I saw Van Halen last week...

...and it was one of those experiences that simultaneously reconnects a person with his or her past and reminds one just how unfair the ravages of time & poor self-discipline can be. Eddie Van Halen is 53 years old and he looks, well, younger than that. He did the entire show shirtless, happy and as shrederiffic as ever. The only place I ever appear shirtless is in the shower or if the phone rings at 2am and I stumble around the house in the dark trying to find the handset. That's it. Oh, sure I sometimes will hop in the public pool with the kids during the summer, in the company of other rapidly crumbling dads, but that's pretty much the extent of it.
The music really did unleash some memories and sensations from the past. Pat Madden and James Buck were two high school friends who introduced me to Van Halen, giving me casette tapes they'd made that flowed from Ted Nugent's Great White Buffalo to VH's Eruption. I can still remember driving my green '76 Ford Maverick (with not two, but four doors) along Illinois highways with those tapes spinning in the Kraco under-dash tape player I'd installed myself.
Here's another memory: the first Van Halen album I owned was "1984" which I received as I prize when I, wait for it, won a dance contest at the all-night lock in at the end of my senior year in high school. Memories of doing the white man's overbite as the coup de grace on my performance are enough to make me willing to sacrifice all the good memories of my youth in exchange for erasing that one.
But we can't change the past.
For what it's worth, VH was great. Eddie was spot-on with his solos, Alex was as durable and reliable as ever keeping it together and David Lee Roth looked remarkably fit, seemed sober and stayed with it during all the songs. I couldn't figure out the multiple top-hats he wore (or his schtick of pulling it down over his eyes and striking the leprechaun pose from ND's Fighting Irish logo), but he kept the show rolling.
All in all, a nice walk down memory lane and an encouragement to go running. I think I'll go do that now.