Fat, we are, reminded once again, is bad for us. Not surprisingly, a new study shows that Americans eat far too much fat and it's a major cause of the myriad medical maladies that people suffer these days, mostly heart disease and cancer.
Fat is now considered the universal enemy of the human body, although it's been pretty good for Dr. Dean Ornish, who has several best-sellers about the dangers of consuming the flesh of animals, and the attendant "bad" cholesterol.
In the old days, fat wasn't so bad. The table wasn't complete without a stick of butter. Bacon fat was saved and stored in the fridge for reuse.
When I was a kid, we used to give greasy food to the dog because "it was good for his coat." But even at an early age I knew it wasn't good for my coat. I learned that after being punished for hiding fried onion rings in the pocket of the new blazer that I got for Easter.
The only thing worse for your heart than fat is the stress generated by reading the relentless news reports about how just about everything we eat kills us. Chinese food, Mexican food, popcorn, hot dogs and margarine - all deemed deadly.
But let's face it. Is anyone really surprised? Not even the bravest knosher really thinks he is going to get away with eating hot dogs on a regular basis without a metabolic penalty.
People who buy loge seats at the movies and insist on having popcorn drenched in hollandaise sauce know they're risking myocardial infarction even before the feature begins.
Chinese food was simply too good to be true.
The dangers of margarine are only a cruel joke on those who believed there was a substitute for butter. It turns out they would have been better off smearing Crisco on pieces of bread.
"Everything your parents told you was good for you turned out to be bad for you," says Woody Allen. "Milk, red meat, college."
I'm still stunned to learn that bran muffins are suppose to be bad for you. Big muffins, all bulbous and browned - resembling a mushroom picked at Chernobyl - that taste like furniture stuffing, mixed with mucilage and covered with a sweetened lacquer are as treacherous as a king cobra. The muffins have as much fat, it seems, as five McDonald's hamburgers.
Cruel, isn't it? This alleged cholesterol-lowering ballast turns out to be artery-blocking sludge, pulmonary paraffin, concrete in the capillaries. Wham, bam, thank you, bran.
I confess I'm old enough to recall when sunlight was suppose to be good for you. Remember the advertising slogan, "Sunshine Vitamin D"? Now we know "D" stands for "deadly."
Exposure to sunshine now falls in a nefarious category with botched breast implants, flesh-eating bugs, Eboli, E-coli, pets with plague, lead laden emissions, seeping selenium and Reality TV.
Experts warn, cheerfully, that most of the damage from the sun already has been done -- all before we reach the age of 14.
Now I might be in some cardiovascular peril due to a childhood fueled by french fries and doughnuts, but I must say it isn't likely I will suffer the effects of ultraviolet exposure. And I owe it all to horror movies.
As summer draws to a close, I think back on wondrous dark days as a youngster at my grandmother's house.
With the shades drawn to keep out the garish sun, I'd watch sci-fi and horror films on TV all afternoon. It was my education in classic creep show -- "Dracula," "The Wolf Man," and "The Mummy."
My brothers played ball in the sandlot by the river. But I was fat and pale and only enthusiastic about wrapping my face in my grandfather's Ace bandages that smelled like Absorbine Jr.
With hat and sunglasses, I could look pretty much like Claude Rains in "The Invisible Man."
"You're going to have nightmares," my grandmother would warn me. But I never did--not until I saw "On the Beach" -- the parable of worldwide nuclear annihilation. That movie was too real, too believable, and I had bad dreams for weeks. (To this day, I get the chills when I see a nuclear submarine come into the Bay under the Golden Gate Bridge--just like in the film.)
One day, my brothers discovered a new activity, to ride their bicycles behind a converted fire engine that sprayed mosquitoes with DDT. It belched great white clouds of pesticide, and they said it was great fun to fall behind on bikes and get lost in the weird smoke.
That got me out of the house like a shot. When the red roadster rolled around each day at dusk, I was there with a mob of neighborhood kids, breathing it all in, eyes running with copious tears of chemical irritation. Now, that's what I call fun.
Over the years, I've wondered what this may have done to my brothers and me. Perhaps I should donate my body to Union Carbide.
*****
When I think of summer days at the Jersey shore, I think of Midnight. Every lad and lassie should have a rabbit.
Mine was Midnight, jet black--not a trace of white or brown. All black. That was unusual, I heard my parents say. But I knew Midnight was special anyway.
He (or she) would go with me to school--I was in first grade-- and Midnight was a big hit. Pictures were displayed on the walls and a biography was prepared by the children. The bunny made me a bit of a celebrity, too, and I liked that.
"You and me, Smid," I'd say to the famous-in-the-classroom black rabbit, "we're going places."
Like most performing artists, Midnight had some bad habits.
He (let's just settle on "he") would like to nosh on my mother's new green carpet and leave little holes in it. Perhaps it resembled a lawn. Ruining the new carpet is about the worst thing you can do to a suburban housewife.
For this, Midnight was remanded to the downstairs recreation room during the nights--and kept out of the house during the days.
Heating can cost a fortune on the East Coast so the door to the rec room remained closed and the heat was turned off in the basement, where Midnight was kept. One night, one of those famous frosts came early. I dashed downstairs to find Midnight on the cold floor, stiff as a board. I mean stiff. You could have picked up the poor rigid beast and used him for a cricket mallet. If you dropped him, I fear he'd shatter.
I was hysterical. I accused my mother of lepus-ide. But wise woman she was, she got a heating pad. Within an hour, the rabbit was completely restored to life, with no apparent damage incurred by his cryonic experience.
But, ironically, it wasn't the cold that was Midnight's downfall--it was the heat.
Midnight loved my mother. He'd follow her all over the back yard as she'd hang up the wash. If she took a step, he'd take a step, just a few paces behind her. It was remarkable to watch.
The New Jersey summers can be as brutal as the winters. On a particularly sweltering afternoon, my mom was out in the yard with Midnight. One moment he was keeping up with her. In the next, old Smid was stretched out peacefully in the grass--for good.
With his black fur, the poor thing was exceptionally vulnerable to heat stroke.
My mother sobbed to my father on the phone while he was at work. She couldn't get the words out.
"What is it?" he asked, alarmed, of course. "Is it one of the kids?"
"No, no," mom wailed. "It's the rabbit! Midnight is dead."
"Oh," my father replied grimly. "I guess we'll have to tell Bruce."
And so, still at the Jersey Shore with my brothers, I was informed of the passing of Midnight, the famed black rabbitt, who gave me my first brush with show business, my first encounter with animal resuscitation, and my first experience with things that die.
We buried Midnight under the sycamore tree. That way he got plenty of shade.
Years later, when my older brother, Jack, returned from college on the summer break, he brought a rabbit with him. He called him Nigel.
I only mention this because Nigel, too, ended up having an out-of-body, near-death, experience. But this wasn't caused by the cold.
Nigel--like all rabbits--was fascinated by green things. He managed to get into my brother's suitcase, and eat all of his high-octane marijuana that Jack had brought back from Oklahoma. Yes, Nigel gobbled up the entire ounce or two of the Shawnee Wowee or whatever it was.
The rabbit remained unconscious for a few days. He finally awoke and, boy -- was he hungry.
It was all we could do to keep him away from my mother's green carpet.
###
Sunday, July 12, 2009
a piece from the archive, ten years on now, it's still "happiness is just a cup of joe" ..
Norm Howard was listening to KCBS, caught a bit of the debate over the now ill-footed, I mean ill-fated, plan to erect an 18-foot-tall sculpture of a human foot at the foot of Mission Street, near San Francisco's famed Ferry Building.
Says Norm, "A very intense woman explained that she was opposed to the sculpture on the grounds that it very obviously depicted a 'male, Caucasian foot.'"
How she could discern this from a stainless steel structure, I have no idea.
At any rate, the Board of Supervisors, caught in a toe jam, got cold feet and es-shoed the $500,000 project.
If anyone wondered if San Francisco suffers from chronic provincialism, then one need not look further than seeing how Oprah Winfrey got two parking tickets during a visit here last week -- making front page news.
The real item, of course, is how she summarily handed the tickets over to Willie Brown so he could "fix" them. But City Hall says the mayor does not use his office to "fix" tickets, he simply pays them. Sure, he can afford it, but Oprah might have spent a little of her lunch money on purchasing a one-day parking amnesty for the whole city. Now, that would have been classy.
Deb Jarrett, who works in the Marina, has been touched by the pungent scent of politics: "I was in an elevator with Mayor Brown the other day," reports Deb. "I swear he smelled like a French whorehouse."
Goes to show that some things do, after all, stick to Teflon Willie.
Nice line from Coppola's "Godfather III," on the telly this week. Al Pacino, as Michael Corleone, mutters, "Politics and crime. They're the same thing."
Paleotologists, digging in Ethiopia, have found what could be evidence of the "missing link" between monkeys and mankind.
Researchers in the region reportedly discovered the rusty remains of a Thighmaster among fossils of ancient apes. "As for the cell phone," explained a flustered Dr. Anthony Farouche, "one of us may have dropped it there."
As a skeptic, I know that coffee was discovered in Ethiopia when herders noticed the goats were staying up all night after chewing on the coffee plants. Maybe the remains of these subhumans are really people who couldn't get their hands on any caffeine. I mean, who's really human until we get that first cup of coffee? Well, it's just a thought.
Ulrica Hume has a nice, new book out, "San Francisco in a Teacup," about where to find a nice place that serves a nice afternoon tea -- or tea anytime.
Bob Hope talks about one of the secrets of his longevity, "When I was touring in vaudeville, I never would go to the greasy spoons to eat -- it was always tea rooms."
Old ski-nose saw many a performer turned into a colonic casualty from eating in those domains of ptomaine.
The inimitable Dave Burgin, formerly the editor of the San Francisco Examiner, the Oakland Tribune, the Atlanta Constitution and innumerable other dailies, has re-emerged as editor/publisher at Woodford Publications, a SF-based house that's handling Barnaby Conrad's excellently grand art book on John Register and Hank Greenwald's autobiography. Hank was the voice of the San Francisco Giants ball club
The Greenwald memoir made the front page this week after the Giants organization took umbrage over some of Hank's disparaging comments about the team.
Burgin says he just doesn't understand why the Giants would ban the book from their Dugout stores. "Can you imagine?" Dave writes. "Killing 500 copies of Hank's book in the Dugout stores, then accusing us of 'just trying to sell books.' Unclear on the concept."
All in all, it spells hefty publicity for the book. That's a topic Dave handles brilliantly. He very nearly orchestrated Herb Caen's defection from the Chronicle to the Examiner back in the 1980s -- but some in-house politics nixed the deal. Sure would have changed the landscape of the newspaper business here.
Yes, old-timers will recall that Caen left the Chron and worked at the Ex for eight years, back in the 1950s.
NATO looks awfully silly as it puts on its 50th birthday party while this agency of European stability plans a ground war in Yugoslavia.
Organizers downplayed the festiviities. The cork was kept in the Dom Perignon while delegates secretly sipped the Sterno located under the hot hors d'oevres.
Yes, the occasion was a grim one but let's look on the bright side: they won't have to have another one for another 50 years -- or never -- whichever comes first.
Well, have a swell weekend. If you plan to see a movie, check out "Lost & Found," with David Spade. New York Times critic Stephen Holden calls it "a rancid, little nothing of a movie." A deadly ringing endorsement.
Cheers from the City by the Bay -- Bellingham, April 23, 1999
Says Norm, "A very intense woman explained that she was opposed to the sculpture on the grounds that it very obviously depicted a 'male, Caucasian foot.'"
How she could discern this from a stainless steel structure, I have no idea.
At any rate, the Board of Supervisors, caught in a toe jam, got cold feet and es-shoed the $500,000 project.
If anyone wondered if San Francisco suffers from chronic provincialism, then one need not look further than seeing how Oprah Winfrey got two parking tickets during a visit here last week -- making front page news.
The real item, of course, is how she summarily handed the tickets over to Willie Brown so he could "fix" them. But City Hall says the mayor does not use his office to "fix" tickets, he simply pays them. Sure, he can afford it, but Oprah might have spent a little of her lunch money on purchasing a one-day parking amnesty for the whole city. Now, that would have been classy.
Deb Jarrett, who works in the Marina, has been touched by the pungent scent of politics: "I was in an elevator with Mayor Brown the other day," reports Deb. "I swear he smelled like a French whorehouse."
Goes to show that some things do, after all, stick to Teflon Willie.
Nice line from Coppola's "Godfather III," on the telly this week. Al Pacino, as Michael Corleone, mutters, "Politics and crime. They're the same thing."
Paleotologists, digging in Ethiopia, have found what could be evidence of the "missing link" between monkeys and mankind.
Researchers in the region reportedly discovered the rusty remains of a Thighmaster among fossils of ancient apes. "As for the cell phone," explained a flustered Dr. Anthony Farouche, "one of us may have dropped it there."
As a skeptic, I know that coffee was discovered in Ethiopia when herders noticed the goats were staying up all night after chewing on the coffee plants. Maybe the remains of these subhumans are really people who couldn't get their hands on any caffeine. I mean, who's really human until we get that first cup of coffee? Well, it's just a thought.
Ulrica Hume has a nice, new book out, "San Francisco in a Teacup," about where to find a nice place that serves a nice afternoon tea -- or tea anytime.
Bob Hope talks about one of the secrets of his longevity, "When I was touring in vaudeville, I never would go to the greasy spoons to eat -- it was always tea rooms."
Old ski-nose saw many a performer turned into a colonic casualty from eating in those domains of ptomaine.
The inimitable Dave Burgin, formerly the editor of the San Francisco Examiner, the Oakland Tribune, the Atlanta Constitution and innumerable other dailies, has re-emerged as editor/publisher at Woodford Publications, a SF-based house that's handling Barnaby Conrad's excellently grand art book on John Register and Hank Greenwald's autobiography. Hank was the voice of the San Francisco Giants ball club
The Greenwald memoir made the front page this week after the Giants organization took umbrage over some of Hank's disparaging comments about the team.
Burgin says he just doesn't understand why the Giants would ban the book from their Dugout stores. "Can you imagine?" Dave writes. "Killing 500 copies of Hank's book in the Dugout stores, then accusing us of 'just trying to sell books.' Unclear on the concept."
All in all, it spells hefty publicity for the book. That's a topic Dave handles brilliantly. He very nearly orchestrated Herb Caen's defection from the Chronicle to the Examiner back in the 1980s -- but some in-house politics nixed the deal. Sure would have changed the landscape of the newspaper business here.
Yes, old-timers will recall that Caen left the Chron and worked at the Ex for eight years, back in the 1950s.
NATO looks awfully silly as it puts on its 50th birthday party while this agency of European stability plans a ground war in Yugoslavia.
Organizers downplayed the festiviities. The cork was kept in the Dom Perignon while delegates secretly sipped the Sterno located under the hot hors d'oevres.
Yes, the occasion was a grim one but let's look on the bright side: they won't have to have another one for another 50 years -- or never -- whichever comes first.
Well, have a swell weekend. If you plan to see a movie, check out "Lost & Found," with David Spade. New York Times critic Stephen Holden calls it "a rancid, little nothing of a movie." A deadly ringing endorsement.
Cheers from the City by the Bay -- Bellingham, April 23, 1999
Wednesday, July 08, 2009
Elegy for the Tragically Unhip
When I got a rejection slip from a trendy, au courant magazine the other day, I immediately went off to see my friend Anne Masarweh, whom I often consult on matters of coolness, hipness and other vagaries of fashion.
Anne knows these things. After all, she runs a hip, cool clothing store on San Francisco's Grant Avenue called wearEver. Clever name. Whatever. As you walk in the door, you find a conspicuous display of the latest issue of Details magazine, that arbiter of what's cool, the oracle of 20-something style.
"You're just not weird enough," Anne said as she handed the thank-you-but-no-thanks letter back to me.
Ms. Masarweh is a little unusual in the sense that she's always kind, and certainly diplomatic.
But I knew the truth. She didn't have to spell it out for me. I just don't have the quality that is necessary to be part of contemporary culture. It's called "attitude."
Attitude is the key these days. I know I'm getting old because I can remember when you needed an adjective before the word to convey its meaning, that is, "good attitude" and "bad attitude." Plenty of times, in my shoddy youth, I was chided by one authority or another with, "You have a bad attitude, Bruce."
This assessment was always accompanied by a warning, such as, "You're going to walk a straight line from now on" or "Better turn over a new leaf" and that sort of thing. That's when a bad attitude was generally accepted as a bad thing -- insubordinate, intemperate, and incorrigible.
Of course, I used to think anarchy was pretty romantic, too. That was before we actually had it. Anarchy is no longer romantic because it is the commonplace. It fell into the wrong hands: everybody's.
Today's attitude is a mixture of anarchy, and narcissism. The anarchy comes from the stunning lowering of standards. The narcissism comes from the justification that "we don't know anything and we don't have to know anything. That's good enough for us."
It has crept into the culture. The new radio station calls itself "radio with attitude." What does that mean? It means that the talent on the air has nothing worth listening to, so the host resorts to shouting. Often it's an attack on safe targets like old white guys. That's attitude from the left. The right wing also has discovered attitude. Rush Limbaugh's search-and-destroy skill on the airwaves made a difference in the political playground.
It's style over truth. Republicans even played one-upmanship with feminists and borrowed their term "empowerment" to name their GOP channel on cable, National Empowerment Television. That's attitude.
It has crept into sports with the "I don't need to be a role model" sort of thing and the celebrating that goes on when a player scores while his team trails hopelessly by four touchdowns.
It has crept into advertising, where the California lottery ads boast that getting a winning ticket is like taking credit for someone else's joke (I'm a little touchy about that) or brings one all the exhilaration of "using a postage stamp all over again."
The message is that getting away with something, at the expense of someone else, is the key to success.
Attitude is thriving in American politics. A legislator on Capitol Hill calls the president of the United States, a "scumbag." And the man who occupies 1600 Pennsylvania has trouble telling the truth -- even with cue cards.
Yes, life is difficult, but it doesn't have to be uncivil.
Of course, if M. Scott Peck tried to publish his "The Road Less Traveled" today, the first line, "Life is difficult..." would probably be changed to "Life really sucks, man ..."
It's sad to see people with class and elegance pushed aside.
On C-SPAN, I saw a group of old white guys paying tribute to Charles Kuralt, not long before he died.
Kuralt was roasted by Ed Yoder, Calvin Trillin, Andy Rooney, and Bill Moyers. Just a bunch of tired old codgers wallowing about in civility and eloquence.
"There's something to be said for plainness," Kuralt once wrote.
"And I might add," Moyers continued, "there's something to be said for grace, humility, and humor in a medium growing crude, trivial, and tabloid before our very eyes. Something to be said as well for Penstaff's Gas Station and Poem Factory, for chats with Wahoo McDaniel and Tiger Olsen, and stories of lumberjacks and gandy-dancers, and beer can collectors. Something to be said for news of maple leaves turning and wild mustangs running, and magpies taking to the wing. Something to be said for saluting the minds of the scientist, the soul of the poet, the sound of the flute, and the faith of the believer's heart.
"Something to be said of victimless wit and wisdom that is humble. And something to be said for words, clear words and honest, that get it just right. Something to be said for being reminded that the ordinary endures and is good, and is us."
There's also something to be said for saying something.
Oh, well. I guess Anne is right: I shouldn't worry about the editors at the hip mag, bless their pop culture, pea-picking, post-pubescent hearts.
Besides, one of these days Gwyneth Paltrow's going to be on the cover of Modern Maturity. You wait and see. She's already hip to that.
###
Anne knows these things. After all, she runs a hip, cool clothing store on San Francisco's Grant Avenue called wearEver. Clever name. Whatever. As you walk in the door, you find a conspicuous display of the latest issue of Details magazine, that arbiter of what's cool, the oracle of 20-something style.
"You're just not weird enough," Anne said as she handed the thank-you-but-no-thanks letter back to me.
Ms. Masarweh is a little unusual in the sense that she's always kind, and certainly diplomatic.
But I knew the truth. She didn't have to spell it out for me. I just don't have the quality that is necessary to be part of contemporary culture. It's called "attitude."
Attitude is the key these days. I know I'm getting old because I can remember when you needed an adjective before the word to convey its meaning, that is, "good attitude" and "bad attitude." Plenty of times, in my shoddy youth, I was chided by one authority or another with, "You have a bad attitude, Bruce."
This assessment was always accompanied by a warning, such as, "You're going to walk a straight line from now on" or "Better turn over a new leaf" and that sort of thing. That's when a bad attitude was generally accepted as a bad thing -- insubordinate, intemperate, and incorrigible.
Of course, I used to think anarchy was pretty romantic, too. That was before we actually had it. Anarchy is no longer romantic because it is the commonplace. It fell into the wrong hands: everybody's.
Today's attitude is a mixture of anarchy, and narcissism. The anarchy comes from the stunning lowering of standards. The narcissism comes from the justification that "we don't know anything and we don't have to know anything. That's good enough for us."
It has crept into the culture. The new radio station calls itself "radio with attitude." What does that mean? It means that the talent on the air has nothing worth listening to, so the host resorts to shouting. Often it's an attack on safe targets like old white guys. That's attitude from the left. The right wing also has discovered attitude. Rush Limbaugh's search-and-destroy skill on the airwaves made a difference in the political playground.
It's style over truth. Republicans even played one-upmanship with feminists and borrowed their term "empowerment" to name their GOP channel on cable, National Empowerment Television. That's attitude.
It has crept into sports with the "I don't need to be a role model" sort of thing and the celebrating that goes on when a player scores while his team trails hopelessly by four touchdowns.
It has crept into advertising, where the California lottery ads boast that getting a winning ticket is like taking credit for someone else's joke (I'm a little touchy about that) or brings one all the exhilaration of "using a postage stamp all over again."
The message is that getting away with something, at the expense of someone else, is the key to success.
Attitude is thriving in American politics. A legislator on Capitol Hill calls the president of the United States, a "scumbag." And the man who occupies 1600 Pennsylvania has trouble telling the truth -- even with cue cards.
Yes, life is difficult, but it doesn't have to be uncivil.
Of course, if M. Scott Peck tried to publish his "The Road Less Traveled" today, the first line, "Life is difficult..." would probably be changed to "Life really sucks, man ..."
It's sad to see people with class and elegance pushed aside.
On C-SPAN, I saw a group of old white guys paying tribute to Charles Kuralt, not long before he died.
Kuralt was roasted by Ed Yoder, Calvin Trillin, Andy Rooney, and Bill Moyers. Just a bunch of tired old codgers wallowing about in civility and eloquence.
"There's something to be said for plainness," Kuralt once wrote.
"And I might add," Moyers continued, "there's something to be said for grace, humility, and humor in a medium growing crude, trivial, and tabloid before our very eyes. Something to be said as well for Penstaff's Gas Station and Poem Factory, for chats with Wahoo McDaniel and Tiger Olsen, and stories of lumberjacks and gandy-dancers, and beer can collectors. Something to be said for news of maple leaves turning and wild mustangs running, and magpies taking to the wing. Something to be said for saluting the minds of the scientist, the soul of the poet, the sound of the flute, and the faith of the believer's heart.
"Something to be said of victimless wit and wisdom that is humble. And something to be said for words, clear words and honest, that get it just right. Something to be said for being reminded that the ordinary endures and is good, and is us."
There's also something to be said for saying something.
Oh, well. I guess Anne is right: I shouldn't worry about the editors at the hip mag, bless their pop culture, pea-picking, post-pubescent hearts.
Besides, one of these days Gwyneth Paltrow's going to be on the cover of Modern Maturity. You wait and see. She's already hip to that.
###
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