30 Rock's Kenneth Parcell | The Cure for Aging?

It surprises some, and infuriates several, that I do not actively watch NBC's 30 Rock. If it's on and I've got nothing better to do, sure, I'll watch an episode, and I find the characters to be healthy doses of self-serving pessimism and woefully optimistic. Except one.

Kenneth Parcell might just be a living Buddha. Sure, he sees the world through Muppet-tinted glasses, but what I find most compelling about him isn't that or his folksy, down-home advice of questionable bias and utterly uselessness, it's that he seems to be at least 140 years old.

Oh, ha-ha, the jokes the jokes, but click the "Kenneth's Age" heading in the article above, and you'll find that other old-timers seem to remember him just the same. He truly appears to be ageless.

Thus, I have come up with some theories as to how Ken seems to manage this.


"Human" Possibilities:

• Decent genes - First possibility, Ken might just be pretty lucky. Maybe clean living was enough for him.

Related theories:

• He's a mutant. Still technically human, in the same way Neanderthal and H. erectus were both human.
   
• He is a postmortal. Good genes, magic potion, fortuitous cocktail, whatever it was, his aging might just be turned off. Gene expressions, hormone cycles, everything might just have stopped progressing when he reached physical maturity.
  
  
• Kenneth is at least the third in a line of perfectly identical male Parcells. It is possible that his grandfather was also named "Kenneth" and Ken III is often mistaken by others for him. The autographed picture of his dated 1947 could be for that Kenneth, passed down to him in a long line of family history. Kenneth's recognition of old celebrities and places? Family lore. "You are the Kenneth now, son! Where that name proudly!" "Yes, Pa!" *Father expires*
  
  It could work for some of it.

• Kenneth is a Highlander.
   
• Clones - Kenneth is actually the latest in a family line of clones, secretly created since at least the first World War. Why? Haven't the foggiest. Maybe as a replenishable supply of hard-working and intensely loyal company clerks. Once the war ended, the clones could have been repurposed for civilian/corporate usage by the military industrial complex.

For a few of these, shared memory and "brain transplant" could account for Ken's 'personal' memories of decades past.

Hell, maybe like The Man From Earth, he's simply a genetic freak who's been alive since the dawn of modern man.

• Ken's a wizard. As with all magical creatures, wizards are long-lived. They have access to else-worldly powers and the alchemic arts. Surely a mage as powerful as the Grand Ken could halt his aging.
  
  Might also explain his tremendous luck and that whole obliviousness angle he puts on. He'd know secrets.
  

Nonhuman Possibilities:

• Some sort of old servant god.
  
  Like Hermes or Vulcan, he'd be something akin to a god's god, the same way Stephen Fry would be considered the ultimate gentleman's gentleman. Yeah, he's a complete servant, but he's still got godly powers all his own.

• A robot powered by hamsters.
  
  Pretty self-explanatory here.
  
  
• A Force of Nature.
  
  A universal law? A personification of an aspect of all creation? He has intimated that he's been around "forever." At east he seemed concerned someone else might have said that.
  
  Let's start checking 15th century tapestries for little blue jackets.

•  A dhampire.
  
  Like Blade, or Vampire Hunter D, or even I think Rayne, dhampires are the half-breed children of true vampires, granted some of their powers but few of their parents' weaknesses.
  
  I.E. Why Kenneth can go out in the daytime and has (at least some manner of) reflection.

 A Non-Player Character from Jumanji.

Lost in the real world, since no one has yet won a game (Since young Robin Williams and his girlfriend threw away the box and some poor kid found it), Kenneth has since given up being a hunter or savage, or whatever he was originally in order to, you know, eat.

As the cartoon said when they tossed the hunter Van Pelt into a bottomless chasm, thus removing him from play without 'killing' and allowing him to regenerate, causing his personality to superimpose itself over I think Peter, slowly turning him into a new Van Pelt. "There must always be a Van Pelt."

"There must always be a Kenneth.

• Kenneth is a golem, created by Lorn Michaels to serve him at NBC.
  
  I don't know if he's the famous Golem of Prague or an earlier model, possibly even the original, once-sinless Adam now roaming the Earth in a self-induced innocent stupor, maddened by his induction or Original Sin. Or maybe Lorn just molded him from the remnants of Chris Farley he found lying around only half-dead. I would, of course, include in that list David Spade's career and haircut. Also, he's got wooden teeth, so why not make the rest of him out of clay?

On Mini Bikes

Despite my enduring illness, I chose to go out in the sunshine and cool breeze today, endeavoring to blow the germs off me.

This is what I call a lie. In actuality, I went out to play a couple half-assed rounds of Wiffle Ball. However, in doing so I was able to witness a young boy of perhaps fourteen years cruise past on the nearby sidewalk, riding on of these:

This is what is called a "mini bike." You can understand where the name comes from, if you were to look at one and say, "Well, that just sort of looks like a … mini … bike, as it were. Huh."

You hear that last, "Huh," echoing in the back of your head? That's the part of your brain that hears warning claxons every time real life conflicts with supposedly common sense. It's registering "WTF?" or more often, "WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?!"

Frankly, I have no idea. As best I can figure it's a type of novelty, something First World nations buy out of Brookstone catalogs with rebate checks from the taxes they cheated on, the type of thing that makes people who are well off (but not well enough to actually afford their own) think, "Well, maybe the terrorists do kind of have a point about us."

Let me put it another way: The kind of people who would buy an mini bike are the same people who think that it is alright doing this to their pets –––>

What's that dog thinking? Doesn't he look happy?

NO! He's thinking, "GODDAM IT, YOU FUCKING BITCH, PUT ME DOWN! I AM A DOG! I SHOULD BE ON THE GROUND! YOUR REFUSAL TO LET ME USE MY LEGS IS GIVING ME CANINE DIABETES! DO YOU SEE MY TONGUE OUT?! I'M NOT HAPPY! I'M A DOG; I DON'T SWEAT! THAT IS ME DEHYDRATING AS YOU DRAG ME ACROSS THE BEACH, YOU FUCKING WHORE! WHY DID YOU EVEN BRING ME HERE?! I HAVE SAND IN MY EYES! THIS IS A TERRIBLE PLACE FOR A DOG! GODDAM SHIT ASS!" (I may be paraphrasing.)

These people have no consideration for how things are supposed to be. They see something cool, like a car:
and immediately assume that anything smaller than a regular-sized thing is either hilarious or adorable:






Yes, this might apply to animals, or hand-carved miniatures, or even little metal Monopoly pieces, but the sad fact of the matter is this does not apply to motorcycles.

Let's look at a motorcycle.
Yeah, that's a motorcycle, alright, but it looks a little like the mini bike, doesn't it?

This is what Big Strong Manly Men call a "crotch rocket." You sit like the more receptive partner in a gay relationship, waving your big, brightly colored attention flag which shouts, "Lookit me, lookit me!" as you drive by.


Real men prefer something like this:



Just look at that. That is what, ideally, I will own before I'm thirty-five. That is a black Honda Rebel. It's not some little Japanese sport shit, that's a road bike, technically a touring/cruiser hybrid, with great gas mileage and a starting price of only about three grand. Plus it's a Honda, which means it's actually made in Ohio by American jobs. This is the bike you get as a first bike, something to dent and ding and wipe out in so you're all practiced by the time you get one of these:

Yeah, babe. That's a Harley. No one questions your heterosexuality (out loud) when you're blasting down the street on one of these monsters. These things start at an asking price the same as a foreign car, dude. A foreign car with options added.

Even with a gay little windshield and a bitch seat and the sissy bar and a couple of those saddle bags I can't stand strapped to its motor-ass like a combustion pack mule, these animals look sick.
I'm probably going to stick just to the Rebel because I know I'm not man enough for one of these. That's how badass these are.

Which brings me to my final point: smaller versions of things are cuter than regular-sized versions of things if those regular things are already supposed to be cute. Tiny versions of many things are not manly. Tiny motorcycle? Not manly. Tiny King Kong? Regular monkey.

In fact Manly Things only get progressively more manly when they get bigger.









Manly beer. Manly steak. (That's one steak.) Manly giant saw thing.

I guarantee you no man riding a giant motorcycle will look as stupid as a man riding on a ridiculous little mini bike.























Alright, unless it's wearing tiny little training wheels. But still only maybe, then.