Steel-hard abs and other anatomical enhancements

On every cover of Men’s Health there is some version of how to get super-strong abdominal muscles. You could write the headlines yourself: Build a bullet-proof gut…Make your abs into a wall of iron. This is the manifesto of men’s magazines. I must have missed something because I thought narcissim had to do with your features such as the shape of your nose, a strong jaw, a wonderful smile or heaven forbid, your IQ. Of course that demands some genetic predisposition. But Men’s Health is a reverse Dorian Grey: the readers age quickly and the magazine retains its youth and vitality. As Scott Fitzgerald said so knowingly: “the greatest thing life can give you is youth”. How many men are like Jack LaLanne, physically fit into their 90’s? Not very many. Yet, hope springs eternal despite the fact that the only six packs in most guys’ lives are in the fridge not the torso.
And then there are the pages devoted to sexually stimulating pinups, pharmacy and STD. Don’t know those letters? It used to be called syphilis, clap and gonorrhea. But STD (sexually transmitted disease) sounds better, The ads and editorial are so insistent that I’m surprised there isn’t a ruler on the page to measure your prowess. Since nearly 30% or all men suffer from PE (premature ejaculation) just keep turning the pages to some overpriced cologne or after shave ($35 per ounce for 15c worth of scent). Hey, here’s an idea, open the sample fold on the page and swipe it across your…no, never mind. As Dave Barry says in his new book, “I’ll mature when I’m dead”. The only person I ever knew who subscribed to Men’s Health was a 60 year old guy who was 150 lbs. overweight and couldn’t run a mile in 10 years. He was happily married with two fine kids. What ever was he looking for? Freud didn’t know what women wanted. Better make that men, too

Barry Zito, Millionaire pitcher and bystander

The World Series starts tonight, but without Barry Zito in the Giants lineup. He was kept off the roster for the National League championships which is surprising since he has a contract worth $126 million. Actually it’s not that surprising since the overpaid and underachieving athlete is the new face of sports.
It all started in hockey, of all places, when Derek Sanderson, a journeyman player with the Boston Bruins jumped to the new WHA for $2 million, the first million dollar contract in sports. The WHA folded, Sanderson blew his money and we moved on to baseball where the Angels signed Joe Rudi for $2 million. I asked an executive with the Angels what was so special about Rudi and he said “he’s just an ordinary ballplayer but the team wanted him”. And of course it grew from there until there were 1000 athletes with million dollar contracts. The Angels seem terminally suited to this when they signed Mark Langston in 1989 to a big contract. He went 8 and 13 and one of the sports writers quipped, “if they wanted 8 and 13 they should have kept Urbano Lugo (a lowly paid player). They signed Mo Vaughn to a $60 million contract. He did nothing and was gone in a few years. The Vancouver Canucks signed Mark Messier for big money. He didn’t break a sweat when playing. What does it mean? It means that the agents are smarter than the owners. After all, the billionaire owners aren’t at practice, or in the dugout or on the bench. They’re too busy acting out their ego trips in the luxury boxes. And to think that once upon a time Ted Williams asked for a smaller contract because he felt he’d had a bad year.
I admire the Giants for benching Zito. He had a lousy season and never seemed to get beyond the 4th inning after giving up his trademark home runs. The best statement I heard was Coach Bruce Bochy saying, after the Giants won the pennant, “Not bad for a bunch of castoffs and misfits”. More hungry misfits mean better baseball.

Note: My thanks to Roland Zapata of Portland Oregon who did the research for this blog.

We're too dumb to be governed

Unlike my hero, George Orwell, I’m not very political. I’m a conservative but not a Republican, a liberal but not a Democrat; I’ve always been an independent. This probably comes from my family who never voted in a single election, because, as my father once said, “they’re all bums and crooks”.
He would be doubly vindicated with this 2010 Midterm election. We’ve come a long way down from Thomas Jefferson’s “Obedience to conscience is obedience to God” to Christine O’Donnell’s “I’m not a witch”. But, as historian Kevin Phillips says, “We’re in the era of second-raters”. Indeed.
Here in Nevada we have a certified dummy running for the Senate on the Republican ticket. She’s actually a third-rater. She says a lot of stupid things but the one that made me mad was when she was asked how she would deal with the wars we’re fighting. She replied, “I’d follow the General’s advice”. There’s no thought or leadership in that statement. I’ve just finished Andrew Bacevich’s book “Washington Rules”. It exposes the Pentagon’s plan for perpetual war. The one we’re now fighting is called “the long war”. How does this thing end? It doesn’t!
In 1984 Orwell has Winston Smith say that the only hope is the proles, his word for the proletariat. Nevertheless the Party always wins. Who knew that the tyrant in the US was not a person but an institution such as the Pentagon.
Don’t worry; I’m not so cynical that I won’t vote on Nov. 2. I’m still a loyal citizen.

Radio Daze

I was on my way to a Las Vegas radio station this week to be interviewed as the host of a new talk show. The station loved my idea, loved me and I thought I was on my way to a new career as the voice of reason when they casually asked me who I was bringing in as my sponsor. Me? Can’t I have some of your sponsors? Why of course not. I could pay for the show out of my own pocket. Isn’t that a great business model? Goodbye KRAP.

Radio was drained of its revenue when entertainment switched to television. AM is all talk now, and talk is cheap. If you want music it’s on FM. When I listen to AM now it could be 1953 or even 1943. It’s still weather, news and sports with sponsors coming and going to the accompaniment of horns, buzzers and whistles, but today with a very crooked spine.

I listened very carefully to the Mike Huckabee Show: out with Obama, lower taxes, kill all liberals, everything said in generalities. You could get a better political discussion in a bar and certainly in a college bull session.

Marshall McLuhan, the guru of media, called radio “the tribal drum”. It’s not for literate people and it’s not a thinking medium, that’s why it worked so well for Hitler. McLuhan added that this is in the very nature of the media to turn people and society into a rigid echo chamber of their own thoughts. That Hitler came into political existence at all is directly owing to radio, McLuhan said, and that goes for Rush Limbaugh as well.

A line from Romeo & Juliet sums up today's radio: "It speaks, and yet says nothing."

The time I met Tony Curtis

It was a “premiere” (if you can call it that) in a downtown movie house called The Vogue in Vancouver BC. The film was called “Johnny Stool Pigeon” which I’m sure you’ve never heard of (Curtis made 185 films!). This was 1949 and the only reason I was there was to gawk at the real star of the film, Dan Duryea (you’ve probably never heard of him either), but he had been the tank driver in the 1943 war movie “Sahara”, one of my favorite wartime films (along with “Desperate Journey”. Without checking with Stephen Hawking my definition of a star is a physical phenomena that attracts people like me. I begged my parents to take me to Tommy Dorsey’s Casino Gardens in LA so I could meet Danny Kaye. I once passed Marilyn Maxwell on Hollywood Boulevard and ran around the block so I could pass her again. As time went on, the stars moved more and more out of sight, or were only seen from behind the barriers. I did see Rock Hudson once in 1953 in a very informal setting at a showing of “Kiss Me Kate”. He was in the lobby tossing popcorn kernels to a young man. The old Hollywood was the best Hollywood and Tony Curtis exemplified it. He would show up at the Bellagio in Vegas very often and meet and greet people on the casino floor. He was a real star then, now and forever.

Bizarro reigns in Starbucks

A guest blog by Carolyn Neubauer, a musician and theatrical producer who lives in Vancouver, Washington

To have had a senseless acid-throwing attack in broad daylight that had such horrific results was a huge shock to the whole community here in Vancouver. Large posters of the woman appeared in bank lobbies and supermarkets, and many people gave money to aid the poor victim.

So you can imagine the shock to find this was a self-inflicted attack, purportedly by, oh yes, a person of black skin. To me, it's still a tragedy of the first order, because this girl/woman is very sick to have done this to herself . Acid on the face? C'mon! Of course many people were hurt by this hoax, but the fact still remains that this was done by a mentally ill person, identified so even by her family. So far, she has entered a not-guilty plea, based on mental imbalance, and has agreed to enter into treatment. Who knows what the ultimate end will be? She has also agreed to return the money donated to her.

So, the world isn't crazy enough politically? Bizarro reigns.