There are a few tell-tale signs that you’re getting old:

1.) You don’t recognize any of the songs on the Top Ten list

2.) Co-workers don’t get any of the cultural references you make from your youth.

3.) You really get into shows about middle-aged people.

So my two favorite new TV shows are about characters who find themselves in the second half of life. While I haven’t been interested in a lot of shows other than “The Office,” both “Men of a Certain Age” and “Cougar Town”  appealed to me because — and I hate to actually admit this — I am much closer to Courtney Cox’s age than anyone on “Twighlight.”

In fact, it’s weird to see Courtney Cox playing a middle-aged woman.  After all, she was the chick in the Springsteen video, Alex P. Keaton’s girlfriend, and one of the hip single 20-somethings in “Friends.”

Now she plays the mother of a teenager. And, oddly enough, when I look at some of my old high school classmates on Face Book (usually to see how much weight they’ve gained), I’m often surprised to see that some of them now have teenaged kids.

How did that happen???

Anyway, I’m digressing. Because I really wanted to write about the shows.

I happened to watch “Cougar Town” as my wife was putting our (6-year-old, not teenaged) daughter to bed recently. And I thought it was really pretty good. It was pretty risque for network TV — I’d be embarassed to watch it with my mother — but it was pretty spot on, and it made me chuckle several times.

Cox was very believable as a single mom with a quench for younger men — particularly a hunky neighbor. And I was happy to see that Busy Phillips, from the show “Freaks and Geeks,” was on the show as the younger friend.

My wife thinks I have a thing for Phillips; I just think she’s a good actress.

But the show I really like is “Men of a Certain Age.” Having been a fan of “Everybody Loves Raymond” actor Ray Romano and Andre Braugher from “Homicide,” I was interested to see how they’d work together.

Along with Scott Bakula, they play three middle-aged buddies who live fairly mundane lives. Romano’s character lives in a hotel after separating from his wife. Braugher’s character hates his job as a car salesman. And Bakula is a struggling actor who shows the lonely side of dating.

Like “Cougar Town,” it’s definitely edgy for TV. And since it’s on TNT, they get away with more salty language. (For example, the characters have called each other ”dick” in every episode so far.) But the language is necessary to accurately portray these guys in a believable way.

While there are certainly moments of humor, Romano, the comic, pulls a Robin Williams, throwing you off with his ability to play dramatic scenes. While Bakula’s character portrayed as an seasoned stud, all three men are showing the effects of age with widened waists and graying hairs.      

Both shows remind you that, yeah, getting older sucks. But you’re not alone.

Normally, when I drive to work, I like to listen to something upbeat. You know — to get me in a positive mood before the workday. But this morning, since I was preparing for an interview with one of the Temptations, I listened to “Village Ghetto Land.”

Of course, “Village Ghetto Land” is not a Temptations song. It came from Stevie Wonder’s landmark album “Songs in the Key of Life.” But while doing a little research on the Temptations yesterday, I got to thinking about ghetto songs.

Back in the ealry 70s, songs about the the African-American ghettos were really popular among soul acts like Marvin Gaye, Curtis Mayfield and Isaac Hayes. TV and film represented ghettos as well. The show “Good Times” was about  a family who lived in the notoriously crime-ridden Cabrini-Green projects in Chicago. And the movie “Superfly” focused on life in the drug subculture.

The “Superfly” soundtrack, by Curtis Mayfield, was actually more popular than the movie. With songs about drugs, poverty and death, the concept album broke new ground. Because while acts like James Brown, The Temptations and even Elvis (”In the Ghetto,” 1969) had performed individual songs about the urban plight, Mayfield took it to a new level.

Stevie Wonder was no doubt inspired by this — along with Marvin Gaye’s anti-war album “What’s Going On” — when he began to write socially conscious music in the early 70s. His first major commentary on urban life came with “Living For the City,” about a Mississipi man who moves to New York for a new beginning only to become a victim of the drug trade. Then in 1976 came the double-album “Songs in the Key of Life,” which was so packed with radio-friendly hits, “Village Ghetto Land” was often overlooked.

Backed by strings but no drums, Wonder sang somberly about the impoverished:

Families buying dog food now
Starvation roams the streets
Babies die before they’re born
Infected by the grief

Powerful stuff, especially when you hear Stevie sing it. (George Michael’s cover couldn’t capture the sense of defeatism Wonder did.)

Oddly enough, you don’t really hear that much about the ghettos today, partly because the entire public housing concept has been reconfigured. The norotious Cabrini-Green projects, for example, have been mostly torn down, as the Chicago Housing Authority has relocated many residents into mixed income neighborhoods, including new condos built at the site of old Cabrini-Green high rises.

That effort has reportedly greatly reduced crime there. But by no means is crime and poverty absent from the cities. Last year, murders were up 15 percent in Chicago from the year before. Still, the 339 murder figure from 2008 pales to the 970 committed in 1974.

I remember this because I was walking through the aisles of Rockports when I took the filling out of my mouth and thought, “Uh-oh.”

Because I knew that 1.) My job at the Shoe Carnival didn’t pay enough for me to go to the dentist and 2.) If I’d asked anyone about the Shoe Carnival’s health benefits, someone — possibly multiple people — would have laughed at me.

But, hey, it was a recession.  Despite my degree, I couldn’t get a real job.

So I took the same approach to my tooth as I took with my dilapidated cars at the time: I ignored the problem, hoping it would somehow fix itself. With my Mazda and Chevette, that actually worked a couple of times.

Not so with teeth.

I was also working at the Shoe Carnival when I felt the first piece of my tooth crumble off. Once again, I thought: “Oh, crap.” It chipped away a little more by the time I finally had enough money to go to the dentist, who treated me like I was a deadbeat dad, asking why I hadn’t come sooner.

“I work at the Shoe Carnival,” I told him. 

He told me I needed a root canal. 

The only way I was going to come up with $1,400 was going to involve stealing shoes, and two of my co-workers had already been arrested for that. So I reverted to my previous plan: Ignoring the problem.

Eventually, I got work in journalism, but my first two newspaper gigs didn’t offer insurance. Meanwhile, my tooth got so bad that the gum around my tooth got infected a couple of times. 

When I saw a History Channel show that talked about ancient Egyptians dying from abcess teeth, I started to get worried. When I did research, I read scary phrases like:  “A tooth abscess complication includes tooth loss, jaw bone damage, neighboring tooth damage or loss, sinus problems, brain abscess, heart damage, hospitalization, coma, and even death.”

DEATH??? Wouldn’t it be tragic, I thought, if I died because I couldn’t afford a root canal?

Eventually, I got a job that provided insurance — about a decade after my filling came out. And when I finally got to a dentist — overcoming a huge phobia that I had developed — she said I wouldn’t need a root canal.

It was too far gone for that. So with one good yank, my tooth problems were gone.

But, of course, the great private health care system that some people like to praise doesn’t cover everything, even if a significant chunk of your paycheck goes to it every month. So if I wanted to fill in my new gap, it’d cost me $600.

Six hundred bucks for one little fake tooth when I could use $600 for things like rent, clothing and food.

If there’s a positive here, it’s that I would be easy to identify if I were to die in a horrific crash — thanks to the gap in my teeth. On the other hand, dying horrifically isn’t really all that positive. Nor is a permanent gap in my teeth.

So, yeah, I guess this is a diatribe about health care. Because while I agonized for years over a tooth I couldn’t fix, imagine what it would be like for someone who needed heart surgery, cancer medicine or dialysis.

So to those who think we’ve got it good I ask: Have you considered those who don’t?

First of all, the swell charts on Wetsand.com looked like the Halliburton stock charts for 2002 — a line shooting straight up. Secondly, the water just looked weird. So when Sunday came I decided 1.) There was no way I was going out and 2.) I had to look and see if anyone else was crazy enough to go out.

 So I went to Spooner’s Cove in Los Osos and, sure enough, the waves looked pretty massive. But you never really know how big it is until you see someone on a wave. You need the perspective.

Anyway, I parked my car, and immediately I saw this surfer walking to his car, which was parked next to mine. He had just made the long paddle back to shore.

“So how was it?” I asked.

He pulled off his hood, beads of water dripping off his chin. “Pretty good. There weren’t really any sets, though.”

I waited a sec as he put his board down.

“How big would you say it was?”

I felt a little like a tourist asking that question. But I did have my board in my car, so maybe it at least looked like I was a surfer.

“Oh, I’d say about ten foot.”

I nodded, then looked out at the water. I wanted to follow up on that 10-foot comment, but I held off. A few minutes later, I saw another surfer drop in on a huge wave. Easily the biggest wave I’ve seen anyone ride in person. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a camera to record it, but it looked like this:

It was quite a sight to see. And the guy, surfing a 10-foot- gun, was just tearing it up.

I waited a while, then I turned to the surfer parked next to me.

“So when you say it was ten feet — are you talking Hawaiian Method?”

I’ve discussed this before. But the Hawaiian Method of wave calculation sizes up a wave from the back side, which really doesn’t make a lick of sense because it’s the front side that will pummel you.

“Yeah,” he said. “The faces were probably 20 to 25 feet.”

Yeah. That was more like it. Because that wave I saw was clearly not ten foot.  It was more like 25, which makes it officially ginormous. 

To think that guys have surfed waves more than twice that size is just unfathomable.

But, hey — by the Hawaiian Method those waves would only be 25 foot.

Of course, I’m not sure exactly how hard I’m going to work for you today. I mean, come on — it’s Christmas Eve, people. Besides, odds are you aren’t reading a lot of blogs this weekend. Am I right or am I right?

So today I’ve decided to take it easy and offer up a fun selection of Christmas music, compliments of YouTube. After all, who doesn’t want to hear Dylan sing about Santa Claus?

So here we go:

Like I said — nothing complicated. But, I figure, people like to know what other people are listening to. And some times it’s fun just to muse about great songs. So here’s the very first entry for Today’s Going to Work Song:

“One Less Set of Footsteps,” Jim Croce

When you see Jim Croce photos, it’s hard to believe he was only 30 when he died. First of all, he looks a little like Mario from the Mario Brothers video games, and I’m pretty sure Mario was older than 30. Secondly, I have a hard time believing the guy is younger than I am now.

Maybe that had something to do with traveling so much. Before he hit it big, he traveled and performed extensively with his wife, Ingrid, reportedly covering 300,000 miles in a 2-year-span.

He finally got sick of it all and backed off of music, taking jobs as a truck driver and construction worker. But those jobs gave him ideas for story songs. And then he hooked up with a classically-trained guitarist named Maury Muehleisen, and suddenly, he was headed for a breakthrough.

“Bad, Bad Leroy Brown” and “Time In a Bottle” were his big hits, of course. But I really like this one — which I jammed to today while making the 20-minute trek to San Luis Obispo.

I’m not one of those music listeners who has to have great lyrics. In my view, the melody is always most important. You want great lyrics, read a poem. Still, great lyrics can be icing on the cake to a great song. And this is where Croce excels.

In ”One Less Set of Footsteps” — a witty break-up song — I love it when he sings, “If that’s the way that you want it/Oh, that’s the way I want it more.” Or the way he describes the house as having “one less pair of jeans upon your door.” Meanwhile, Muehleisen’s acoustic leads just seem to fly off the fretboard, yet without overtaking the song.

After finally hitting the charts, Croce planned to take a breather from the touring in order to spend more time with family. But he wanted to fulfill his previous gig obligations. So he performed at a small venue in Natchitoces, LA. Roughly an hour after the show, the small plane he was in clipped a grove of pecan trees and crashed, killing all onboard, including a comedian named George Stevens and Muehleisen (pictured above in a plane with Croce).

Some theorize that the pilot had a heart attack.

Given that Croce has just achieved his big break, you wonder how many more great songs he would have written. (I suspect he’d still be writing today.)

Check out Croce and Muehleisen performing ”One Less Set of Footsteps” in this video. While most people don’t know who Muehleisen was, you can see here how much flavor his guitar added to the songs. Also, as you can see in other videos, he also added nice vocal harmonies.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vLETlTkr1s

So I was listening to some of Brian Setzer’s Christmas music recently when I discovered the above surf song, “Mr. Jazzer Goes Surfing.” I know he’s done other classics, like “Sleepwalk” and “Hawaii Five-O” so I was interested to see if there was more of a Setzer-surf connection.

I couldn’t find anything saying he surfed, but I did find some interesting surf-related info about his label, Surfdog Records. The company, located near the famous Swami’s reef break in San Diego, was founded by Dave Kaplan, a former accountant and avid surfer.

Interestingly, Kaplan started surfing in his native Phoenix — which had a Big Wave Surf Pool he and his friends would visit. Later, he moved to LA and surfed there while working as an accountant. Eventually, he ditched the suit and entered the music business, signing UB40 as his first client.

Through the years other clients would include Freddy Mercury, Butthole Surfers, Gary Hoey, Dave Stewart and even Harry Perry – that turban-wearing dude who plays guitar while roller skating in Venice Beach.

Surfdog has put out dozens of albums and has landed its artists’ music on numerous TV shows and movies. But while it’s serious about music, it also values quality of life — and surfing. From the web site:

“If we’re out at a board meeting, and the surf is good, you’ll know what we’re really up to.”

It was a wire story, dating back to 1967, and it was written in first person by Hobie Alter, described as surfing’s first millionaire. The story is pretty lightweight, but it basically features Alter talking about the stoke.

“More and more people are learning what it means to be stoked,” he writes.

Alter is credited for developing the foam and fiberglass surfboard — a big change from those heavy wood boards. His line of boards remains one of the best selling brands of all time.

If you read today’s Tribune, you might have seen the piece where Clarence “Big Man” Clemons talks about hanging out at the Pozo Saloon. But that’s not the only local connection he has with San Lus Obispo County.   

Clemons, Bruce Springsteen’s sax player since the early 70s, also gave local songwriter Jude Johnstone her first big break. The two first met, Clemons told me, on a plane.

The sax is part of the band’s trademark sound. But Clemons said it shouldn’t be a component of every tune. Otherwise, he said, it’d get predictable.

  Photo: Eric Meola (from the “Born to Run” photo shoot)

I didn’t get a chance to hit the waves today (Thursday), but rumor has it they were tow surfing up the coast. Surfline said waves were up to 15 foot in Morro Bay this afternoon, and they tend to underestimate in the winter.

Luckily, former Tribune staffer Jay Thompson got out a took a few snap shots up in Cayucos and was kind enough to offer them to Sidetracked for an exclusive. So enjoy.

The one at the top is my favorite because you can see Mouse Rock swelling massively in the back ground. But then this next one shows how big it got at the pier:

Maybe I’m a sis, but that doesn’t look like something I’d want to surf in. Just looking at it makes me envision the pounding it would distribute. But if you want to get barrelled, Cayucos on a big day is probably one of your best bets. This guy isn’t getting tubed, but he is avoiding a beatdown:

And here’s what he had to face on the paddle out: