IT RUNS IN THE FAMILY

Getting old sucks. Your joints tighten up and ache, your breasts sag while your ass disappears, and your height shrinks. It’s just awful. However, there is one much more insidious side affect to the aging process that never occurred to me until I endured this atrocious Douglas/Douglas fiasco-- suddenly, everything you do becomes absolutely precious. Doesn’t sound so bad, does it? Well it’s a fate worse than death, my friend, and Kirk Douglas is inflicted terribly. As I sat through every drawn out moment of this picture, I was completely bewildered by the audience’s responses. Suddenly, everything Kirk said was apparently a laugh riot. At first, I almost rejoiced. I discovered the key to comedy! All you need to do is get old, survive a stroke, and just try to speak. It’s that easy! I’ll be rich! My glee quickly died when I detected the quiet murmurs throughout the audience. They weren’t laughing with old Kirk; they merely found every one of his inane lines completely precious. Their patronizing tone made me ill. “Aaoohh,.. he’s sad because he’s old and can’t jog fast anymore.” “Aaoohh,.. he’s sad because his wife died.” “Aaoohh,.. look, now he’s injecting insulin into his thigh.” “Aaoohh,.. now he’s burning his brothers remains in a canoe. Isn’t he just the cutest thing?” This was a man that caught more tail than a fleet of dogs can catch in New York City, and he’s contracted more STDs than all of the Chicago Bulls-- including Michael Jordan. But now he’s just an old, withered man. Aging is torment enough without constantly being reminded by tedious, soul-sucking movies like this one. For the love of God, just let the man die in peace without forcing us to watch his last agonizing moments! If you need to watch something sickeningly cute watch an episode of Lassie, or that hypnotic cartoon Hamtaro; but let Kirk die in peace. Unless, of course, he’s doing something completely precious,.. like changing his own catheter or something.