The Walter White Guide to Middle Age

Being middle-aged isn't generally considered to be cool. It's usually the time when people begin contemplating how much they've changed and how close to death they now are. Of course a little latter when they become seniors those concerns become less pressing and thoughts turn to Jeopardy, Wheel of Fortune and Fox News.

Very few actors for example, have made a name for themselves after they turned 45. Bryan Cranston is one of those. AMC's Breaking Bad accomplished something quite remarkable - and has empowered middle-aged white men everywhere. Breaking Bad made the mid-life crisis cool. How did they manage to accomplish this seemingly impossible feat? It was Walter White of course...

The five season long series that redefined television finally concluded this month and as a tribute to that show and middle-aged men everywhere we've collected some wisdom and advice from the show's lead character on how to deal with middle age.

Walter White - White, Middle-Aged and Funky

• Tip 1 - Don't trust Social Security to provide an adequate pension for you or your family; you will need at least $9 to 14 million in ready cash.
• Tip 2 - Conflict resolution is a thing of the past - it's better to deal with problems head-on - and make them just go away (permanently).
• Tip 3 - Driving a beat up Pontiac is just fine. 
• Tip 4 - Don't let anyone ridicule your funny hats.
• Tip 5 - Share your wisdom, mentor a young person.
• Tip 6 - Don't just build a business, create an empire.
• Tip 7 - Science and Chemistry are cool. Remote control machine guns are a great hobby too.. 
• Tip 8 - Never go into business with Ayran prison gangs.
• Tip 9 - Don't wait for Obamacare to get the treatment you need.
• Tip 10 - Encourage your wife to work, laundering your excess cash.
• Tip 11 - Don't waste your money on expensive legal advice. 
• Tip 12 - Accidents happen, get over it.
• Tip 13 - Do it for the family, do it for the fun.
• Tip 14 - Product quality is just as important as distribution.
• Tip 15 - The goatee is a reflection of raw power.

One of the many tributes to middle-aged cool

We will miss you Walter White, that is unless AMC decides to bring you back in the Walking Dead or as a teen intern in Madmen.


copyright, Raving Reviews 2013

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What Goes Up...

We went to see Gravity the weekend it came out (about 2 weeks ago) and attended a very nice IMAX / 3D equipped theater (at one of our favorite venues - AMC at Newport at the Levee  by Cincinnati). While 3D plus IMAX inflates any movie-going experience, there were definitely mixed feelings about this one. The action was great - not much bother about plot - this film was a non-stop sprint for survival without any explanations per se. The science was suspect; much ado was made about the debris field orbiting in the wrong direction (a la Neil deGrasse Tyson) but no one seemed to notice that the shuttle fleet has been retired for two years and it certainly looked as though they were using one of the old shuttles as opposed to something that Elon Musk might have up his sleeve. So does this mean that the disaster already happened and someone is keeping it a big secret?

A $25 billion investment digitally shredded in about two scenes...  

BTW - we had the unique distinction of being at Cocoa Beach (or slightly south at Patrick AFB) to film the last shuttle launch. Damn if that shuttle didn't fly right into a cloud - oh well- at least it didn't fly into the space station, we think.

Doesn't look much like a shuttle does it, Elon?

So anyway, how about that Sandra Bullock? She survived the worst husband ever only to have to escape from one exploding spacecraft after another. She certainly did a good job with the limited (and somewhat far-fetched) material given to her. But what about Putin, isn't he going to get upset after being blamed for the destruction of just about everything in near-Earth orbit? Will he jail the production team and cast if they ever tour Russia (like he did to Pussyriot?). That remains to be seen.

While we must admit this was an entertaining film, it certainly doesn't warrant becoming an Oscar contender (as is being talked about now). Although if they had inserted a plea for more NASA funding (as a way to have possibly avoided the catastrophe in space) then we might have been able to get behind a nomination. 

Perhaps the saddest way to look at the film is as a metaphor for our collective ambitions for Space exploration - they all seem to have coming crashing down...

copyright 2013, Raving Reviews

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