It’s Whisper Quiet!
I used to watch a lot of infomercials. Still would had the market not shifted. The insidious nature of the infomercial is that you can watch it and laugh at it for its hilarious deceptions and ridiculous turns of phrase, but still kind of want a pasta maker at the end of it.
This is how I feel about turning 40. The difference being that I actually did turn 40 and I have yet to buy a pasta maker.
Before I saw Ron Popeil’s children make chocolate pasta on stage, I had never even considered the idea of making my own pasta or even the actual origins of pasta. For all I knew, its various shapes were grown in a field and harvested by men dressed in overalls, dodging barrels thrown by an ape as they jump through fields of linguine. I didn’t even eat a ton of pasta, but the idea that I could make my own was fascinating to me, even if it seems like the machines barely made it through the damn infomercial, let alone whatever Fruit Loop and Hi-C pasta concoction I would have forced it to process. Still once I knew the pasta maker was possible, I very much wanted the pasta maker, no matter how shitty it actually was.
Once again, the similarities between turning 40 and the pasta maker are evident.
One could be forgiven for thinking the pasta maker would never produce rotini in the same way one could be forgiven for thinking I’d never hit 40. Though me and the pasta maker both make inhuman noises as we struggle to complete our questionably useful tasks, we soldier on regardless until one day the pasta stops and we’re both just empty shells and useless accessories—me with my vibrating, mucus removing vests and the pasta maker with it’s bagel making attachment—our parts barely worth harvesting.
I’m not much of a celebrator which means so far being 40 feels a lot like being 39, which felt a lot like being 38, etc. Seems like the market for Over the Hill items has mostly dried up, which is a possible side effect of the increasingly Sisyphean nature of “the hill.” I don’t know when I’m going to die, but I can pretty much guarantee I’ll be working until I do. All the effort of pushing the stone up while still sliding into the grave, baby!
Still, I’m surprised at how much I wanted to add 40 to the collection of years I’ve been. Not enough to attempt a Demolition Man-style cryofreeze on myself, but enough that I didn’t start writing this until after I turned 40. I may not be superstitious, but I’m also not going to set the universe up for a decent punchline.
In any case, the reaper didn’t come in my 30s or 20s or teens. Instead I’ve reached an age where it is no longer possible for me to die young but instead I will expire at an age that will be much more than anyone expected of me and everyone will be able to say “he used to be real sick” or “at least he can breathe now” or whatever they’ll say once my final act is written, probably in my blood upon the rocks after I miss my jump over Snake River Canyon. Or maybe I’ll make 50, who knows?
A Somewhat Related Video
Many Years Ago I made an edit of two of my favorite things: the Ronco Pasta Maker infomercial and televangelism. I think it was the first video I edited on an iPad, but I’m too old to remember now.
Two Other Birthday Related Posts
I wrote my book Can’t Eat, Can’t Breathe and Other Ways Cystic Fibrosis Has F#$%*d Me roughly 10 years ago and I started a website to promote it around that time. I recently imported the archives from that site into Substack, so allow me to highlight two posts I wrote when I was in my 30s.
One is about the last act of my 20s and the other is a list of birthdays and whether or not they are significant. I stopped the list at 40, which feels ominous now, but I assure you I was just lazy then.
Coven
Though I just made a big deal about not being a celebrator, I did do one thing to mark the occasion of my birthday: I released an album.
The new All Hallow’s Evil album “Coven”—pronounced with a long “o” in the Mark Borchardt tradition—is now out on every major digital music platform. I can assure you it’s very good, but even if you don’t want to listen to it, I’d very much appreciate it if you just let it play on every device in your home that can play music. Here’s a bunch of links: https://linktr.ee/allhallowsevil
Things I Like
I saw Enter The Dragon when I was very young, 5 or so. My parents had just gotten divorced and me and my mom had moved into a trailer with her friend and her two kids. I did not have a lot of space to myself there, which was tough because I was born a stuff lover and I’m not happy unless it’s piled up all around me.
One thing I did have is two sets of nunchucks, made out of wooden dowels and cheap chains by the divorced dad of the kid I was sharing a room with. It was the 80s, so giving kids melee weapons was seen as good for their development, even before the Ninja Turtles brought it mainstream.
I had mostly forgotten about those nunchucks until re-watching Enter the Dragon last week. When Bruce Lee started beating ass with those nunchaku, I came real close to buying a pair as a birthday present to myself. The only thing stopping me is that I’m too old and tired to explain any potential injuries to the ER. Also, I just bought an air conditioner, so there’s not a lot of room in the bank account for surprise hospital bills right now.