Matt Labash Tackles Serious Issues Like Aging

Matt Labash is the Daily Caller author of the "Ask Matt Labash" column, a weekly dose of surrealist humor. In answering questions, he tends to veer into the absurd fairly quickly, as was the case in a column the Wire recently highlighted. The question was: "I am a woman. Should I get a tattoo?" Labash opened his response with "I am a man. Let's make a baby." He then launched into a 500-word tirade which, among other things, touched on the Parthenon. More recently he responded to a question about George Bush and the Constitution by suggesting liberals accuse the ex-president of "trampling" the Treaty of Greenville.

But Labash does occasionally break character (or revert to character?) to make a serious point, as he does in his latest offering. After answering a question about what he would do with three wishes (1. give them to someone with a terminal illness, 2. take them back, and 3. bring back taco-flavored Doritos), he slips in a serious point about aging. A reader who is "insecure" about her age wants "wisdom." Here's his response.

A few months ago, I heard a radio interview with a terminally ill journalist. She'd once been a gold-plated action junkie and a swashbuckling war correspondent. Now, she was in a hospice, waiting for the inevitable. When asked if she spent a lot of time looking back, she said that no, she didn't. When reading a book, no matter how great chapter two was, when you're on chapter eight, you’re still more interested in what happens next than what you've already read. That's the spirit, I think. If I had a fourth wish (see last question), I'd wish to keep that in mind at all times. Though third place would still be to bring back taco-flavored Doritos.  You have to keep priorities straight. Still, you don't have to spend life looking back wistfully. Nostalgia can be the devil. Nor do you have to dread what comes next. Life’s pretty good about staying interesting and yielding unexpected pleasures. All that's required is to keep turning pages.

Not bad advice--especially coming from someone who just spend a few hundred words weighing the merits of Klingon versus Braille.