Henry Kissinger hit 100 and the internet reacted the only way the internet knows how. Half the population posted the same joke. Death took one look at Kissinger and quietly backed out of the room. Meanwhile, the obituary page in Peoria was filling up with a respiratory therapist, 61. A welder, 63. Somebody’s favorite uncle who spent forty years hauling drywall until his spine filed for divorce.
People have noticed this pattern forever. The bastards seem to linger. The decent disappear halfway through the movie.
Part of the illusion comes from bad bookkeeping. Monsters who keel over at fifty-eight don’t become legends. They vanish before anyone builds the mythology. Survivorship bias is one hell of a publicist.
Then the statistics arrive carrying a baseball bat.
Raj Chetty’s massive 2016 study in JAMA looked at tax records and life expectancy. Richest one percent of American men. Poorest one percent. The difference wasn’t a few birthdays. It was about fifteen years. I used to quote ten. Reality raised the bill.
The IRS keeps meticulous records. Income. Deductions. Capital gains. One thing missing from the forms is a checkbox marked “War Criminal” or “Pathological Narcissist.”
Science has tried to pin longevity on personality. The results refuse to cooperate with the revenge fantasy. Chronic hostility, rage, and cynical mistrust tend to kill you sooner. Cardiologists have spent decades watching furious men sprint toward heart disease. Living in a permanent state of outrage is less fountain of youth than express lane to the catheter lab.
So much for the theory that evil itself preserves the body.
Money does.
Money buys distance from stress. Distance from eviction notices. Distance from lifting fifty-pound boxes at age sixty-three. Distance from double shifts, impossible bosses, and four sleepless years caring for a dying parent because nobody else showed up.
The Whitehall studies in Britain found the same ugly pattern. Same government employer. Same national health system. Same buildings. Yet every rung lower on the employment ladder meant a shorter life. Your body keeps score of your place in the pecking order even when everyone carries the same insurance card.
Donald Trump turned eighty this year, still performing marathon rallies while surviving on a diet that looks like a prank played on nutrition science. People point at him and announce the mystery solved.
Wrong mystery.
He isn’t demonstrating the biological benefits of being difficult. He’s demonstrating insulation. Problems arrive at the gates of his kingdom and get intercepted by assistants, lawyers, security staff, communications directors, and people whose job description begins with, “Don’t let this reach him.” And, Natalie Harp. Stress gets outsourced. Consequences get delegated. Most people don’t have employees standing between themselves and reality.
The fantasy is satisfying. The facts are irritating.
If you’re waiting for history to improve because certain old men finally exit the stage, bring snacks. The actuarial tables are not on your side. The work gets done while they’re alive, not afterward. Elections. Courts. Agencies. Institutions. Those are the only weapons with decent odds.
Kissinger, for the record, received full military honors.
History has a vicious sense of humor. Sometimes the punchline lasts another fifteen years.
Listening - Mr. Natural - Stanley Turpentine
Recorded at Van Gelder Studio in September 1964, “Mr. Natural” brought together Stanley Turrentine with Lee Morgan, McCoy Tyner, Elvin Jones, Bob Cranshaw, and Ray Barretto. On paper, an all-star lineup; in practice, they sound like they’ve rehearsed for years, which is not surprising because they played together in a number of Blue Note recordings.
Turrentine’s tenor is warm and conversational, leaving space for confident blues phrases. McCoy Tyner and Elvin Jones bring the Coltrane Quartet’s rhythmic engine without overpowering Stanley (Interesting to compare their playing here, with what they were playing with Trane in ‘64). Lee Morgan plays with restraint, complementing rather than competing. Ray Barretto’s congas add rhythmic depth, and Rudy Van Gelder’s engineering captures the tenor beautifully with weight and body.
The album wasn’t released until 1980—sixteen years later—because Blue Note considered Turrentine’s soulful, bluesy approach less commercially viable than progressive albums they prioritized, and the label faced a massive recording backlog.
The secret ingredient remains the combination of Turrentine with the Coltrane rhythm section. The music sits between hard bop, soul jazz, and modal jazz, occupying a rare space that keeps it sounding fresh sixty years later.
Listen to Turrentine’s composition Shirley, written for his wife at the time, Shirley Scott:
Watching - Wings of Desire - Wim Wenders
Wim Wenders, probably best known his film, The Buena Vista Social Club, shoots like every frame owes somebody money. Landscapes don’t decorate the story. They interrogate it. Roads, deserts, empty streets, and broken skylines become the loudest voices in the room.
His people drift through life without GPS, chasing versions of themselves they barely remember. Nobody rushes toward answers. Wenders leaves you stranded inside the uncertainty, which feels closer to real life than Hollywood’s addiction to closure.
He refuses to yank your emotions around with plot tricks. He shows you what happened, then walks away and leaves you alone with it.
His films ache, but they never surrender to cynicism. Paris, Texas. Wings of Desire. The American Friend. They don’t end. They haunt.
His 1986 cult classic, Wings of Desire, starring Peter Falk and Bruno Gans is about a trenchcoat-wearing guardian angel who falls in love with a trapeze artist and wishes to become human. This breathtaking film ably tackles questions of love, life and metaphysics.
You can watch the film on Netflix or HBO Max.
Next Tuesday: The Night That Jazz Fought Back
In 1960, while the official Newport Jazz Festival collapsed into riots, Charles Mingus and Max Roach organized a breakaway event that asked a question the music industry has never honestly answered. Who does the music belong to? This is the story of three days in Rhode Island that exposed a contradiction still running through jazz, and every other art form, right now.
You write beautifully! I'm envious. I found this three-element post a wonderful morning read: Music, Movies, Miscreants.
What a nice take on Wings of Desire, a movie I watch every few years and will continue to watch as long as I inhabit this mortal coil.