A Time To Give

With the holiday spirit all around us, why not take this opportunity to add The Big 40! or Book of Ages 30 to the holiday stocking of someone near and dear? They make excellent gifts, particularly if the recipient happens to be 40, or 30, years old!

Party Update

The guests have left.

Guests still arriving...

Recent calls indicate: guests are on their way...

Big 40! Party: Guest Arrival Times

JVG's guests arrive first. JA suggests: "Maybe it's that theater thing."

Book Party Begins

LS, JA, and I arrive at Grace Bar/Restaurant/Ritual -- If you are reading this blog right now, you are invited to join us for THE BIG 40! book party. The barkeep has generously allowed us use of his computador to blog directly from the party; stay tuned for future updates*. * Future updates not guaranteed.

Big 40 Votes

Voting is one of the few things that the Census Bureau surveys not only by age range, but by sprecific age. Hence, we can (and did! -- see The Big 40!, Chapter 5) dig into the numbers to measure the lever-pulling tendencies of 40-year-olds. Here goes:

Reported registered 40-year-olds: 62%
Reported voted 40-year-olds: 53.4%
Reported registered over-18s: 63.9%
Reported voted over-18s: 54.7%

In case you were wondering, the big voting winners are 68-year-olds, 73.3% of whom reported voting. The losers? 18-year-olds at 26.7%.

Could 40Meter Have Predicted Weekend Box Office?

Quite possibly. Looking at the top 5 movies of this past weekend...
Methodology: # of 40+ actors in the top 5 on the IMDb cast list.

FortyMeter would have said: #1 Shall We Dance? (3 @ 40+) #2 Saw (2 @ 40+) #3 Shark Tale (1 @ 40+) #4 Ray (Questionable No 40+ — 2 actors have no IMDB birthdate) #5 The Grudge (Definite No 40+)

But if we look at previous FortyMeter predictions, we realize that 40Meter is always wrong. Therefore, we reverse the order of our list and discover an almost exact replica of the actual weekend box office top 5!

Actual box office top 5: #1. The Grudge #2. Ray #3. Saw #4. Shark Tale #5. Shall We Dance?

Go 40Meter!

BREAKING! Big Baseball News!

The Baltimore Orioles have re-signed 40-year-old Rafael Palmeiro, #10 on MLB's all-time homerun list, to a one-year deal.

In other baseball news, the Red Sox extended their winning streak to 8 last night, defeating the Cardinals for the 4th straight time.

Ocean's Forty

Many happy returns to birthday girl Julia Roberts, who turns 37 today. She's celebrating in the hospital, according to WENN, because she went into labor two months early. Blog of Ages wishes you well, Julia.

Why is the Pretty Woman's non-40th birthday relevant to the topic of these web environs? Well, Julia stars in the upcoming Ocean's Twelve with George Clooney (43), Brad Pitt (Exactly 40!), Andy Garcia (48), Don Cheadle (turns 40 eleven days before the film opens), and Bernie Mac (46), directed by Steven Soderbergh (41). With such an impressive number of 40somethings — and, let's be fair to Juila, almost-40somethings — in the roster, our FortyMeter predicts big things for this little sequel. (Of course, the last thing FortyMeter predicted was that the Cards would take the series.)

Congrats to all these plucky thespians for bucking popular trends and going against the Screen Actors Guild, which said "People under the age of 40 are favored in the entertainment industry." (The Big 40!, p. 162)

Google 40

How much does a Google search for "Age 40" reveal about the age in question? Our answer: some. Among the first page of results:

• An article on Erectile Dysfunction from the Digital Urology Journal (#1 result!)
• Biographies of Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison from a site that helps one "succeed through biographies"
• Meet-an-inmate.com! (Ladies, Age 40, including Anita, right)
• Article from the Genome News Network entitled "The Brain Starts to Change at Age 40" (Expert Bruce Yanker, interviewed therein, panders to the publication: "My feeling is that the process of maintaining the integrity of the genome is going to be very important in understanding the aging process.")
• A porn site ("Click Here! You Will Be Impressed & Shocked!")

Our humble web enterprise does not appear until the second page of search results. On the bright side, we rank slightly higher than overthehillgifts.com.