{"id":22001,"date":"2010-08-03T15:51:12","date_gmt":"2010-08-03T23:51:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=22001"},"modified":"2010-08-04T12:29:31","modified_gmt":"2010-08-04T20:29:31","slug":"birthdays","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=22001","title":{"rendered":"Birthdays"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>None of my birthdays hit me hard. The occasion of a birthday has never been monumental for me. It&#8217;s never been as sad as losing a job or a girlfriend or a community. I&#8217;ve never been as sad about my birthday as I have about the loss of another Dallas Cowboys season without a Super Bowl victory.<\/p>\n<p>I lost my health at age 22, so after that, I had no more illusions about youth. Turning 30 and 40 was no way as significant as spending 1988-1994 in bed.<\/p>\n<p>My hair started turning grey after I moved to Los Angeles in 1994. I was 27 and I started using Grecian Formula.<\/p>\n<p>Dennis Prager says that 30 was the toughest birthday for him because it meant that he was no longer a kid.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve never celebrated my birthdays. I&#8217;ve never done anything special for them. I like it when other people pay me attention, whether it is for my birthday or for my good looks or for my awesome Torah insights. It&#8217;s all good. I like back rubs and ego rubs and free meals and presents. <\/p>\n<p>I know you&#8217;re thinking, oh, the Moral Leader, he&#8217;s so holy. He could never understand a sinner like me. It&#8217;s not true. The Leader understands.<\/p>\n<p>Dennis Prager said on his show Aug. 3: &#8220;What&#8217;s the first birthday is not an unalloyed joy? It&#8217;s 30. At 30, it hit me that I am not a kid anymore. You can delude yourself in your 20s.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>None of my birthdays hit me hard. The occasion of a birthday has never been monumental for me. It&#8217;s never been as sad as losing a job or a girlfriend or a community. I&#8217;ve never been as sad about my &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=22001\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[14713,23089,10685,29761,11310,14186,23108],"class_list":["post-22001","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal","tag-back-rubs","tag-bowl-victory","tag-dallas-cowboys","tag-dennis-prager","tag-grecian-formula","tag-torah-insights","tag-unalloyed-joy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22001","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22001"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22001\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22034,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22001\/revisions\/22034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22001"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22001"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22001"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}