60 Comments

  1. How can we have a geezer tag if Old Age is Over.

    Yes, I get the reference. But I have no idea what the article is supposed to be about.

    Actually, if old age is OVER then…. oh, well, it was inevitable.

  3. I would have thought I understood it, but the fact that you say it’s a Geezer reference means I probably don’t.

  5. Thank you for “yea or nay”. There are several irritating variant spellings out there , like “yay or nah” (though that may be trying for something else), as well as a contrary impulse of writing “yea” for “yeah”.

  6. But so far none of us have actually followed the directions to just say “yea” or “nay.” (Or any spelling variations of them.)

  9. Yea. I get the reference despite being a few years too young to remember it firsthand. But was I the only one who interpreted the magazine cover as advocating elderly suicide?

  10. So what you’re saying, yodarkritch, is “Christ, what assholes.”

    (Yeah, I know this i going into moderation)

  11. Yea. But I get TR and I have read the issue already. Or is the John Lennon reference confusing people?

  16. O.K., somebody has got to admit s/he didn’t get the reference, so I’ll take the fall. Though since music and Lennon in specific were brought up, is it a shoutout to his “War is Over, If You Want It” title (which I’m not sure I ever actually heard; with two or three exceptions I didn’t find post-Beatles Lennon very memorable).

    If I’m way off base, I admit my inadequate (mere 74 years) geezerdom and abase myself. Willing to learn, though.

  17. And only after just the above did I take another look at the cover and see the small print for the first time So I guess I can blame my elderly eyes and absolve the rest of my elderly mind and body? I think I’ll try going with that excuse, anyway.

  18. Nay. I would not have even thought to think there was a reference, just to take it at face (over-hyped) value.

    Is it even a particularly good reference? I see from comments what its referent is, and from my guess as to what the article is about, I don’t see much overlap, ironic, clever, or otherwise.

  19. Nay. If old age is over, does that mean that many of us are about to cease our existence? And I thank Shrug for the explanation, but it that’s what the editor meant, it’s a pretty far reach.

  20. Yea…I went to the MIT Technology Review website. The whole issue covers coming medical advances to prolong geezerdom. The editor, Gideon Lichfield’s introduction/commentary is what added the “if you want it” because he points out some of the negatives. I personally don’t remember any other notable magazine cover that this one could be paying tribute to.

  21. Since non yea-nay spoilers have been posted, to confirm the song is Happy Xmas (War is Over) and kicks of with “So this is Christmas/ And what have you done?”, and is a staple Xmas song along with other early-70s sings from Slade, Wizzard and Greg Lake over here in UK-land.

    I must admit I didn’t nail the reference at first – it rang a bell, sort of, but I got tangled up with the lyrics “If you want it / Here it is/ Come and get it/ But you better hurry/ Cause it’s going fast”, which was written by another Beatle, Paul McCartney, but first released by Badfinger (who wrote and released the original Without You), who were an Apple label band, with Macca producing it.

  23. IIRC, the Lennon tune is Merry Christmas ( War Is Over ). Since he was a brit, it might be Happy Christmas ( War Is Over ). I live in Naples, Florida, and my job entails servicing many senior living centers. Trust me: old age is not over, and if it was, you wouldn’t want it. Good news for me: I’ll never run out of clients until I’m one myself.

  24. “I live in Naples, Florida”

    Hello from a neighbor to the north – Palm Harbor. Lotsa old folks here; one told me today I’m fulla sh*t ’cause of a political badge I was wearing. I wonder if she kisses her grandkids with that mouth.

  27. These signs were all over Times Square during 1972’s Christmas season:

    And of course there was this:

    My son’s designs magazine covers (as well as Chanukah cards), and his verdict is that this cover works on its own the same way the original poster did: and it’s “a fun treat and aha moment” if you recognize the reference.

  28. I certainly got it, but I don’t think it counts as a geezer reference. The song is so ubiquitous during the Christmas season that it’s nearly impossible not to be exposed to it over and over again.

  29. Combining technology and old age being over if you want it, I would say not until The Singularity when they’ll supposedly be able to upload you into a robot body.

  31. I’d like to go with “naybut”. I’ve heard the song in heavy holiday rotation for many years, but I’m not really a lyrics guy. Even musical poets such as Bob Dylan are something something something, “… Like a Rolling Stoooooonnne”

  32. Never paid much attention to this song, mainly ’cause I don’t listen to radio. I also contend that it should be, ‘WAR IS OVER if you want it to be’. The absence of those two little words is, to me, very annoying.

  34. Put me in the “nay” group. Had no idea what this was referring to until reading the comments.

    “The song is so ubiquitous during the Christmas season that it’s nearly impossible not to be exposed to it over and over again.”

    Hardly impossible – In six decades of listening to all sorts of Christmas music, I have never heard this song. Never even heard of it, for that matter. And the Beatles were the first thing I remember on the radio, and provided the soundtrack to my youth. Still love their music, though I have to agree with Shrug – John Lennon didn’t produce much of interest to me after the Fab Four breakup. Maybe the song gets heavy airplay in the UK? Not so much in the central USA, where I’ve spent my life.

  35. Here’s one list of UK top sellers at Xmas, with Lennon’s song at no. 11. Not sure why the Jona Lewie and East 17 tracks are in the top 10, with Wizzard, Greg Lake and Aled Jones, for instance, much lower down. But I guess this reflects actual £ sales at certain times, not the all-pervasiveness of them blaring out in supermarkets and on the radio each year.

    http://www.everyhit.com/christmas/festivefifty.html

  36. I would have originally said “yea”, because I got the reference to the song. But I didn’t know about the posters at all, so I guess I’m a “nay”.

  37. I’ll say Nay. I hear the song every Christmas, but I’ve never seen the sign before, so it didn’t click at all. I sussed it out yesterday when Scott mentioned John Lennon, but I still wasn’t sure that was it. I don’t know if I’m a geezer or not. At 47, I’d like to think I’m not.

  40. Darn interface!

    I’ve never heard the song before, let alone seen that poster. And I was okay about John-and-Yoko.

    So, I sort of thought, along with Andréa, that the “understand it?” question was getting at the ?1968 Time Magazine “God is Dead” cover. And that the added hint about John was getting at his “We’re more popular than Jesus” remark.

  41. “And that the added hint about John was getting at his “We’re more popular than Jesus” remark.”

    Yea, I thought that, too . . . .

  43. The cover raises interesting philosophical question. If interpreted literally, isn’t it one of those “Can God make a rock so big he can’t lift it?” questions? The Judeo-Chrsitian-Muslim God is eternal and omnipotent. So how could He be dead? On the other hand, if “God” is the concept of a collective spiritual heritage and society has given that up and moved on to a reason-based life, then that “God” could be “dead.” On the third hand, it could be a thought experiment, like asking if Donald Duck is dead. How can a fictional construct be dead?

    I think the editorial staff at Time was getting high.

  45. @Kilby: “Freddie’s dead, that’s what I said!”

    @Bill: Wait, April 1966?? How can that be? My recollection of where and in what circumstance I picked up that issue off a newsstand would rule out that date. Was there a prominent follow-up issue in 1968 or 1969?

    @All — Geeze, look at that font! Today it looks so strangely mannered and decorative. Like it should be used for covers of Phillip Roth paperback editions from around then too.

  47. But we *are* following directions. Bill said, “Just say Yea or Nay if you understand it.” So you’re either going to say, “Yea or Nay” if you understand it, and anything you want if you don’t.

  48. I doubt it’s coincidence. When I worked at a couple of magazines, we’d keep an eye on what was happening in other magazines, looking for ideas we might be able to adapt, including design concepts. This was twenty years ago, when you could make a living working at a magazine. Ah, the good old days.

  50. I’ve been interested in how the term “peak” is being used lately. In early 2000s with “peak TV” it was sort of affirmative, celebratory. But now the sense is more often “past the peak” (and on the way down therefore) – pretty much like this “over”.

    And the oddity is that the “we are past the peak” part is generally not made explicit, and people will say “We’re in peak X” to mean “X is in serious decline” rather than “We’re getting wonderful X”.

    Have others noticed it that way?

  52. Oh sure, I didn’t mean to be looking at it in terms of proper or improper . And of course I agree with your “graphing view” that it’s downhill after a peak. (Which as afterthought I might have called the “topographic view”!)

    But I do see some novelty in getting the “downhill” sense without making the “PAST the peak” explicit. You can say “we have peak Twitter” to mean it’s in decline, not having to say “we have gone thru peak Twitter” to get that meaning… as I think would have been needed a decade ago.

  54. CIDU Bill, I’m glad to here he can make money doing that. USA has a lot of magazines, so maybe still possible. It was much smaller in Singapore. And when I moved to Canada, I spent some time looking for work in magazines, before determining there was no future there. I came to that conclusion when I came across a job posting for The Walrus, a very good, award-winning magazine. At The Walrus I’m sure they talk about themselves being similar to The Atlantic or maybe Harper’s. https://thewalrus.ca/

    Anyway, the job posting was for an assistant editor and they posted the salary they were offering as $30,000 (Canadian dollars) per year. This was in 2009. This was much less than I had been making as a staff writer (lower position) at a magazine in Singapore a number of years earlier. It was also less than I was making working as a phone monkey for a Canadian bank. And not nearly enough money to live on in Toronto.

  58. All I can think of is: “My wedding day was the happiest day of my life. It was all downhill from that.”

  59. I wonder if Zach follows us here:

    If you go to his site, you’ll also get the hovertext and after comic.

  60. Back when I read it, I thought it looked like The Atlantic but read more like Harper’s. When I found out they were paying poverty wages, I lost a lot of interest in the mag. Frankly, when I had to give up the dream of making a living working at a magazine again, I found it a bit heartbreaking to read any magazine.

    It was a very good magazine, but I doubt the years have been good to it (or any other magazine).

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