Rinkli Funstaz

Exposing and exploring the commercial and cultural vitality of this generation of over-65s (and the one following hard behind).

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Nov132020 by James Murphy1 Comment

Sitting on the rocking horse does not make it Pegasus

Scholarship, Topicality
First of all, it is morally inadmissible for anyone   -  whatever the politics or the agendas  -  to describe the Coronavirus crisis as “an opportunity”. After some 40,000 citizens have died in France alone, it is abusive to suggest that C-19 and all its consequences have somehow shown us a better way to live, to develop our civics, to organize human movement, to run our cities. One can but hope that Carlos Moreno has the decency to wince out loud whenever he re-reads his words on that subject here. C19 is not a social science laboratory; it has been a hell for millions. There are other problems. CM abominates the anti-immigrant rhetoric of the likes of Rassemblement National. Good for him. Yes, he elevates social diversity but, since he wants…
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Nov72020 by James MurphyNo Comments

In the heat of the triple lock down

Philosophy
Well, the author has a lot of humanity to share. Good for him. But his book could certainly have done without the favourable references to Abraham Maslow (surely the most raggedy old hat in the milliner’s bargain-basement), Carl Jung, Woody Allen and Ashton Applewhite…. Ugh. With such an untutored eye, all the cultural simpering of the New Age is jumbled onto the page here here with an utterly predictable critique of the way we live in this century. Now that “the storms of youth and middle-age are behind us” (sic), we can apparently be free to complain about acquisitiveness, materialism, the consumerism that “has the power to distract us from such vital issues as ageing and death”. Older people are, meanwhile, so dissed in the media / advertising and youthful…
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Jul32020 by James MurphyNo Comments

The Rinkli Funstaz Book of the Lockdown

Scholarship
All memoirs are essentially about ageing. It is a natural and therefore unavoidable sexagenarian instinct to lean in to the past  -  in search of explanation, amusement, forgiveness. However, almost no autobiography you have ever read is  -  let’s put it out there  - persuasively reliable. Perhaps the knowing reader silently nods at every half-fumbled but very obvious evasion, all the Pollyanna Pollyfilla that covers the cracks of pain and disappointment, the casual casuistry that gets us all, specially the grey and the balding, through the remains of the day. Perhaps it’s also true that the mightier the celebrity of the author, the weaker the credibility all round. Who was it said that you must not touch your idols since the gilt is bound to be left on your fingers?…
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Jun262020 by James MurphyNo Comments
Sat Upon The Rocking Horse

Sat Upon The Rocking Horse

Scholarship
    For the positives’ column, this is an often impressive if occasionally overwhelming dam-burst of stats-n-surveys about the business of ageing in the UK. But here the first problem lies already. Given the abundant literature already on the shelves across the Western world - the whole agequake/ageshift idiom being as old as the internet - there is little, at its best, really new here. (more…)
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May72020 by James MurphyNo Comments
It’s a short step from the sentimental to the macabre: beware of nice people telling us to be nicer people.

It’s a short step from the sentimental to the macabre: beware of nice people telling us to be nicer people.

Scholarship
Dr. Murthy seems like a very nice man. One can hold no doubt that he has done much good in his life. But his book is an atrocity. And, with the interest of his fellow-Americans and indeed all the Western world in mind, one is here to tell you how and why. His pitch is simple enough We have lost precious things “in this transition to modern culture”. As we rush to grow personal wealth and achievement and while we linger online with our social media toys, we fail truly to connect with people and thus impoverish our souls. Loneliness is shortening the lives of millions of Americans; we are being murdered by modernity and inter alia the toxic masculinity which it inspires. Money and consumerism do not bring happiness;…
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