On turning 70

Celebrating seven decades on this very, very weird planet

Nov 05, 2025

Seventy years old. If you’d told me that I’d hit this milestone in 2025, I’d have laughed and asked if we’d colonized Mars yet. (Spoiler: We haven’t, unless you count Elon Musk as a real estate agent.)

I popped into the world on the tragic day that actor James Dean plowed his Porsche Spyder, nicknamed “Little Bastard,” head-on into a 1950 Ford Tudor in the Mojave Desert near Cholame, CA. Somehow, I believe, it was no coincidence the brooding rebel died on the day I was born (Sept. 30, 1955). You know, kismet … destiny … the circle of life type thing.

We’ve come a long way over the past seven decades, some good, some bad, and a lot of really, really weird. I’ll submit that I am perplexed by the freaky direction humankind has taken over the years — it’s like opening a gift and having no idea what it is, what it does, or whether or not I should be pleased. It is somewhat disconcerting. But now I’m a septuagenarian, so I’ll be satisfied with my longevity.

Meantime, I’ve been reflecting on how much society has evolved — or devolved — in my lifetime. I’m convinced we’re still one step above chimps, but a very small step.

Change by the Decade

In 1955, society was like a neatly pressed suit: buttoned-up and allergic to change. The Civil Rights Movement was brand new, Elvis, Bill Haley and Chuck Berry introduced the Devil’s music, and Jonas Salk conquered polio. The post-war boom meant suburbs exploded like popcorn. Television invaded living rooms, and Ray Kroc bought McDonald’s, changing our eating habits and clogging arteries for generations.

Essentially, America said, “The war’s over — let’s make babies, bake pies and arm ourselves to the teeth with thermonuclear weapons.”

By the time I hit my teens in the ‘60s, everything exploded — protests over the war and racism, free love, and hair that could hide small woodland creatures. Woodstock happened in ‘69 — I wasn’t there, but I was old enough to grow some scruffy sideburns.

By the way, I have it upon reliable information that we landed on the moon.

Fast-forward to the ‘70s. Watergate made us distrust politicians (shocking, I know), and disco made us hate music. For a brief while.

The ‘80s? Greed was good, according to Gordon Gekko, and fashion underwent a makeover with parachute pants, shoulder pads and hair ... really big hair. AIDS hit hard, shifting how we talked about health and shagging. I got married, fathered three boys, and went corporate ... by “corporate,” I mean working in the fantasy world of Major League Baseball.1

By the 1990s, the Berlin Wall was down, Tim Berners-Lee had introduced the World Wide Web, and society was logging on via dial-up connections that sounded like a robot with indigestion.

Remember Y2K? We stockpiled canned goods as if Armageddon was looming. It didn’t, but my pantry had enough peas and carrots for a lifetime.

In the 2000s, 9/11 changed everything. Airports became fortresses (I once got patted down for forgetting a nail clipper). Society got patriotic, then polarized, then hostile.

Facebook launched in ‘04, the iPhone three years later, giving our arms a permanent extension. The Great Recession in ‘08 had us all eating ramen, even if we called it “fusion cuisine.” Obama’s election in ‘08 felt like progress — “hope and change” … all that.

Then along came the Orange Man in 2016 — and suddenly half of us became totally deranged. We had to Save Democracy! Society splintered like a bad divorce, with Twitter (now X) involved in a custody battle over memes.

Now it’s 2025, Los Angeles has burned, the National Guard is patrolling the streets of four U.S. cities, and New York, the capitalist center of the universe, elected a Uganda-born Muslim Communist mayor.

But he’s a charmer.

Hoo, boy. Turning 70 is really weird.

More Ch-ch-ch-Changes

By the time I reached 70, society went techno-mad. Economically, the world transformed from a manufacturing-based market to a technology-driven, AI-powered future world. How sweeping has been the change? Nvidia, the producer of GPUs and advanced computing technologies, last week became the first company to reach a market capitalization of $5 trillion. Microsoft is valued at more than $4 trillion, Alphabet (Google) at $3.7 trillion.

That’s trillion … with a T.

Climate? We’ve mutated from doomsdayers believing the planet is carbon-poisoned to Bill Gates now saying, “Eh, never mind.” (Greta Thunberg is seething: “How dare you!”)

Electric cars zip by silently, some without drivers. And pronouns? In my youth, they were just grammar; now they’re identity badges. Technically, I am a “he/him” but I always feel like “it/whatever.”

Icons

As I was born in ‘55, my first cultural icons were Mickey Mouse and Captain Kangaroo. In the ‘60s, the Beatles invaded, and I twisted the night away, thinking I was cool. Truth be told, I looked spastic.

The ‘70s brought John Travolta, the Bee Gees and the Sex Pistols. They spat anarchy. I just spat out my gum.

In the ‘80s, MTV killed the radio star, and Michael Jackson moonwalked into legend. The ‘90s brought about Grunge, which made old flannel fashionable, and Friends taught me about coffee shops and bad haircuts.

In the 2000s, reality TV gave rise to the Kardashians, transforming fame and a lack of talent into a billion-dollar family business. Harry Potter bewitched me. I read the books to my kids, but I secretly wished for a wand to clean the house.

Streaming killed Blockbuster, phones killed Kodak, and social media killed normal conversation. Now Netflix suggests shows based on my “mood,” which is usually “confused old guy.”

In the 2010s, Superheroes dominated screens, from Avengers assembling … to me assembling IKEA furniture (equally heroic). Sometime during the decade, we suddenly had 76 genders. Who knew?

“Girls will be boys and boys will be girls
It’s a mixed up, muddled up, shook up world …”

— “Lola” by The Kinks (1970)

The ‘20s kicked off with COVID turning the world into a Zoom call nightmare. NFTs sold monkey pics for millions (then tanked), AI started writing essays and TikTok dances made me question if Darwin was right.

2025 … and beyond

The Russia-Ukraine war grinds on. The Middle East simmers. China’s risen like a Phoenix with tech and tensions over Taiwan. The James Webb Space Telescope revealed the wonders of the cosmos while Earth precariously hangs on by its fingernails. Elections swing wildly … AI deepfakes make truth optional … and everyone not named Twinkle and wearing a Keffiya is a “Nazi.”

And me? I’ve seen rotary phones become smartphones … “critical thinking” has been replaced by ChatGPT … and the polio vaccine advanced to mRNA miracles. Humor in aging? My body’s a comedy of errors. My knees are fine, but my memory’s a sieve.

But I’ve survived multiple wars, both real and fictional, pandemics, technology/AI, political upheaval, threats of thermonuclear annihilation, cultural revolution … and disco. Seventy is not old; it’s vintage. Like fine wine — or in my case, prune juice.

Here’s to another decade of changes. What a long, strange trip it’s been.

###