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Life As A Boomer Babe

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By SUSAN HEMMINGWAY

The Tampa Tribune

Published: May 11, 2008

TAMPA - Say you're a woman significantly older than Paris Hilton but not yet as ancient as Grandma Moses. You may believe the only heat in this stage of life arrives via a hot flash. Not so, according to ''How to Be a Middle-Aged Babe'' (Scribner, $25).

You just need some coaching, and your inner man-magnet will emerge.

Marilyn Suzanne Miller, the author of ''How to Be a Middle-Aged Babe,'' wants to help. Her how-to guide is a hilarious take on being no longer young, in the same spirit as Nora Ephron's ''I Feel Bad About My Neck.''

One of the original writers who launched television's ''Saturday Night Live'' in the 1970s, Miller skewers the absurdity of expecting to be always youthful with laugh-out-loud advice for middle-age dating, sex, financial security and maintenance of body parts.

Miller is a middle-aged boomer at 58. Her perspective on what she calls ''life's new real estate'' comes from a long career as one of TV's best comedy writers and from surviving advanced breast cancer.

Like many her age, she has changed her priorities about what drives her. Two years ago, she sold a spacious apartment in New York City and relocated to Tampa, where she can be close to her 84-year-old mother, Shirley, and younger sister, Joanne.

Professionally, her career as a sitcom writer — once the focus of her life — is no longer appealing. Miller began writing TV comedy after graduating from the University of Michigan. She was 22 when she started writing for ''The Odd Couple,'' and 25 when she joined ''Saturday Night Live.'' At ''SNL,'' she created some of the show's best-known sketches. Miller collaborated with Dan Ackroyd to create the ''wild and crazy'' Czech brothers and produced pieces for Gilda Radner such as ''The Judi Miller Show.''

Over the years, she earned three Emmys and last January was honored by The Paley Center for Media in New York for achievements as a pioneering female writer. Her work pushed ''real-life-based, enigmatic, sexual, assertive women as engines of sketches,'' noted The Paley Center. The pieces ''were hip, weird and not cute.''

Miller hasn't given up writing, but now prefers to work on longer projects, not sitcoms. ''How to Be a Middle-Aged Babe'' is her first book.

''I'm too old to work in a studio. If I had to go through another sitcom, I'd jump off the building,'' Miller says.

''When I was 22 and at ''The Odd Couple,'' we'd be there from 10 in the morning until 2 or 3 in the morning. At ''Saturday Night Live,'' we would all sleep in the building day after day ... I don't want to do that.''

Her writing style hasn't changed, though. ''How to Be a Middle-Aged Babe'' is as ''hip, weird and not cute.''

''I waited many years to begin writing prose. … It takes a long time, and you have to give up everything in your life to do it. I'm very glad I waited because I could look back on things that were really hilarious,'' she says.

She gives some wild and crazy advice for achieving middle-aged babe status, including plastic surgery to do at home (''How to 'Lipo' You!''), a panic investment guide for babes with skimpy retirement savings and a wallet card on how to give CPR during sex when your middle-aged male babe has a heart attack or stops breathing.

Follow the panic investment guide — which recommends the T. Lowe Price Lap Dance Misdemeanor Fund, among others — at your own risk.

''I wouldn't invest in the investments as they don't exist, except for the lotto cards,'' she says.

Karen Roston, a designer on the original ''Saturday Night Live'' crew, created sketches of clothing essentials such as the Chin Corrector Blouse. The blouse's color is fitted with discreet flesh-colored bars that ''invisibly'' lift the chin and neck through the help of ''invisible'' over-ear harnesses.

There is a graph that charts how to tell when you have officially entered middle age: When a 16-year-old bag boy calls you ma'am, and this happens twice within one year, you're there.

But despite these indignities, no one should really be complaining, Miller says.

She nearly didn't get a chance to reach even 50. Miller was diagnosed with advanced breast cancer at age 42 and survived through experimental chemotherapy. Too many of her good friends died before they became old: Radner, John Belushi, Michael O'Donoghue.

''I just realize how lucky I am to be here.''

Reporter Susan Hemmingway can be reached at (813) 259-7951 or shemmingway@tampatrib.com

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