By Karen Middleton
karen@athensnews-courier.com
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It seems like just yesterday that Cher, clad in leather jacket, black boots and thong cavorted around the strobe-lit deck of the USS Missouri, singing “If I Could Turn Back Time.”
As hard as it is to believe, Cher turned 65 the other day. While it might be a little harder to rustle up a background crew of believably lust-crazed sailors for a video these days, she is still one sexy senior.
OK. OK. We can tell ourselves that we could all look that good if we had access to as much plastic surgery and a U.S. Navy vessel on which to practice our aerobic dance moves.
As it is, my knees are audibly creaking. I flexed them the other day and they emitted a sound like a cowpoke shifting in an old leather saddle.
If, like Cher’s anthem of 22 years ago, I could “turn back time,” I would have knees that didn’t hurt when I descend stairs and ankles and arches strong enough to wear sassy spike heels.
In the meantime, I’m just fighting to maintain. Heck, none of us wants to get older, but we must constantly remind ourselves that it is better than the alternative.
Speaking of which, contrary to the predictions of California radio preacher Harold Camping, the world didn’t end on Saturday.
How do you like that for a segue?
The Associated Press reported Monday that Camping now acknowledges that he was off by five months and Judgment Day will actually come on Oct. 21. But he is not completely backing off his earlier prediction, saying now that May 21 was an “invisible judgment day.”
Oct. 21, in his original scenario, was to be fireball day, but now it’s all going to happen on that one day. He once predicted the apocalypse would happen in 1994 and when that day came and went without a rapturous event, Camping blamed it on faulty mathematics.
Let’s say Camping gets it right this time, what do we suppose he’s going to do with the $18.3 million in donations and assets of $104 million – including $34 million in stocks and bonds – he listed in IRS filings for his nonprofit Family Radio?
I think between now and Oct. 21 if he were to take that money and make life more bearable for a whole bunch of hurting people in this world, he would assure his berth in paradise.
Then, if, perchance, the world doesn’t end on Oct. 21, he could don leather jacket and thong and join Cher for a “If I Could Turn Back Time” duet on the deck of a battleship because I’m sure he would want to be filthy rich again.
