Nothing New No More. Please!

Okay, it's finally happened. I have gotten so old now that I can't stomach anything that's new. Let me repeat this: I CAN'T STAND ANYTHING NEW AT ALL.

By "new" I mean anything that has been created after say, 1990. I've really had it with the electronic things. And going out and mingling with today's people makes me sick to my stomach. I hate what people look like, sound like, think like, and I really hate the way they treat old fossils like me, which is basically like an old fossil.

I've gone absolutely as far as I want to go now with new gadgets. I can use a home computer, sort of. Enough to do what I need it to do anyway. I carry a cell phone of which I can actually make and receive calls on, but that's it. I don't want to know from texting or tweeting, or instant messaging, or maxi padding, or sending photos to my friends (they're all just about dead anyway, and the ones that aren't are getting ready). I don't need to make movies on my phone. I don't need to take "selfies" with anybody (frankly I really don't want to get that close to people anymore. They repulse me).

My technological advancements in music stopped with the CD's. I own around 387,000 CD's so I've got my music pretty well covered. Don't need no iPod.

Don't need no iTunes or any other 'i things'. I put a CD into my player and I hear music. It's great. It's easy. It's low tech. And low tech to me means low blood pressure and low aggravation. Listen, I went from vinyl records to four and eight tract, to cassette tapes, to CDs.

I figure repurchasing my music collection in four different formats is enough already. When these CDs start breaking down or skipping or melting or whatever they do when they go bad, well, I'll just have to sing to myself from then on, that's all.

Same goes with television. I went to the large flat screen HD a few years ago along with a DVD player and now I'm done. I don't need a "higher quality" picture than what I have. I don't watch these new computer generated special effect slam-bang movies, I don't like them. And Laurel and Hardy will never look any better then they do on what I have now. Watching classic old black and white pictures doesn't require surround sound or 3-D or any other revolutionary 21st Century advancements.

I have no use for a Blackberry or a smart phone or a Facebook account. These things are not part of my life and I have no desire to start collecting "friends" on social media at this stage. Truth be known, I've never desired having hundreds or thousands of people "following me."

I never liked informing people of my actions or whereabouts at any given moment Ð I don't like being followed.

Posting pics on a social media page of what I ate for dinner last night seems like a really stupid thing to do.

So much of this kind of stuff has become oh so important to so many people that it makes doing a jigsaw puzzle seem like a worthwhile endeavor towards the betterment of mankind.

My distaste for the new goes way beyond the electronic arena. I don't like most of what's new in the arts and pop culture. I enjoy pleasing sounds, not grating, shrill, or screaming. I like sweet singers, not coarse rappers. I enjoy watching elegant, good-looking, well-dressed people doing civilized, smart things in the movies.

In short I love William Powell, Cary Grant, Grace Kelly, and Myrna Loy performing in almost any picture. Show me their equivalent in today's movies and I'll buy a ticket. But there'd better not be any vulgarity or social messaging in the film or you'll lose me. Call me old-fashioned but I just don't see a whole lot of entertainment value in bodily fluids jokes.

New restaurants are a turnoff for me also. Again, what happened to comfort? I much prefer the warm relaxing ambiance of a large comfortable leather booth to chrome and glass tables pushed close together in a loud, brightly lit space which has more in common with a high school cafeteria than it does to a fine dining establishment.

Also, enough already with the piling up of the food on the plate. I like to differentiate the various food items on my dinner plate and not have them piled high on top of each other like so much garbage.

Another new thing is mixing up food that traditionally never went together. Like using bacon in chocolate pudding or salted caramel frosting on prime rib or kale on just about everything.

I could go on and on but I guess you get the idea. I'm an old guy who prefers old things, and not because they're old, because they are better. Improve something, really come up with something new that is honest to goodness better than what was before, and I'll go for it.

If you come with anything let me know.

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JWR contributor Greg Crosby, former creative head for Walt Disney publications, has written thousands of comics, hundreds of children's books, dozens of essays, and a letter to his congressman. He's also a Southern California-based freelance writer.