The Hysteria of Irrelevance

The hysterical woman in this video reaches far beyond its political framework.

Yes, it is a political rant, but much more importantly, it’s a statement about what it feels like to live as an obese and unattractive middle-age female in the throes of an existential meltdown over feelings of irrelevance and invisibility.

To some this is quite sad.

To people like me, it’s a chapter in my next book about the stratospheric value of youth and beauty.

As you watch, ask yourself why else anyone would ever acknowledge her?

In deference to what’s left of her sanity, one can certainly understand the motivation to assert her existence to the world, a place that otherwise sees right through her.

In this sense, her rant is an assertion of her existence.

I have to admit it’s been a while since I last witnessed such a bizarre manifestation of self-loathing.

Most of the time it’s just a bridge jump and an obscure Obituary notice someplace you can’t even Google.

Nonetheless, it was entertaining, and therefore, accomplished its end no matter how pitiful or embarrassing to her constituency.

How Does Billy Bob Thornton, 61, Do It?

Baby Boomer, Billy Bob Thornton, was born in Hot Springs, Arkansas on August 4, 1955. He is an American actor, filmmaker, singer, songwriter, and musician.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3757208/Why-beauties-fall-Hollywood-s-unlikely-lothario-Billy-Bob-Thornton-charmed-Angelina-Jolie-Amber-Heard.html

In the above article you’ll read all about how Billy Bob managed to nail so many beautiful young women.

But as I have always said, women don’t see a whole lot with their eyes unless it involves themselves or other women.

This is because women for the most part are drawn to the darker mysteries of intellect, power, success and surrender – usually in that order.

I know. Shocker.

Fame, Power, Money and SEX in Entertainment

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3754559/Fox-News-host-Andrea-Tantaros-files-suit-claiming-network-operates-like-sex-fueled-Playboy-Mansion-like-cult-Roger-Ailes-Bill-O-Reilly-unwanted-sexual-advances.html

Newsflash: It’s not just Fox, and it’s not just entertainment, but mostly entertainment because people who choose this route are most often dealing with some form of psychiatric disability.

This aside, when I was a budding young actor in NYC [and before i chose photography and writing], this kind of thing was commonplace.

If you wanted something, you have to surrender something – usually your dignity.

I mean, come on! You weren’t just asking for a job as a bagger at Whole Foods for god’s sake.

You wanted fame and fortune and everything that goes with it.

That was then.

The great thing about being older is that you can look back at all the shit you had to swallow to get ahead and know that no one will ever pull that shit on you again, not least of which because you’re no longer a hot 22-year-old model with your hands out.

“Billionaire Executive, 56, Dates 22-Year-Old Woman.” So What?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3740712/Billionaire-real-estate-executive-56-divorces-wife-15-years-date-22-year-old-Harvard-student.html

This is decidedly a “non-story.”

So why did I publish it?

To make yet another in an eternally long string of identical points, that wealthy older men who date much younger women are simply leveraging assets the way everyone does at every stage of life.

Young men leverage youth, beauty and the prospect of future success while older men leverage success, maturity and appreciation, among others.

It’s all asset management, consciously or otherwise, but usually consciously.

Then, and only then does everything else matter.

It’s no different than everything else in life.

We leverage what we have at our disposal and for those who come up short, you see comments like the following:

“I hope she gets half the money”

“Oh god, lol! What a joke!”

“I’ll date ya, man. I’m not a female, but for the amount of cash you are willing to throw around, a little experimentation is ok.”

“It’s good to be rich…..It’s then you only see that ALL women have a price tag !”

“Rich men can be the biggest fools when it comes to women. They might have loads of cash but fail to own mirrors.”

If everyone could afford their fantasies, they wouldn’t blink.

Now you know a little more about the people commenting, both men and women.

Life in the In-Betweens

In spite of what you see and hear in the media, most people are not multimillionaire celebrities.

In terms of actual numbers, most people are either flat broke or living on governments subsidies, which makes them invisible by media standards.

But what about people who fall somewhere between flat broke and filthy rich?

They’re stuck on cruise control, particularly these days with little return on investments and turbulence in the air.

The dirty little secret about life is that the people who have been the most financially successful either had substantial wealth and connections to fall back on, or they had nothing to lose.

Two public examples of this are Donald Trump and Ellen Degeneres.

Trump had everything to start out with, Ellen nothing.

But for most people, life is not about risk-taking. It’s about establishing financial security.

Why?

Because most cannot afford risk.

They earn well and save reasonably for the entire length and breath of their career, and now have what’s referred to as an income-producing nest egg.

They’ve done everything they were supposed to do and ended up exactly as prophesied by every economist in the world.

Now what?

Though their nest eggs are substantial by relative standards, there isn’t enough to risk losing.

This is where many, many successful Baby-Boomers find themselves at early retirement, by which I mean retirement before they necessarily have to.

The necessity is to preserve wealth, but the desire is to continue growing.

This group is what is known as the “in-betweens” of high net worth individuals.

They sit at the bottom end of the top 1% or 2% of the population with enough to live well, but not flourish.

This also makes them the most vulnerable, because those who don’t have anything are provided for, and those who don’t feel tax increases are cavorting with Ukrainian hookers in Aspen.

The other truth about this in-between group is that they constitute approximately 3% of the working population, rather than < 1%.

Some refer to this group as the upper middle class, and since there are a lot more of them than there are billionaires, they are the target of every tax whore on the planet.

In America, we are no longer a nation of working people who seek the American dream of retiring comfortably at the end of a long, hard journey.

Now we’re a nation of either celebrity multimillionaires or recipients of government subsidies.

Everyone is being squeezed out of existence.

Now you understand why small business are becoming a thing of the past, and by the time most baby Boomers are dead, a handful of companies will own the entire planet.

I just bring this up because one of my neighbors wants to start a mobile restaurant, but his banker told him that if he failed, there would be nothing left to go home to but a bottle of Jack Daniels and a loaded 9mm pistol.

I assume the house painting he’s currently doing is a substitute for his new smoothie franchise.

MORAL OF THE STORY

Figure out how to become a multimillionaire celebrity.

Psychology and the Retirement Nest Egg

Most of us Baby Boomers have launched retirement calculators a thousand times. Almost every financial institution has one, and invariably, the ones we tend to go to offer the most optimistic outlooks on how much we can spend until the day we die.

The problem is that no one knows exactly when they’re going to die, or if they’re going to die for those of us who’ve opted for cryogenic sleep.

Nonetheless, there is still an annual charge for keeping a body on ice, perhaps for a thousand years or more, so there’s that.

So here’s the dirty rotten obnoxious and existential nightmare-provoking truth: You probably won’t outlive your money.

As I stated in my book, Urban Dystrophy, The Perverse Truths About Mid Life in the Big City, a starter portfolio is $5,000,000.

I know I know. How the hell are you supposed to save $5,000,000 on a $500,000 annual salary over the course of 25 or 30 years?

After taxes somewhere in the 39% range, you’re only taking home somewhere in the $300,000 range.

If you own a home that costs $1,000,000, you can expect to pay $25,000 in property taxes and after a 20% deposit, approximately $60,000/year on a mortgage.

Now add electricity and other related home expenses and you’re down to $200,000 — and you haven’t taken a vacation, bought a single meal or paid a single car note.

Back out those expenses and with luck you have approximately $150,000 left over.

If, however, you have 2 kids, you have basically nothing left over.

So, for the past 25 years you’ve made $12,500,000 and don’t have a dime left in the bank.

Even if you were frugal enough to contribute $75,000,000 a year to a retirement account [for 25 years], you would still only have $1,875,000 in contributions, plus investment interest at an average of around 5%, so $2,800,000 – $3,000,000.

Seriously?

If you retire at age 65, that’s not even close to enough for anyone I know.

The reason for this is because you want to live the same way you did before you retired, which means you’ll need a few million more to generate the income you need to avoid running out of money before your time is up.

For most men I know who give a crap about living well in retirement, the number is around $7,000,000.

At a 5% return, you’re still at 350k/year.

If, however, market crashes, feel free to put a bullet in your head because being broke isn’t worth the struggle for older people.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MONEY

Most men my age validate themselves based upon their relative financial security.

And while every psychiatrist on the planet will call bullshit on this because it’s about as unhealthy a perspective as one might have given the vagaries of money.

But nothing is going to change it unless you plan to join a monastic congregation in Burma.

Money is kind of like a living thing that follows you around wherever you go.

When it doesn’t, you have a big fat fucking problem.

Walk into a car dealership, new prospective home…or hell, the Apple store, and see what happens when the money monster isn’t with you and smiling.

Then you know true meaning of nausea.

The reason you feel the hubris of filthy rich older men with the tans, snow white veneers and $3000 suits is because they’ve beaten the system.

They’ve overcome whatever life can throw at them, shy of a brain aneurysm, stroke or stage 3 cancer.

In other words, they can ride out the highs and low of the stock market, or pay marginal tax increases and still live their lives without making any changes whatsoever.

This is where you want to be, but unfortunately, probably won’t be.

The media is always talking about wealth; who has this or that.

Magazines feature $5,000,000 homes like they’re normal abodes for anyone who’s led a reasonably successful life.

But this is a lie.

The only way to afford a home like that is to inherit it or sell something.

Salaries don’t pay for homes in that price rage.

Investment capital does.

Psychologically, this is a massive hurdle for otherwise success older men facing retirement.

You look down the road at the rest of your life and you don’t see the picture you’ve been sold…and there isn’t a damn thing you can do about it.

Many men lose their younger girlfriends and/or wives to cut backs in lifestyle.

The ones who don’t tend to be with women their own age who have little to no value on the dating market, who and just sty put.

On top of all this we have a government hell bent and determined to tax out of existence everyone in the middle to upper middle class – including the bottom end of the top 3%.

This is because there are more of them than there are people with $100,000,000 or more who don’t feel any tax increases whatsoever.

So now we have an oligarchy and you’re on the wrong side of it.

WHAT TO DO

1] Figure out how much you absolutely, positively need to live the way you want to live and carve your expectations accordingly.

2] Accept that fact that as you near the end of your life, your retirement savings will be nearing the ends of it’s life.

3] Add 5 years to your anticipated lifeline and then hope and pray you don’t outlive it.

4] Find someone in your personal life who can handle stock market turbulence.

5] Don’t marry a gold-digger unless you’re in the $100,000,000 demographic.

Mick Jagger, 72, Fathers 8th Child Melanie Hamrick, 29

Melanie Hamrick, 29, is mother to Jagger’s 8th child.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-3691150/Nothing-fazes-Sir-Mick-Jagger-72-set-father-ballerina-girlfriend-Melanie-Hamrick-29.html

BTW, who cares if it’s his 22nd child? He could father a nation and still support them so shut the hell up.

As for the rest of you, try having just one you can afford.

The rest of us are sick of paying your bills.

4 Nannies + 2 Twins = How Money Evens the Playing Field

Rolling Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood, 69, and his wife Sally, 38, tend to their newborns, Gracie Jane and Alice Rose.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-3660312/Full-house-Ronnie-Wood-69-hires-FOUR-nannies-help-wife-Sally-Wood-38-tend-newborn-twins-Gracie-Jane-Alice-Rose.html

~~~

In days gone by [lots of them], a man of 69 was, for the most part, on his death bed.

The very last thing he was doing was having children with a woman 30 years his junior.

Then something happened [a lot, actually], and this same man is now clean and sober [for the most part, I assume], propped up by the miracles of medical science, and thus, living like there’s no tomorrow.

This is what fame and fortune [fame + money = relevance] does for most men.

It’s like a blood transfusion that just keeps giving and giving.

You’ll note that many of the comments under the article are dismissive of him and his “relationship.”

People simply can’t resist the temptation to criticize his motives, and hers.

Nothing is real. It’s all one big endless past time for a man who has nothing left to do with the time he’s not touring.

Well let’s get real.

No one in their right mind has kids at 69 without the ability to afford nannies…lots of them.

It’s not that he doesn’t want to be a part of their lives, just not all of it.

As for his young wife, she’ll do her part, with lots of help, while her husband does what he does when he wants to do it, because like he’s Ronnie Wood and the scales have to balance somewhere.

Wealthy older men have reached a point in their lives where they just don’t give a crap what other people think about them and their lifestyles.

For one thing, they don’t have to. Nothing rides on their reputations in the office.

This is the beauty of success. No one can fault you for it no matter how you choose to live out your years.

It’s like a golden wrapper, a force field that follows you around wherever you go.

You walk into a restaurant, hotel, resort property – even local liquor store – and there’s a kind of parting of the waves.

It’s something you get used to, which is one reason men who find themselves suddenly without it blow their brains out.

The story here is really about what it’s like to feel validated for everything you ever dreamed of as a little boy.

For young men there is tremendous pressure to amount to something, to achieve.

And as we age we gauge our success by those around us, hoping that we’re still close to the front of the line, relevant, valid.

All older men validate themselves on their achievements whether they admit it or not.

They subconsciously sum up everything to a series of equations and derive a number that determines their relative worth.

And while some men do not base their lives solely on financial success, I don’t know any.

While vicariously living through one’s children is a fallback position, it really sucks to rely on their financial support.

The moral of this story is that life is a food chain no matter how you dice it.

You have to fight for every scrap, and then live to tell a very tall tale that you and people around you can easily quantify.

It is unforgiving, savage, and brutally objective.

This is why reality television focusing on the super rich is so popular, while anxiety disorders are the most common mental illness in the U.S., affecting 40 million adults…and counting.

Now you know why people beat up on Ronny Wood…and why Daily Mail published it in the first place.

Concluding Remarks and Data Points

1% (2 out of 233) became wealthy before the age of 40
3% (6 out of 233) became wealthy between age 40 and 55
16% (38 out of 233) became wealthy between age 46 and 50
28% (66 out of 233) became wealthy between age 51 and 55
31% (73 out of 233) became wealthy between age 56 and 60
21% (48 out of 233) became wealthy after the age of 60

So yes, Ronnie was one lucky SOB.

Why Rich Older Guys Can’t Find the “Right” Women

The reasons men of means have difficulty finding true love has everything to do with them, and nothing whatsoever to do with the relative health of their investment portfolios.

~~~

The following is a conversation between yours truly and one of these men.

By the time you’re half way through it, you’ll understand the dilemma.

“John” is a nom de plume.

JOHN

“I just met this woman who is perfect! Perfect body, nice skin, teeth…and she has a perfect ass. A little flat on top, but I can fix that.”

“Where did you meet her?

JOHN

At a really nice steakhouse. She was at the bar having drinks with a girlfriend.

Is she from here?

JOHN

I think so. She’s in school.

How old is she?

JOHN

So she’s getting a graduate degree or something?

JOHN

I don’t know all of that, but she is really into fitness and wants to workout with me at the club.

I’m sure she does. What does she do for a living? Does she have a job?

JOHN

Yea, she’s in medical sales or something like that. She’s really smart.

I bet.

~~~

So this is how it all starts.

There’s a checklist that runs in the blood.

You’ll notice the same list in 22-year-old men who don’t have resources and children that must withstand their poor life choices.

Such men can ebb and flow with the tides, relatively unscathed.

But when an older man of means gets caught up in what feels like a rip current, it can drag his entire life straight to hell before he has time to repair the damage.

The point is older men of means have a tendency to forget their age and financial station relative to the women they choose to date.

In their minds, they’re still at Stanford, and the women are on a field in front of them carrying lacrosse rackets.

This is the delusion that settles in like virus and hides out in their spinal columns for the duration of their lives.

It’s incurable, but it can be contained.

Unfortunately, containing it is akin to death to many, so it just does what the hell it wants until there’s nothing left to do.

I can’t tell an older man that his choices are ass-backwards. He doesn’t want to hear it.

What he wants to hear is that a beautiful young woman of unknown origin and lifestyle will love him for who he is.

He wants it to all the be same way things were 30 years ago.

This is the psychopathology.

This is also why these men rarely – if ever – find the “right” women.

They don’t exist anymore than the person they were 30 years ago exists.

Now they’re standing at a steakhouse bar in the middle of a massive metropolis, hallucinating.

And who takes advantage of their hallucinations?

You guessed it.

5 Bullet Points of Note

1] Never choose a woman based solely upon her appearance thinking you can fix the rest of it. In her mind, the rest is not broken. You are.

2] If a woman in a steakhouse says she’s in school at 33, she is in class where you’re standing.

3] Your fantasies are public knowledge, which means that the women you meet have your number.

4] Line items are fine, but not particularly practical.

5] Imagine your world without money and then place that template over the women in your sights.

“All Middle-Aged Men Want To Be Thought Of As Cool…”

This statement is thrown around a lot these days, mostly by older women who are sick to death of older men acting like juvenile delinquents.

But I can assure you, I know just as many 40-60-something women who make them look like choir boys.

~~~

Okay, enough with the stereotyping.

It’s boring, mostly because it’s true.

Older men who can afford to “act out” [when I was a kid, they called it “acting up”], do so because they can.

And because they can, they do. Not all, but those who can afford the fallout.

This is how many gold-diggers spot their marks, by the way.

Anyone who can afford to stand out does so for reasons that have pretty much everything to do with the fact that they can do so with impunity.

The same is true of divorced older women who go on jaunts to Cancun with their single – and married – girlfriends only to come back knocked up by teenagers at beach raves.

Understand that, from an actuarial point of view, there is nothing ahead that remotely resembles “I’m getting hotter,” or “Aging is an abstraction.”

It’s in your face and it’s mouth is wide open.

What better to do than go back to a time before all the existential crap laid its wicked hands on you and stick it to time, even if you’re still sticking it to yourself.

Affluent older men [and women] do, in fact, buy sports cars and motorcycles, drug themselves silly, engage in risky sexual encounters, do stupid shit like jump out of airplanes, climb mountains and play with gold-diggers as though they were domesticated animals.

It happens to all of us at some point along the way, when time is slipping so fast you start with the opiates to slow the shit down.

Not to bury the lead here, but it’s obvious by now that both genders play the same game.

Perhaps it could be argued that for men aging is a tougher pill to swallow.

The hunter/predator/drone paradigm only works when the joints are nimble and quick to react.

But women who take on traditionally male roles suffer similar fates as time beats down the doors, wreaking havoc on once vibrant skin, teeth hair, nails and everything else for that matter.

Neither gender fares particularly well where the body is concerned.

The bottom line is this:

Older women want men – within their age demographic – to kick the older man/younger woman habit so they can have a fair shot at settling down with one of them.

And while there are ample studies that suggest older women are just fine being alone or in the company of friends, it is only so when faced with the alternative of an average older man.

This is why we see so many of them revisiting adolescence on Spring Break before finding themselves empty, depressed and alone.

See, men are superficial enough to keep this thing going until the day they die.

Women, on the other hand, can only keep it going long enough to prove a point before moving to Florida, joining a book club, and outliving men by 10 years.

Revenge at last.

[Depending on your point of view].

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