Beth Broderick: Wit and Wisdom for the Ages from the Aged Podcast

Wit and Wisdom by Beth Broderick “There’s a new injection that is proving very effective. We are seeing great results. It does have one black-box side effect, though. (A black-box side effect is one that is potentially, but not often, fatal.) Do you have a history of depression?” she asked. I was in my Rheumatology office with Ashley, the Physician Assistant to the Big Cheese doctors in the practi...

Wit and Wisdom by Beth Broderick I was in Fredricksburg Texas, sitting across from the twins. John and Don have been known in some circles as “The Gay Twins from Arkansas” for as long as we have been friends, which is a long, long time. Mostly, though, they are just known as “The Twins”. Both men are tall and lanky, with the kind of impressive physical strength that comes from labor and not the gy...

Wit and Wisdom by Beth Broderick Four A.M. The alarm woke me out of a deep sleep and interrupted an odd dream. I have lost the plot of it now, but it involved my old colleague Nate Richert, who played Harvey on Sabrina. We were college students, and he was in trouble, and I was trying to get him out of it. That’s all I’ve got; the particulars of the story are lost to the night. The dream is good n...

Wit and Wisdom by Beth Broderick I said goodbye to a dear old pal on Sunday. Harvey “The DON” Siegel was one of the first people to truly befriend me when I was young and stupid and on my own in New York City. My first year there I got caught up in a crowd that lived hard and long into the night, courtesy of cocaine and a few other substances that were favored at the time. I loved the drug, a litt...

Wit and Wisdom by Beth Broderick Some time ago, I just had to admit it: I need help. I have always been headstrong, determined to handle everything on my own. This has often sent me careening down the highway to the hell of burnout. I would collapse for a day or two and then dive right back in at warp speed. I take on a lot. I have a wide variety of creative interests, as well as a keen drive to c...

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Wit and Wisdom by Beth Broderick I have a lot of lists. Long lists and short ones, memos and notes. They are on my phone, on rolls of paper in my kitchen, sticky-noted to my laptop, and pasted on the walls. These lists are meant to keep me on track, keep the larder stocked and the business of life flowing. The problem is not that there are no lists. I’ve got them up the wazoo. The problem is that...

Wit and Wisdom by Beth Broderick “You’re doing that? You’re up in the hills alone like that? On steep ridges?” my sister-in-law Sarah asked with a look of concern. When she put it that way, I had to admit it sounded a tad off the beam. I had been explaining that I feel more confident hiking in the hills and on the ridges alone with my dog Fairness, because my pal Dean gave me a cane with a stun fe...

Wit and Wisdom by Beth Broderick Luck. “The definition of luck is when preparation meets opportunity.” My mother said this to us many times when we were growing up. It has a nice “pull yourself up by the bootstraps” Americana feel about it, a nod to the work ethic bestowed upon us by our Puritan ancestors. That is not, however, the definition of luck. This is how it is described according to Webst...

Wit and Wisdom by Beth Broderick They are everywhere. Lemons, oranges, and grapefruits are the most obvious, but tucked into corners or looming in the back are also figs, and, this being the Southland, avocados. My new neighborhood is ripe with produce which tempts me at every turn. I look up wistfully at the lemons I cannot reach without risking serious bodily harm. The low-hanging ones are picke...

Wit and Wisdom by Beth Broderick My hair is really short—way shorter than I wanted it to be. It looks fine, I guess, and blessedly is no longer purple, but dang it, why so short? The fellow who has been taking care of it for me is lovely and kind, and I am a bit fascinated by him, so I was maybe not paying enough attention to the “hair” part of the appointment and too much to the “him” part. He do...

Wit and Wisdom by Beth Broderick I failed to read the directions. Just didn’t bother. The label seemed straightforward enough: “Color Extend Blondage.” It is supposed to tame any of the dreaded brassy notes a gal’s hair may pick up in the sunshine or under a hot dryer. It’s not dye; it is just a simple mask. The way I make a living is not entirely based on looks. One has to have talent, “chops” as...

Wit and Wisdom by Beth Broderick “Tell me the truth,” my nephew Conor said emphatically. He is not a blood relative, but I have been his Auntie Beth for as long as he has been alive. He is 100% my family. “Am I being a baby, or have the last few years just been impossibly hard?” “You are not a baby. The last few years have been impossibly hard.” For young people trying to carve out careers in the...

Wit and Wisdom by Beth Broderick I moved home to my native California two years ago. I was born and raised in Orange County but have lived in Los Angeles for the better part of my life. I have tried other places. Spent time in New York City and Austin, Texas, but L.A. has always called me home. Two weeks ago, on the last day of 2024, I moved into a new place in Beachwood Canyon. It is an old Holly...

Wit and Wisdom by Beth Broderick I woke up in a new apartment on New Year’s Eve morning, the bedroom still full of boxes, the to-do list ever growing. But the anxiety had mostly eased. For a few glorious moments, I just lay there, the dog snuggled up beside me, and felt at home. I played a round of Words with Friends with my dear friend Michael, with whom I am always in a neck-and-neck battle to t...

Wit and Wisdom by Beth Broderick “When you see me in February, I will look brand new.” My dear friend said this to me not long ago. At the time, we were dining on croissants and some kind of sugar bun—one of the many holiday feasts we had recently consumed—but soon, he promised, it would be time for famine. “I think you look good now,” I said. “You are old and blind and deaf, so you can’t really s...

Wit and Wisdom by Beth Broderick Can we talk about trash? It is a subject that consumes many of my thoughts. I am borderline obsessive about it. I save food scraps in compostable bags in my refrigerator until they are full enough to be placed in one of the green bins that frequently line the streets alongside their blue and black bin brethren. I divide recycling carefully and rinse it, if need be,...

Wit and Wisdom by Beth Broderick My last article was published on November 4, 2024, twelve days ago as of this writing. November 5th occasioned an electoral outcome that shocked and dismayed many while thrilling others. It is no secret that the results were not what I had hoped for. I believe that the implications of this vote are as far-reaching as any I can think of in my lifetime, but the peopl...

Wit and Wisdom by Beth Broderick I saw her first: a lovely coyote walking just twenty steps ahead of us on the opposite side of the street. It was about 8:30 PM, darkness just beginning to settle over my Beverly Hills neighborhood. She looked right into my eyes, and I nodded with a neutral expression. Fairness, the pup, caught on at that point and strained toward her, wanting a better look. “No,”...

Wit and Wisdom by Beth Broderick “ But there never seems to be enough time  to do the things you want to do once you find them .”  -Jim Croce He died in a plane crash at the age of 30.  Today is Tuesday. I am supposed to be in your inbox with this piece of insightful prose, but I ran out of time. After returning from a four-day work trip to Scotland and the ensuing brief recovery period, during wh...

Wit and Wisdom by Beth Broderick I have lived with Fairness the rescue pup for going on six months now. I will grant you that a lot of that time has been spent away. Even when one is filming in Los Angeles, the hours of work outside of the home are long and many. I started a production two days after he settled in as my guy. He was technically a foster, but I don’t play with that kind of thing. On...

Wit and Wisdom by Beth Broderick LOST. It started gradually enough. There was just a pesky hair missing here and there. No big deal, but in the last year there has been a mass exodus. My eyebrows have fucked off. They are so few and so pale that I cannot leave the house without a quick once-over with a pencil.  Of course, those only come in colors like brown and weird taupe, orange-y hues that no...

Wit and Wisdom by Beth Broderick On Sunday, I was still trying to climb out of the fog of exhaustion that was clouding my thoughts. Having concluded a series of night shoots at 3 AM in Montreal, I finally made it to bed at around 4:15. I then awakened at 9 AM on the same day in order to pack and head to the airport. At my asking I was on a Delta flight which had a layover in Detroit. Yes, there ar...

Wit and Wisdom by Beth Broderick Michael was worried about me in Romania. I was having a very hard time, and he had rarely known me to be so deeply depressed. After our conversation he hung up the phone, leapt into action, and called his airline to book some flights (Yes, those of us who travel often for work all have an airline to which we are fiercely loyal—“our” airline. It doesn’t matter if th...

Wit and Wisdom by Beth Broderick I am not one hundred percent sure, but I believe it was 2006 when I got on a plane and headed overseas to shoot a horror movie (my one and only horror movie). I was the villain in a quite well-written and demanding role in what I thought was most likely a good script. I couldn’t read it. Not the whole thing anyway. Every time I got to a really harrowing moment I wo...