tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-60186406518218335552024-03-13T05:06:27.332-07:00ENDLESS SUPPEROne man's journey to the dark side of dieting and exercise.Jeff Brawerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13938964235215073371noreply@blogger.comBlogger31125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6018640651821833555.post-8475461000725555002010-11-18T11:01:00.000-08:002010-11-18T11:01:01.270-08:00I DREAM OF BARACK WITH THE LIGHT GREEN HAIR<!--StartFragment--> <br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 15.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">It's not bad enough that our president must endure scurrilous allegations about his birth, nationality and religion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It's not enough that he is constantly barraged by the spittle-flecked ranting of the lunatic Right or that he is demonized by his opponents both inside and outside of the government as if he were Lucifer's community organizer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It's not even enough that he was called a liar during his first State of the Union address.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For more than a year, President Obama has faced a grievous insult to his person and office that has made these other affronts seem like pleasantries.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I refer, of course, to the Chia Obama.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrh5dcp7uPlZsAiE96KBJ_TQOGnt-NFx49L3fnht4SrVWqTIu8Jo-QpYN4WVsodd8kmDNwlwarN8qMPbf9j53L08u20s9IiFg1JzoI02Us353PD40nZ6Cmi0F_eJmC9fsNQcSgQQEDbWa0/s1600/CO+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrh5dcp7uPlZsAiE96KBJ_TQOGnt-NFx49L3fnht4SrVWqTIu8Jo-QpYN4WVsodd8kmDNwlwarN8qMPbf9j53L08u20s9IiFg1JzoI02Us353PD40nZ6Cmi0F_eJmC9fsNQcSgQQEDbWa0/s400/CO+1.jpg" width="263" /></a></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 20px;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 15.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">How is it that I never saw this travesty until a late-night commercial knocked me off my chair on Sunday?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The "product" was released in April of 2009 by Joseph Enterprises, Inc., which, besides the Chia Empire, has marketed the Clapper and the "Ove" glove.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The company's founder, 77 year-old Joseph Pedott, denied any racism in creating the novelty and said he even voted for Obana in '08 despite being a life-long Republican.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The item was quickly pulled off the shelves of many Walgreen's stores, but is still readily available at CVS, Target, and multiple online venues for the upcoming holiday season.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 15.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Personally, I don't believe Mr. Pedott had any racist intentions with Chia Obama.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The concept is simply too wacky to be a deliberate slur.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What I find amazing is that an entire commercial concern, staffed, I assume, by sane and savvy businessmen could come to believe that a proper and patriotic way to honor the leader of the free world was to crown him with a sod toupee.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQKQa6aDrWG9yCofs_EgKfwjF9b1eZJJU72rb9MBMmqsQ-weuE2Xo5GbTjq_xn26XX3U42D_2mKHtN3YCsRV3OiJhphd-oMqKK-LUHC7rjkaSTL0xmhK7TOauRTciNhULjU8WtZ4qBEzh2/s1600/C3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="171" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQKQa6aDrWG9yCofs_EgKfwjF9b1eZJJU72rb9MBMmqsQ-weuE2Xo5GbTjq_xn26XX3U42D_2mKHtN3YCsRV3OiJhphd-oMqKK-LUHC7rjkaSTL0xmhK7TOauRTciNhULjU8WtZ4qBEzh2/s400/C3.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 20px;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 15.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">I also dismiss the accusations of slander because Chia has recently seen fit to endow other symbols of America's greatness with green Afros.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Presidents Washington and Lincoln now sport the emerald 'do as does the Statue of Liberty, the latter requiring a rewrite of Emma Lazarus's famous poem:<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">"Give me your tired, your poor,</span><span style="font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,</span><span style="font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">The wretched refuse of your teeming shore beset by cranial pastures,<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost with turf-topt noggins,</span><span style="font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"</span><span style="font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 15.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Most astonishing of all is that this enterprise has come about without a nation-wide onslaught of derision.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Where are SNL, The Daily Show, Colbert, Letterman, Leno, and Conan regarding what would seem to be the comic bonanza of the century?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I'm a sporadic viewer to be sure, but weeks and months of monologues should have been sparked by this phenomenon.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was said after 9/11 that the US had lost its sense of irony, but this isn't some arch witticism aimed at intellectual snobs - it's the proverbial barn door whose sole purpose is to be peppered with rocks.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I'm less afraid that the president is being disparaged than that the entire country is losing its sense of humor along with its sense of perspective. <o:p></o:p></span></div><!--EndFragment-->Jeff Brawerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13938964235215073371noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6018640651821833555.post-44067042471568882852010-10-29T09:20:00.000-07:002010-10-29T09:21:14.706-07:00DEJA VU ALL OVER AGAIN, BUT NOT AS GOOD<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 17px;">While watching TV this week, I stumbled across a combination of shows which brought on a severe fit of geezer pique.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 17px;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 17px;">The first was a quick dip in the new </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 17px;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Hawaii Five-O </b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 17px;">which struck me as nothing special. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 17px;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 17px;">Then again, I was never a big fan of the original, so I didn't stay with it long enough to form an honest opinion.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 17px;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 17px;">Still, I couldn't understand why they bothered to remake it.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 17px;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 17px;">I then changed channels to HBO and landed in the middle of the 2008 version of </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 17px;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">The Day the Earth Stood Still</b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 17px;"> with the effervescent Keanu Reeves as Klatu, the alien judge of mankind's foibles.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 17px;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 17px;">Not that Michael Rennie gave a nuanced performance in the 1951 original, but if Reeves were any stiffer, they would have had to wheel him around the set on a hand truck.</span><br />
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<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 13pt;"><o:p></o:p></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 17px;">This movie was so moralistic and eco-dogmatic that I was surprised Al Gore wasn't hired to play Gort, the robot arm of extraterrestrial law. A joyless mess, it wasted the talents of everyone involved, but especially John Cleese who played a humorless scientist sympathetic to the invaders. Just writing "John Cleese" and "humorless" in the same sentence makes my blood pressure soar. The original was also burdened by a "mankind better watch out" message, but it was secondary to the '50s B-movie sci-fi milieu of flying saucers and Theremin riffs. Apparently, Keanu Klatu was too virtuous to buzz around the universe in a gas-guzzling spaceship; he traveled in a biosphere, no doubt fueled by pixie dust.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 13pt;">However, this is not a rant about how much better all film and TV originals are compared to their later incarnations, although in this case it's beyond question. In other cases, the remake is better than the original. An Open Salon debate last year argued about the greatest film version of <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">A Christmas Carol</b> with almost everyone agreeing that the 1935 adaptation with Reginald Owen was eclipsed by later versions (although many dunderheads didn't agree with me on the supremacy of the 1951 remake with Alastair Sim.) There is also the odd example of the two John Wayne Westerns, <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Rio Bravo</b> (1959) and <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">El Dorado</b> (1966) which are essentially the same film with different supporting casts, but nearly equal quality.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 13pt;">No, my quarrel with remakes deals with a particular category of revisionism, specifically those movies and shows where the main character is so connected to the original actor that any change is disorienting and usually disastrous. In the case of Lt. Steve McGarrett of <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Hawaii Five-O</b>, I don't think it matters whether Jack Lord or Alex O'Laughlin plays the role except for reasons of nostalgia. In other cases, the update is a travesty.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 13pt;">People's exhibit A and B are the film remakes of two 1950's TV staples, The <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Phil Silvers Show</b>, also known as <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Sgt. Bilko</b>, and <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">The Honeymooners</b>. These were both shows created and written for their stars (Phil Silvers and Jackie Gleason respectively), and reflected the unique gifts of the actor involved. Unlike a theatrical role such as Hamlet which was meant to be played and reinterpreted by generations of performers, Silvers' hustling peacetime army sergeant and Gleason's bombastic Brooklyn bus driver were perfect admixtures of actor and role. Over the course of episodes and seasons, it became impossible to separate one from the other.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 13pt;">So what was the incentive to revise and recast Bilko in a full-length movie in 1996? Simply that the character already existed? Was Hollywood so lame that it couldn't come up with a similar character and parallel plot without ripping off a classic? Did they think that the name would draw older viewers of the show? I have nothing against Steve Martin, but he worked mightily at channeling Silvers without coming close. For one thing, he didn't have the gifted and driven Nat Hiken, the TV show's creator and principle writer, literally killing himself to make the show shine. This film was a dud that probably destroyed any chance a young viewer might hunt down the original.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 13pt;">The 2005 <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Honeymooners</b> attempt at reprising Ralph Kramden as a black man is even more incomprehensible. I confess that I didn't see this film, so it's possible that Cedric the Entertainer was brilliant. If so, wouldn't he have been just as brilliant in a comparable situation without the touchstones so laboriously created and inhabited by Gleason and company? Given the time differential, it's even more unlikely that old viewers of the show would run to see the movie, so there seems even less incentive to invoke the source.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 13pt;">It is in film, however, that the most egregious rip-off has been perpetrated. Anyone who ever saw <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">The Pink Panther</b> or <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">A Shot in the Dark</b> knows that Peter Sellers <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">is</i> Inspector Jacques Clouseau. Even in the weaker sequels, Sellers takes threadbare plots and elevates them with comic genius. Why then have several other actors, including Alan Arkin and Steve Martin, donned mustaches and trench coats in order to make pale imitations? Well, for the money, obviously, but is a bumbling police detective such a hard character to create that studios felt the need to cannibalize and degrade the master franchise? Jim Abrahams and the Zucker brothers did pretty well with Leslie Nielsen as Frank Drebbin in the <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Naked Gun</b> series.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 13pt;">I hope that my dyspepsia is based on more that my age and general crankiness. I had the good fortune to grow up with TV in the 1950's when stations and networks, desperate for programming, would throw nearly anything on the air to fill time. Movies and cartoons from the 30's and 40's and industrial and military PR films such as <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Industry on Parade</b>, and <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">The Big Picture</b> were mixed with live theater and variety shows as well as the low-budget 50's horror movie oeuvre. It probably warped me in ways I can't imagine, but by its sheer volume and diversity, it also made me a discerning viewer and critic. The majority of programming was terrible, but it pains me to see the best of it hacked up for lack of imagination and inspiration.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 13pt;">To those of you too young to remember those days, I suggest that you hunt down the DVD's and watch the originals. I know that they're in black and white, the plots are dated and the pacing laborious by current standards, but watch them anyway. You won't regret it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>Jeff Brawerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13938964235215073371noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6018640651821833555.post-43538643388914316642010-06-21T08:57:00.000-07:002010-06-21T09:25:37.529-07:00MERCHANDISE FROM CLASSIC FOREIGN FILMS<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">With the nationwide release of </span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Toy Story 3</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> last weekend, a whole new generation of kids will be emptying their parent's wallets for Woody and Buzz Lightyear action figures, lunch boxes, underwear, can openers, and whatever other junk Disney-Pixar can plaster their pictures on. And the producers are only too happy to add this windfall to a strong opening box office for a synergistic marketing-palooza.</span><br />
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</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">What few people realize is that this is hardly a new phenomenon, nor is it restricted to mainstream films. Our company, </span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Jules et Jim et Ronco Novelties, Inc.</span></b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">,</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> is proud to offer you these selected items from our extensive catalog of classic foreign film merchandise.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
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</span> </div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">THE SEVENTH SEAL</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> CHESS SET</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgImbjsUGzzTgXEwLgBX6-YuTOe6dxOTXx0cpgax2rkTPwBJS__RjvkPK11_PbamtJsMfj0-BoxdMwWnV1_apZuA557nogigJQvT3k_lOvEOzGhMybz43dskBbSnTwgJumPESIDRWUch6pW/s1600/1seventh-seal.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="287" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgImbjsUGzzTgXEwLgBX6-YuTOe6dxOTXx0cpgax2rkTPwBJS__RjvkPK11_PbamtJsMfj0-BoxdMwWnV1_apZuA557nogigJQvT3k_lOvEOzGhMybz43dskBbSnTwgJumPESIDRWUch6pW/s400/1seventh-seal.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Whether you're playing chess with Death or worse, your mother-in-law, you'll love this finely crafted set with hand-carved pieces based on characters from Dante's </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Inferno</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> and a board made from the shards of a discarded tombstone. Carrying shroud is optional.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
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</span> </div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">GRAND ILLUSION</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> NECK BRACE AND MONOCLE </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2yfoqjE-wX9rBTysDOPu8mTUm9Z-tJn9ntlz5vpuV1Oq03u7EQwPN7jPFuAMFKF9Yjq21bqe7eUp2SDRKX4P2KJ9HBCKBuzy7VnErK0vwnJ5xiu_rK60MPZblPPm5WN_Hat54QuYWIBHh/s1600/Stroheim.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="303" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2yfoqjE-wX9rBTysDOPu8mTUm9Z-tJn9ntlz5vpuV1Oq03u7EQwPN7jPFuAMFKF9Yjq21bqe7eUp2SDRKX4P2KJ9HBCKBuzy7VnErK0vwnJ5xiu_rK60MPZblPPm5WN_Hat54QuYWIBHh/s400/Stroheim.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So you think you're an anti-war protester just because you've waved a sign at a few rallies? Show your true feelings by sporting these snazzy accessories worn by Captain von Rauffenstein (Erich von Stroheim) in Jean Renoir's powerful WW I fable. They're sure to catch the eye and win the heart of like-minded pacifists of the opposite sex.</span></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
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</span> </div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="text-transform: uppercase;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Un Chien Andalou</span></span></b><span style="text-transform: uppercase;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> eyeball razor trick </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_L86fgz1Jyn0WyHnmrnLvDrRwyaqbGS0oMrPVbfMynN_r-MLPAfRNwucLMQ9P9b_lLmSoAK_0gZSuaZ0YDkl5jAyYP4SRUzwbRH6v57gio2tQuUS0mL4cBu9vdHSooK6Ng2qutBA42W20/s1600/un-chien-andalou-big.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="287" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_L86fgz1Jyn0WyHnmrnLvDrRwyaqbGS0oMrPVbfMynN_r-MLPAfRNwucLMQ9P9b_lLmSoAK_0gZSuaZ0YDkl5jAyYP4SRUzwbRH6v57gio2tQuUS0mL4cBu9vdHSooK6Ng2qutBA42W20/s400/un-chien-andalou-big.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">C'mon, nobody really believes that Luis Buñuel slashed an eyeball in the opening sequence, but the illusion is highly disturbing. This gag is the perfect icebreaker for your next party and is guaranteed to make your friends spill their drinks and toss their lunches. It comes with three prosthetic contact lenses and a 6 oz. bottle of vitreous humor. Razor not included.</span></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
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</span> </div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">LA DOLCE VITA</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> MODEL HELICOPTER WITH STATUE OF CHRIST</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7GfiywI7rWGFbN4eBXJLy7zg-8zv3JwMgwqxWhln2RYvqwOqB15Q-yIw-rh5IgyEIqPjV3-ns91OnCUQyAG1rBxVDCwmXfYVVRvNR68ELJ8gDwU9twcqKF9JXkEqcZTCqObHNgEBi10rJ/s1600/dolcevita3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="228" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7GfiywI7rWGFbN4eBXJLy7zg-8zv3JwMgwqxWhln2RYvqwOqB15Q-yIw-rh5IgyEIqPjV3-ns91OnCUQyAG1rBxVDCwmXfYVVRvNR68ELJ8gDwU9twcqKF9JXkEqcZTCqObHNgEBi10rJ/s400/dolcevita3.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Taking your kids to a Fellini movie is like taking them to the dentist - it's wise to bring along a distraction. This beautiful scale model will provide hours of fun for your children while you ponder the cinematic mix of religious cynicism and cultivated decadence. The statue is detachable and has a magnetic base for dashboard mounting.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
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</span> </div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">THE BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> BABY CARRAIGE</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFCkX58fRk536NQJv1PjqPSxk7yL27Wj-jo0c2pncu3BgAuLx6ufn8iNkliYXyu1ftGAqmSnG2sEe_r-_MYrBWlM7fobnX6MdS8eO-D0ogA1IYyiBqg0WIWZWXn6-crOnyPVCXj-YgGOmZ/s1600/potemkin-baby-carriage.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="261" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFCkX58fRk536NQJv1PjqPSxk7yL27Wj-jo0c2pncu3BgAuLx6ufn8iNkliYXyu1ftGAqmSnG2sEe_r-_MYrBWlM7fobnX6MdS8eO-D0ogA1IYyiBqg0WIWZWXn6-crOnyPVCXj-YgGOmZ/s400/potemkin-baby-carriage.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span> </div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The Odessa steps are no match for this sturdy conveyance designed for our company by </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Inglesina</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">™ and based on its popular Classica Pram Carriage w/ Diaper Bag Marina ($1,100). Add armor plating for an extra $500 to put your mind at ease about those Tsarist troops.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
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</span> </div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">THRONE OF BLOOD</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> ARCHERY SET</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMCqimSxl94hJ52-bX0jAyuRUsa74POPtHzh0HVQRBhAqGuh_2afn3-hMA1y6mYqWcE30COrcA_s66Q2UHY7F4tJjM-PCnu1C9UpZyFcz6r2-fmNzjSYctvl06hhyphenhyphenwNsK0utJXuCBjtSJ3/s1600/1-fcthroneofbloodmifunedeath.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="271" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMCqimSxl94hJ52-bX0jAyuRUsa74POPtHzh0HVQRBhAqGuh_2afn3-hMA1y6mYqWcE30COrcA_s66Q2UHY7F4tJjM-PCnu1C9UpZyFcz6r2-fmNzjSYctvl06hhyphenhyphenwNsK0utJXuCBjtSJ3/s400/1-fcthroneofbloodmifunedeath.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">If you've ever spent any time on an archery range, you know how boring it is to shoot at a circular bullseye target. Our set includes a 30 pound fiberglass bow, 2 dozen arrows, and a life-size straw figure of Toshiro Mifune as Lord Washizu in full samurai armor. </span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Macbeth</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> was never this much fun!</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
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</span> </div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">METROPOLIS </span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">TOY ARMY OF DRONES</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBvhw9dyfaLiYNd5jfhjEucRXE8g-mLU0ZM30_h9WY6q66ahqBmFAGvAYdla0jSt9CeveAmPOpYWPkNOiNoguuSBj74IYmZkgmBV9pQsK_r2YQ0YZDmnvq-pLxaxPSYkbiBWAyAVYA5aFv/s1600/metropolis_drones.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="270" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBvhw9dyfaLiYNd5jfhjEucRXE8g-mLU0ZM30_h9WY6q66ahqBmFAGvAYdla0jSt9CeveAmPOpYWPkNOiNoguuSBj74IYmZkgmBV9pQsK_r2YQ0YZDmnvq-pLxaxPSYkbiBWAyAVYA5aFv/s400/metropolis_drones.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">While the rich live in luxury and ease, your set of 200 identical drones perform slave labor deep underground. You lead the rebellion that brings them to the surface to destroy the existing order. Hopefully, this will work out better for you than it did for Germany.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
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</span> </div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> SLEEP AID</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOP1qGj2b7V0kypEom5g-5J1jsDwVD6eOfKaWAbK9PtOk2NV7ShmES5K5d7qMQnbhgNHUyF6ZDg1rzrvPooWOWjmCDxV1NDMuNF8vKG-_hVmP3S2j-g82dzJN2rp0fe5X7SNXY2YZ8LcYU/s1600/Marienbad+copy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOP1qGj2b7V0kypEom5g-5J1jsDwVD6eOfKaWAbK9PtOk2NV7ShmES5K5d7qMQnbhgNHUyF6ZDg1rzrvPooWOWjmCDxV1NDMuNF8vKG-_hVmP3S2j-g82dzJN2rp0fe5X7SNXY2YZ8LcYU/s320/Marienbad+copy.jpg" /></span></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"></div><div class="MsoNormal"></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
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<div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Just pop this DVD into your deck and hit play for hours of restful sleep.</span><o:p></o:p></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"></span>Jeff Brawerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13938964235215073371noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6018640651821833555.post-65329785047146074082010-06-11T14:38:00.000-07:002010-06-11T21:45:30.274-07:00REMEMBERING DA<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-Y3x-EVjcgiycCazk1GWt-CsJI0UpTs22BJvA_bx0KF4gszADVrDUf9spa52_AuyiOUV7sZC2boNIvA985q7h8lY7TRfwvj6iVWtvZ_98votB8zY8KfcD_ncYiuSoxSEBubnwTMkQ_S3g/s1600/DFA.w.MA.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-Y3x-EVjcgiycCazk1GWt-CsJI0UpTs22BJvA_bx0KF4gszADVrDUf9spa52_AuyiOUV7sZC2boNIvA985q7h8lY7TRfwvj6iVWtvZ_98votB8zY8KfcD_ncYiuSoxSEBubnwTMkQ_S3g/s400/DFA.w.MA.jpg" width="232" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px; font-style: italic;">Felix and Shirley Brawer circa 1942</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">There is an old saying that no child understands his parents until he has children of his own. This is complete bunk - no child ever understands his parents. You may have a brood that puts Old Mother Hubbard to shame and possess the combined wisdom of Freud, Dr. Spock and Oprah; your parents will still remain a mystery. It's best to forget comprehension and settle for appreciation mixed with gratitude for those who brought you into the world, no matter how screwy you turned out. It's in this spirit that I salute my father in advance of his and my phony Hallmark holiday a week from Sunday.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Felix Edward Brawer was born in Paterson, New Jersey on St. Patrick's Day of 1912. Every March 17, waggish cronies would refer to him as "Felix O'Brawer," yet another irony for this man of Latvian-Jewish descent whose mother named him "Felix" in honor of Mendelssohn. Da was profoundly tone-deaf.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">My brother and I started calling him Da after hearing the expression in a South African Western. The title of the film is long forgotten, but the name stuck to my father for the rest of his life. My children would refer to him as Papa Da to differentiate him from their other grandfather.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">He was the second of five children born to Abe and Lily Oberman Brawer and grew up surrounded by a huge extended family on both sides. Da claimed he had thirty first cousins, but even he had trouble remembering them all. This was an age when parents didn't hover over their children like social directors, but more or less shoved them out the door to fend for themselves. My father and his cousins learned to take care of themselves amid the harsh ethnic rivalries of Paterson, and they developed into a tough, if not criminal bunch. My father-in-law, who knew Da as a kid, claimed his own father wouldn't let him hang out with "those wild Brawer boys." <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Idiot that I am, I never documented the stories he told about his early years. I'm sure some were apocryphal and most were enhanced in the telling, but all were the stuff of legend. Mark Twain himself might have written these tales if he'd been Jewish and had grown up in urban New Jersey instead of rural Missouri.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">My father, like most Jewish boys then and since, attended Hebrew School for a couple of afternoons each week. Once, one of his gang was caught misbehaving, and the teacher made the mistake of striking the culprit in front of the class. The mistake wasn't the corporal punishment - that was an accepted practice of the day - but doing it with the victim's pals in attendance. Posterity doesn't reveal whether Da was the first to charge the teacher, but a full-scale brawl broke out, the only recorded riot of pre-Bar Mitzvah boys in the school's history.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Da had an ambivalent attitude towards the faith of his fathers. He was not a particularly religious man but always maintained a fierce pride in being a Jew. Years later when local kids scrawled Jewish stars and graffiti on our front walk, he refused my mother's pleas to erase them and defiantly left them there for days until embarrassed and chastened neighbors washed them off.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">He was a gifted athlete, excelling at sand lot baseball and swimming in his youth and later, skiing, bowling, and golf. He maintained a life-long passion for the links that try as he might, he could not pass on to his sons. He played his last round three weeks before he died. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">But it was fishing that gave him the most pleasure. As a young man, he and his friends would fly fish for salmon in Canada or go after tarpon in the Everglades. When my brother and I were old enough, he would take us striper fishing on a charter boat out of Provincetown. My most vivid memories have him standing triumphantly in the stern of the Flora K while Captain Gray unloaded our catch at the end of the day. Unfortunately, his victory was our hardship as it fell to my brother and me to gut the dozen or so fish we caught and could never give away. Since my mother hated the taste, they remained in our freezer for six months and were then thrown out.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 19px;"><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3PTWHhb6sBFbvyuTS_Zs4qPaCcLkXd9Ec94krT19RB5qgVgfKN62ZrudHEw2PXm2ItYFmOZkNPRFirWwJ43jHtsb4Y3of0v1VozCMm8IKaTV00d3a4ZQIciMjEBv_xdn5fRokuug7HPAX/s1600/DA.EVERGLADES+copy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3PTWHhb6sBFbvyuTS_Zs4qPaCcLkXd9Ec94krT19RB5qgVgfKN62ZrudHEw2PXm2ItYFmOZkNPRFirWwJ43jHtsb4Y3of0v1VozCMm8IKaTV00d3a4ZQIciMjEBv_xdn5fRokuug7HPAX/s400/DA.EVERGLADES+copy.jpg" width="292" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Unlike his children who were beset with enough fears and neuroses to make Hamlet seem sunny and bold in comparison, Da was an outgoing and charismatic man who was always up for an adventure. At one time, he had a private pilot's license and would fly himself to business appointments up and down the East Coast. He claimed that he gave it up at my mother's request, but eventually confessed that surviving a flight through a thunderstorm in a Piper Cub convinced him to stop. He always respected the odds.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">It was in his later years that I came to appreciate the true caliber of the man. During most of his life, my father 's domestic needs were taken care of by others. When he was in his early seventies, my mother, nine years younger, started to show signs of Alzheimer’s disease. Beset with heart and lung problems of his own, Da did everything within his power to grant her the care she needed and the dignity she deserved at home. On their fiftieth anniversary, he made a large party for her and their friends, celebrating their life together even as she was failing. It was only when his own health was in jeopardy that he agreed to move my mother into a facility nearby where he visited her every day until her death.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Da was diagnosed with lung cancer in the fall of 1997, which came as no surprise. He started smoking cigarettes in his teens and didn't stop until his sixties. It also didn't help that he was a textile manufacturer who worked in an environment filled with all kinds of floating fibers. Gambler that he was, he thought he had a shot to survive with surgery, but the disease had spread too extensively by then. When I gave him the bad news, he swore once, let out a deep breath, and accepted his fate with equanimity. On the morning of July 1, 1998, he called all his grandchildren to say goodbye and left this world in the late afternoon. He was eighty-six.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">I often say that the world is a poorer place without men like Da, and I mean it in a sense beyond my own personal loss. Men of his time who went through the depression and World War II had a much different outlook on life than the self-absorbed generation that followed. Beyond the self-sacrifice expressed in Brokaw's <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Greatest Generation</b>, there was an exuberant vitality in these men, a willingness to live life on its own terms, to overcome obstacles where they could, to laugh when they couldn't, and to accept the inevitable with grace.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Towards the end of his life, I would speak to Da every day, and each conversation would end with one of us saying, "my dime tomorrow." I would give every cent I own for one more call.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 19px;"><br />
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</div>Jeff Brawerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13938964235215073371noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6018640651821833555.post-33908484714435804192010-05-25T13:24:00.000-07:002010-05-25T13:24:34.103-07:00THE MOST DANGEROUS STREET SIGN IN AMERICA<!--StartFragment--> <br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">The Drake Passage around Cape Horn, the direct North Face route up Everest, El Camino del Muerte (the Death Road) in Bolivia - all of these legendary paths are fraught with peril and require consummate skills and iron nerves to navigate.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But none has ever aroused the level of sheer dread or demanded the degree of reckless bravado as this crosswalk in Brookline, Mass.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 19px;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9uUFOdDo4FfVBYqBULQMRWzcRvP26RFnEFE0FDou3Nb7qw5AFtN_NVbmukxJ2Y0Hj50yY_OG_VM7_ilJZa70fcvbSGZrc40evcaGpnSKJnCnSj8OtxG3RUfb3joJ2M4MpHn6toYg9DNQe/s1600/PedSignWS.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="256" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9uUFOdDo4FfVBYqBULQMRWzcRvP26RFnEFE0FDou3Nb7qw5AFtN_NVbmukxJ2Y0Hj50yY_OG_VM7_ilJZa70fcvbSGZrc40evcaGpnSKJnCnSj8OtxG3RUfb3joJ2M4MpHn6toYg9DNQe/s400/PedSignWS.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 19px;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 19px;"> <!--StartFragment--> </span></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Don't let the benign residential surroundings fool you.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hardened explorers and fortune hunters alike would rather circumnavigate the globe eastward than risk their lives in a foolhardy attempt to reach the west side of St. Paul Street directly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even the riches of Coolidge Corner with its multiple cell phone dealers and chain drugstores would not be worth the danger involved.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">It wasn't always this way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There was a time when young children were not afraid to approach this intersection, when the elderly and infirm made their way to the opposite sidewalk without a care.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What insidious transformation turned an innocuous crosswalk into a horrifying gauntlet of doom?<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">It was, my friends, the well-intentioned addition of this sign.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijcrNQ4B4XELSepWuTC70zZ3mBJSS6RrHW0Rn0KJYlTihWUdeOuJxxEtPZq8i0wp-HvecNH1V501yCSaDr9cC7eFVAuRD1kbhzQKcYfBIST8ErRrVlJTwvuMP-EDvo_aQkN-TgJeABYQ5q/s1600/PedSign1.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijcrNQ4B4XELSepWuTC70zZ3mBJSS6RrHW0Rn0KJYlTihWUdeOuJxxEtPZq8i0wp-HvecNH1V501yCSaDr9cC7eFVAuRD1kbhzQKcYfBIST8ErRrVlJTwvuMP-EDvo_aQkN-TgJeABYQ5q/s400/PedSign1.JPG" width="300" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><!--StartFragment--> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Prior to its installation, there was a tacit understanding between drivers and pedestrians"<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>"I won't stop, so don't cross if you're within range."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even if a vehicle could only intercept you by travelling at Mach one, stay put.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>"All clear" meant all clear a mile or so in either direction.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I'm told that in Canada, cars are required to stop for anyone in a crosswalk regardless of circumstances or signage.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Such a person wouldn't last a half-hour in Massachusetts.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Boston drivers are reputed to be the worst in the world and I'm inclined to agree.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>New York City drivers are more cutthroat, but at least they're predictable in their ferocity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Italian drivers are lunatic daredevils with no regard for traffic legality, but are skilled enough to get away with it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Boston drivers are both feral and capricious; there is no method, only madness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>From the time a child in these parts can tie his own shoe, he understands this instinctively, and acts accordingly.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">The addition of these signs in local crosswalks has ruptured this delicate equilibrium.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No longer is crossing the street a strictly Darwinian skirmish, but an odd experiment in Newton's laws of mass and acceleration as modified by local legislative and judicial fiat and open to interpretation by every jerk in a Subaru Outback who's yakking on his Blackberry.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Where once there was certainty, there is now paralyzing indecision and not only on the part of the pedestrian.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This sign is less a traffic directive than a reject puzzle from the old quiz show, <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Concentration</b>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The last thing a person piloting a quarter-ton of metal should have to worry about is solving a rebus.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">The first challenge facing the approaching vehicle is to actually see the word "YIELD" embedded in the inverse red triangle of its corresponding highway sign.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Traffic department has apparently gone to great lengths to make the word as small and indistinct as possible.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And as hard as it is to read, it is equally hard to define.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Technically, "yield" means giving the right of way to other traffic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If you can avoid the crosser by cutting harmlessly behind him by a few microns, you've technically "yielded."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Wouldn't "STOP" be more appropriate?<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">And the walker icon is even more ambiguous.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It's either a plump elderly man with osteoporosis and his pants pulled too high or a mime in a beret doing that "walking against the wind" routine they're so fond of.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He (or she) does seem to be in motion which means anyone just standing tentatively off the curb is not covered by the "YIELD" order, so feel free to hit the gas and continue on your way.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">As for the "within crosswalk" addendum, does that imply that if you step beyond the actual dotted lines, you're toast?<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">My anecdotal experience is that the majority of drivers pay no attention to the sign unless annihilation is a certainty.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If you can bob and weave your way around a crosser, the onus is on him to get out of your way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In other words, there's little difference between traffic behavior before or after the sign's deployment.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">The crosser, however, is now always in doubt as to whether a driver will respect or even understand the sign.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Occasionally, a car will slow down to read it, giving the pedestrian the false impression that it's safe to cross.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Having disdained the sign as another unwarranted governmental intrusion into the life of its citizens, the driver speeds up, forcing the crosser to fly across the street in blind panic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In response, the driver slams on the brakes to avoid a potential collision and spills his four-dollar Venti Caramel Macchiato all over his pants.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What usually follow is a vehicular Alphonse and Gaston routine with upraised fingers and horns taking the place of exaggerated courtesy.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Please, Brookline Traffic Department, get rid of these signs before someone gets hurt.</span></div><br />
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<!--EndFragment-->Jeff Brawerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13938964235215073371noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6018640651821833555.post-86900215943898001052010-04-27T21:20:00.000-07:002010-04-27T21:38:36.012-07:00SENATE REPUBLICANS BALK AT LARCENY REFORM BILL<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 19px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">WASHINGTON - GOP senators emerged today in nearly unanimous opposition to the larceny reform bill passed in the House earlier this week by a margin of three votes. The thirteen-hundred-page piece of legislation would place severe restrictions and oversight on the unlawful or fraudulent removal of another's property without the owner's consent.</span></span><br />
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</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">"This is just another grandstanding effort on the part of Democrats to make us seem out of touch with Main Street," said Sen. Ron Furcover (R) of Texas. "The truth is that our colleagues across the aisle are trying to stifle free enterprise under the self-serving premise that theft is somehow 'wrong.'"</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">"It's independent operators and small businesses who will suffer the most under the provisions of this bill. If you impose too many restrictions on car thieves, they'll quit the business and swell already bloated welfare rolls. This would cause additional hardship on chop shops which would be forced to purchase their 'raw materials' at higher prices on foreign markets. And hasn't the Slim Jim industry suffered enough from those new OSHA regulations?"</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Other senators objected to the speed with which the measure was being brought to a vote. “This bill needs further debate,” stated one opponent. "There has simply not been ample opportunity to dither and dither until the whole matter collapses in a heap of bipartisan ennui."</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The most controversial provision calls for an HGOB, or Hot Goods Oversight Bureau to monitor the fencing of stolen property. Democrats claim that this will allow for greater transparency of these transactions, although in deference to Republican criticism, they stopped short of insisting on a regulated exchange.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">According to Sen. William T. Overture (D) of Wisconsin, "This will insure more equitable taxation and relieve the burden on the average citizen...well, I mean unless it was his stuff that was 'relieved' in the first place."</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">But even this compromise is unacceptable to critics. "The liberal establishment and the Washington insiders are hell-bent on increasing the size of government," said Harry "The Shiv" Barlow of the Canarsie Institute and Social Club, a conservative think tank. "Why do we need a costly bureaucracy when Big Louis and Tommy Four Fingers can cut their own deal much more cheaply?"</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">There is much speculation about the influence of well-funded lobbying groups on the debate. Supporters of the bill point to large campaign contributions and gifts made to opposition senators by QAPAC, the Questionable Acquisition Political Action Committee, including late model Cadillacs and junkets to Sicily.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">"There was absolutely no </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">quid pro quo</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> involved. These are scurrilous charges meant to distract the public from the real issue which is governmental interference in the unlawful practices of its citizens," said Sen. Phil McCoffers (R) of Nebraska, who was awarded QAPAC's coveted Charles Luciano Medal at their convention in Jersey City last Month.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Despite the best efforts of opponents, a vote is expected in early June or as soon as Senate officials can locate the missing rostrum and several green "Aye" voting buttons.</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>Jeff Brawerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13938964235215073371noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6018640651821833555.post-70499139137504511122010-04-04T23:41:00.000-07:002010-04-04T23:55:38.424-07:00THE GOOD OLD DAYS OF VAMPIRES<div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> <!--StartFragment--> </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Nostalgia, like arthritis and constipation, is a curse of the elderly. Some get teary about the house they grew up in or the joys of their high school years.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Others yearn for their first car or the songs that accompanied their courtship.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Personally, I pine for the days when vampires didn't look like J Crew models.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">It's hardly news that the undead have returned as a major force in popular entertainment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Twilight</b> series of books and movies and the HBO series <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">True Blood</b> have captivated a new generation of gore-addled youth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But compared to their predecessors, this crop of vampires is a pretty anemic lot.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I've only seen a few episodes of the TV series and a couple of trailers for the movies, but what I have seen is about as scary as a Clearasil ad.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The "children of the night" have devolved from <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Dracula</b> to <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Dawson's Creek of the Damned</b>.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">My love of the bloodsucking genre dates back to my childhood when <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Chiller Theater</b> on Channel 40 in Springfield would show horror double features on Saturday nights.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The movies were the classic 1930's films about the unholy trinity - Dracula, Frankenstein, and the Wolfman - along with their sequels, "Return of...", "House of...", and "Bride of..."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My first vampire role model was the great Bela Lugosi, who played Bram Stoker's Count with a debonair malevolence yet to be matched.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">But for sheer terror, you cannot beat F.W. Murnau's <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Nosferatu </b>(1922.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I first saw it in a college course on German Expressionism and nearly ripped the writing board off my lecture hall seat from fright.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While the film is technically primitive, the brilliant Max Schreck endowed his vampire with a repulsive exterior that perfectly matched his soulless interior and evil inclination.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 19px;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p>Which brings me to problem number one with contemporary vampires; the notion that they can be good as well as evil.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A good vampire is as ridiculous a concept as a helpful tornado or beneficial dose of the clap.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Once you allow them moral ambiguity, you effectively neuter the species and turn their gruesome behavior into nothing more than an alternative lifestyle.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Where's the conflict?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A vampire saga used to be a battle where heroic but fragile mortals fought against more powerful and thoroughly depraved creatures bent on enslavement and exsanguination.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Today, it's just a cross-cultural teen romance with some supernatural arm wrestling thrown in.</o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Not only are today's hemoholics well intentioned, they are sometimes cast as the sympathetic victims of anti-vampire prejudice.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Aren't there enough real issues of bigotry and hatred to be dealt with in the world?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Can't we have one fictional realm apart from Santa's list where there's a general consensus on who's good and who's bad?<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Once you allow a vampire to be just like you and me except for an unusual eating disorder, you drain the genre of its primal terror and diminish its ability to be cathartic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I also think you lose the fun, but that's likely a factor of my age as are my other preferences for how the undead should be portrayed.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">• Vampires don't have gooey romances with mortals.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even during the censorship-heavy thirties, it was all about sex and blood, not dinner and dancing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Vampires don't have "relationships" and never discuss their feelings.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They don't have any.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">• Vampires don't shop at Urban Outfitters.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Draining blood requires a more formal look than a trip to Starbucks.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A frock coat with black pants a la Schreck is acceptable, but the full Lugosi monkey suit and cape is preferable.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">• Vampires come from Eastern Europe.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I know it's the era of globalization, but what else has Romania to boast about? The rec room of a split-level in Dayton is no place to stow a coffin.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Home should be a castle in the Carpathians with a weekend retreat in Berlin or London to stock up on fresh provisions.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">• Similarly, Vampires speak with an accent.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Lugosi's Budapest-flavored speech and drawn-out cadence were the result of never learning English properly, but the effect is unsettling.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No one is afraid of a vampire who sounds like a GAP clerk or Delta Airlines pilot.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">• Vampires don't drink artificial blood.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You might as well have them swig Red Bull.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I'm not a natural food fanatic, but the organic stuff right from the source is the only way to go.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Which would you prefer, biting a beautiful woman's neck or dropping by 7-Eleven for a six-pack?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>"Try new Plasma Lite</span><span style="font-family: Times;">®</span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> - more taste, less clotting."<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Immortal though they may be, I don't expect the vampires of yore to make a comeback soon.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Kids today won't even watch a black-and-white movie much less a seventy-five minute parlor drama starring a tuxedoed Hungarian with halting English.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But back when visual effects were in their infancy, there was a greater reliance on mood and character to make the audience shriek, and I doubt any of today's blood-sucking millenials have that power.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You don't need garlic or wolfbane to scare them off; just threaten to block their Facebook pages.<o:p></o:p></span></div><!--EndFragment--> </span></div>Jeff Brawerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13938964235215073371noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6018640651821833555.post-6095735483844658102010-03-19T12:35:00.000-07:002010-03-19T13:11:28.467-07:00TUFTS UNIVERSITY'S "TAKE AN UNDERGRAD FOR COFFEE" APPEAL<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtwaefSEnusasA4dEA_vVtoy1CcJ1qUrjJK_3A2NpdPD50Z2KmlnsnRr8Idf80PPRCKXQob_7e6jPgQPE6oht0jMOdniZD5rD564I8G_3Mg5EtGx8z80-vrmu-ihY09rxPNKMofhwoFqgy/s1600-h/Tufts_seal.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtwaefSEnusasA4dEA_vVtoy1CcJ1qUrjJK_3A2NpdPD50Z2KmlnsnRr8Idf80PPRCKXQob_7e6jPgQPE6oht0jMOdniZD5rD564I8G_3Mg5EtGx8z80-vrmu-ihY09rxPNKMofhwoFqgy/s200/Tufts_seal.png" width="200" /></a></div>On Tuesday, I received a letter from Lawrence Bacow, president of my alma mater, Tufts University. He asked me to become a participant in the school's Student Ambassador Program - well, me and 93,000 other alumni, but I'm still honored and humbled by the offer.<br />
<br />
According to the letter, "Our graduates provide valuable models for Tufts' current students and faculty, who look to them for guidance and inspiration." How do they know I can guide and inspire? Are they tailing me? I thought I saw some guy duck into an alley when I turned around suddenly the other day. He could have some incriminating shots of me spilling mustard on myself at the deli - there's some fine inspiration for the students.<br />
<br />
I wish I had known about this sooner; I would have dressed better and shaved more often.<br />
<br />
The letter goes on to say, "The Student Ambassador Program connects some of the university's most thoughtful and engaged students with graduates who can share unique perspectives on Tufts." I do recall some unique perspectives from my college days. There's the view of the third-floor bathroom ceiling in Carmichael Hall that I experienced while sprawled on the floor from too much cheap bourbon. And up on the library roof, there was that spectacular scene of Boston at night as it was being stomped into rubble by a giant Richard Nixon (1969 was a bad year for lefties but a great year for acid.)<br />
<br />
"In the next few weeks a student ambassador will contact you with an invitation to meet for an hour to hear your thoughts on Tufts...The conversations this program fosters will help us learn how we can best support our alumni on their lifelong professional and personal journeys." Regular cash stipends would be nice, or maybe they could just cover my cable bill.<br />
<br />
I think I'll accept the invitation when my student ambassador calls. It might prove useful for him or her to hear about my time on the Medford Campus, and I'm all for the university being more responsive to the needs of its graduates.<br />
<br />
I'll start off by imparting all the life lessons I learned at Tufts to my young colleague:<br />
<br />
• Don't take girls to Paul Newman or Warren Beatty movies.<br />
• If you mislabel the page numbers in the middle of a ten-page paper, it becomes a fifteen-page paper and professors are none the wiser.<br />
• Dark beer is the perfect complement to a Reuben Sandwich.<br />
• Theater majors are easy.<br />
• A fifteen-page paper becomes a twenty-page paper if you gradually expand the margins and triple-space around quotations.<br />
• Mutton chops are seldom a good look.<br />
• "Adult Entertainment" has nothing to do with age or maturity.<br />
• You can make a pipe out of anything.<br />
• Choose some old disgruntled professor who's being forced into retirement to be your advisor. He'll sign your degree sheet without looking too closely.<br />
• Don't drink cheap bourbon.<br />
<br />
For the most part, these precepts hold up well today. It's true that Paul Newman is dead and thus not the box office draw he once was, and Warren Beatty now looks like the villains he played against in Dick Tracy, but you can swap in some new pretty boy and the rule still applies.<br />
<br />
When we get around to discussing ways the university might better prepare its graduates for the real world, I'll make a suggestion. No student should be granted a degree of any kind without first becoming a licensed plumber or electrician. Drains will always clog and light fixtures will always short out, but your comprehensive knowledge of Melville won't fix either. The pen may be mightier than the sword, but the pipe wrench clobbers them both.<br />
<br />
As for improving alumni relations, having collected the equivalent of Latvia's GNP from us for four years, Tufts might show more personal interest in our wellbeing. I'm not asking for much - an occasional phone call or letter, a nice card around the holidays - just a sentimental little something that says, "I'm thinking about you beyond your capacity to fuel our endowment."<br />
<br />
And the Student Ambassador Program is a step in the right direction. I have no doubt that it's an altruistic endeavor on the part of the school and not simply another sleazy ploy to bleed the last possible cent out of its former students and sharpen the scythe for the current crop. In our hour together, I'm sure my ambassador and I can cover all the issues raised by the president's letter in a lively give-and-take over lattes at Starbucks...provided, of course, that Bacow picks up the tab.Jeff Brawerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13938964235215073371noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6018640651821833555.post-91386458850904918072010-03-03T23:06:00.000-08:002010-03-04T20:13:35.186-08:00Selling Coals to Newcastle; Adventures in Pointless MarketingIn recent years, the most popular concept in the advertising world has been viral marketing, the use of social networks and word-of-mouth to increase brand awareness and sales. Lately, I've been besieged by a different form of advertising that I like to call sterile marketing, the targeted promotion of products or services to consumers who haven't the slightest interest in or use for said goods, or the necessary funds to purchase them. I can't understand why companies spend years and fortunes analyzing demographic patterns, economic trends, and sales data to pinpoint their most likely customers, and then decide, "Nah, forget about them. Let's go after this bozo instead."<br />
<br />
About a month ago, I received a fancy invitation from Ferrari of New England to test drive the latest model of their California series (see my earlier post "Dear Ferrari of New England...") I had never made inquiries about the car or contacted the local dealership about taking one out for a spin. Furthermore, I'm currently unemployed and as likely to buy a Ferrari as a timeshare at Windsor Castle. Yet not to be outdone, Maserati of New England has recently sent me a similar offer. <br />
<br />
Why me? Even when gainfully employed, I was never in the financial stratosphere where such purchases occur, and I've never owned one of those Beryllium or Manganese American Express Cards which entice their holders with high-end promotions. Perhaps these firms discovered my fondness for all things Italian, although in practical terms, it's now limited to Louis Prima and Chef Boyardee. I do like small European cars, but the only way they could know that was if they traced the burned-out clutches from my '85 Rabbit. Whatever the reason, I'm just waiting to hear from Lamborghini and Bugatti before I rate the world's best performing sports cars that I can't afford.<br />
<br />
People's exhibit #2 is a catalogue that was sent to my wife by The Pondguy, purveyor of supplies for ponds, lakes, decorative pools, and water gardens. In this one comprehensive volume can be found such useful items as "Faux Boulders", "Cascading Waterfall Kits", and the indispensable MuckAway™ pellets which release "natural bacteria designed to...convert muck into an odorless gas." It's too bad they don't work on the human digestive system. <br />
<br />
However aesthetically pleasing or effective these products may be, they are of limited interest to city dwellers. It's the rare condominium apartment that has its own cascading waterfall, and the only "pond" we have to deal with is the sewer overflow during winter storms. There's Jamaica Pond, a small body of water about three miles from our home, but it's cared for by the Boston Department of Parks and Recreation, and I assume they've got their own catalogue.<br />
<br />
Across this vast country though, there must be thousands of people who own property with ponds. There are plenty of wealthy folk with fountain-ringed palazzos and golf course grounds keepers who would surely find these products helpful. What breech of commercial sanity drove The Pondguy to hawk his wares to a women's clothing retailer and an out-of-work television editor?<br />
<br />
But at least we're alive. My favorite sterile marketing scheme was from the Easter Seals 2010 fundraising drive. Last week, two large identical envelopes came to our house addressed to Mr. Felix Brawer and Mr. Morey Hunter, asking for donations to this worthy cause. The gentlemen in question, my father and father-in-law, passed away several years ago and were thus disinclined to contribute.<br />
<br />
Don't think it's so easy to rectify this situation. I have tried for years to get their names off various mailing lists with only limited success. Apparently, companies and charitable organizations don't like to lose potential customers and donors, whether they're breathing or not. I once had the following phone conversation with a certain charity which will remain nameless.<br />
<br />
Solicitor: "Could I please speak with Felix Brawer?"<br />
<br />
Me: "May I ask what this is in reference to?"<br />
<br />
"I'm sorry, but I'm only authorized to speak with him. Is he at home?"<br />
<br />
"He's not, but..."<br />
<br />
"I'll call back at another time. When would be convenient?"<br />
<br />
"There's really no good time because..."<br />
<br />
"Is there some other way we can contact him?"<br />
<br />
"Possibly. Do you know a good medium?"<br />
<br />
"Excuse me?"<br />
<br />
"Or perhaps a necromancer?"<br />
<br />
"I don't understand."<br />
<br />
"Mr. Brawer is deceased. I'd appreciate it if you would take his name off your mailing and phone lists."<br />
<br />
"I can't do that without proper documentation."<br />
<br />
"I have to provide you with documentation, or you'll keep calling and sending him mail?"<br />
<br />
"That's our policy."<br />
<br />
"Good luck with the campaign."<br />
<br />
So there you have it, ladies and gentlemen, the final frontier of advertising - pitching the dead.Jeff Brawerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13938964235215073371noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6018640651821833555.post-68778399404688228652010-02-24T22:59:00.001-08:002010-02-24T22:59:57.727-08:00A Geezer ManifestoHaving reached the milestone of three score years, I find myself faced with the challenge of how best to spend my remaining time on Earth. My first task will be to drag out this period for as long as possible, wringing every last nanosecond out of my potential lifetime. I will do this with a positive outlook, improved diet and exercise, and plain white envelopes stuffed with twenties for the Grim Reaper.<br />
<br />
Of course, the simple pursuit of longevity isn't enough for a fulfilling existence. A life must have purpose and direction; there must always be meaningful goals, self-sacrifice, and higher aspirations than one's own selfish desires. I guess that rules out just waiting around for the Bruins to win the Stanley Cup.<br />
<br />
But the pitfalls are many in our dotage. Old age has a habit of making us ornery, entitled, and, um...indiscreetly loquacious. The inevitable aches and pains of senescence can cause even the most stoic soul to become whiny and irritable, and I was already there at eighteen. The increase in irrational and offensive speech may also have a physical basis, but I think it's mostly that oldsters don't give a damn what other people think. Entitlement is a thornier philosophical issue.<br />
<br />
Many subscribe to the belief that wisdom comes with age. Sorry, but only wrinkles, cataracts, and memory loss come with age, so you better have some wisdom before you get here. Many also believe that experience is the best teacher. If so, how do you explain old guys in whale pants? In fact, hanging around the planet a long time does not rightfully confer upon you anything other than the nickname "Pops."<br />
<br />
And yet, we expect deference as we get older. We demand blind acceptance of our opinions, inflated praise for our accomplishments, and complete tolerance of our foibles. In return, we'll take your seat on the subway and complain if our soup isn't hot. Forgive me, my fellow geezers and geezettes, but this is neither becoming nor fair. I hereby pledge that I will not fall victim to this syndrome, and I swear to uphold the following ten principles of proper geriatric behavior.<br />
<br />
1) There is no age-related immunity for the "ten items or less" restriction.<br />
<br />
2) All grandchildren are created equal. Your Kenny is not superior because he can sculpt an airplane from his boogers.<br />
<br />
3) Eyebrows should be trimmed before they resemble furry welcome mats.<br />
<br />
4) Success or failure in the bathroom does not have global implications. It is not necessary to have daily briefings or issue press releases.<br />
<br />
5) Automobile turn signals were not installed as holiday decorations nor is their use optional.<br />
<br />
6) "When I was your age" is not the opening clause of every sentence in the English language.<br />
<br />
7) No whale pants. Ever.<br />
<br />
8) A thermostat is a device with settings below eighty-five degrees.<br />
<br />
9) Once whiskers turn gray, clean-shaven or full beard are the only acceptable looks. The two-day growth is allowed if you're in a back alley sucking down Thunderbird.<br />
<br />
10) There is no such thing as "The Divine Right of Codgers."Jeff Brawerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13938964235215073371noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6018640651821833555.post-19912603947302916312010-01-28T18:04:00.000-08:002011-03-29T09:16:18.248-07:00"DEAR FERRARI OF NEW ENGLAND..."<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikGIvhGZhQyCr43wocMAkSVRmYsbZLQqe97Oyvs3Vbqdu19klze-8fPXjXDTsGe70wmFQYZ3eQcgQuIqTx_ovsD6eDUavhVB9AoIeHX-h2OPqKsT3-xKAVXuyQlWyBmC0fw1pKQy8iwRMB/s1600-h/Ferrari+1.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="167" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikGIvhGZhQyCr43wocMAkSVRmYsbZLQqe97Oyvs3Vbqdu19klze-8fPXjXDTsGe70wmFQYZ3eQcgQuIqTx_ovsD6eDUavhVB9AoIeHX-h2OPqKsT3-xKAVXuyQlWyBmC0fw1pKQy8iwRMB/s400/Ferrari+1.png" width="400" /></a></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 15pt;">Dear Ferrari of New England,<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 15pt;">I can't tell you what a thrill it was to receive your invitation for a test drive of the new Ferrari California. At first, I thought there must be some mistake, but since you've seen fit to send me a reminder, I can only assume you're serious.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 15pt;">It has been my lifelong dream to pilot one of your legendary sports cars, and the California would more than fit the bill. I yearn to hear the low growl of its 4.3 liter 460 horsepower direct injection V8 engine, to climb through its 7-speed dual clutch gearbox, to accelerate from 0 to 60 in less than 4 seconds, and to cruise the highway at its top speed of 193 mph with the wind whipping through my hair. Of course, given the traffic on Rte. 1, I'll have to settle for stop-and-go at 15 mph with my hair drooping on my forehead. No matter.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 15pt;">I feel it's only fair to apprise you of some misgivings. My eyesight is a tad compromised, and I was only granted my license (daylight restricted) after presenting the Registry with a medical file the size of the Oxford English Dictionary. Also, the last car I drove with a standard transmission was a 1985 VW Rabbit whose top speed could be seriously challenged by an Amish buggy. My heart may be a Ferrari, but my driving skills are strictly Ford Pinto and my reaction times best suited for a Schwinn Cruiser. If you're OK with this, I'm ready to roll.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 15pt;">I don't wish to look the proverbial gift horse in the mouth, but I wonder what I did to deserve this opportunity. I have never been to your Norwood showroom, nor have I ever made inquiries about purchasing one of your automobiles. I'm neither wealthy nor the heir to a fortune, and I don't travel in the circles of those who are. Frankly, I've always thought my chances of owning a Ferrari were about the same as owning a space shuttle.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 15pt;">Not to belabor the point, but I've been unemployed for over a year, and I've read that the California sells for just under $200,000. Unless it sells for $195,000 under $200,000, it's unlikely I can drum up the cash. Further, while looking for work, I have survived on the largesse of the Mass. Dept. of Workforce Development. I can only imagine how the taxpayers of Massachusetts might feel about my wheeling around town in a nicer car than the Governor's.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 15pt;">But obviously you know all this, or you would have never courted me in the first place. And unless you have a sudden change of heart, I'll be down on the Automile as quickly as my ten-year-old Camry will get me there.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 15pt;">Gratefully yours,<o:p></o:p></span></div><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 15pt;">Jeff Brawer.</span></div>Jeff Brawerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13938964235215073371noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6018640651821833555.post-86011876530167273012010-01-18T05:56:00.000-08:002010-01-18T05:59:38.125-08:00THE HUNK OF TIN<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 14pt;">It was a 1960 Bonneville coupe, robin's-egg blue where it wasn't rusted and only slightly bigger than the QE2. You could ram it into a telephone pole at sixty and not feel a thing for fifteen minutes. It had a 389 V8 engine, a Hydra-Matic transmission, and upholstery of the finest Corinthian plastic. The power steering was so sensitive that the slightest adjustment would send you careening over three lanes of traffic, and the brakes needed only the lightest tap to throw you into the windshield and bring the car to a raucous halt. There were no seatbelts. The radio was strictly AM and owed its reception to a bent wire hanger stuck in the hood.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 14pt;">It cost seventy-five dollars and was ugly as sin. I loved it.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 14pt;">It had no speedometer needle, so I painted one on at sixty-five. I figured if I were ever pulled over, I could show it to the cop to prove I hadn't been speeding. It only occurred to me later that once the car stopped, the speedometer should read zero. This didn't augur well for my future as an engineering student.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 14pt;">I dubbed it the "Hunk of Tin" after a popular car commercial of the late '60s in which two stereotypical Mexicans in serapes and sombreros made fun of a gringo asking directions to Baja. "You loco? You goin' to drive thees hunk of teen through de Baja? Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!" The gringo survived, and I had the perfect name for my car.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 14pt;">In the summer of '67, just before my freshman year of college, I used the Hunk to go back and forth to my job. I worked at my father's textile plant, something I had done off and on for several years. In order to show there was no preferential treatment for his children, my father gave my brother and me the lowliest jobs at the lowest possible pay. My specialty was stripping bobbins, pulling the last bits of tangled thread off the spools that were placed in shuttles on the looms. When the bobbins were almost empty, they would be dumped into large wood bins where they formed an enormous multicolored Gordian knot. It was my job to disentangle this mess and remove the empty bobbins for reuse, a process that caused extreme strain on the back and multiple splinters under the fingernails. My brother had the more glamorous job of crawling under the looms and, with oil dripping in his face, vacuuming lint off the machinery.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 19px;"><br />
</span></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 14pt;">But the Hunk's raison d'etre wasn't the daily commute nor its true home the backstreets of Holyoke. Like its owner, it lived and breathed on the Mass. Turnpike. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 14pt;">I had a long history with the Pike. I first traveled the road a month after it opened in 1957 to see an eye doctor in Boston. During my childhood, I rode the Pike west to summer camp and east to the Cape. By the time I could drive and long before James Taylor immortalized it, Interstate 90 from Stockbridge to Boston was embedded in my genome.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 14pt;">Every weekend that summer, the Hunk and I would traverse the state in search of knowledge, thrills, and love. With a death grip on the huge blue steering wheel and shrieking the lyrics to Sgt. Pepper over the noise of the wind, I would be jumping in anticipation of the next adventure or savoring the one I'd just had.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 14.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 14pt;">Most of the knowledge came in the form of cultural enlightenment and involved bombing around Boston with my friend, Dave. Club 47 in Harvard Square was in its final years but still drew top talent. At that tiny but fabled venue, I heard Patrick Sky, Tom Rush, Spider John Koerner, Mose Allison, Buddy Guy, and other folk, jazz, and blues legends of the day. At the Brattle Theater, I saw Humphrey Bogart and Marx Brothers movies on the big screen for the first time. It's one thing to watch <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Casablanca</b> on a small TV and another to sing the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Marseillaise</i> at the top of your lungs with two hundred other film buffs in proud defiance of Major Strasser. It was as close to fighting the Nazis as a post-WW II kid could get.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 14pt;">For thrills, I took my first baby steps into intoxication and altered consciousness. One night when my parents were out, Dave and I raided my father's supply of Colt 45 and learned first-hand the joys of oblivion and the price you pay for it, the freedom from inhibition and the enslavement to the toilet. I also had my first taste of weed that summer, smoking a few bowls with a certain family member who shall remain nameless to protect the not-so-innocent. As you might expect, the colors were vivid, the music transcendent, the food incomparably delicious, and the revelations earth-shattering. And like all novices, I learned two hours later that the colors were ordinary, the food unexceptional, and the revelations nutty. Only the music remained profound.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 14pt;">As for love, it may be a stretch to call my night at the Berkshire Theatre Festival romantic. It was more an exercise in teenage hormonal madness, and she was to blame. "She" was a stunning blond girl who sat next to me in the first row of the balcony during <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">The Skin of our Teeth</b> with Anne Bancroft. In the middle of the first act, she started pressing her leg against mine - the girl, not Anne Bancroft. At first, I thought it was an accident, but when I moved my leg slightly, she moved hers right back. Since the play was in progress and her parents were sitting on her other side, my options were limited to sweating profusely. This agonizing flirtation went on for three acts and two curtain calls, and I left the theater bent over, clutching my program judiciously. During the drive home, a friend explained what happened on stage while I was in the silent and unfulfilled throes of passion.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 14pt;">The Hunk survived into the following summer, but it had lost its mystique and only provided transportation in the geographical sense. I had spent the year in Boston and had acquired that strange combination of arrogant sophistication and disdain which typifies the newly-emancipated college student. I was a seasoned drinker and smoker and had won and lost my first girlfriend. And jaded fool that I was, I cared less about new experiences than the pleasurable repetition of the ones I knew. The Hunk was just a car and a rapidly deteriorating one at that.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 14pt;">It's only in the reveries of my later years that it returns as the magic carpet of my youth.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div>Jeff Brawerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13938964235215073371noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6018640651821833555.post-32001251986592735602009-12-09T07:18:00.000-08:002009-12-09T20:43:09.053-08:00I WAS A GRAMMAR SCHOOL KLEPTO<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 14pt;">It's hard to know why a man turns to a life of crime. A broken family? Grinding poverty? Hanging out with the wrong crowd? Or maybe he's just a rotten seed, destined from birth to be a blight on humanity.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 14pt;">I have no excuse. My family was stable and loving, we were solidly middle class, and my friends were harmless dorks. The biggest hardship of my youth was hay fever. The mean streets of Arnold Rothstein, Meyer Lansky, and Murder Incorporated were a world away from my idyllic New England home. So I must have been born bad; nothing else can explain the reign of terror I visited on my second grade class.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 14pt;">It started innocently enough. In the spring of 1957, my class set up a beautiful miniature farm. It had a farmhouse, barn, and silo made from construction paper, and a large population of plastic poultry and livestock. Within a few days, that population started to dwindle.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 14pt;">Why cattle rustling? Because like most fledgling criminals, I was burdened with a first-class set of model trains. My layout included a farm which was not nearly as well stocked as the one at school. I figured that I would borrow a couple of cows and return them the next day. Even though I forgot to bring them back, nobody seemed to notice. That afternoon, I lifted three chickens and a goat. I just lingered a while before heading out to recess, and when the classroom was empty, I stuffed them in my pocket. As before, there were no repercussions. Even my parents seemed oblivious to my farm's sudden productivity and my remarkable success at animal husbandry.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 14pt;">I grew headier with each heist. I soon left the farm behind and started moving small school supplies - rulers, scissors, and the like. But even the thrill of unlimited paste wasn't enough. I got greedy.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 14pt;">As part of a science unit on weather, our teacher, Mrs. Pierce, constructed a milk carton anemometer. We took it outside one windy day, and she timed the blade rotations with a gleaming silver stopwatch. It was love at first sight. I had to have it.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 14pt;">I spent that night in feverish preparation, devising a scheme so diabolical that Sherlock Holmes himself would be baffled. At exactly 2:55 the next afternoon, as school was letting out, I asked Mrs. Pierce if I could see the watch. When she left the room for a moment, I bolted.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 14pt;">Ingenious, no?<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 14pt;">For the next few hours, I went into a timing frenzy. How far could I run in a minute? How long could I hold my breath? What I should have been timing was how long before the jig was up, because soon after, I dropped the watch on the sidewalk and broke the crystal. I could no longer tell Mrs. Pierce that I simply forgot to give her back the watch before I left school - the linchpin of my scam. Despite this setback, I was determined not to crack, to play it cool as long as I could.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 14pt;">Which turned out to be not that long. When my father came home from work, he found me banging my head against the side of our porch. He asked what I was doing, and I said, "Trying to kill myself." Keen observer of human nature that he was, he got suspicious.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 14pt;">After a call from the school, he had the facts but decided to sweat it out of me anyway. When my father got seriously angry, he would speak softly and slowly, but with menacing intensity and volatile sarcasm. He also possessed an extremely potent version of the hairy eyeball which could extract a confession faster than the Spanish Inquisition.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 14pt;">"I understand you got a stopwatch at school today."<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 14pt;">Deny everything.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 14pt;">"A stopwatch? What stopwatch?"<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 14pt;">"How about the broken one we found in your jacket."<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 14pt;">Oops.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 14pt;">"Where did you get it?"<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 14pt;">"My teacher gave it to me."<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 14pt;">That was true.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 14pt;">"Why did she give it to you?"<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 14pt;">Uh oh.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 14pt;">"She gave it to me for being a good student."<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 14pt;">Even at seven, I knew I was in it deep.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 14pt;">"Really?"<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 14pt;">"Yeah."<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 14pt;">Deeper and deeper.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 14pt;">"Well, we'll just have to call her up and thank her for giving you such a wonderful gift."<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 14pt;">He reached for the phone. I folded like an origami crane.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 14pt;">"Wait a minute! Let's talk."<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 14pt;">Game. Set. Match.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 14pt;">Justice followed swiftly. I received a thorough spanking, lost a few month's allowance to pay for the watch, and was forced to apologize to Mrs. Pierce. I'm convinced that only part of the punishment was for the theft; the rest was for the dimwitted way I'd committed it. My father, who'd led a fairly wild youth on the streets of Paterson, NJ, <o:p><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;">was likely more embarrassed by my ineptitude than my criminality.</span></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 14pt;">And so with chastened heart and sore behind, my career as an evil mastermind came to an end.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div>Jeff Brawerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13938964235215073371noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6018640651821833555.post-68725896993608576732009-12-02T12:28:00.000-08:002009-12-04T15:55:25.638-08:00NOW THAT YOU'VE LOST WEIGHT, WHO ARE YOU?<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 14pt;">Congratulations! You've made it! There is no more glorious moment in life than getting on a scale after months of dieting and seeing your target weight in the window. It's winning the Nobel Prize and heavyweight crown on the same day the Sox take the Series and Juliette Binoche invites you to bed (assuming you're a prizefighting physicist from Boston who's smitten with Juliette Binoche.) Now that you've reached the pinnacle, what's next?<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 14pt;">Start by soaking up some adoration - you've earned it. Let words of tribute and laudatory speeches fill your head until it bursts from the pressure. Glory in the discomfort of naysaying colleagues who once ridiculed your efforts and now betray their hypocrisy with oily praise. Treat compliments from overweight friends with a shrug and assure them that they could do the same if they wanted to. It's utter malarkey, but it provides them with a reprieve and earns you a merit badge in humility.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 14pt;">Given your accomplishment, you are allowed to do some bragging without tarnishing your halo. This can be subtle and non-verbal, such as wearing tight clothes to your final Weight Watchers meeting, or more overt:<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 14pt;">"Really, Officer, I was doing forty-five in a school zone? Because that's how much weight I've lost."<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 14pt;">Yes, revel in this moment because it's over in a heartbeat, and once it's gone, it ain't comin' back.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 14pt;">People will quickly accommodate themselves to the new slimmer you. Their praise will fade, and as long as you stay at your current weight, it will no longer be discussed. But there will always be an undercurrent of jealousy and a lethal lode of suppressed schadenfreude waiting to erupt the minute your self-discipline shrinks and your waist expands<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 14pt;">After all, you're expected to keep the weight off. All the effort you put into reaching your new size is now required just to keep you there. The term used by the diet community is "maintenance," which is like referring to Marine boot camp as an invigorating spa treatment. Maintenance is going to the dentist twice a year and changing the oil in your Camry. What's demanded of you is a life of constant denial and perpetual vigilance, all without the benefit of friendly encouragement or positive reinforcement. You're already trim; nobody cares.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 14pt;">Further, you've lost the support of your diet plan, that rigidly defined program that got you here, and you've reawakened those demons who were previously soothed by your overeating. The temptations of the world didn't disappear because you were losing weight and righteously avoiding them. Burger King flourishes, potato chips are as popular as ever, and Hostess hasn't gone out of business. That sound you hear? It's the footsteps of your old weight hunting you down. Don't look back.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 14pt;">In short time, the joy of the new you is replaced by the fear of becoming the old you, and it's not idle paranoia. You should be very afraid; the statistical rate of recidivism among dieters is somewhere near 90%. And even if you beat the odds and remain steadfast, your anxieties will quickly spread from the physical to the existential. For once the blush is off the rose, it's not so easy to figure out who the rose is. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 14pt;">At the same time you were losing part of yourself, you were also losing part of your self. If you were heavy for an extended period of time, it's likely that your personality and behavior were informed by your shape. Maybe you were defensive or withdrawn in response to your weight, or you possessed an oversized persona to match your oversized bulk - the Chris Farley Syndrome. As you became thinner, your need for these character traits also diminished, confusing your emotions and blurring your identity. By the end of your diet, you might not know who you are anymore.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 14pt;">An old friend who lost over a hundred pounds a few years back, said of his transformation:<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 14pt;">"Everything changes along with your shape, how you move, sit, get in and out of a car, and ultimately how you perceive yourself. You're a different person, but that person is an alien, someone you're not totally comfortable with."<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 14pt;">He eventually regained the weight.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 14pt;">If you're unsure of who you are, your friends and family are even more bewildered and often resentful. You've changed the comforting role you played in their lives and taken away whatever superiority they felt because of your former girth. If you were boisterous before, they miss your constant antics and bonhomie. If you were introverted, they now dislike your good humor and optimism. They've remained the same; who are you to rattle their world by becoming someone else, even if you don't know who that someone is?<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 14pt;">Congratulations. You've made it.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div>Jeff Brawerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13938964235215073371noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6018640651821833555.post-81413936605500898922009-11-11T14:43:00.000-08:002009-11-11T18:28:38.705-08:00IN HONOR OF MY FATHER-IN-LAW ON VETERANS DAY<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-kNG_-liBkKQyTElSPq68pPfFPwyuqKV35WbdtyOENNNoLpZT4F1wzeGKI9Qa9AXO_30lTjhP-PeOdua27w6xuZ2_xv9qesvyb4vNdXtzZdgpE8KZQo5XfM1U5a3wBBNp-YxBhQn-Q0_V/s1600-h/CIMG1930.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-kNG_-liBkKQyTElSPq68pPfFPwyuqKV35WbdtyOENNNoLpZT4F1wzeGKI9Qa9AXO_30lTjhP-PeOdua27w6xuZ2_xv9qesvyb4vNdXtzZdgpE8KZQo5XfM1U5a3wBBNp-YxBhQn-Q0_V/s320/CIMG1930.jpg" /></a><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 15pt;">It's been just over two years since my father-in-law, Morey Hunter, passed away at the age of ninety. During the thirty-five years that I knew him, he never once spoke voluntarily about his service during World War II.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 15pt;">For Morey not to speak about a subject was unusual. He was a garrulous and highly opinionated man, operatic in tone and sentimental by nature. Where family and close friends were concerned, he didn't just wear his heart on his sleeve, he gave it to you wholesale. He was a tireless worker, a dapper dresser, a fastidious cleaner, and a rabid Yankees fan which led to some truly hilarious banter with his New England transplant daughter. He loved to argue, waxing both poetic and crude about politics, movies, sports, and the quality of the fruit at various local markets about which he was more fanatic than he was about the Yankees. But about the war, he would say almost nothing.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 15pt;">Because of his reticence, the details of his service are sketchy. He was sent overseas in 1944 as a radar specialist with an artillery battalion. He saw service in North Africa, Italy, France, and Germany where, being a natural if untutored linguist, he became a German translator despite only knowing Yiddish. He arrived in Dachau the day after the camp was liberated.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 15pt;">If pressed, he would tell us some of the more humorous incidents that befell him in Europe - the time his rifle split during guard duty in a rain storm or the time his precious supply of canned tuna from home was destroyed by German artillery. But even in these stories, there was always an undercurrent of the fear and brutality he'd experienced, the sense of isolation he'd felt as a young man far from family and home and in constant peril.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 15pt;">Only twice did I fully see the psychological scars the war had left on him. The first was in the summer of 1999 during a family vacation in Italy. We were driving from Tuscany down to Naples, the car ringing with laughter over some forgotten travel mishap, when Morey suddenly became quiet and withdrawn. I asked him if he was okay, and he simply said that he'd been there before. I looked up at an approaching road sign: Monte Cassino. He had been present at one of the bloodiest campaigns of the war.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 15pt;">The second time was in the spring of 2003 when Morey received a cryptic phone call from France to his Florida home. Given the bad connection and his partial deafness, he couldn't understand much of what was being said but managed to get enough information for me to follow up. The call was from a French family, the Merciers, who had befriended him and a GI buddy while they were stationed in Épinal after the liberation of France. The father, Marcel, was a young boy at the time but had very clear recollections of the time he spent with the Americans. In broken English, he wrote Morey the following:<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 15pt;">"The last time I saw [you] was some weeks before Christmas and [you] should have come to dinner but [your] unit moved some days before...and we were very sad."<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 15pt;">"Please [know] the friends who are dead for the France are not dead for nothing. French people love their American friends...I wish to your family a good health and I address you my good and faithful memory."<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 15pt;">When we asked Morey what he would write in return, he looked at us sadly and said, "I can't. You write him back." We were stunned and pressed the issue. This family had gone through a tremendous effort to make contact; how could he not reply personally? He got mad and told us again that he couldn't and wouldn't. The pain of remembering was clearly much deeper than we imagined. We never brought up the subject again.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 15pt;">Morey was among the fortunate who returned from the war. He married, raised a family, prospered in business, and lived a full, rich life. But it would be thoughtless of me not to remember him today for his service to this country and for the sacrifices he and countless others made for the freedom of the world.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div>Jeff Brawerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13938964235215073371noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6018640651821833555.post-39106627139772949022009-11-03T21:48:00.000-08:002009-11-03T21:48:44.308-08:00GOOD BYE MR. CHIPS AND GOOD RIDDANCE<!--StartFragment--> <br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 15.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">At the tender age of fourteen, I abandoned hearth, home, tube, and fridge and went off to boarding school for three years.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When I arrived at Williston Academy in the fall of 1964, I was a chubby lad of 160 lbs., but after three months, I was twenty pounds lighter and three inches taller.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The inches were a consequence of puberty; the pounds were victims of circumstance. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 15.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Before I wallow in the Dickensian details, it's only fair to note the benefits I received at Williston.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was given a solid general education with a strong emphasis on writing and literature.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>With no TV available, I discovered that there just might be something to this book-reading thing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I also developed a keen interest of theater since the Drama Club was one of the few places a sports-challenged dweeb could meet girls.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 15.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">For Williston, like most New England prep schools of that era, was strictly single gender.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Apart from plays, the only contact we had with women came during the occasional Saturday night dance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These two-hour affairs were more tightly chaperoned than Sicilian mob trials and afforded all the intimacy of a subway platform at rush hour.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Your escorts were chosen by the sole criterion of height, and more often than not, this was bungled.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Many was the night I found myself dancing cheek-to-sternum with some mortified amazon from our sister school.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Prep school may have sharpened my mental skills, but socially, I was one evolutionary step shy of Neanderthal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As a result, I spent most of my first semester at college gawking at female classmates like a randy village idiot.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 15.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">The lack of women was only one of many rigors at Williston.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Boarding schools in the 60's came fully equipped with an exhausting and rigidly maintained schedule of studies, athletics, and vicious hazings.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There were daily room inspections, a mandatory dress code, and a dearth of fellow Jews.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because the school was founded by a dour Congregationalist minister, attending chapel was mandatory six days a week.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To this day, I'm one of the select few of my tribe who knows the words to "Onward Christian Soldiers."<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 15.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">But those hardships were like a week on the Riviera compared to what passed for food at Williston, and I use the word "food" in the broadest possible sense allowed by the English language.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 15.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Meals were taken in a large communal dining hall tastefully decorated in Early American Penitentiary.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It could have easily been mistaken for Leavenworth except that the inmates wore blazers and sported more pimples than tattoos. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The room held fifty long rectangular tables, each seating nine students and one faculty member.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Food and drink were served in bulk from indestructible stainless steel platters and pitchers - clearly a time before Martha Stewart had any influence on "institutional" decor.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 15.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Like classes, meals at Williston were for instruction, not pleasure.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Apart from providing basic sustenance (dubious at best), the partaking of food was seen as a means to manners, civility, and restraint.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Since the actual food was merely an adjunct to these lessons, it was treated with the same joyless severity as logarithms and gerunds.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 15.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">However fresh and savory provisions may have been when they arrived at the Williston kitchen, they were soon taken to task by the school's culinary Marine Corps.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Under the stern leadership of head chef Albert Boudreau, the staff didn't so much prepare food as beat it into submission.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Chicken was shaken down and bullied by these gastronomic goons until nothing remained but grease and bones.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Crisp string beans were strong-armed into limp, colorless straw, and potatoes were clubbed into mush right out of the sack.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Serving this stuff wasn't merely an affront to the palette; it was a violation of the Geneva Convention.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 15.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Our biweekly "treat" of roast beef was cooked so far beyond well done that science has yet to find a name for it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It's as if the recipe came from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Solar Core Cook Book</i>:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>"Place meat in preheated oven at 15,000,000° F and roast until nuclei are sufficiently fused."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The remains were then stored in steam chambers until the texture became indistinguishable from an all-weather radial.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Once it was certain no vestige of flavor remained, the meat was cut into thin grayish-white slices and stacked on cold metal trays.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was served with a brown sludge-like gravy consisting of equal parts beef drippings, butter, flour, flour, flour, flour, and flour.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 15.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Another feature of the Williston dining experience was the requirement to wait tables for a three-meal rotation every nine days.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Apparently, it wasn't enough to be nauseated by the culinary horrors tableside, you had to witness first hand how meat and produce could be cruelly transformed into hardened criminal fare.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You also learned the brutal lessons of natural selection as you and forty-nine other crazed students fought with Darwinian fierceness for the clean dishes and silverware needed to reset the tables before you were late for class.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 15.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">In such a place at such a time, weight loss wasn't a sign of deprivation, but a blessing.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><!--EndFragment-->Jeff Brawerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13938964235215073371noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6018640651821833555.post-20780795897257149782009-10-15T05:55:00.000-07:002009-10-15T10:55:50.179-07:00OF GHOULS AND MR. GOODBARS<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16pt;">Autumn has arrived, and with it, crisp apples, fresh cider, and clogged gutters. New Englanders are nailing Indian corn to their doors while the sound of metal rakes on sidewalks drives psychopaths to serial murder. </span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 16pt;">With winter on the way, squirrels scurry about, collecting acorns and storing them in secret caches. For they know instinctively that in a few short months, these precious morsels can be sold on the black market at predatory prices.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 16pt;">The transformation of summer to fall has been a literary inspiration through the ages. It is the basis for Aesop's best-known fable, "The Ant and The Grasshopper," which extols the virtues of hard work and decries indolence. Nowadays, of course, the industrious ant would be laid off his job of thirty years and end up an alcoholic, while the lazy grasshopper would stash the take from his Ponzi scheme in an offshore account and flee the country before the idiots at the SEC catch on.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 16pt;">The joys of the season are many, warming the heart and delighting the eye. Some revel in the excitement of old college football rivalries. Others flock to harvest balls or take hayrides on moonlit nights. For me, it's the sublime weather that puts a smile on my face, the chill, bracing air which prevents people who weigh more than lawn tractors from parading around in sleeveless Celtics jerseys.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 16pt;">But the true highlight of autumn is that time in late October when the wind turns bitter, and gloom settles over the city like a burial shroud. No, I'm not talking about the Red Sox being eliminated from the playoffs, but Halloween, Christian holy day, commercialized celebration of the spooky, and pagan festival of high blood glucose levels.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 16pt;">Halloween is distinguished by the confluence of two powerful and mysterious forces - the supernatural and candy. What is this cosmic connection, and why, on this one day of the year, does it cause a heightened awareness of the otherworldly as well as rampant tooth decay?<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 16pt;">Few people know this, but the spirit world is crazy about candy. Parapsychologists now theorize that ghosts are actually the souls of the dead who refuse to leave for higher realms because Junior Mints aren't available. They wander the earth ceaselessly, craving the sweet tastes and gooey textures they adored in life but can no longer experience in death. Dickens was wrong. Ghosts aren't tormented by good deeds not done, but Snickers not eaten.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 16pt;">Once a year on All Hallows Eve, the spirit world attains the power to influence the living. After invading the minds and bodies of well-meaning homeowners, these pudgy phantoms from beyond ply eager youngsters with enough refined sugar to make a black forest cake the size of the actual Black Forest. The children then grow up to be candy-addicted adults, and after their passing, new soldiers in this portly legion of darkness. And what weapons have we mere mortals to combat this evil? Toilet paper, shaving cream, and eggs.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 16pt;">There are those who believe that jack-o'lanterns provide some protection. Right, because nothing terrifies disembodied beings who exist beyond time and space like a rotting squash with a goofy smile. Unless it's made of<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 16pt;">chocolate, they couldn't care less.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 16pt;">There are, however, certain precautions which vigilant parents can take to minimize the dangers and insure that the holiday affords their children a bit of carefree fun instead of an eternity of despair.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 16pt;">• Limit the amount of sweets your kid can collect. Don't let them go trick-or-treating with military issue duffel bags.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 16pt;">• Don't let them eat gummy candy with chocolate candy. Apart from providing a windfall for your dentist, this combination causes a heartburn that can bring down a bull moose. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 16pt;">• Once they've finished their treats, tether them securely to prevent interference with incoming air traffic.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 16pt;">While I do counsel caution and moderation, I despise those health nuts who drop toothbrushes into treat bags instead of candy. Back off, killjoys. This is the one night a year when adults have no say in what children stick in their mouths and regurgitate three hours later. Happy Halloween, everybody!<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div>Jeff Brawerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13938964235215073371noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6018640651821833555.post-88571917161578799362009-09-30T10:16:00.000-07:002009-10-01T04:56:15.291-07:00THE TEN MOST INFURIATING CLICHÉS ABOUT DIETING<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 15pt; text-transform: uppercase;">W</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 15pt;">ho doesn't love a good list? Thanks mostly to David Letterman's "Top Ten," the list is fast replacing the expository essay as the literary form of choice for periodicals. Everyone benefits. The reader is spared long-winded explanations, grandstanding commentary, and pointless flourishes of style. The writer doesn't spend untold hours worrying about structure, progression, or transition. A short intro, ten zingers - badda bing, badda boom - you're done.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 15pt;">So I couldn't have been more delighted to find "Ten Secrets of the Effortlessly Thin" on the MSN Health & Fitness website.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=6018640651821833555#_edn1" name="_ednref" style="mso-endnote-id: edn;" title=""><span style="font-size: small;">[i]</span></a> For contained in this one list of supposedly helpful hints are the most irritating and noxious platitudes ever uttered or written about dieting. Even the use of "effortlessly" in the title is an affront to anyone who has struggled with weight loss. If it's really effortless for you, you should thank God every day and keep your precious suggestions to yourself. But since you feel that our lives would be so vastly improved by your keen insights, let's tackle them one by one.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 15pt; text-transform: uppercase;">They don't diet. W</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 15pt;">ell, "they" don't need to diet because they're already thin. The explanation for this banality emphasizes the despicable, "permanent lifestyle change," i.e., eat better regularly and make more sensible food choices. Yeah, and you'll live a lot longer if you don't get hit by a bus.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 15pt;">THEY KEEP TRACK OF THEIR WEIGHT. That's because the scale is their friend, not an instrument of abject terror. It gives them positive reinforcement. It gives us nightmares.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 15pt;">THEY EXERCISE REGULARLY. They don't look like the Hindenburg in sweatpants.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 15pt;">THEY DON'T SOLVE PROBLEMS WITH FOOD. They don't <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">have</i> problems with food. In fact, the effortlessly thin have fewer problems in general. Since "the food won't fix what's bothering you," they suggest "going for a walk, watching a movie,...or taking a bubble bath." I can't speak for everyone, but when I'm ravenously hungry, food works a lot better than lukewarm suds.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 15pt;">THEY STOP EATING WHEN THEY'RE FULL. They're full when they've consumed enough to satisfy their biological hunger. I'm full when it would take an air compressor to drive so much as a single Cheerio into my body, and my pants are so tight I sound like Al Green on helium.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 15pt; text-transform: uppercase;">They don't surround themselves with temptation. T</span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 15pt;">hey're so pure that nothing tempts them. For the rest of us, seeing a Snickers wrapper in the gutter is enough to trigger a binge.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 15pt;">THEY ALLOW THEMSELVES TREATS. "A small but really delicious chocolate bar" may "put the craving to rest" for the saintly slender, but it incites me to clear out the snack inventory of Seven-Eleven.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 15pt;">THEY EAT BREAKFAST. Not Denny's Lumberjack Slam.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 15pt;">THEY MOVE, STAND, AND FIDGET MORE. If nervous energy provides such a great weight loss benefit, how do they explain the late Rodney Dangerfield?<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 15pt;">THEY DON'T SKIP MEALS. "Thin people keep their gas tanks [i.e., their stomachs] between one-quarter and three-quarters full all the time." How thoughtful of them to clarify the gas tank-stomach conundrum; I was halfway out the door to fuel up the car. But keeping with the metaphor, it takes a lot more gas to fill up my Lincoln Navigator than their MINI Cooper.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 15pt;">Please, just go back to living your naturally skinny lives in silence and leave us to our efforts in peace.</span><br />
</div><div style="mso-element: endnote-list;"><hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" /><div id="edn" style="mso-element: endnote;"><div class="MsoEndnoteText"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=6018640651821833555#_ednref" name="_edn1" style="mso-endnote-id: edn;" title="">[i]</a> <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 10pt;">http://health.msn.com/weight-loss/slideshow.aspx?cp-documentid=100218116</span><br />
</div></div></div>Jeff Brawerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13938964235215073371noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6018640651821833555.post-60506416626111878652009-09-24T12:13:00.000-07:002009-09-24T12:13:34.751-07:00VIDEO ERGO DEVORO (I WATCH, THEREFORE I EAT)<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times; font-size: 18px; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16pt;">The recent return of NBC's <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">The Biggest Loser</b> has generated some interesting criticism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Amanda Vogel, a certified fitness professional, has provided a thorough analysis of the show's training methods on the </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16pt;">IDEA Health & Fitness Association website.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=6018640651821833555#_edn1" name="_ednref" style="mso-endnote-id: edn;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;">1</span></span></a><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Among the concerns of her sources:</span></span></span></b><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 22.5pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">“There seems to be no rationale for exercise program design. Clients are pushed to their limits, which places them at risk of injury and overtraining."<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 22.5pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 22.5pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">“Making a person feel badly about his or her effort, mental/emotional status or progress is not a strong motivator..."<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 22.5pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 22.5pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">“I believe [the show] sets unrealistic expectations for many people who have a large amount of weight to lose.”<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16pt;">However valid these complaints might be, they ignore one crucial but obvious detail; it's a TV show.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The categorizing of such shows as "reality programming" only confuses the issue.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Jean Shepherd, the late humorist, broadcaster, and social critic, had the most profound answer for those who complained that television didn't reflect reality.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He simply pointed out that it isn't reality, it's television.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16pt;">Look no further than the show's use of the "cliffhanger" scale.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When you step on your bathroom scale in the morning, does the indicator swing wildly for twenty seconds while dramatic music plays?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I didn't think so.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16pt;">The fact that weight loss is a serious concern for so many people only adds to the confusion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I don't imagine viewers of <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">The Bachelor </b>really feel that withholding a rose is the proper way to dump a potential mate or consider the bungee jumping on <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">The Great Race</b> a normal component of foreign travel.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These shows are clearly contrived competitions manipulated for maximum thrills and with no long-range consequences for the contestants beyond winning a prize.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the very real health risks of the contenders on <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">The Biggest Loser</b> resonate with viewers who then look to the show for personal guidance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Caveat emptor.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16pt;">And while you debate the merits of dieting as seen on TV, it's also wise to remember that watching TV itself can be major factor in needing a diet in the first place.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16pt;">This issue is far more complex than mere couch potato syndrome.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In my case, the conjunction of food and television has not only affected my girth, it </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">has influenced my personality, my cultural tastes, and my choice of profession.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It also explains why I whistle "Howdy Doody Time" when I'm hungry.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">There is a strong elemental synergy between the tube and the fridge.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For one thing, they are both purveyors of the limited yet precious freedom afforded modern man.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Your TV may provide you with five hundred channels of absolute swill, but at least you control which swill to watch.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And during commercial breaks, you can run to the fridge and choose which swill to swill.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There's more personal autonomy for the average American in an hour of TV viewing than exists for the entire population of Albania in a year.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">My own blurring of show business with chow business began in infancy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When restless at night, I would be rocked and fed, but not to some old-world lullaby.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No, I was soothed by the gentle sounds of Jerry Lester and Morey Amsterdam on <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Broadway Open House.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></b>The bottle-and-Borsht Belt combo was my first TV dinner.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">During my grade school years, my bond with television and Twinkies grew stronger.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This came about as a byproduct of my early bedtime.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I knew that while I languished in bed, something was going on that was exciting, something denied to me by rigid and autocratic adults.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Through the bedroom door, I could hear the muffled sound of the TV along with my parent's laughter, and I seethed with revolutionary fervor.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">My parent's absorption in their program allowed me to sneak downstairs and stock up on goodies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Since I was a chubby kid, they severely restricted my intake of snacks but inexplicably, kept the house loaded with them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I'd creep back to my room with enough provisions to last the siege of Leningrad, and except for an occasional telltale crumb, they were none the wiser.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not much of a rebellion to be sure, but I was ten, and Holyoke wasn't Havana.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Eventually, unable to monitor my hours due to their own fatigue, my folks sensed defeat and eased the restrictions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>During school nights, I could only stay up until 9:30, but on weekends, I had carte blanche.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>With this last concession, they opened up Pandora's (and Admiral's) 21" black-and-white box, and out blew the strange cultural winds that shaped my character.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Unencumbered by parental oversight, I watched TV until comatose, and consumed mountains of junk food with impunity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The link was forever forged.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Happiness is a warm puppy, said Charles Schultz, but for me, you couldn't beat Steve Allen and Cheez Doodles.</span><br />
</div><div style="mso-element: endnote-list;"><br clear="all" /> <hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" /> <div id="edn" style="mso-element: endnote;"> <div class="MsoEndnoteText"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=6018640651821833555#_ednref" name="_edn1" style="mso-endnote-id: edn;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;">1</span></span></a> http://www.ideafit.com/fitness-library/weighing-in-on-the-biggest-loser<br />
</div></div></div>Jeff Brawerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13938964235215073371noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6018640651821833555.post-65325521465620159522009-09-14T07:59:00.000-07:002009-09-14T08:45:51.833-07:00BRUSHES WITH FAME: I BUMMED A CIGARETTE FROM A NOBEL LAUREATE<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghfqOw-mm3JWv6tpbXDZcV56phUYaP_PAyMUnjhv_mtp_6eNM3qBC7wQWyTakrDL5JJehWOuOtSuWrlJuYmt4IQ80j8LC6L-mhDE8F5TTyjMy-SFPb6IYS_PaxCtJq9x3FEFyKp4UdA8NG/s1600-h/Cormack.png"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 126px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghfqOw-mm3JWv6tpbXDZcV56phUYaP_PAyMUnjhv_mtp_6eNM3qBC7wQWyTakrDL5JJehWOuOtSuWrlJuYmt4IQ80j8LC6L-mhDE8F5TTyjMy-SFPb6IYS_PaxCtJq9x3FEFyKp4UdA8NG/s200/Cormack.png" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5381344738685801842" /></a><p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">I've been fortunate in my life to have had several encounters with the rich, famous, and infamous.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">I've eaten Chinese food with Joseph Heller, bumped into Abe Vigoda on 3rd Avenue, and was running camera on a late-night Boston TV show when the late Wendy O. Williams of the Plasmatics pulled her top down on air.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">None of these, however, has had the lasting impact of my encounters with Professor Allan Cormack.</span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">I was a student at Tufts University School of Engineering in the late sixties, and I use the term "student" in the loosest way possible.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">I was convinced that my youthful fascination with tinkering and taking objects apart made me well-suited for the program.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Given my inability to ever reassemble said objects, this was perhaps a bit presumptuous.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">The curriculum for all freshman engineering students included an introductory physics course in Newtonian mechanics which was taught by Dr. Cormack in the fall of 1967.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Almost immediately, I ran into problems - linguistic, ophthalmic, and sociological - none of which were the fault of the professor.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">I was assigned to a lab group where the instructor had an accent so thick and indecipherable, he might as well have been speaking Romulan.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Maybe he was.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">All I know is that it took most of the first session to figure out that an "offapackle" was an alpha particle, and by then, I had already bungled the experiment.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">In those halcyon pre-Hewlett-Packard days, all experimental data and statistical evaluation was calculated using a slide rule, an ingenious but complicated device as common today as a chariot on the interstate.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">For those of you too young to remember, it was an adjustable ruler with multiple scales and a cursor that you manipulated to perform various math functions. Given the infinitesimal size of the scale markings and my abysmal eyesight, it was as useful to me for computation as a chainsaw for embroidery.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">In spite of my empirical ineptitude, I enjoyed the lectures and had a good grasp of the theory, until the moment a girl with great legs and a penchant for short skirts started sitting next to me.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">I spent the rest of the semester in a R-rated reverie while the voice of one of the century's great minds drifted like faint Muzak in the background.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Before Tufts, I had attended an all-male boarding school, and my social graces weren't fit for a Tijuana Bordello.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">After three torturous semesters, it was obvious that I wasn't cut out for engineering, but in my clueless egomania, I blamed the subject.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">The problem was that I was clearly too abstract a thinker for such a practical field.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Despite mediocre grades, I decided to become a theoretical physicist.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">I met with Dr. Cormack who was the department chairman, and switched my major.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">In retrospect, that was the task I really excelled at.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">I don't remember much from that first meeting, except that he was a kind, down-to-earth man who didn't laugh in my face outright as he might have considering my qualifications.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">We talked about the curriculum, and he suggested I enroll in his course on advanced electricity and magnetism for the next semester.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">It was at this point that my tobacco jones got the best of me.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">I asked for one of his cigarettes which he graciously provided and lit.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">For anyone correlating Nobel laureates with their preferred cigarette brands, Dr. Cormack smoked Parliaments.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Advanced E and M turned out to be the most difficult course of my academic career.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">It was only through his superhuman patience that I wasn't KO'ed by Maxwell's equations, and could get up off the canvas to earn a respectable B.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">But I had stretched my science brain as far as it would go, and I knew I would never make it to my degree that way.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">I swallowed my pride and told him I was switching my major to English.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">As before, he was understanding and non-judgmental, and he wished me well.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">He also let me bum another smoke.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Dr. Allan Cormack was a co-recipient of the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1979 for the theoretical work behind CT scanning.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">He died in 1998.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">It was my honor and privilege to know him.</span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <!--EndFragment-->Jeff Brawerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13938964235215073371noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6018640651821833555.post-45675854221171632262009-09-03T11:41:00.000-07:002009-09-03T21:30:59.176-07:00THE UNBALANCED DIET<!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align: left;"><span style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">The principle of moderation has been espoused by nearly every religion and philosophy, but it's most often associated with the ancient Greeks.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">The temple at Delphi was adorned with the inscription, "Nothing in Excess," and I doubt many people would disagree with that sentiment today.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">It makes sense, right?</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span></span><span style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Yet in the convoluted world of food and dieting, this simple concept has been overshadowed by theories of fanatical abstinence as well as their polar opposite, the embrace of gross indulgence.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">On the "less is more" side is the CRON or Calorie Restriction with Optimal Nutrition diet.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Based on scientific studies, this theory holds that a reduction of caloric intake by as much as 30% from the average western diet can lead to longer life and minimize the effects of aging.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">According to various CRON websites, the studies that support this contention were carried out on monkeys, cows, rats, mice, fish, worms, and various insects.</span></span><span style=""><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">One website (www.cron-web.org/) provides a colorful chart that lists the extended lifespan of various species on restricted intake.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">White rats top the list with up to 14 months extra life, guppies get an additional 13 months, bowl and doily spiders pick up 49 days, and protozoa, 12 days.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">This is wonderful news for anyone who has ever felt the pain of reduced rat longevity or lamented how badly bowl and doily spiders were aging.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Another article</span><a style="mso-endnote-id:edn" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=6018640651821833555&postID=4567585422117163226#_edn1" name="_ednref" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">1</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> gushes about test results showing that mice "</span></span><span style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">retain a youthful appearance much longer."</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">I'm sure this is a great comfort to my wife whose blood-curdling screams last winter might have been mitigated if only our rodent intruder had looked more youthful.</span></span><span style=""><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">And remember, all you kids out there:</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Withholding a few extra grains from the top of the fish tank might keep your beloved pets a few precious days further from their Viking funeral in the family commode.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Most importantly, we all laud the tremendous strides made in solving the protozoan obesity crisis.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">What exactly scientists withheld to keep them svelte remains a mystery.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">So much for creatures small and microscopic, what about humans?</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">The optimal.org website lists the following potential drawbacks to CRON:</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span><!--StartFragment--></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">- Feeling cold</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">- Having difficulty sitting comfortably</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">- Reduced libido</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">- Hating it</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <!--EndFragment--> <p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">So not only does this diet severely restrict the amount and type of food you can eat, it also makes you cold, uncomfortable, sexless, and angry.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">You've got to wonder why it isn't more popular.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">On the "more is more" side, one need only consider the oft-reported expansion of the national waistline to realize that the world's largest consumer society is largely consuming too much.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Clues to the blubbering of America are not hard to find.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">7-Eleven has done its part with its "Gulp" line of soft drinks.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">These are fountain drinks served in cups with straws, not bottles meant for storage and consumption over time.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">The Big Gulp holds a mere quart, the Super Big Gulp, 44 oz., and the Double Gulp, a full half-gallon.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">A Double Gulp of Coca Cola has 744 calories and 186 grams of sugar - enough, I imagine, to bring on diabetes in a blue whale.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">It's only a matter of time before 7-Eleven markets the Super Double Big Gulp, 44 gallons of your favorite soda served in a standard oil barrel.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">It'll come with a straw, but you'll have to bring your own forklift.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">McDonald's is also in an inflationary mood, moving beyond the Quarter Pounder to the new Angus Third Pounder.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">I'm guessing we're about two years away from the Five Pounder which will be packaged in a disposable bowling bag.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Not only are we not ashamed of this excess, we exalt it.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Eating competitions, such as Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest, continue to proliferate and attract media attention.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">There is even a governing body for the "sport," the IFOCE (International Federation of Competitive Eating) which supervises and regulates contests, and also awards the coveted Mustard Yellow Belt to the Nathan's winner.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">I can think of nothing that would make a parent more proud.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">The apotheosis of this trend is the Travel Channel's remarkable show, </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Man v. Food</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">A burly New York food maven, Adam Richman, travels the country and takes on insane eating challenges, including a twelve egg omelet, a thirteen pound pizza, and a seventy-two ounce steak.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">The show website refers to him as an "ambassador to all things delicious," but this hardly describes his noble stature.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">He is a lone warrior in the tradition of the Homeric heroes, knights-errant and samurai, an Achilles for our gluttonous times who battles burritos and chicken wings instead of Trojans.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">I love this guy and I love the show, but it may not present the best blueprint for rational diet and nutrition.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Can someone tell me how I get to Delphi?</span></span></p><div style="mso-element:endnote-list"> <div style="mso-element:endnote" id="edn"> <p class="MsoEndnoteText"><a style="mso-endnote-id:edn" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=6018640651821833555&postID=4567585422117163226#_ednref" name="_edn1" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">1</span></span></a><span style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">www.brighthub.com/health/dietnutrition/articles/23680.aspx#ixzz0PsApxdSz</span></span></p> </div> </div> <!--EndFragment-->Jeff Brawerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13938964235215073371noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6018640651821833555.post-5648989863073231322009-08-19T05:25:00.000-07:002009-08-19T05:53:44.638-07:00THE GIFT OF SHARING<!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Times New Roman';"> <!--StartFragment--> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="Times New Roman""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">In my opinion, the three most unpleasant expressions in the English language are, "There's smoke pouring out of your hood", "Somebody from the IRS called", and "Oh, that looks great.</span></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Can I have a bite?"</span></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">And frankly, I'm far more tolerant of greedy auto mechanics and rapacious tax auditors than of dinner companions who want samples.</span></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">I'm eating here, folks, not selling carpet.</span></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="Times New Roman""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The first time I took my wife to a restaurant, she innocently asked for a taste of my Beef Teriyaki.</span></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">It required every ounce of restraint I possessed to smile politely and offer her a bite instead of stabbing her hand with a fork.</span></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">My suppressed rage eventually subsided, but I made sure my steak knife was close by in case she came back for more.</span></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Over the years, I've taken fewer pains to hide my hostility</span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="Times New Roman""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">What's ironic is that trading food with my wife is a bargain.</span></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">She always returns more than she gets and sometimes offers a taste without demanding compensation.</span></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">I, on the other hand, require a notarized affidavit before I'll ante up, a pre-victual agreement with a penalty clause assuring forfeiture of the entire entree if the return portion is too small or not immediately forthcoming.</span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="Times New Roman""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Now I'm no Sigmund Freud (I'm no Fred Astaire either, but that's another story), yet even I realize this paranoia didn't arise in a vacuum.</span></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">It arose at 45 Yale St. in Holyoke, Massachusetts where I grew up surrounded by my parents and older brother, the villain of this saga.</span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="Times New Roman""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Western Mass. in the '50s wasn't exactly a culinary hotbed.</span></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">It wasn't even a culinary sleeping bag except for </span></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Mel's</span></span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">.</span></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Mel's</span></span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> is a small Italian restaurant in Holyoke whose specialties include spaghetti in a spicy red sauce, meatballs, roast chicken, and...French fries.</span></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Now I know that by today's health-obsessed standards, a dinner that includes both spaghetti and French fries is as unthinkable as a meal of poached salmon and motor oil, but back then, the greasy starch was a basic food group, as important to growing young bodies as red meat, butter, and Twinkies.</span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="Times New Roman""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">We would take out from </span></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Mel's</span></span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> about once a week.</span></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">I can recall few more joyous moments of my childhood than contemplating those two enormous meatballs floating on a sea of glistening pasta, with a hefty portion of my beloved fries on the side, steaming under a squirt of ketchup.</span></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Then it would happen.</span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="Times New Roman""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">"Hey, Jeff!</span></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Look at that huge dog in the driveway!"</span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="Times New Roman""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Alas, I was the perennial sucker. I'd automatically turn to stare out the window, and by the time I looked back, most of my stash had disappeared. My brother would be in convulsions - half with laughter, HALF FROM CHOKING ON MY FRIES!</span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="Times New Roman""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">But even the biggest sap catches on eventually.</span></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">One night when I was nine, I feigned distraction and bashed him solidly across the hand with a serving spoon as he went in for the kill.</span></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">I didn't inflict any real damage, but the dynamics of our dining relationship changed dramatically.</span></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Mealtime evolved from a cordial family gathering into a tense battle of will, no quarter asked, none given.</span></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">It must have been a remarkable sight -</span></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">the two of us sitting there in stony silence, eyes locked in a steely glare, left arm curled protectively around the plate, right hand clutching the fork like a shiv, just a couple of lifers in Alcatraz.</span></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">This standoff continued until he went off to boarding school, and I could again eat in peace.</span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="Times New Roman""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">But once you're accustomed to dining in full combat readiness, you can never fully relax again.</span></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">This is why I still regard every request for my food, no matter how innocuous, with suspicion and fear.</span></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">I'd like to think, however, that I've mellowed over the years and become a more genial fellow to break bread with.</span></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">I've learned to curb my more violent tendencies and conceal my outrage, save for a telltale blink or two.</span></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">As for my brother, we've since become very close and can now enjoy a meal together provided nobody makes any sudden moves.</span></span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <!--EndFragment--> <p></p> <!--EndFragment-->Jeff Brawerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13938964235215073371noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6018640651821833555.post-25585042236347883652009-08-07T14:51:00.000-07:002009-08-07T20:35:13.186-07:00MISSPENT YOUTH<!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Like all true Bostonians, I'm a loyal Red Sox fan.</span></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">I take pride in their successes, suffer grievously over their failures, and detest anyone who wears pinstripes.</span></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">So virulent is my hatred of that pattern that it extends beyond Yankee players to anyone sporting parallel lines on their clothing including train engineers and candy stripers.</span></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">If Mother Teresa had worn a pinstripe sari, I'd have booed her too.</span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">I love going to Fenway and rooting for the team. </span></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">I jump up and down and scream with the best of them, cheering on our boys and excoriating the opposition or any official who dares rule against us.</span></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">In begrudging deference to Yogi Berra, I never leave a game until it's over.</span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">And yet, I possess a certain animus towards the sport that I just can't shake.</span></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Through deep introspection and extensive analysis, I've uncovered two possible explanations.</span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Ken Burns and my childhood.</span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">My gripe with Burns is professional.</span></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">I've spent most of my working life as a television editor, and in my many years of cutting and watching documentaries, I have never been subjected to anything as </span></span></span><span style=" Times New Roman""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">stupifyingly</span></span></span><span style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> dull as Burns' twenty-three hour snorefest, </span></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Baseball</span></span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">.</span></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Employing a reverential tone normally reserved for Papal investitures, he smeared his </span></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Civil War</span></span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> paintbrush over the national pastime, obliterating every last bit of genuine excitement and color from the sport.</span></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">I mean, really, how many different ways can you play </span></span></span><span style="Times New Roman""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">"Take me out to the Ball Game" in a minor key? </span></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">A complete hack could have generated more fun out of a ten-part series on crescent wrenches.</span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">But this is a minor insult compared to the trauma that baseball inflicted on my youth.</span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="Times New Roman""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">There were other sports and activities while I was growing up, but none held the exalted boyhood status of baseball.</span></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">In addition to playing the game, there was the endless discussion of players, teams, and stats, as well as the constant buying, selling and trading of cards.</span></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">It wasn't the high-stakes memorabilia racket it is today, but many a tooth became cavity-ridden in a vain search for a Stan Musial or Moose Skowron.</span></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">From April through October, baseball was all that mattered.</span></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Proficiency made you popular, ineptitude branded you an outcast.</span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="Times New Roman""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">I couldn't hit the damn ball.</span></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">It didn't matter how slowly it was pitched or how many swings I was allowed, my time in the batter's box was spent in utter futility and embarrassment.</span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="Times New Roman""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">I really tried.</span></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">I would hold my breath, tense my body, and glare wide-eyed and unblinking at the pitcher - more Marty Feldman than Mighty Casey, but no less determined.</span></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">It didn't matter.</span></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">As soon as the ball was thrown, it would disappear into some multi-dimensional wormhole until it smacked against the catcher's mitt.</span></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">On the rare occasion that I did connect, it was courtesy of the same dumb luck that allows a roomful of monkeys to type a word or two of </span></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Macbeth.</span></span></i></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="Times New Roman""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">My problem?</span></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Congenital Nystagmus, which, for all you Ophthalmology buffs, is a neuromuscular condition that causes the eyes to jitter uncontrollably.</span></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Objects don't appear out of focus; they just dance around the visual field like blood-crazed mosquitoes.</span></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">As a result, my depth perception is on a par with a medium-sized plum.</span></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">I was diagnosed shortly after birth and began wearing glasses at the age of two.</span></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">During the "50s, it was the misguided belief of opticians and frame manufacturers that children’s glasses should simply be scaled-down versions of hideously ugly adult models.</span></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">In an era that worshipped DiMaggio, Williams, and Mantle, I could have been mistaken for Bennett Cerf.</span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="Times New Roman""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">My fielding was worse than my batting.</span></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">When grammar school teams were forced to include me, I was stuck deep - and I mean WAY deep - in center field.</span></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">The second baseman or shortstop would run miles to grab any fly headed my way.</span></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">My field of dreams was more like the Sea of Tranquility.</span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="Times New Roman""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Finally, I gave up, reluctantly accepting the fact that this avenue to fame, fortune, and popularity would forever be closed to me.</span></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">My father made a valiant effort to keep me competitive, but when a simple game of catch resembles a medieval stoning, it's unlikely that pro scouts will come knocking at your door.</span></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">I put away my glove and became the youngest embittered cynic in the history of Western Massachusetts.</span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="Times New Roman""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Forging an identity apart from sports was daunting.</span></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">I wasn't a gifted student, and my miserable eyesight meant that I always sat in the front row of class, a sitting duck for teachers' questions and classmates' spitballs.</span></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">I didn't have the smarts to be teacher's pet, and was too shy to be class clown.</span></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">My age and social background ruled out delinquency and petty crime.</span></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">And while alienation and angst were hot topics in North Beach and Greenwich Village, they were seldom discussed by the ten-year-olds who hung around the Coke machine at Lincoln St. Texaco.</span></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">The only beatnik we knew was Maynard G. Krebs on </span></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Dobie Gilli</span></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">s</span></span></i></b><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">, </span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">and he was no more a viable role model than Nikita Khrushchev.</span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="Times New Roman""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Ironically, while desperately seeking an identity, I was growing one.</span></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">My lack of baseball skills along with the attendant derision led me to disdain physical activity of any kind.</span></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Spurred on by a twenty-three hour-a-day TV habit and voracious sweet tooth, I began to gain in girth what I lacked in self-esteem.</span></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">In sixth grade, I claimed the heavyweight crown of my class.</span></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="Times New Roman""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">From then on, I was "The Fat Kid," a role I coveted about as much as "Pariah Outfielder."</span></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">But a certain prestige did come with the pounds.</span></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">How many other boys my age had the stature to play William Howard Taft in historical dramas?</span></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">And while I was still shunned during ball games, I was in great demand for "Johnny-on-a-pony."</span></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">I couldn't lick any man in the place as John L. Sullivan had boasted, but I could do some real damage if I sat on him.</span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="Times New Roman"font-family:";font-size:14.0pt;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Still, the perks were few, and the bullies many.</span></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Because of my size, I stood out from the other losers on the playground like Joseph Stalin at a DAR picnic.</span></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">And with the first stirrings of adolescence, I discovered that sheer bulk is not highly prized in romance (at least not in the Western Hemisphere.)</span></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Today, unable to earn millions by playing a game eight months a year, I spend my time sifting through the detritus of a misspent youth trying to explain my dietary fluctuations and adult eccentricities - all because of that son of a bitch, Abner Doubleday.</span></span><br /></span></p> <!--EndFragment-->Jeff Brawerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13938964235215073371noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6018640651821833555.post-78810365471035727792009-07-29T11:55:00.000-07:002009-07-29T12:16:42.991-07:00COLONIAL THEME PARKS<!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=" ;font-family:'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">[This piece has nothing to do with the purported theme of the blog, but it's summer and Massachusetts is awash in colonial tourism. JB]</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=" ;font-family:'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">We Americans love our mythic history more than our actual history.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">This is understandable since real history is ambiguous and unpleasant while national myths are reassuring and optimistic.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">They are feel-good fantasies promulgated to boost civic pride and, like all myths ancient and modern, give insight into the national character without necessarily being true..</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">I have nothing against these myths provided that they are not passed off as actual history and more importantly, are not incarnated in "historical" recreation villages.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=" ;font-family:'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Perhaps it's insecurity about our country's short lifespan that makes us yearn for some theatrical embodiment of an idealized past.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Neapolitans have yet to set up </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Ye Olde Volcano Village</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> amid the Vesuvian ruins to reenact the natural disasters of first-century Rome.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">They take pride in the actual Pompeii and Herculaneum and constantly debate the trade-offs of restoration, conservation, and tourism.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">They prefer displaying the rock-encased bodies of the original inhabitants to having toga-clad actors run from imaginary showers of ash.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Americans, in contrast, will travel hundreds of miles to watch a bonneted high school girl churn butter just off Exit 9 of the Mass. Turnpike.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=" ;font-family:'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Old Sturbridge Village and Plimoth Plantation are two very big attractions on the East Coast colonial circuit.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">To be fair, these sites do have historical roots, and Sturbridge Village does have many buildings and artifacts that date back to the time frame they try to reanimate.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">The activities, crafts, and costumes are said to be accurate, and I don't question their scholarship.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">It's what isn't shown that bothers me.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=" ;font-family:'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Where, for example, are the recreations of 17th century surgery?</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">As a grade school student, I went on several field trips to these places, and I don't recall a single exhibit where a leg was amputated without anesthesia and cauterized with a hot iron.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">I don't remember hearing the blood-curdling screams that must have been common while undergoing the dentistry of yore.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">The staff may dress appropriately, but I bet they bathe more often than their colonial counterparts did.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">The smell of Mennen Speed Stick gives lie to the reality of Puritan-era hygiene.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=" ;font-family:'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">If the goal is to give the visitor a real feel for colonial life, forget about candle-making and weaving classes.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Hook them up to an ox-drawn plow and let them break up rocky fields for twelve hours.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=" ;font-family:'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">By ignoring the more distasteful elements, these sites minimize the actual hardships undergone by our American ancestors - well, perhaps </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">your</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> American ancestors as mine didn't arrive from Latvia until 1904.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">That they survived and prospered is a testament to their strength and resolve, and it is a disservice to their difficult and dangerous lives to pretend they can be encapsulated in theatrical displays, 9 AM to 5 PM, March through November.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">What about winter?</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">My understanding is that winters were particularly hard on these folks.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Perhaps a group of actors wearing insufficient period garb could demonstrate starving and freezing to death using a walk-in refrigerator.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=" ;font-family:'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">I don't want to be overly disingenuous about these places - they are first and foremost tourist sites with their own hardships, primarily economic.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">I know that they have to provide all the modern amenities to attract visitors and must balance authenticity with user-friendliness.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">This might explain the "Plimoth Cinema," an indie art house on the Plimoth Plantation site.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Because when I think of colonial America, the first thing that pops into my mind is Jean-Luc Godard.</span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <!--EndFragment-->Jeff Brawerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13938964235215073371noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6018640651821833555.post-1815808716954756812009-07-08T13:21:00.000-07:002009-07-08T19:17:55.553-07:00MOTIVATION II<!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none; text-autospace:none"><span style=";font-family:";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">About three or four weeks into a diet, the early withdrawal symptoms diminish or disappear.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">This means I no longer have a handy excuse for my innate irritability.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none; text-autospace:none"><span style=";font-family:";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">At this stage, if you are a confident, well-balanced person, you’re well on your way to happiness and better health.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">I don’t know who you are, but Godspeed.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">For the rest of us, there is a shift from physical to psychological hunger.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Nutritional piety has lost its power, and the reinforcement of others, the “Gee, you’ve lost weight” effect hasn’t yet arrived.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">We are in a whole new phase of the conflict.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none; text-autospace:none"><span style=";font-family:";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">The cause is simple.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">You can accustom your body to smaller quantities of better food, use your brain to justify it, and canonize yourself for the effort, but as you do, your id will grow more insistent in its primal mantra: “Eat as much as you want, of whatever you want, whenever you want it.”</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none; text-autospace:none"><span style=";font-family:";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">The id, or as I like to call him, “The Little Chazzer</span><a style="mso-endnote-id:edn" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=6018640651821833555&postID=181580871695475681#_edn1" name="_ednref" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">1</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">,” is the loudest and most belligerent of Freud’s mental triumvirate.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Until you decided to diet, he was in control of your eating.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Now he’s engaged in ruthless combat with your rational self-interest (the ego) and the demands and expectations of our weight-crazed society (the superego, or as I like to call her, “The Stern Governess.”)</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none; text-autospace:none"><span style=";font-family:";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">The Chazzer may be trouble, but he also makes life exciting.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">And what do we do?</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">We spend our lives beating him down him.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Everything from toilet training to obeying traffic lights is an effort to suppress his madcap sense of fun.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">I’m not opposed to restraint, mind you; society can’t function if its citizens are governed solely by their unbridled desires.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">But loading another set of restrictions onto our already over-regulated and and over-scheduled lives seems criminally repressive.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">It also infuriates the Chazzer and makes his demands more insistent.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">This conflict is the root of our angst.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none; text-autospace:none"><span style=";font-family:";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Not bad for a guy who barely passed Psych 1, eh?</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none; text-autospace:none"><span style=";font-family:";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">To maintain any diet, a way must be found to mollify the Chazzer.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">If he can’t eat whatever he wants, he must be offered something else to divert his single-mindedness and harness his boundless energy.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">In short, you’ve got to find him a hobby.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none; text-autospace:none"><span style=";font-family:";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">That used to be easy.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Cigarettes.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none; text-autospace:none"><span style=";font-family:";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Please understand that I am </span></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"><span style=";font-family:";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">not</span></span></i><span style=";font-family:";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> endorsing the use of tobacco.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">I myself have not smoked a cigarette since January of 1972, when a bout of bronchitis broke its magic spell.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">But in college, I smoked, and while I smoked, I was fanatic.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">After a shaky start learning the basics, mainly how not to puke, I embraced cigarettes with utter zeal, accelerating from 0 to 40 faster than a top-fuel dragster.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">And it wasn’t just for show; I inhaled…deeply, all the way to my toes.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none; text-autospace:none"><span style=";font-family:";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Not that I was immune to their stylish allure.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">During the ‘60s, many of us who reveled in the social freedom, political tumult, and “mind expansion,” of hippiedom, were put off by its treacly, feel-good philosophy.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">For us, there was the iconic Bogey, world-weary and cynical, with Ingrid Bergman or Lauren Bacall on his arm and a cigarette dangling from his lips.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Never mind that we looked ridiculous in snap-brim fedoras and bell-bottoms, our eyes burning from Camel smoke; we were, at least in our own minds, cool.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none; text-autospace:none"><span style=";font-family:";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">And thin.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Bolstered by faux-panache and nicotine, I smoked more and ate less.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Gradually, cigarettes surpassed, and then replaced food as my emotional tranquilizer.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">I puffed for serenity and ate for sustenance.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">The pounds came off.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">It was the perfect balance - provided, of course, you ignored the bit about diseased lungs.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none; text-autospace:none"><span style=";font-family:";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">I'm not bitter that I gave up smoking and with it, my last neutral relationship with eating.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Had I kept going, I wouldn't be able to tie my shoe without a two-week stay at Mass. General.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">But not a year has gone by since I quit that I haven't had two or three guilt-ridden dreams about smoking.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">And if the Surgeon General were to reverse himself tomorrow and announce that smoking isn't bad for your health, I'd be up to two packs by noon.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none; text-autospace:none"><span style=";font-family:";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">So, no id-appeasement from RJ Reynolds.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Then what?</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none; text-autospace:none"><span style=";font-family:";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Some diet experts advise a system of rewards as weight loss goals are met.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Among the most common suggestions are mini-vacations, such as a weekend in New York, and new clothes for your increasingly svelte physique.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">While sensible on the surface, this approach is fraught with potential disaster.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none; text-autospace:none"><span style=";font-family:";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">A weekend in New York?</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">In case the proponents of this approach hadn’t noticed, NYC is not only known for its theater and museums, but for its restaurants as well.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">There are thousands of them serving an unimaginable variety of food, and they are located prominently on every block beckoning the unwary with their siren charms.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">There are also battalions of food carts, the street whores of food desire.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Once, in one of my more depraved moments, I ate a Sabrett hot dog at every ten-block interval up 5th Avenue.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">There is simply no way to avoid temptation in this city.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Do you really want to test your resolve against the best hand-cut pastrami in the world?</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none; text-autospace:none"><span style=";font-family:";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">More insidious but equally disastrous is the idea of new clothes as a reward.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Initial joy at fitting into slimmer duds can turn quickly to despair when they bulge from even slight fluctuations in weight.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">If perchance you have a small lapse in your diet, they become an uncomfortable and very public reminder of your pitiful weakness.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Living under the tyranny of the scale is bad enough, but at least you don’t have to wear the damned thing.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none; text-autospace:none"><span style=";font-family:";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">As your diet progresses, more, and bigger rewards will be needed to achieve the same level of motivation.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">What started with small vacations and clothes can quickly become sports cars and yachts.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Basically, you’re soothing your food addiction by becoming a reward junkie.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">As your waistline shrinks, so will your wallet, and though you may be thin, you might also be on welfare.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none; text-autospace:none"><span style=";font-family:";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">There is a deeper problem with this system.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">If you’re going to reward yourself when you’re successful, it follows that you should punish yourself when you’re not.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">The logic is simple; ten pounds down gets you a weekend in New York, ten pounds up earns the same in solitary.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none; text-autospace:none"><span style=";font-family:";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">“C’mon warden, give a guy a break.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">I was starvin’.”</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none; text-autospace:none"><span style=";font-family:";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">“I’m sorry, Louie, you know the rules.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">That piece of danish just cost you a deuce in the hole.”</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none; text-autospace:none"><span style=";font-family:";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">What’s next? Law & Order: Weight Watchers Unit?</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none; text-autospace:none"><span style=";font-family:";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">The simple fact is that diets are not fun, and any strategy designed to hide that fact is doomed to fail.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">If you are the stoic sort, you’ll be able to live with this.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">If not, you can whine, complain, swear, make yourself and everyone around you miserable, but don’t pretend that this process is anything but an unpleasant system of denial.</span></span></p><div style="mso-element:endnote-list"> <hr align="left" size="1" width="33%"> <div style="mso-element:endnote" id="edn"> <p class="MsoEndnoteText"><a style="mso-endnote-id:edn" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=6018640651821833555&postID=181580871695475681#_ednref" name="_edn1" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">1</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> Yiddish for pig or glutton.</span></p> <p class="MsoEndnoteText"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></o:p></p> </div> </div> <!--EndFragment-->Jeff Brawerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13938964235215073371noreply@blogger.com1