I turn 40 in one month and watching the NBA has turned into a sort of mid-life crisis from hell. This puts me as essentially the same age as Karl Malone, John Stockton and Michael Jordan. I have to listen to aged announcer after aged announcer proclaiming how the "old guys" can't jump as high, run as fast, play as well as their younger counterparts. One of the worst I heard during the 2002 All-Star Weekend when MJ was compared to some new 20 year old who was 3 years old when Michael first entered the NBA. This means that the kid was 3 years old when I was graduating from college and now he is a multi-millionaire in the NBA and I'm writing a column for Street. Listening to a Jazz game has become a constant reminder that I am over the hill.

Now, maybe this is just part of the male psyche that comes from growing up in the United States, where we are taught to idolize and emulate our sports stars. The NFL season was just as bad. Steve Young is my age and he is ‘concussioned’ out of the sport. Jerry Rice is my age, too. They read his stats for the season and say, "Not bad for an old guy" or "He can still keep up with the young uns.”

The youth movement doesn't stop with sports. Take the ubiquitous computer -- who is usually sitting at the keyboard, but some teenager? The computer, the game of the mind, has, like sports become the playground of the young. So science extends our life so we can watch the people excelling grow younger and younger.

I ran into a client that I hadn't seen in three years and the first words out of his mouth were "Boy, you've got a lot more gray hair." So naturally, I think of death.

Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter who was killed in Pakistan, was 38. I saw his picture on CNN.com and it had the caption of 1963-2002. I was born in 1963, too. The life expectancy in many African countries has dipped below 38 years of age because of the devastation of AIDS. The immortality of 18 seems like a thing of the distant past. I could easily be dead.

So death isn't the usual topic of conversation for a light-hearted column. But if we can't laugh at death, then we can't laugh at life either. I've always thought that we've missed out on the concept of resurrection and reincarnation. This isn't about what happens after we are dead. The concept of resurrection and reincarnation are the same: it is the concept of recreating ourselves, letting the old die off and the new be reborn.

ON THE MALL DESTRUCTION

For months, I've had the opportunity to watch the mall, from above 24th Street, crumble bit by bit. Now, the devastation is present for all to see. Destruction has become a voyeuristic past time. Just this morning I was hearing ruminations of radio personalities on the Survivor show. Survivor is interesting because everyone, but one, loses. We don't watch for the winner -- that is the myth. We watch to see if the person we want to lose, loses, and ensure that justice is served. Even in those moments when justice is not served, we gain a perverse delight in observing the unfairness. As if some quantity of unfairness is established and if bad fortune befalls someone else, the likelihood is that the misfortune will miss us. Or, maybe it is just a sigh of relief that at least for the time being, it wasn't me.

Destruction can be so much quicker than construction. We like our buildings in our movies to blow up and be leveled. A post-apocalyptic landscape fulfills something within us. I saw another icon of destruction in the paper today -- an aerial shot over where the World Trade Center Towers had once been. I'd been to New York in December of 2001 and the dust still coated the roads as the trucks drove off with piles of debris. I was amazed at the progress of just a few months in cleaning up the disaster. As horrific as the events of September 11 were, I must acknowledge the awe I felt at the destructive power.

Humanity, life, Ogden City and even little kids with their rooms constantly struggle with entropy, that tendency to go from an ordered state to disorder. Down comes the mall. Clean up your room. Down comes the old McKay Dee. Entropy may reign supreme, but life is an effort against entropy and destruction, an effort we make even as we are drawn towards the destruction.

ON THE SPECTACULAR NATURE OF THE UNSPECTACULAR

The difficulty is that spectacular has at its root the word "spectacle,” which actually has a little bit of a negative connotation. Something that is spectacular would be something that grab sour attention because it is unusual and out of the ordinary. We are conditioned to respond to the ordinary without much reaction. Routines and ruts, yet because certain things are always present, always around, we completely miss the spectacular nature of the unspectacular.

I'm not talking in riddles. I'm talking about taking a step back from the unspectacular -- as the unspectacular occurs, say brushing your teeth in the morning. I did that this morning and didn't realize until now just how spectacular that moment was. Expanding thought out beyond the little battery powered tooth brush, the minty toothpaste and mouthwash seems remarkable and spectacular considering the poorer regions of the planet and even further out -- off the planet. Just between the earth and the moon where there is a whole lot of nothing. Suddenly the bristles on my teeth become unusual, extraordinary and incredible. How did the brush get in my hand? How does it work? How come the toothpaste kills germs that cause cavities? Inside my mouth a war is raging and I'm spraying germs with napalm Crest. Spectacular only because of my point of view. The act itself did not change. Life is spectacular when viewed properly. Pay attention to the moment and suddenly the mundane becomes spectacular, the unspectacular becomes unbelievable. The breath in and out, the heart beating -- two things we don't go a minute without during our lives -- yet they are simultaneously the most unspectacular of events.

ON THIS WEIRD COLUMN

I got some feedback on my first column. Some relative by marriage to one of my myriad of siblings asked my brother if he was related to the guy who wrote that weird column. Other than that all was silence. As nice as silence is, I wouldn't mind feedback: -zenboard@yahoo.com

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