We are going to start sharing our author press releases here in our blog. First up, is Perry Block
Nouveau Old, Formerly Cute
Havertown Resident Perry Block Confronts his Aging Angst in new Book
Nouveau Old, Formerly Cute.
What happens when a man realizes he has gone from cute and young to middle-aged plus and occasionally cranky? Well, if you are Perry Block, you document this transition in a new book entitled Nouveau Old, Formerly Cute which offers a series of often hilarious essays that tries to make sense of growing older. Within this work, Block, aided by his son Brandon and a host of other real and fictitious characters including Batman, Cupid, the Legendary Jewish Vampire Vlad the Retailer, Richard Nixon and more, takes aim at his aging angst.
“How can I feel good about something that’s draining me of my youthful cuteness and turning me into the little old guy in the back of the hardware store who makes the keys?” he admits.
With Nouveau Old, Formerly Cute, Perry Block confronts his aging fears in this slightly off-the-wall look at all things Boomer including social trends, self-deprecation, the sixties, the good old days of entertainment and more.
Born and raised in Merion, PA and a long-time Delaware County resident, Block attended undergraduate school and law school but left his legal dream behind when he couldn’t accept the fact that a “tort” was not a delicious small Italian pastry. He spent most of his adult life in Human Resources but the desire to write kept nagging at him. In his thirties, he began to write short humor pieces for various publications. He also developed the HR Comedy Troupe, a sort of Saturday Night Live for the Human Resources community which performed at Society for Human Resource Management chapters throughout the Philadelphia area.
“During the run of the Troupe, we presented comedy sketches such as Sam Meritor, Anti-Harassment Private Eye. We also created desk pieces such as HR Action News and numerous song parodies including OSHA’s Coming to the tune of Oklahoma.”
Unlike many Boomers who choose to embrace their station and life, Block lets the world know he will never agree to grow old gracefully.
“For me, a Boomer is someone who has one foot in the black-and-white fifties and the other in the psychedelic sixties,” Block explains. “We Boomers may also have some fleeting memories through the Quaalude dazed haze of the disco seventies, but we are much more defined by the two decades prior to that. My generation loved The Adventures of Superman and The Lone Ranger, sported short hair and knew America was always right and just.
We later witnessed the assassination of John F. Kennedy and the birth of the Beatles, grew our hair to our navels and learned that America could sometimes be very wrong and very unjust.”
While Nouveau Old, Formerly Cute relies on comedy and humor to address Block’s “fear” of aging, the book presents sentiment, nostalgia, warmth and hints of an inconvenient sense of morality.
“I sincerely hope that I have portrayed some of the thoughts, feelings and hopes of the Boomer Generation in a humorous and entertaining fashion based upon a fictionalized version of me,” Block notes. “I also hope that my book presents the type of humor—especially in the many non-Boomer related parodies and satires—that resonates with people of all ages. And finally, I hope that somehow this book will fall into the hands of actress Scarlett Johansson and she will respond to the subliminal messages I’ve loaded onto almost every page.”