Older and Old Men’s Routines and Aging

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/11/16

According to some semi-reputable sources gathered in a listing here, Rick G. Rosner may have among America’s, North America’s, and the world’s highest measured IQs at or above 190 (S.D. 15)/196 (S.D. 16) based on several high range test performances created by Christopher Harding, Jason Betts, Paul Cooijmans, and Ronald Hoeflin. He earned 12 years of college credit in less than a year and graduated with the equivalent of 8 majors. He has received 8 Writers Guild Awardsand Emmy nominations and was titled 2013 North American Genius of the Year by The World Genius Directorywith the main “Genius” listing here.

He has written for Remote Control, Crank Yankers, The Man Show, The Emmys, The Grammys, and Jimmy Kimmel Live!. He worked as a bouncer, a nude art model, a roller-skating waiter, and a stripper. In a television commercial, Domino’s Pizza named him the “World’s Smartest Man.” The commercial was taken off the air after Subway sandwiches issued a cease-and-desist. He was named “Best Bouncer” in the Denver Area, Colorado, by Westwood Magazine.

Rosner spent much of the late Disco Era as an undercover high school student. In addition, he spent 25 years as a bar bouncer and American fake ID-catcher, and 25+ years as a stripper, and nearly 30 years as a writer for more than 2,500 hours of network television. Errol Morris featured Rosner in the interview series entitled First Person, where some of this history was covered by Morris. He came in second, or lost, on Jeopardy!, sued Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? over a flawed question and lost the lawsuit. He won one game and lost one game on Are You Smarter Than a Drunk Person? (He was drunk). Finally, he spent 37+ years working on a time-invariant variation of the Big Bang Theory.

Currently, Rosner sits tweeting in a bathrobe (winter) or a towel (summer). He lives in Los Angeles, California with his wife, dog, and goldfish. He and his wife have a daughter. You can send him money or questions at LanceVersusRick@Gmail.Com, or a direct message via Twitter, or find him on LinkedIn, or see him on YouTube. 

Rick Rosner: When I used to work at Kimmel, there was a swag corner that was mostly neglected, except by me. People would send things from their shows, books, movies, or whatever they were trying to pitch, hoping it would catch someone’s attention and be used on the show. But it never did. It just sat there on a set of bookshelves. I’d go over and see what was there. This shirt, for example, was from a show on MTV2.

The logo of MTV2 is Cerberus but with just two heads instead of the traditional three. It’s for a comedy and improv show called “Wild ‘N Out,” abbreviated as WNO.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What time are you getting up?

Rosner During the night, I wake up a couple of times. Usually, men my age wake up because they have to pee. I generally wake up because I have a dry mouth. I have this stuff to drink that makes the dry mouth disappear for a while. I might incidentally pee if I’m awake, but it’s not urgent.

Because I take a ton of fisetin, I tend to be a bit more wakeful. I also take dutasteride, which is Avodart for the prostate. So, Avodart plus fisetin means I don’t have to pee as much as some men my age. Today, I woke up at just about 6 AM. My alarm was set for 6:20.

I get up and generally eat part of a bagel with butter. I turn on the news and check my news sources, which include Drudge Report—once conservative and annoying but now pretty neutral, maybe even anti-Trump. I look at FiveThirtyEight, the poll aggregator. I also check Twitter.

Then, I got ready for one of the debate shows on PodTV. I participated in seven of these PodTV shows, where panellists debated with each other. I’ve gotten good at making my point concisely. I need to be more concise with you because I’m not fighting with anyone for talking time.

Jacobsen: I’m a patient person.

Rosner: Yeah, maybe too patient. I wish I had these skills when I was at Kimmel because we had to pitch ideas to Kimmel every day. A lot of late-night writers come from stand-up comedy. They get noticed for being funny.

I didn’t come from stand-up, but coming from stand-up helps you pitch at the table where he’s listening, along with a bunch of other people. It’s like being in the NBA—it’s some of the funniest people in America. It’s tough unless you’ve got a certain amount of stage presence. Anyway, at 7 AM, I go upstairs to the StreamYard computer.

StreamYard is a different platform than Zoom. We argue about issues for an hour. It’s usually three or four liberal guys versus a couple of conservatives. We debate the topics of the day. Earlier this week, it was the vice-presidential debate. If I’m lucky, the coffee has kicked in by the show’s end, and I’m ready for a good bowel movement. Today, though, it was just a few pellets.

So I’ve still got a bigger one in me. I take magnesium—Carole got me on it so I don’t get constipated. I’ve still got this pseudo-hernia where I had something frozen out with a liquid nitrogen needle. But it also killed the nerve that runs from my spine around to an ab muscle. So it’s still numb—today is day 77 of being knocked out. It generally takes three months for the nerve to regrow, maybe a little longer.

But anyway, I hope I get my missing ab back. I feed the dogs and call Carole, who’s 8 hours ahead of us in London, so it’s 4 PM over there. Then I try to go back to sleep. 

After 9 AM, so I wake up at 11. I eat some Popeye’s chicken. Our local Popeye’s on Laurel Canyon sells eight for $25, which is too much for tenders.

But last night, I went over to Cousin Kenny’s for a Rosh Hashanah dinner and passed through a neighbourhood that has a sketchy Popeye’s. You can get eight tenders for $9 instead of $25, which I need clarification on. Why such a big difference? Anyway, I appreciate that I can get tenders for about a buck apiece, plus the biscuits they throw in. So I eat some of that.

What else do I do? Oh, I tweet a lot and look at election polling statistics. I checked the University of Florida’s early voting website to see if anything made me more optimistic about the election because it was close. I found on the early voting website that women make up 53% of the early vote, which is good because women voted for Harris more than they voted for Trump.

But those statistics are from just five states out of the 24 or so that have started early voting. So, it’s yet to be indicative of a trend. In 2020, which the Democrats won, women were 52% of the vote. So I’m hoping we hold on to 53% for a few more weeks because day-of voters tend to lean Republican compared to early voters, which means they probably also lean male. I want us to build up a big surplus of women voters to feel confident.

I go back to bed again and take another nap. I’ll talk to Carole maybe before I take another nap. I sleep until 3 PM, and I take a lot of naps now. Then, I feed the dogs again, which is an elaborate process because we have elderly dogs with special dietary needs. They’re also persnickety—at least one of them is. For the older dog, who has Cushing’s disease, I use cooking scissors to chop up a bunch of chicken as the base.

Then I take some chicken Gerber baby food—two spoonfuls of that—and add it to their dietary low-sodium dog food. Both dogs get that, though one dog gets three times as much because you burn more calories with Cushing’s. Then they eat.

While they’re eating, I prepare the Cushing’s pill for the older dog. I drill a hole in a teeny chunk of chicken, stuff the pill in it, and feed it to him. After that, I take them out to pee.

I tell the dogs to pee. Only one of them consistently pees inside if you don’t take her out, so she’s the one who needs to be told to pee. Sometimes she does, sometimes she doesn’t. If she pees outside, she gets a treat—these doggy bacon strips.

Then I go to the gym. I start at LA Fitness on Coldwater. I do 27 leg presses, starting at 165 pounds and building up to around 295 pounds. Somebody was on the other machine I might use—it’s a cheat day, so there’s a bench press machine.

Or no—actually, no. Someone was on the overhead press machine, so I skipped that and focused on the legs there.

Then I go to the LA Fitness on Victory, which is 2 miles away. I do 12 sets of butterflies on the machine and 8 more leg presses there. Afterward, I head to the LA Fitness off Oxnard at NoHo West, the new shopping center, and do 17 sets on the ab machine. Finally, I go to the Y and do 20 sets of bench presses, finishing at 180 pounds, a new record for me on that machine, given my current body weight of about 138 pounds. That’s about 1.3 times my body weight, which would still be pathetic if I weighed more.

But given how skinny I am, 1.3 times my body weight is almost acceptable. Then I go to Planet Fitness at Laurel and Ventura and do 15 sets on the chest press and the pushdown machine, maxing out at 177.5 pounds. I come home, have a smoothie, and eat another piece of Popeye’s chicken.

What’s nice is that I took a piece of glass from the frame I bought. I collect micromosaic frames, and this one was beaten up because they’re all at least 100 years old, some more like 130 years old. The little mosaic parts fall out, and sometimes, people do a poor job of repairing them. You can’t see it here, but this particular repair was badly done—the person didn’t put the glass pieces back. They used plaster or clay material in the gaps and then painted them to resemble mosaics.

Tonight, if I’m awake enough, I’ll take a dental tool and start chipping away at the repair to replace the parts correctly with glass mosaic tiles. Also, the oval piece that covers the frame part where the picture goes was probably broken at some point. Whoever repaired it likely nipped a piece of glass to fit the oval space and probably wasn’t using a glass cutter—maybe nippers or even pliers.

So it was jagged. A nice small project while I was eating dinner was using a whetstone normally used for sharpening knives. I’ve wrecked mine because I use it for filing down mosaic tiles and framing glass to smooth out some of the jagged edges. It was unnecessary, but it gave me something to do while I ate dinner and watched “The Lego Batman Movie,” which was pretty decent.

Then, it was time to talk with you.

I took one for a bowel movement, but it was still pellets. So, I still have a giant one, and I’m hoping it will come out eventually.

Jacobsen: What do you find, capacity-wise—mentally, physically, sensation-wise—has declined the most with age? What are the most marked changes?

Rosner: I’ve mentioned that my willingness to waste hundreds of hours on IQ tests has declined. I’ve ruled against it now. It is a terrible waste of time because the odds of outscoring my established high score on a Cooijmans test are not high. I might still be as smart, but scoring high on a Cooijmans test is hard. He’s one of the few who offers tests with ceilings above my highest score, so that’s been a decline for me.

My reading has also declined for several reasons. One is that when I was younger, I got a reading done while working as an art model. As a younger model, I’d do crazy poses—just insane poses that took a lot of flexibility and strength. Eventually, I found a few poses that required flexibility but allowed me to hold a book simultaneously. Or if I were modelling for a painting, where I’d be posing for 20 to 25 hours, I’d try to incorporate a book into the pose, which some teachers would allow.

I could plow through many books that way, especially if the pose were painful because I’d read harder and faster to distract myself from the pain, right? But I don’t model anymore. Another place I used to read was at the gym. I wasn’t a jerk about it.

I’d spend less time reading between sets than the people who waste time on their phones between sets. I’d spend at most 20 seconds between sets reading. I’m a fast reader, so I could finish a page, or at least half a page, in those 20 seconds. But it would still piss people off.

People who thought nothing of others being on their phones at the gym would get offended when they saw me reading. They’d approach me and ask, “Are you using this?” They wouldn’t wait to see if I was doing sets. If they waited another 10 seconds, they’d see I was in the middle of a set. But people are stupid—jerks.

When COVID hit, I wanted to get in and out of the gym as fast as possible because, again, people are jerks and might be there with COVID. So, I stopped reading at the gym. Then I stopped reading at home, and for the same reason, I stopped taking IQ tests—it feels like I don’t have time to waste.

I don’t want to spend four or three hours reading books—maybe not even 90 minutes. And my patience for books has declined, just like it has for everyone else. We were talking about this last night at dinner. The deal is, when you Google something now, you’re familiar with this, right?

You Google something, and half the time, Google will use AI to write you two or more paragraphs answering the question it assumes you’re asking based on your query. Right? So you get the information. Google has become even more powerfulthan it used to be.

But I’ve had times where Google got it wrong. For example, I once tried to find the exact definition of “accursed.” I’d tweeted about Trump being accused of sexually assaulting and harassing 26 women, and some MAGA idiot wrote back. He meant to write “accused, not convicted,” but he wrote “accursed, not convicted.”

I loved that—it was my favourite tweet. So I was trying to find the exact definition of “accursed” to make fun of the guy by pasting it. But instead of giving me the definition, Google gave me biblical uses of the word.

I’ve tweeted a few times about how I wish Jesus would rapture all the world’s jerks to Europa, the ice moon of Jupiter. Europa is said to have fairly livable conditions. Its radioactive center makes it somewhat warm. So maybe Jesus could dig some ice caves for the world’s biggest jerks.

Anyway, I wonder if Google is spying on me. It probably saw me tweeting about Jesus and assumed I was religious. So when I searched for “accursed,” it gave me the Bible’s word usage.

But back to the main point: you can go online now and instantly get what you want to know. In the olden days, you had to go to the library. As a kid, I’d ride my bike or have my parents drive me to the library. We had a good library—it probably had about 150,000 to 200,000 books, which is still not enough compared to today.

Now, 50 million to 100 million books are distilled into articles online.

So back then, you had to hope that something close to the answer you needed could be found in one of the three books they had on the subject you were working on. But now, we don’t need books. Google spits it right into your eyes like a mother bird feeding a baby bird, which works against my patience with books. Also, Carole and I watch a ton of premium TV every night. The deal with books is that one person wrote it, and another person edited it, and those people may be interested in something other than what I care about regarding the plot. So there’s often much stuff I want to skip over, or at least skim, because it’s not engaging.

On the other hand, good TV has been filtered through the sensibilities and instincts of a dozen people—execs giving notes, etc. It often takes years for a show to be developed. Some of the most talented writers aren’t writing books—they’re writing for TV. As I said, the best TV has been filtered through many people to ensure everything is as good as possible. So, generally, the dialogue on a good TV show is better than the dialogue in a book. All this works against me wanting to read books. I used to read 5 or 6 books a week, and now I’m down to maybe two books a month, some of which are graphic novels because they’re easier to get through since they’re essentially shorter.

I still think about physics. My ability to think about it has been improved. My ability to do anything about it or make headway in convincing others—except maybe you—has never been great. But my ability to write… I’m a good writer and editor, but my output of long-form writing outside of Twitter is way down. It makes me wonder if I’ve lost something essential, if I’m blocked, or if I’m just lazy.

So those are three areas that have declined.

Do you notice any changes in your intellectual abilities as you move from your twenties into your thirties?

Jacobsen: I feel more relaxed. I feel more like myself. I don’t feel like I have to prove myself as much. I feel like producing something good, even in a small way, is good enough. My self-care is way better now.

I know when to take care of myself. It’s not overwhelming self-confidence, but I don’t drive myself as crazy as I might have in a previous decade. Sure, I work hard, but I know when to take a break, and I do. I still work long hours all week, but I’ve learned to balance things better. I might watch The Lord of the Rings—a simple tale of good and evil, crafted by a Catholic like Tolkien—but I enjoy that.

Rosner: Does your family or mom know how hard you work?

Jacobsen: I don’t think so. I think only a few people do. I don’t think anyone does. I keep that low-key myself.

Rosner: It’s a weird thing. It’s not weird that you’re weird—it’s just how life works. You generate hundreds of thousands of words a year, maybe even a million, through interviews and other journalism.

If someone noticed this, I’m sure the people you submit work to—like The Good Men Project, for instance—or anyone you generate content for must be delighted with your output. But that’s a professional relationship, and they probably don’t go around saying, “Wow!”

Or they do, but still, it’s their job. Do they go home and tell their partners, “There’s this one guy, and he’s just a machine”?

Jacobsen: Also, professional relationships shouldn’t necessarily come with the expectation of praise, right? The expectation is that you are to produce a product. They are to consider it and publish it—maybe, maybe not. Then, you move on to the next piece. Right?

Rosner: Yeah, exactly. At some point, I can imagine somebody asking, “You’ve got a sister, right?”

Jacobsen: I have a sister and a brother. They all know what I do, but they’re family.

Rosner: They think, “Scott went to Ukraine. What the hell was he doing there? I guess he worked at a horse farm or something, talks to people, and writes online articles.”

You can imagine their shock if, at some point, someone went to them and said, “How does it feel to be related to one of the most productive journalists in the world?” They’d be like, “What? We thought he was hanging out, talking to people.”

Jacobsen: Yeah. So, I’ll be house-sitting for a neighbour this weekend, caring for their dogs. And I’ve got a good opportunity coming up where I got selected again. I’m going to a graduate-level journalism training seminar. They fly you out, pay for your hotel, food, flight back, and the trainers who come to teach you. You go to these things, and there are journalists from various political stripes and publications. I recognized several names. When I went to the one last year, you had to apply and get selected. I got selected last year and again this time. So, I’ll be attending again. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Rosner: That’s great! So, when you go to these things, there are plenty of legit, objective journalists. But do you also bump into biased journalists from propaganda outlets like The Gateway Pundit?

Jacobsen: Not The Gateway Pundit, no. I’ve communicated and interacted with people who, within liberal circles, would be considered part of propaganda outlets. It’s probably tier 2 in terms of their online circulation. But during the training, I interact with them as individuals who happen to work at these places, and we’re all learning the same material. It’s just professional development for journalists. And then there are people like me who apply under the freelance, independent title.

Rosner: But enough about that—since this session is a bit of an odds-and-ends conversation, let me brag about my kid. Her hands are on the cover of Archaeology Magazine this month, holding a slip of cut paper with a design on it. She’s a specialist in the products created by schoolgirls, typically embroidered and sewn items from the early modern period—which generally starts in the Renaissance, maybe the 15th or 16th century, and extends into the 19th century.

Her expertise also includes other craft projects using wax, shellwork, cardboard, mica for shininess, and various materials. She worked at this place—what was its name? It’s in England and London and has been used since the 1700s. In the 17th or 18th century, it was a girls’ school, and the floorboards had gaps.

Jacobsen: That’s incredible! So, did they discover something in the gaps?

Rosner: Over time, objects like these intricate, handmade crafts had fallen between the floorboards, preserving them for centuries. She was involved in researching and handling these historic finds, which is how her hands ended up on the cover of Archaeology Magazine. It’s pretty cool.

Nothing big—nothing you’d fall into. But if you were working on a fussy craft project and there was a quarter-inch gap between the floorboards, over the decades—maybe centuries—a girl might drop something she was making, and it would slip through the crack to the floor below. They were doing a renovation and found all these scraps of paper that were 300 years old. They called in Isabella because this is her wheelhouse—identifying these kinds of scraps—and it turned into a whole exhibition.

One of her key points is that history tends to erase all but the most prominent figures. And even then, men get erased a lot less than women because men manage the affairs of the world. They left legal records, signed documents, and generated most of the official paperwork. So we know much more about men in the 17th and 18th centuries than we do about women—except for the Quakers, maybe, because they were meticulous record keepers and letter writers.

But for most women throughout history, it’s tough to find much. Isabella specializes in using household products, embroidery, and craft projects to piece together the lives of girls and women. So they called her in, and she was the expert on these scraps. They turned the scraps into a whole exhibition, which is pretty cool.

Archaeology Magazine discussed how this discovery offers a new angle on girls’ lives—these paper scraps that, by accident, survived for three centuries.

Let’s end this call. Isabella pointed out another issue around women: how they’ve been historically shortchanged. During her undergrad, or maybe when she was getting her master’s, she wrote about a problem that still exists today—women don’t have pockets. Women get super excited when a dress comes with pockets, but that’s been an issue for centuries. Where do women carry things?

And there’s also the theory—sorry, I know we’re almost out of time—from women’s studies that suggest women’s attire makes it easier for them to be sexually assaulted. It’s harder to run away in spiky heels, and dresses can be lifted easily to access parts of the body. So there’s been institutionalized repression and sexism even in everyday clothing. History messes everyone over, but it messes women over harder.

The end.

Jacobsen: Tomorrow, same time?

Rosner: Yeah, let’s do that. Thank you.

Jacobsen: You’re welcome. Thank you, too. Bye.

Rick Rosner, American Comedy Writer, www.rickrosner.org

Scott Douglas Jacobsen, Independent Journalist, www.in-sightpublishing.com

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