Paul Oberjuerge: Sagging Repertorial Boomers
This is the 12th edition of the Olympics I've covered. The reporters who come to these events tend to be a clubby little crew (sports writers call them Ring Heads, and not in a loving way). Many of them returning time and again. (Just like me, but I'm not really one of Them.)
Anyway, I might not see the Ring Heads between Olympic cycles. Two years, maybe four. The really sad thing is how rapidly these people are aging! I wonder if they even notice!
I won't name names, but the Ring Heads are getting decrepit. Porky, bald, flabby, sagging, graying at the temples, the forelocks, the crown -- if they still have hair there.
You don't see someone for a while, they show up, and man, Father Time has been beating on them with the ugly stick. How is it I manage to stay so young and vibrant, and essentially unchanged from Sarajevo 1984?
It may say something about print journalism, in general, that most of the best jobs were grabbed by Boomers in their youth and that they're still hanging on to them 20 years later. (Might also say the talented younger writers, if there are any, have decided Print Is Dead.)
Even though I've been to 12 of these, I can think of at least three print guys, real quick, who have been to at least 13 -- Phil Hersh of the Chicago Tribune, Tom Weir of USA Today, Mike Lopresti of Gannett News Service.
Anyway, the guy who used to be handsome ... now he has jowls and a limp. The former semi-handsome Ring Head-ette ... now looks like Johnny Carson dressed up as Aunt Flabby.
Probably goes for the TV vets, too, but they have better makeup artists. Bob Costas in real life probably is a tiny little dried up prune. Jim Lampley, take him out of his Dick Clark girdle and funeral parlor-strength makeup, he probably looks like Lyndon Johnson after a weekend bender.
I've been really lucky to escape the aging process.
Leave a comment