Dietary thoughts on weight gain, cannibals

(692 words)

I like to ask fitness fanatics if tragic circumstances required it which part of themselves would they eat first.

This is particularly fun with vegetarians.

Yes, self-cannibalization gives new depth to the old you-are-what-you-eat adage.

I’m spending a lot of time thinking about weight gain these days. I tell myself I’m still working off my winter paunch. But I’m becoming less sure about just which winter. I fear my paunch is becoming permanent.

I did eat a lot this winter, most of it over five glorious binge days in Las Vegas.

The weight gain becomes more noticeable when the summer shorts and slacks come out and once-roomy garments are uncomfortably snug. 

Drives me crazy. I detest almost anything that restricts my movement, the exception being family obligations which often restrict me from staying out drinking beer and eating pizza when there’s a good game on.

Health nuts might scoff, but I think I have a pretty decent diet.

Breakfast is usually a banana or an apple. Once a week I get one donut or one breakfast sandwich from McDonald’s. 

Lunch is almost always a big salad and a sandwich or a piece of fish on the grill.

And my wife, who usually helms supper, is admirable about making sure we eat healthy.

I probably eat burgers or something fried at The Pond about three times a week (two lunch or maybe one dinner).

Is it all that beer, you may be wondering. Yes, I drink a lot of beer, but I always urinate a near equal measure so in my mind that can’t be it.

My father was a tubby gent, but he drank three or four beers each night. I do not drink beer at home, preferring to drink maybe a dozen or so at the bar two or three nights a week.

That sounds like a lot, but I stretch them out over about six hours so I consider it wise moderation, albeit wise moderation in reckless excess.

Either way, I’m not giving up my happy bar nights so let’s just drop it.

Exercise?

I probably walk two or so miles about four or five days a week. It’s not habitual, but I do 50 push-ups probably three times a week. I should do more sit-ups, but they’re a real grind and anytime I lay flat my mind automatically shifts to nap mode. 

So why am I unhappy with my physique?

I guess it’s because I can’t get the rest of me to resemble my calves.

I spend a lot of time with my bare legs crossed up on my desk. It’s my reading pose.

When it’s time to turn a page or just take a look around, I often spy my calves, nicely toned from walking, and say, “Man, you’ve really got some nice legs. They’re gorgeous.”

And I do say this right out loud, and often follow it up with a polite, “Thank you. That’s very kind of you to notice.”

My body may be in decent shape, but my mental health from working all alone for so many years is an absolute mess.

I remember thinking a cannibal would go right for those calves. 

(Joke break: What do you call a cannibal who’s careful about not over-eating? A cannibbler.)

That’s why I’m so dismayed about my gut. 

Even worse is when I gaze in the mirror and see the Rodell neck.

I first noticed it on my Dad when he was about my age and we were golfing on a breezy day. He turned in profile and I remember seeing his neck flapping like some  careless sailor had forgotten to secure the spinnaker.

I remember recoiling in horror and thinking, man, if I inherit that freakish abnormality I’ll wind up spending all my retirement dough on drawers full of turtlenecks.

Unfortunately, it was all I inherited from the old man.

So I’m not too concerned about a middle aged spread. That can be addressed.

The real problem is all this useless fat up above my shoulders.

But if you’ve read this far, that’s nothing you didn’t already know.

Related . . .

My hands are beautiful to behold

Extreme Vegas

Monkeying around with bananas

Our wills, our ways; prayers for Oklahoma

(661 words)

Val and I are in the process of updating our wills. All we have to do is sign them.

The attorney who’s doing them is our friend Chuck. I see him practically every day at The Pond for either lunch or Happy Hour drinks.

So now after about a month of the documents gathering dust in his office, he’s starting to hound me about coming in to take care of business.

What’s the rush, I say. It’s not like we’re going to die today or tomorrow.

I wonder how many people in Oklahoma woke up feeling similarly arrogant about their mortality yesterday morning.

For all its many splendors, this life is often just a horrendous crap shoot.

I was watching the news last night as our 12-year-old daughter was away at a two-night all-class school camp. She called at 9 p.m. begging us to come get her. She’s never once been away overnight without either me or her mother.

I resist the urge to get in my car to break the land speed record to come and rescue her from having to endure even a single night without coddling. 

I go to bed praying she’ll make it through a difficulty that seems silly to world-weary adults, but momentous to young children who’ve known nothing but love. I worry bullies might detect her tears and target her for teasing.

Many parents in Oklahoma today would, I’m sure, envy my trivial concerns.

The tornado’s complete demolition of elementary schools is striking.

We have in the last year done much to fortify our elementary schools against monsters who come to kill. We pray to God He’ll keep our children safe in places we send our children. 

I hear stricken Oklahomans saying the destruction is simply God’s will. I wonder where they get the faith.

I wonder if I’m praying to the right God.

I remind myself of the need to get to Chuck’s to tidy up a different kind of will, one imbued with many god-like declarations.

If, God forbid, we die tomorrow, our wills will instruct responsible executors about the division of our possessions and where and with whom our children will reside so they will be raised with requisite love and wisdom. Given the daily drumbeat of gloom, it all seems so pretentiously assured.

More and more it seems like earth’s anthem should be “Eve of Destruction.”

It’s probably the most hopeless and sarcastic protest song ever recorded. Barry McGuire sang the P.F. Sloan song best in 1965, an era renown for senseless killing, religious wars and racial injustice.

Throw in a gargantuan dose of climate change that unleashes monster storms in New Jersey and Oklahoma and 48-years-later it still plays like an Auto-Tune version of the nightly news.

I wonder how anyone will ever want to live again in a place that’s been so thoroughly scoured by wind that even the debris is in another zip code.

I wonder how parents who kissed their children goodbye for the last time can ever go on.

I wonder how orphaned elementary school kids will endure this world without primary love.

I think how tonight it’s again essential for all of us to hug our young children even tighter than we did the day before.

It’s something Val and I cannot with our first born do.

See, we’re leaving Josie at camp a second night and challenging her to defy biological imperatives and in essence grow a pair.

We’re hoping she’ll come back wiser and more worldly, and with the understanding that for most of us life is a series of challenges we can either overcome or let defeat us.

It’s something we all need to remember as we make our way through this often cruel world where we seem to be forever at the mercy of the worst of the wolves and the weather.

I guess moving forward is just a matter of finding the will.

Related . . .

I cry, I fart; more thoughts on Newtown

Boston bombing: I read the news today, oh, boy . . . 

How old will you be in heaven?

Bravo! Our night at the symphony

(667 words)

My wife prepared me for a night at the symphony by assuring me I’d be enthralled with the conductor.

“Oh, he’s magnificent,” she said. “Very charismatic.”

She was correct. Daniel Meyer, artistic director of the Westmoreland Symphony Orchestra, is all that and more.

Heck, his hair alone was magnificent and charismatic. It struts. It shimmies. It cavorts. It moves like it is being told what to do by some demanding unseen conductor determined to wring every last bit of performance out of each sweeping hair.

A friend of ours had given us four free tickets to the Greensburg symphony’s performance of “Around the World with Disney” program. The concert features symphonic recitations of music from “Beauty and the Beast,” “The Lion King,” “Mary Poppins,” and other tuneful Disney classics.

It was thoroughly enjoyable, although my wife kept asking me what she should do to keep the 6-year-old from getting bored. She got mad when I kept suggesting she just give Lucy a straw, a piece of paper and just let the spitballs fly, as sure a cure for boredom as there’s ever been.

Symphonies have a difficult time maintaining the visual attention of those of us who’ve seen Tommy Lee play the Motley Crue drums upside down.

That’s why the highly-regarded Meyer is such a compelling asset. He has conducted all over the world and is to be applauded for his musical outreach to youth with programs like the one we enjoyed Saturday.

He truly is a great performer in a discipline few of us understand. He has his back to us the entire show and must know that many uncouth louts like myself are sneering about how we could do that.

Understand, we couldn’t accurately ring -- ding! ding! ding! -- the little silver triangle on cue, yet we believe we could conduct the entire orchestra.

Conductors are the rock stars of classical music, an analogy that must make legendary maestros like Herbert von Karajan cringe at being lumped in with the likes of, well, Tommy Lee of Motley Crue.

Yet, conducting a symphony is the most satirized role in all of music. “Seinfeld” did it with “The Maestro” episode. Bugs Bunny raised the baton several times and consider yourself lucky if you recall any of the late Victor Borge’s hilarious performances.

As it was explained to me, the conductor’s job is the most important in the entire orchestra, even though he doesn’t play a single note.

The paradox is no one playing instruments ever seems to look up at him for even a single beat, as all their eyes are glued to their sheet music. Yet, I couldn’t take my eyes off of him.

He was a tornado of metronomic commotion. Baton flying, he had an air of such supreme poise and confidence I don’t think any of us would have noticed if with his left hand he’d taken out a smart phone and deftly texted a buddy about the score of the Pirate game.

He oozed virtuosity.

That kind of stage presence takes a lot of brass. Meyer had that in spades, not to mention in tubas, trumpets, French horns and trombones.

I counted 45 musicians on stage, just a shade under the number on the 53-man roster of a professional football team.

The coincidence gave me insight into the value of a conductor.

In football, no one watches the coaches, but everyone watches the team. It’s almost the exact opposite at the symphony.

The analogy stuck with me the rest of the evening.

I had a wonderful time and always thrill any chance I get to see fellow humans who’ve practices long and hard excel at their art. It’s something I hope our children learn to appreciate.

We stayed for the whole thing.

I wouldn’t have had it any other way.

I wanted to see if the evening would end with two of the big guys from percussion rushing up and dumping a big bucket of Gatorade over the Meyer’s head.

Related . . .

Grammy thoughts: Recall all music since 1986

Chris Rodell, Art Historian

Horse race re-run: Foolin' 'round in the ol' breed barn

Another day of Triple Crown pageantry, another opportunity for me to re-run an old horse racing post. This one ran exactly four years ago today.

Looks like a beautiful day here in Western Pennsylvania. That means yard work 'til post time. Have a great day!

I admit this is going to sound sexist, but when I learned what was planned for Rachel Alexander’s future, my first thought was, “That slut!”

I don’t know why I’m surprised. It’s the way of the world. Already, the girl really gets around. She got around Pimlico on Saturday in 1:55:08. She’s the first filly to win the second leg of the Triple Crown in 85 years and only the fifth in the 134-year history of the Preakness Stakes.

Those are the kinds of numbers that get pulses racing. Jess Jackson is the filly’s owner. One report described him as the Kendall-Jackson “wine magnate,” a term they left undefined. I like to think it's a typo that means whenever he strolls down the aisles of a liquor store bottles of Cabernet and Merlot fly off the shelves and bond to the 79-year-old entrepreneur.

Despite his advanced age, he spends a great deal of time thinking of horse sex and this in no way means he’s deviant. The fourth most famous race in the sport is tastelessly called The Breeder’s Cup.

How the refined men and women who dabble in what is renown as The Sport of Kings aren’t lumped in with common pimps must be just another exception of privilege.

That’s what struck me when I read that Jackson is eyeing a breeding jackpot with the filly. He also owns the stallion Curlin, winner of the 2007 Preakness, and insiders say it’s a sure thing he’s going to usher the pair off to the breeding barn.

As a romantic who’s always eager for new techniques to please the missus, I decided to research what goes on behind the big doors of the breeding barn.

You can check it out at this highly entertaining segment from Mike Rowe’s Dirty Jobs show on the Discovery Channel.

There are no roses. No sonnets. No sweet nothings. It’s all very clinical. The stud comes in, does his business and, I guess, leaves behind an insincere note with a made-up phone number for the spent mare.

Then there was this disturbing passage that could have easily applied to me and any unfortunate date from back when I was about 24. Try this: whenever the paragraph mentions the “stallion” or its male pronoun, just substitute “Chris” and read on:

“Make sure the stallion mounts the mare in a controlled and reasonable fashion. Too many overenthusiastic or fresh, young stallions will be so anxious to start copulating that they will try to mount from the side and/or thrust with no rhyme or reason. This can frustrate both the stallion and the mare, and neither option is particularly desirable. A frustrated mare can start lashing out at the stallion, and a frustrated stallion will only perform worse as he allows his frustration to cloud his mind.”

Boy, does that take me back. It might have risked ruining the mood, but I’ll bet my dates would have been thrilled I’d have brought along a squad of white smocked veterinarians to show me what goes where.

Not all the research was so grim and sterile and, yes, I realize that’s a poor word choice when dealing with story about horse fertility. I found there’s a sporty-looking human supermodel named Rachel Alexander and she’s often topless.

I’m going to start trying this research thing more often!

I’m unable to reconcile why I feel the equine Rachel Alexander is such a cheap slut for her role in the breeding process when I always feel I should congratulate the male counterparts with cigars and bourbon toasts.

I guess it’s just the primal differences between men and women, stallions and fillies. I’ve been a bystander to enough Lifetime movies to know that women who wind up like Rachel Alexander always come to a moment when they realize what they’ve become. It destroys their self-esteem.

They say they feel used.

And I know what most men will do if we ever find ourselves in the stud role and in a moment of clarity realize we’ve been used for the most base reasons.

We’ll say, "Thanks!"

"Cheers!" to sudsy beer drinking innovation

(725 words)

I lied in yesterday’s post. I said my friends and I were going to Altoona. In fact, Altoona was not our ultimate destination.

Instead, we went to the future!

And we discovered it has a great big hole in the bottom of it.

I’m one of those guys who is frustrated by mankind’s lack of innovation. We are awash in problems that seem indubitably solvable.

Climate change. Highway gridlock. Runaway health care costs. Air travel that is at once chaotic, inconvenient and uncomfortable, and inefficient 19th century internal combustion engine technologies powering 21st century vehicles.

But yesterday we stumbled into a bastion of innovation at the last place I’d ever expected it: the beer stand at the Double A minor league ballpark for the Altoona Curve.

As mentioned previously, yesterday was Thirsty Thursday, where The Curve sell 16-ounce Yuengling lagers for $2 each. First pitch was at the unusual starting time of 10:30 a.m.

It promised to be a splendid day and we were alive with anticipation as we walked into the concourse on our way to our seats.

But first stop: brunch beers.

“We’ll take three, please,” said my buddy to the pretty college-age beer tender.

We were too busy taking in the scenery of the ball park to notice something was amiss. The stand had no beer taps.

The beer tap is a standard feature of every single bar and draught beer vending place in which I’ve ever set foot -- and I’ve been drinking beer since the fourth grade.

Here’s how it works. You put the glass or mug under the spigot and give the tap a tug, and I’m explaining this in case anyone reading today has never had a beer and is feeling crushed by a lifetime of sobriety.

That’s all it takes and then, hooray, beer!

I saw it first.

The girl took three plastic cups and slammed them down on silver mushroom-like pegs submerged just below the otherwise flat metallic surface.

Beer began gushing up from the bottom of the glass.

I was dumbfounded. It took a second for my buddies to notice. When they did, I thought they were going to vault over the stand and do something heroic to rescue the beer that was certainly in danger of spilling everywhere.

It did not. After about four seconds, the beer filled clear to the top, the girl removed the glass and handed them over. All three were perfect pours.

You could have knocked us over with a feather, well, if that feather was the size of a telephone pole being wielded by a Hercules intent on knocking over three beer-bellied middle aged men.

What just happened?

“It’s a new system called The Bottoms Up,” she said. “Each glass has a hole in it covered by a magnetized little souvenir disc. When I put the glass on it, the disc pops up while the beer goes in. Then it fills up automatically and the disc re-attaches to the magnet ring when I lift the glass.”

We took them in later for Happy Hour Show ‘n’ Tell when we got back to The Pond, our home bar in Latrobe.

It was the first time we’d ever had Happy Hour Show ‘n’ Tell and it was so much fun I’m hoping we can do it every Thursday. It’s just a fun way to share and learn about things certain to accelerate our inebriation.

Dave had heard about them. Turns out, the beer system we’ve been enjoying for more than 100 years is incredibly inefficient. You see it all the time.

Beer dispensation may be poorly regulated resulting in excessive foam that requires the bartender to waste a lot of beer to get the perfect pour. Or maybe it’s so slow that the bartender has to stand there while it dribbles out and his or her thirsty customers get agitated.

I checked out the Bottoms Up website that boasts it’s the most efficient beer-pouring system ever. It set the Guinness World Record by having one bartender pour 62 pints in one minute.

The stat makes venerable beer bongs look slow pokey.

And now today I’m changing my mind about the pace of innovation. The Bottoms Up Beer delivery system means all is right in the world.

With enough beer, who’ll give a crap about all the rest of the other problems?

Related . . .

The Great American Beer Fridge

A convivial man stricken with “beer sickness”

Steve Jobs: American iCon

Priorities: Work or cheap beer baseball?

(834 words)

I’m becoming convinced God won’t let me succeed because my story would be a terrible example to the youth of America.

And in a pop culture landscape dominated by people like Kim Khardashian, the Duggars and Lindsey Lohan that’s saying something.

But each of those examples has something compelling: looks, charisma, traumatic circumstances or hyper-active reproductive organs.

Me, I have this blog emblazoned with the logo: “No Paychecks. No Prospects,” like it’s some kind of cockeyed virtue.

You’d think by now I’d try and do something to change that circumstance.

And I might, but every time I consider doing just that I weigh the pros and cons and think, well, gee, that doesn’t sound very fun.

So I’m not going to change, even as change is about all I ever have in my savings account.

Even on weeks when I have work to do, cosmic interventions arise. That’s what happened yesterday when my buddy called with earth-shaking news:

It’s Thirsty Thursday in Altoona!

Thirsty Thursday is a Yuengling Beer promotion at the ballpark that’s home to the minor league Altoona Curve ball club.

Yes, Paul texted me just yesterday and reminded me we’d talked about going. I suppose it’s a sign of maturity that my first instinct was to decline.

But it was Paul, it was just an hour away and . . .

It was Thirsty Thursday in Altoona!

Here’s how he explained it to me a few weeks ago: “It’s a cheap beer bonanza. They sell 12-ounce Yuenglings for something like a buck. And, get this, the first pitch is at 10:30 a.m. Do you know what that means?”

I did.

For one day at least, I’d be missing “The Price is Right!”

To me, that feels like a real sacrifice, which gets back to my point about being a bad example.

When he told me the first pitch was at 10:30 a.m., my first thought wasn’t, man, I really should stay home at work. No, my first thought was, well, going to the game means I’d miss ‘The Price is Right.’ Is that a sacrifice I’m prepared to make?”

I convinced myself it was.

Why?

It’s Thirsty Thursday in Altoona!

This, for me, is a bucket list item itching to be checked off.

Attending a day baseball game and enjoying a few beers in the sun is one of life’s most sublime pleasures. It’s visual and conversational feast for convivial people. But professional baseball is ruining a big part of it by charging $8 for a can of domestic beer that probably cost about 80-cents to produce.

Not surprisingly, the team that does this most to me is named the Pirates.

We’re Lutheran, but I’m pretty sure I consider myself non-denominational when it comes to worship. But denominations are very important to me when it comes to drinking beer at ball games. My denominations are $5, $10 and $20.

I’ll never be a $50.

Me and my buddies all used to be devout $20s. That meant any time the vendor came by any one of us could produce a $20, purchase four beers for $4 each and still have healthy leftover to tip the vendor. It was perfect.

Then came the price creep.

I first noticed it, where else, in New York City, home of the over-priced everything.

I was with my buddy Kyle. He took me to a game at old Yankee Stadium. To show my appreciation, I told him I’d buy the beers.

So I ordered two beers and passed a $20 down the aisle. We were in the middle of the aisle so the transaction involved passing the money and the beer over about 10 other savvy Yankee fans.

When my crumpled $20 reached the vendor, he said, “Hey, pal . . .”

I interrupted him.

“Oh, you keep the rest,” figuring he’d get a $5. I wanted the Yankee fans to be impressed by my big tip.

“Uh, sir . . .”

“No, no, my good man. I understand the importance of tips to your livelihood. Please. It’s my pleasure.”

I went to sit down, sure the exchange was becoming tedious to the surrounding fans.

Whether it was or not, I’ll never know. But I recollect verbal evidence it had to the vendor who said, “Hey, asshole! You owe me another $2.50.”

It was a near perfect humiliation. I gave the guy $2.75. He could keep the quarter.

It was $22.50 for two ballpark beers! Outrageous.

Of course, the beer at PNC Park in Pittsburgh is now $8.25, an amount I refuse to pay, choosing to spend the game sulking in my sobriety.

So today promises to be a bit of stumble down memory lane. It’s me, Paul, our friend Dave, and maybe another guy. There’s a chance we might be $5s.

Either way, it promises to be a great day. That’s just the way guys like us roll.

Maybe I can be a roll model after all.

Related . . .

Buc bosses asinine over “seat integrity”

Taking pregnant women to the ol’ ballgame

Go Bucs! Jumping on the bandwagon over jumping on the bandwagon

The joyful need to read

(664 words)

Reading is maybe the one passion that’ll ensure you’ll never need friends while assuring you’ll always have as many friends as you wish.

That’s one of the arguments I’ve holstered for the next time I engage our 12-year-old over the need for her to turn off the TV and pick up either a book or a nook.

Our schools do a fine job of teaching our children to read.

That means the rest of us need to do a better job of teaching them to love to read.

Ignore your menial chores, leave the your nutritious morning milk untouched and turn your room into a Selena Gomez-themed slum -- all is forgiven if I spy you sitting there immersed in a book.

It is, to me, the ultimate get out of jail free card. And I’m not just referring to household obligations.

Nothing liberates a restless soul like reading a book.

The belief puts me in the exquisite company of Lord Babington Macaulay (1800-1859) who said, “I’d rather be a poor man confined to an attic with plenty of books than a king who didn’t love to read.”

More and more I see myself becoming like the Burgess Meredith character from the old “Twilight Zone.” Either one.

He plays reading zealots in two of the show’s most memorable episodes. In one he finds a cheerful silver lining to a nuclear holocaust when he realizes his life is now one uninterrupted reading splurge -- right up until he stumbles on the steps of the library and breaks his glasses.

In the other, a totalitarian regime judges him obsolete for his devotion to books that exalt free thinking. He is sentenced to a televised death and cleverly rigs his apartment so his oppressor must share his explosive fate. The accused calmly spends his last mortal moments reading a good book.

It is, in fact, The Good Book. 

His execution is solo after he graciously frees the tyrant when he hears him plead “For God’s sake!” let him go, a broadcast declaration that leads the populace to determine he, too, is obsolete.

We have spent about an hour each night reading books aloud to our two daughters since they were old enough to pay attention. Those times have been absolute joys to both of us, even as part of us wishes we could put down the Shel Silverstein, the Dr. Seuss and their many worthy peers and escape to watch adult shows about zombies before sleep deprivation turns us into actual zombies.

But Josie’s now at an age where she doesn’t need our bedtime stories.

I find myself feeling an increasing urgency she find her own. She was so blown away by “The Hunger Games” trilogy she thinks nothing else will ever fire her imagination. 

At her urging, I, too, enjoyed the Susan Collins books, but, oh, what a fearful pity it would be if she turns out to be right.

This has nothing to do with how I make my living, I assure you. It instead has everything to do with how I live. No occupation could ever enrich my life the way reading books has.

Opening books has opened invitations to meet and become friendly with many of the most interesting men and women on the planet. I could never have scored so many assignments for character profiles without the book-bestowed knowledge of so many esoteric topics.

Being a reader these days defines you in ways that will always define veterans of common struggles.

We’re feeling outnumbered. We feel we’re under siege by moronic diversions and by a populace that increasingly would rather play “Angry Birds,” than engage a book about an angry white whale.

Let the mad cacophony continue without us.

We’ll be sitting all alone in small still rooms surrounded by thousands of silent voices who still have so much to say.

That’s all I have for today.

Thank you for reading.

And I mean that in the broadest sense.

Here are five books I’ll have with me when they come to declare me obsolete.

“The Grapes of Wrath,” John Steinbeck, 1939 -- When I was teaching creative writing, I’d always read aloud the part where farmers spray kerosene on healthy produce to keep starving people from eating them and driving the price down. I always precede the reading by telling my students I’ll try not to cry. Yet cry, I always do.

“Catch-22,” by Joseph Heller, 1961 -- I have two copies of this book, one for my home and one for my office. As soon as I find another used one for sale, I’ll buy it so I’ll have one for my car when traffic gets bad.

“Life On The Mississippi,” Mark Twain, 1883 -- As much as I love “Tom Sawyer” and “Huckleberry Finn,” my Twain affections will always run deepest toward his extraordinary travelogues.

“Lonesome Dove,” Larry McMurtry, 1985 -- Capt. Augustus McCrae will forever be one of the greatest characters in American literature.

“Moby Dick,” Herman Melville, 1851 -- I try and read it every five years because every time I read it I find something new and remarkable. Sometimes I think it should be all I ever read.

Related . . .

Them, the jury

Of humdingers and sockdolagers