From one bald guy to another, Bezos, please find a cure

Jeff Bezos, who is the inventor of Amazon and the original rocket man who spent $5.5 billion to fly four minutes in space, has a new and exciting mission. He wants to turn back the hands of time.

He isn’t investing in H.G. Wells’ time machine; he’s pumping money into a startup company that’s developing technology to reverse the aging process and prolong life.

According to the “MIT Tech Review,” which I usually read after I finish the “National Enquirer,” Bezos is pouring cash into the antiaging company Altos Labs. Not to be confused with Altoids, which are those curiously strong peppermint breath mints that don’t prolong your life, but could mess up your stomach if you eat too many.

Altos is reportedly looking for scientists committed to research that will reverse the process of aging cells, and they plan to open institutes in California and Cambridge. They should also consider one on Sunset Boulevard because they’d get a lot of walk-in traffic.

The company is said to be developing “biological reprogramming technology.” I generally associate “reprogramming” with places such as North Korea and the Planet of the Apes, so it doesn’t sound like something I’d spend my Social Security check on. Better to squander it at Mohegan Sun.

Would you like to have technology plugged into your nervous system the way they did in “Blade Runner” and “I, Robot”? We’re all familiar with the Six Million Dollar Man. Pretty soon, we’ll have the Six Billion Dollar Human. Real science, it seems, is crazier than science fiction.

Bezos, as you know, revolutionized the retail industry when he gave us Amazon, which is the largest online retailer in the universe. With the success of Amazon came neighborhood gridlock. I used to live on a quiet suburban street, but now it’s like Grand Central Terminal the day before Thanksgiving. Delivery trucks constantly drive up and down the street, and the neighborhood dogs snarl and bark like they’re possessed.

Because of Amazon, they’re tearing down shopping malls and putting up apartments, casinos and cannabis distribution centers. I suppose I should look on the positive side. Amazon can use its drones to start shipping weed, which will keep people who are high off the road.

What troubles me is that even though Bezos built a space ship to take us to Pluto, he’s wasting his money on scary technologies when there are much more urgent matters to consider.

Sure, I understand that celebrities are committed to eternal life on Earth because they don’t believe in eternal life in heaven. Larry King, along with many others, wanted to be frozen so he could come back in 100 years. In addition to the celebrities, there are probably hundreds of politicians who crave this sort of stuff because it would let them raise taxes into the third millennium and no term limits could stop them.

Jeff Bezos and I share one thing in common. No, I didn’t go to Princeton. No, I don’t have a space ship, although I may start building one if things keep getting worse. And no, I’m not a trillionarie although I’m still trying to make my first billion. What we have in common is we’re both bald.

So here’s some free advice from one bald guy to another. Use your hard-earned cash to solve the baldness pandemic. There are an estimated 35 million bald men in America, and about 21 million women who suffer hair loss.

For decades, we’ve been told that a cure for person pattern baldness is just around the corner, but we still haven’t reached that corner. I’m pleading with Bezos to tackle the baldness crisis first ... and then he can unearth the secrets to eternal life.

Anti-aging technology will only mean that Joe Biden and Donald Trump can keep fighting for decades instead of becoming roomies in a federally funded assisted living facility. It will also mean Nancy Pelosi may become the first member of Congress to serve for a century.

Let’s put quality before quantity. When that fateful day of reckoning comes, we won’t be judged by how long we lived or how popular we were or how many galas we attended. We’ll be judged on the good that we did or didn’t do.

And quite honestly, a full head of hair will make me want to do a lot more good than I do now.