Acting our ages

Please bear with me. This is not another gripe about celebrities, although it starts out that way.

I see where Demi Moore resents the fact that she’s having a harder time getting big movie roles as she gets older. It seems no one wants a 44-year-old woman who tries to look 24. So she’s undergoing plastic surgery and taking other steps to keep herself looking young so she will still appeal to people who buy tickets to watch movies. (Her surgery cost several times what my house cost.).

It might work, but Ms. Moore might want to consider this one fact: She really is getting old. It happens to most of us, and it beats the alternative.

If Glenn Close and Gary Sinise have to slum in TV, perhaps it’s time for Ms. Moore to think about it, too. Even I have had to give in to age. I mean, a 52-year-old guy like me would have a hard time going to a college bar and have a Marshall cheerleader or a cheerleader from THE Ohio State University find him attractive. (Okay, so something like that has never happened in my entire life. You get the point.).

Some people have a hard time acknowledging that they are growg old and their bodies change. There's a guy in a bluegrass group who used to wear T-shirts during performances until he realized (or someone told him) that he would look better in a button-up shirt with a collar rather than having a t-shirt draped over his ever-expanding belly.

Perhaps that could be the problem of a certain pop tart whose name I will not mention. She made her career in her younger days with performances that bordered on child porn. She was a sweet-faced little thing singing grownup songs. But as she pushes 30 and her grownup-type personal problems stay in the news, the oversexed child act just doesn’t work.

The Backstreet Boys succumbed to reality when they realized no tweenie girl would find a bunch of 30-year-old guys that appealing.

When the Spice Girls were around, the one who did Baby Spice really bothered me. She dressed as a kindergarten-age girl, but she pouted and gyrated like she wanted . . . you get the idea. “Borderline child porn” always came to mind on the few occasions I saw her perform on TV.

When Jon Benet Ramsey was murdered, one of my then-coworkers said her momma dressed her up as a cheap hooker in order to win pageants. He was right.

So it’s time for Demi Moore to accept that time waits for no one, even Hollywood stars.

If you ever want to see what happens when actresses try to ward off time, go to http://www.awfulplasticsurgery.com/. Look at Priscilla Presley and Meg Ryan and others to see how otherwise attractive women ruin their assets in the pursuit of eternal youth.

Cities, counties and states age, too. It's why West Virginia's problems are so much different from Utah's, where people tend to be younger. We're a state that has reached retirement age without enough money in its 401(K) to pay the bills. At least we as a state have accepted that. So we're maxing out our credit cards, hoping the next generation will be able to pay them off. At least we were until Joe Manchin took office as governor. Give the guy credit for wanting to get the state out of debt as quick as he responsibly can. I'm not saying he's perfect, but he's been better at this than some of his predecessors and about anyone else who has served in the Legislature.

So let's rejoice in our age and work within its limitations -- individually and as communities.