I figure it’s about time for another grab bag of a post updating everyone on what’s going on at Casa Eades and throwing up a few interesting articles and websites.

The Verdi Requiem

The Santa Barbara Choral Society’s Verdi Requiem was a triumph last weekend.  As you can see from the photo above, MD was pretty whipped when it was over.  Apparently, it’s pretty demanding on soloists, orchestra and chorus.  And, as you can see from the photo above, the listeners don’t have the same burden.  Other photos here.  A recent review of the concert here.

The concert was pretty well attended, although not as well attended as it would have been had the entire city not been consumed with worry about the fire from the week before.  Santa Barbara is just now returning to normalcy.  The receipts from the door covered a little over 40 percent of what it cost to put on the production.  When I heard that figure, I thought the whole thing was a financial disaster, but I learned that that figure is typical for non-profit arts productions.  Around 40 percent of the cost comes from the people who buy tickets – the other 60 percent comes from patrons who sponsor the event.  In other words, the ticket prices are subsidized by the nobless oblige of the wealthy, a large number of whom consider it their obligation to support the arts.  So, next time you go to a great performance that costs you $25 to see, thank a rich person that you didn’t have to pay $60.

Twitter adventures

As anyone who has followed me on Twitter knows, I spend a lot of time reading and posting to Twitter since I first posted about it.  It’s a great way to do mini posts because users of Twitter are limited to 140 characters, so it’s tough to get too verbose.

I was pretty clueless about Twitter until I started using it, so I assume others are clueless as well.  If you are not in the know about this social networking tool and would like to keep up with these mini posts, there are a couple of ways you can do it.  You can sign up for Twitter and follow me (and anyone else you would like to follow).  It takes maybe one minute to sign up for Twitter.  All you need is a working email address and a username and you’re in.  Once you are a Twitteree (or whatever they’re called), and sign up to follow me, you can read these mini posts as I put them up.  If you want to sign up, click here and get started.  If you do start, you will probably find that a bunch of your own friends are using Twitter, so you can keep up with them as well.

The other way you can access these mini posts is by clicking on the little blue bird logo that says FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER.  If you click there, you will go to a page that gives you all the latest mini posts, but you’ll have to keep going back to get the updates as they come in.  Here is a link to the page you will find.

I occasionally Tweet (a Twitter mini post is called a Tweet, a loathsome word if there ever was one, at least when applied to activities of grown humans) on personal stuff, but mainly the Tweets are mini posts on medical articles or other news articles that I think are of interest along with anything else I find that strikes my fancy.

For those of you who do follow me on Twitter, I apologize for any Twitter faux paux I may have committed.  One of the things that most appealed to me about Twitter was the notion that I could put up these mini posts without anyone responding.  But, alas, I was wrong.  I discovered a few days ago that people can respond and several hundred have.  I was taking time from feverishly mini posting by looking around my Twitter home page when I found a highlighted link that said: @DrEades.  When I clicked there, I was appalled to find several hundred responses to Tweets I had made.  I learned that when people respond to Tweets, it ends up in that section.  So, I wasn’t off the hook.  But I couldn’t possibly respond to several hundred people – even at 140 characters a response.  So, if you replied to something I wrote and I didn’t respond, you now know what happened.

I did have a couple of interesting experiences in responding however.  When I discovered the @DrEades section and found the zillion responses to my Tweets waiting there, the most recent one was from a lady who took me to task for one (or several) of my political Tweets.  She wrote that she had always liked my nutritional writing but that my political postings had alienated her.  I decided to reply to her just to see how the whole reply thing worked.  I sent her one of my favorite Thomas Jefferson quotes:

I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend.

Then I watched her site and found that she had deleted the Tweet to me, which is how I learned that one could delete these things once they are up.  They can’t be changed, so if you make a grammatical error (which, sadly, I have done a few times) it can’t be fixed, only deleted.  Then she deleted me from her list of people she follows.  I guess the Thomas Jefferson quote alienated her even more.

People are really strange.  I posted a Tweet about an email that I had received a dozen times about how George Bush has a state of the art, energy-efficient ranch house in Crawford, TX while Al Gore has a giant, energy-gobbling house in Nashville.  I always ignored the email because I thought it probably was an urban legend kind of thing.  Then someone sent me a link to the Snopes report on it, which said that the email was true.  I posted the Snopes report on Twitter.  Then I started to wonder what makes Snopes the last word authority on everything, so I started looking into that.  I discovered that Snopes is a husband – wife team, who live in a double-wide house trailer on the outskirts of Los Angeles.  They do all the checking themselves.  I was stunned.  I always figured that Snopes was some kind of outfit with a staff of hundreds that checked out all these things.  The notion that the ultimate authority on everything was just a mom and pop operation who make their living by ads on their snopes.com website.  Now that I know the situation, I’ll be more careful when I accept snopes as the last word on everything.

I put up a Tweet that said basically Who would’ve thought Snopes was a mom and pop operation?  Some guy signed up to follow me on Twitter, and immediately sent a nastygram to @DrEades that said If Snopes is a mom and pop outfit, what does that make the Protein Power blog? A ‘Pop’ outfit?  I replied that the Protein Power blog is a ‘Pop’ operation, but isn’t considered by anyone to be the last word on everything.  He then deleted me from his list of people he followed. As I say, a lot of bizarre people in the weeds out there.

The whole experience has been very strange indeed.  But I’m still working my way through it, probably alienating people right and left.  So join up, follow me, and watch the fun.

Upcoming travel plans

MD and I are leaving late Sunday night for Hong Kong, then to Guangzhou, back to Hong Kong, then to London.  Sadly, the entire trip will be a working trip.  We’re hard at it in our efforts to change the world, and this trip is all about that.  By the time we get back, I should be able to write about what we’ve been working on.

I will take a lot of photos and continue to blog during the trip.  And Tweet.

Comments on the blog

I continue to be mired in comment woes.  I just checked, and I have 78 comments in moderation, some of which have been there for weeks.  It has kind of become a comments graveyard.

I’ve whined about the comment situation for that last two years. I’ve said that I wasn’t going to continue to answer questions and was just going to post the comments as they came in.  My resolve would last for about two days, then I was right back answering all the questions.  Now, I’ve gone into a funk over the whole thing, and have devolved into just ignoring the comments that require answering and letting them stack up, which I hate doing.  But, I’ve been so busy lately that there isn’t much else I can do.

I was reading a book titled Economic Sophisms by one of my heroes, Frederic Bastiat, when I came across the following paragraph that, in a way, applies to the comment situation.

We must admit that our opponents in this argument have a marked advantage over us.  They need only a few words to set forth a half-truth; whereas, in order to show that it is a half-truth, we have to resort to long and arid dissertations.

It’s easy to pen a comment that says, Hi Doc, what are your thoughts on this article? and attach a link.  I have to read the article, pull the actual study, read it, think about it, then write an answer that is considerably longer than the original comment.  What takes a commenter 20 seconds to write ends up costing me an hour or two to come up with an intelligent answer or even an ‘arid dissertation.’

I’m also getting a lot of comments asking for my ideas and recommendations on personal health issues.  People send me lab results and want to know what I think.  Without treating a given individual as a patient, medico-legal restrictions prevent me from answering these kinds of questions.

I never read the comments on blogs that I read, so I must assume that many people don’t read the comments on this blog.  But I end up spending way more time dealing with the comments than I do writing posts.  If I didn’t have to deal with the comments, I would write more posts.

I noticed that Mark Sisson, whom MD and I had lunch with yesterday, has started making posts out of some of his comments in a Dear Readers section of his blog.  He takes several comments that he thinks may be of interest to all his readers, posts them, and throws them out for the combined wisdom of all his readers to deal with. I may start doing this myself and weighing in along with the readers.  If anyone out there has any advice for me on this issue, I’m all ears.

Soda tax in New York

I just read this article this morning.  Was going to make a mini post out of it, but thought it would be better here.

A New York state senator (I’ll leave it to you guess from which party) says that by adding a measly one cent tax to each can of non-diet soda sold, the state of New York can add $100 million per year to its coffers.  If this is true, it means that citizens of and visitors to the state consume 10 billion cans of non-diet soda annually!  The population of New York state is a little over 19 million.  Dividing 10 billion by 19 million calculates out to about 525 cans of non-diet soda per man, woman and child in the state.  That’s almost 90 six-packs per person per year.  Wow!  There have got to be some low-carbers who live there who drink zero six-packs per year, which means that some other poor slob is drinking 180 six-packs per year.  That’s a lot of high-fructose corn syrup.

To my way of thinking, this is an onerous tax.  It moves $100 million from the pockets of the citizenry and puts it in the coffers of the bureaucrats to spend.  And, despite the fact that it sucks off 100 million bucks, the tax isn’t high enough to discourage consumption, so it really has no societal advantage except for transferring funds from the citizens to the government.

Where does your beef come from?

I don’t mean what part of the country.  I mean what part of the cow.  Here is a great site created by the University of Nebraska and the University of Florida showing way more than I (and probably you) need or want to know about beef anatomy.  But if you really do wonder where a flank steak or some other piece of beef comes from on the cow, click here to find out.  A lot of work went into this site.

Gradient gel electrophoresis

For those who hate to pay big bucks to have a lab tell you how much small, dense LDL you have, here’s how you can do it yourself.  That’s right.  With a drinking straw and a few other simple ingredients, you can make your own electrophoresis equipment and test your blood anytime you want for minimal expense.  Warning.  This is a real geek site.  I doubt that many will want to put together their own equipment, but at least it shows what’s involved in making a primitive version and how complex the testing process is.  May make you not feel so bad dropping the money to get the test done professionally.

Feel better immediately

And, finally, here is your feel-good YouTube of the day.  Watch this huge prank (if that’s what you would call it) played on the people in the train station at Antwerp one morning.  Really delightful.  Watch the faces of those watching.

Remember, don’t forget to help me out on this comment issue.  All suggestions will be appreciated.

I’ve been looking for a theme song for this blog for a long time when one came to me over the in-store music system.  I heard it when my eldest son and I were grabbing the fixings for dinner at a natural foods grocery in Dallas a few days ago.  As the infectious beat thumped down around me, I hustled to position myself under a speaker so I could hear better.  I listened and was taken back to what was probably my social awakening as a gawky, pimply teenager.

My father had been transferred to Detroit, Michigan when I was just starting junior high.  We drove from our home state of Missouri to Motor City, as it was later to be called.  Prior to this, I had grown up in small towns and had just been living with my parents, two brothers and two sisters in an old army barracks in Jefferson Barracks, MO, which was on the Mississippi River near St. Louis.   There were eight families living in each one of these barracks, and each living space had a living room, kitchen, two bedrooms and one bath.  Needless to say, the seven of us were in cramped quarters.

We moved to a blue-collar suburb of Detroit and I started junior high.  I met a girl in one of my classes who invited me to a party at her sister’s boyfriend’s house.  We went to this party – my very first teenage party experience – and I thought I had hit the big time.  My date and I were the youngest ones there – all the other kids were in high school.  I couldn’t believe that I – a real social neophyte – was there hanging out with actual high schoolers.  And not only hanging out with them, they acted like we were a part of their crowd.

The party was in the basement of the sister’s boyfriend’s house.  There was a record player and a load of 45 rpm records being played non stop.  Kids were dancing to the music in the soon-to-be old fashioned way during which one held on to one’s partner.  I danced with my date, and, in what I thought at the time to be the acme of social achievement, even danced with a high schooler or two.

Throughout the party all the kids kept asking this one guy to do his dance.  He kept saying, Later, later.  I asked my date what they were talking about, but she didn’t know.  As the party was drawing to an end, everyone started goading him to do his dance.  He finally relented and asked for the  record to be put on.  It was a song called Alley Oop by the Hollywood Argyles.  I had never heard it, which wasn’t unusual.  I was never one to listen to the radio and didn’t really care much (at that time) for music.  My family didn’t have a stereo system until I was a junior in high school, so I had no real way to listen to music unless I was riding in a car.  And if I was riding in a car, it was typically with my father, who listened to sports or sports talk radio.  So, not having the means at hand,  I had very little exposure to popular music.  Thus my having never heard Alley Oop, which was a hugely popular song at the time.

As the first beats of the song started, this guy, who kind of looked like a white rat with thick glasses, but who was obviously extremely popular, began to writhe to the music.  His dance became more and more chorioid as he jerked and twitched and twisted to the thumping bass of the song.  The rest of the kids were clapping to the beat as he danced, and they broke into loud applause when he finished.  And I, my young pubescent self, thought this was possibly the coolest thing I had ever had the good fortune to witness.  I immediately began imagining myself performing such a dance to adoring applause, but, sadly, thanks to my innate shyness such an event never took place.

The song has stuck with me since, although after it’s run of popularity, I don’t think I’ve heard it more than a half dozen times.  But one of the lines has become part of our family lingo.  At the end of the song, the singer says: “There he goes. …  He sho is hip, ain’t he?”  I was totally taken with that line and used it – and still use it – when I see someone whom I think dresses or acts outlandishly.  He sho is hip, ain’t he?  Said in the cadence of the singer.  It never occurs to me that others don’t know the line is an allusion to the song Alley Oop.

The song and the group have an interesting history that I never knew until I read about it before writing this post.  I had always assumed that the Hollywood Argyles were a real group.  But not so according to the Wikipedia entry and to the statement of the record’s producer.

Here is the song in case you haven’t heard it, or, as in my case, haven’t heard it in a long time.  It’s got a beat that inspires dancing as evidenced by the number of people who have put videos of themselves dancing to it on YouTube. Enjoy.

It would make a great theme song for this blog since it is about Paleolithic man (Alley Oop is a caveman), the Paleolithic diet (”He don’t eat nuthin but a bearcat stew…”), and the exuberance and surging energy that comes with a low-carb diet (”He rides through the jungle tearin’ limbs off of trees…”).  A perfect song given this blog’s theme.

What think you?

Messiah ad Dec 5, 2008

The day started off today with a mad tear by the bride to make sure the full-page ad for the Messiah was in the entertainment section of the local paper.  You can see her above brandishing it proudly.  She’s holding the paper as she is because she doesn’t want anyone to see her bed head.

Chocolate shake Dec 5, 2008

I started off the day with a chocolate protein shake made the way all the others have been.  But this time I was about half way through the shake when MD starting yelling, “What are you doing?  You’ve got to take a picture.”  Oh, yeah.  So, what you see is what’s left of the chocolate shake.

I busied myself with a load of projects this morning while MD went off to do a couple of radio interviews for the Messiah.  I thought she was going to be gone for a couple of hours – she thought she had told me she was going to be gone for most of the day.  Since MD is my life-support system where food is concerned, it didn’t occur to me that I would be without someone putting food before me all day.  But I soldiered on awaiting her return.  While soldiering I ate a handful of mixed nuts.

Handful of mixed nuts Dec 5, 2008

As the day wore on, I ate another handful of mixed nuts like the one above.  And another.  Three all together throughout the late morning and early afternoon.  I ate nothing else.  But I did take a swig of pickle juice, which I dearly love.  I have my own dedicated jar of pickles so that I don’t slurp from a jar that someone else might grab a pickle from.  Since I was alone, I took my own photo.

Pickle juice Dec 5, 2008

I almost didn’t put this photo in because I’m not including photos of water, coffee, tea and any other non-caloric beverages (there were none other than these three), and pickle juice probably qualifies as being non-caloric, but since it is a good thing on a low-carb diet, I decided to include it.  Why is pickle juice a good thing?  Because it has a lot of sodium.  Sometimes on low-carb diets, people get a little sodium depleted.  Why?  Because insulin makes the kidneys retain sodium, which is why people who have hyperinsulinemia retain fluid.  Excess sodium causes fluid retention.  When starting a low-carb diet, most people spend a lot of time in the bathroom getting rid of that excess fluid as their insulin falls, and their kidneys release the sodium.  So, since I’m on a low-carb diet virtually all the time, I like to add a little sodium from time to time because I know I constantly get rid of it.  And it gives me a good excuse to drink the pickle juice.  Other more squeamish types drink bouillon.

When MD finally got home, she was in a sweat to get changed and get back downtown.  The chorus has a final rehearsal tonight for the big event tomorrow.  And, unfortunately, the Santa Barbara Christmas parade is tonight, and it goes right by the Granada theater where she will be rehearsing.  She was afraid she wouldn’t be able to find a place to park.  So, I suggested that we leave early, beat the parade crowd and grab a bite downtown.  Then she would be right by the Granada, and I could come pick her up after when all the parade traffic had died down.

We ate at a great little Southern-style restaurant right next door to the Granada called Tupelo Junction.  We’ve eaten there for breakfast many, many times, but never for dinner.  And they have the absolute best bloody marys in town, one of which I always have when we have breakfast there.  I decided to throw caution to the wind and have a bloody mary before dinner, which I’ve never done before.  But I’ve never been confronted with Tupelo Junction’s bloody mary at dinnertime either.  Here is is.

Tupelo Junction Bloody Mary Dec 5, 2008

Their bloody marys include a crab claw and pickled green beans, both of which – to my palate – are infinitely better than and olive and lemon or whatever they usually put in bloody marys.  De-frigging-liceous!

Then, for good measure, I ordered the Bloody Mary Braised Baby Back Ribs from the dinner menu.  As you can see, these come with baby corn.  I had them switch the corn out for some sauteed Swiss chard from the Crispy Fried Free Range Chicken entre.  Just about the time our dinner came, I noticed that there was smoked bacon collard greens available on another entre that I hadn’t noticed.  Although I love Swiss chard, there’s no green that I love more than collard greens.  And to think I could have had them cooked with smoked bacon.  Ah, well, there’s always next time.

Bloody Mary Baby Back Ribs Dec 5, 2008

As you can see, this is one large pile of ribs.  I ate every one with my bare hands. The Swiss chard came with kernels of corn sprinkled on it, which I picked off.  The bloody mary sauce on the ribs wasn’t as sweet as it looks.  It was more tangy.  It probably had some sugar in it, but I didn’t care because I hadn’t had more than about 10 grams of carb all day – if that.  And I did eat every single one of the little fried onion rings.  But I ate only half of the home-made apple sauce.  It was nothing to write home about.  This home made business is a real pet peeve of mine.  How can restaurants call their food home made?

After dinner, MD and I went right next door to the Granada.  I intended to drop her off and head home.  But instead I decided to stay and watch a little of the rehearsal.  And take a couple of photos of the Granada.  Here you can see it looking back from the stage.  It is a magnificent place.

Granada from the stage (click to enlarge)

It is an old theater from the 1920s that just underwent a $60 million renovation.  The acoustics are unbelievable.  If you look at the left side of the photo, you can see the box I’ll be sitting in tomorrow night.  Being married to the President has it’s perks.

My box at the Granada Dec 5, 2008

box

And I shot this photo of MD and group singing there little hearts out.  MD is right in the middle in the front row.

Rehearsal Dec 5, 2008

The soloists that Marilyn Horn selected for this performance all have voices that are out of this world.  The performance will be taped to be rebroadcast on the local classical station.  I’ll get a few cuts and put them up for whose who are interested.

A few years ago MD and I were in a product development meeting with a handful of thirty something people.  During a break, she and I were huddled together having our own little discussion about something when the meeting got started back up.  In an effort to get our attention, one of the other people said, ‘Hey, you two, we need to get going again.’

I looked up and said, ‘Sorry, we were just having fun fillin’ out the forms and playin’ with the pencils on the bench there.’

Blank stares all around.  ‘What forms?’

‘Huh?’ says I.

‘What forms are you talking about?’

‘There are no forms.  I was just quoting that line from Alice’s Restaurant. You know, from where he was on the Group W bench’

More blank stares.

‘You know’, I explained, ‘the song, Alice’s Restaurant.’

Still more blank stares.

‘By Arlo Guthrie.’

‘Who’s Arlo Guthrie?’

It finally dawned on me that these kids hadn’t a clue who Arlo Guthrie was or anything about his famous song, Alice’s Restaurant.  Their parents I’m sure knew, but the kids didn’t.  I tried to explain that the song was a huge Vietnam war protest song.  That it was hilarious.  That there had been a movie made of it starring all the characters in the song, including Officer Obie.  And that the real Officer Obie played himself in the movie.  And that Arlo Guthrie was the son of the famous folk singer Woody Guthrie.  But my efforts were all sort of like performing a card trick for a dog.  They seemed interested, but they really didn’t have a clue. It was a total generational disconnect.

So, for those of you who remember the song with the infectious melody, here is the original recording below in two parts.  Listen and feel the waves of nostalgia wash over you.  For those of you who, like the thirty somethings in that meeting, have never heard the song, sit back and listen.  It’s not something that won’t appeal to you.  All of our kids are now 30-something, and they all love the song.  And can quote parts of it.  And would have known exactly what I meant.

And today is the perfect time for this song, which has become a Thanksgiving tradition for about 40 years. You’ll see why when you listen.

Here’s to hoping that you, too, can get anything that you want. And that you have a Thanksgiving dinner that can’t be beat.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Click here to view the embedded video.

MD, Dan Parker and Willie Nelson (click to enlarge)

I have a number of photographs that I would like to put up on this blog, but I can never figure out how to make them connect to a post.  I’ve decided to start a series of posts (here and there) with the photos at the top and the story behind the photos following.  This is the first.

As most of you know from one of my previous posts, I’m not much of a concert goer.  I hate the noise, I hate the people standing up in front of me, I hate the drunks, etc.  Well, I got a call a few days ago from Dan Parker, former track star at the University of Kentucky, and one of my regular golfing buddies (whom I regularly beat like a rented mule) asking me if I wanted to go to a Willie Nelson concert at the Santa Barbara Bowl.

Dan is an old rock and roller himself, having spent 20 years in the business.  He was involved in the management of the Beach Boys, Rick Springfield, Andy Gibb, and a few others I can’t remember right now. (Tonight Brian Wilson is in concert here in Santa Barbara, and Dan is over doing the sound checks with him this afternoon. I could have gone, but I had a golf tournament.) He knows just about everyone in the music business, and he got two tickets for the concert from Willie’s road manager.

Since I didn’t want to go to the concert, I asked MD if she wanted to go.  She jumped at the chance, so she and Dan went to the concert while I stayed home and read like the nerd I am.

The warm up for Willie was Jakob Dylan (Bob’s son – Bob was appearing the next night at the Santa Barbara Bowl), and toward the end of Jakob’s set, Dan got up and told MD to follow him.  Dan had the credentials to get through security, and the two of them made their way to Willie’s bus, where Dan’s friend got them in.  Dan, MD and Willie chatted for a bit, then had this photo taken.  MD said Willie was as nice and friendly as he could be.  And she said he put on a heck of a show starting a few minutes after this photo was taken.

That’s Dan in front, MD and Willie in the back.  And that’s the story of this photo.

62 years ago Farrokh Bulsara was born in Zanzibar, an island off the east coast of Africa, which is now part of Tanzania, but was then a British colony. His parents were Parsis, citizens of India of Iranian origin and practitioners of the Zoroastrian religion. As young Farrokh played in the island sands and balmy breezes, it’s unlikely he would have foreseen the life ahead of him. It’s doubtful that he could have foreseen that his creations would move people attending athletic events in vast stadiums throughout the world to leap to their feet and chant. He probably didn’t even know there was a National Football League a world away in the United States, where his words would become a part of every game.

When he was of age to start his education, Farrokh’s parents sent him back to India, where he attended a boarding school near Bombay. There he didn’t particularly distinguish himself, but he did take piano lessons and formed a band that played at school functions. After completing his education in India, he moved back to Zanzibar to live with his parents. During the revolution in 1964, the Bulsara family fled Zanzibar for London, where Farrokh began his college education. After a few stops and starts, he ultimately obtained a degree in Art and Graphic Design from a small technical college.

After graduation Bulsara took on a series of jobs including selling second-hand clothing and working in the baggage area of Heathrow airport. As he drifted from job to job, none of which involved art or graphic design, he formed or joined a few bands, all of which failed. Despite his dead end jobs, his keen interest and focus on music kept him inspired and constantly on the prowl for a band to join. In 1970 he teamed up with the members of a failed band called Smile to form yet another band. Farrokh overcame the resistance of other band members and named the new group Queen, then changed his own name to Freddie Mercury and launched himself into the pantheon of Rock immortals.

Although untrained as a singer, Freddie Mercury was endowed with a spectacular 3.5-4 octave range voice. As a consequence, you don’t see many groups out now doing Queen music, at least not as Freddie did it. There are countless Beatles imitators out there because though the Beatles were clever songwriters, they didn’t have particularly great voices. Their sound is easy to reproduce with fairly ordinary singers – even John Lennon’s sort of whiny voice. Elvis impersonators are a dime a dozen for the same reason. And all of them sound pretty much just like the King. Not so with Freddie. Few can match his vocal range.

Here is Freddie singing a song he wrote called Killer Queen. Ignore the camp (it was all part of Queen’s early shtick) and focus on the range of his voice and the ease with which he hits all the right notes.

Not long after Luciano Pavarotti died I posted a video of a pop singer compared to a trained opera singer at the height of his powers. There was really no comparison. Freddie, however, could hold his own. Here he is in concert with Montserrat Caballé.

As MD pointed out after having watched this video, it’s apparent that Freddie wasn’t formally trained because he sings from his throat. Which is one of the reasons he developed vocal nodules as he aged.

Not only was Mercury a phenomenal singing talent, he was no slouch as a songwriter. Most of the greatest Queen hits were penned by Freddie. Queen and Freddie pioneered the use of video to promote their music and were really the first to perform stadium rock. Freddie wrote two of the songs that are staples at athletic events throughout the world today: We Will Rock You and We Are The Champions. Here he is performing these songs before God only knows how many people in Wembley Stadium.

In what could have been Mercury’s theme song about his own life of excess and flaming out early, here is the group performing another Freddie-written song, Don’t Stop Me Now.

You can better understand the quality of Freddie’s voice when you see someone else with an excellent voice try to duplicate it as this guy does on American Idol. Notice how he can’t hit the high notes at the end and so he bails out and drops them down an octave or two. Link here. For some reason I couldn’t get this YouTube to embed.

Now here is Freddie performing Bohemian Rhapsody, a song he wrote considered by many to be the greatest rock song ever written. Listening to this, you can see that Queen was truly a choral group, which is why MD likes them so much. (Every time I hear the line in this song that goes “Spare him his life from this monstrosity” I always think of all the PBs (poor bast**ds) who get frightened by their misinformed doctors into going on a lifetime of statin drugs unnecessarily.)

MD is afraid that you all will think I have a man crush on Freddie Mercury. I really don’t, but I am mesmerized by the range and quality of his voice. And by his songwriting ability. It’s almost unimaginable that he was able to do the musical things he did without any formal voice or musical training other than the same piano lessons countless others have taken in childhood and ultimately forgotten.

I hope you all have appreciated this little break from nutrition (I needed it after that last post), and I hope you enjoyed these videos as much as I did tracking them down and watching them myself.

Years ago when our youngest son, Scott, was in kindergarten or the first grade, he came home from school in a huff. When we asked him what was wrong, he told us that he had had a very rude day. We thought the expression was hilarious, and it’s become part of our family lingo since. We don’t have bad days – we have rude days. And I’ve had a few rude days in a row that I feel compelled to tell everyone about.

It started last Thursday. I got a call on my cellphone from a Colorado area code. When I answered, it was a real good news/bad news call. Back in 2003 our house in Boulder was burglarized. The crooks went through every drawer, every closet, every everything. All our drawers were dumped, all the clothes in the closets were on the floor, and the house was trashed. We had all of our computers and electronic items (TVs, DVD players, stereo system, etc.) taken as well as a lot of artifacts we had collected over the years. They got a couple of guns that I had owned since I was a teenager and a bunch of casts of various hominid skulls that I had collected over the years. And they took my Gibson guitar (the best guitar I’ve ever had – it was custom made) and the 100 plus year-old, sweet-toned violin on which I had learned to play. All in all, they got about $75,000 worth of stuff, much of which was irreplaceable. The detectives from Boulder came out and fingerprinted everything and collected some cigarette butts from which they hoped to be able to extract DNA. But they told us that the testing would take forever because we were behind all the murders and rapes in the system. There was a lot of sturm and drang from the police for a bit, but in the end, no one was fingered for the crime.

The call I got last Thursday was from a detective in the Boulder County Sheriff’s office telling me that they had finally gotten a hit on the DNA from the cigarette butts. The good news was that they had found the thief (at least one of them). He had been incarcerated in the state of Washington, and upon his release had moved to Montana. The bad news was that the statute of limitations had passed, so there was apparently nothing that could be done to him. Nor could any attempts be made to find and/or collect any of our stuff that he might still have. The call just sort of rubbed salt into an old wound.

Things got worse. That same Thursday night MD and I went to a concert at the Santa Barbara Bowl. MD is a big Steve Miller Band fan and a long-time Joe Cocker fan (as well as a dedicated and devoted concert goer), and when she found out that they were both going to be performing on the same night at the SB Bowl, she sat poised with her finger on the button to get tickets as soon as they were made available. At the time it seemed so distant that I (foolishly) agreed to go with her.

The Santa Barbara Bowl is a great venue for concerts and Santa Barbara is a great venue for anything out of doors. The weather is mild, even in the middle of summer (and in the middle of winter, for that matter) and there are no bugs, so you can watch a concert outside without dripping sweat and swatting mosquitoes. I’ve been to too many of those kinds of concerts during my days in the South.

We got there and found our seats, drank a little champagne and watched the crowd shuffle in as we waited for the show to start. An interesting and diverse crowd it was. There were a lot more young people there than I would have expected along with a lot of people who were on the leading edge of the baby boom. A lot of young women scantily clad (miniskirts and short shorts, it appeared, were de rigeur) and a lot of mutton dressed as lamb. And there was a guy whom I couldn’t quit staring at who could have come in first in a Fred West look alike contest.  It was eerie. I was settling in for at worst a good time simply people watching.

When Joe Cocker took the stage and the music started, however, I realized that I had made a huge mistake in agreeing to attend. First, the sound was at deafening decibel levels, and, second, Joe Cocker could barely be understood. One of his first songs was The Letter, which is my favorite Joe Cocker song, and he was at least a third of the way through the tune before I recognized it. In his best days, Joe kind of croaked and screamed out his songs, but the words were at least recognizable. Now, his voice is…I don’t want to be unkind, so let’s just say, he’s no Freddie Mercury.

And, like the rest of the population, Joe has added some weight since his youth. He’s not of Orson Welles proportions yet, but he’s well on his way. And he’s lost his hair. All changes which are kind of for the better, at least in terms of his watchability (by me, at any rate). When he was younger, all of his choreaform movements and the thing he did with his hands kind of gave me the creeps. As an older, bald, obese guy they didn’t seem nearly so bad. In fact, they somehow seemed more appropriate.

Even worse than the Cockeresque unintelligible croaking and screaming were the throngs of hemorrhoids (I call them hemorrhoids because they are a pain in the you-know-what) who all insisted on standing and swaying, totally oblivious to those behind them who didn’t particularly want to stand and sway to the croaking, yet wanted to see the stage. And, just like Joe Cocker, the hemorrhoids have aged and followed the trend of all Americans in adding avoirdupois to their frames, making them even more difficult to see around. Here is a picture of my view of the Joe Cocker portion of the concert.

Now, you may tell me that all people stand and sway to the music at concerts. Not so. Not so at all. At some concerts the ratio of hemorrhoids to others is small, at others – Gordon Lightfoot concerts, for example – the ratio is so small that it’s infinitesimal. MD and I went to the SB Bowl a few days before the Cocker/SMB concert and saw James Taylor. As you can see from the photo below (which you can click to enlarge), there was nary a hemorrhoid in sight, at least not one in front of us, which, as far as I’m concerned, is all that really matters.

James Taylor concert. August 1, 2008 SB Bowl

The hemorrhoids to others ratio is huge at some concerts. Jimmy Buffet comes to mind. I’ve seen him a couple of times, and at the first chord of each song, all the Parrotheads jump to their feet and start to jerk and twitch. Annoying to the max. I can’t even imagine what it must be like to be at a Hank Williams, Jr. concert. All I know is that I couldn’t be dragged to one with a team of horses. Other concerts are a crap shoot. MD and I saw Paul McCartney in Michigan years ago, and everyone stood the whole time, making it virtually impossible to see. Had everyone remained seated, everyone could have seen. As it was the hemorrhoids in the front, prevented people in the back from seeing the concert. We saw McCartney two more times over the years – both the later times in the South – and most of the people sat. The latter two concerts were the same music but much more civilized in terms of concert goers. So, you never know. I guess you pays your money and you takes your chances.

At least we lucked out in one category at the concert. We had good seats on the end of the row, and no one, not one single person, went in and out during the performance. I can never understand why people pay good money to go to a concert or a sporting event, then spend all their time going back and forth to the concession stand. Go to the concert or the game and sit and watch it, for God’s sake. You can eat and drink at home or during intermission or halftime. That’s my opinion, at least.

The Steve Miller Band was kind of a disappointment on a couple of fronts. First, the sound was way too loud. Don’t the people that put these things on realize that sounds in excess of a certain decibel level can damage hearing permanently. And the damage is cumulative. I don’t know what the sound level was during the SMB performance, but it was earsplitting.

Second, the band has added a new member, who is a lead singer and backup singer. He sang four or five new songs that the band has recorded, none of which sound anything like the SMB is supposed to sound. The guy has a good voice, but with him singing, it’s a different band. And, worst of all, the guy is on stage for the entire concert, and when he’s not singing, which is most of the time, he gambols around the stage doing some kind of dance that makes him look like the village idiot or worse. It is annoyingly distracting. And not just to curmudgeonly me – I heard others make the same comment.

As the concert mercifully ended and we trudged out and down the hill (the SB bowl is way up on a big hill) and the drunken chavs stumbled along (many were literally falling-down drunk), I couldn’t help but wonder how people can think it’s fun to go to a concert, have their eardrums blown out, and get knee-walking drunk. It’s a mystery to me, but God knows, a lot of people must enjoy it.

I left the concert with my ears ringing and damn glad it was over. MD left wishing she had come with anyone but me. We both dreaded that we had to get up the next morning at 4 AM to leave for Napa in order to get there in time for our meeting.

I’ll post about Napa next and the heart stopping $1400 dinner bill. I’m sorry to bore you all with my trials and tribulations of the past few days, but I’ve faithfully posted on nothing but nutritional topics for the past year. No political ruminations, no weird things I’ve found in my daily slog through the web, no nothing other than pure nutrition. So, you’ve got to indulge me on these couple of soul-cleansing blogs. It’s how I regenerate and restore my good humor.

MD and I wish all of you a Merry Christmas and a happy holiday season. I’ve figured out (with the help of my web guy) how to embed audio files. Below are some cuts of MD’s group performing Handel’s Messiah at the Santa Barbara Christmas program last year. I hope you enjoy the music as much as I do and as much as MD did performing it.

We’ll start with the first chorus of Part I.

And the glory of the Lord

And He shall purify

For unto us a Child is born

And, finally, from Part II

The Hallelujah Chorus

These are from a live performance in Santa Barbara on December 2, 2006

Here is a an article in the LA Times by Matt Welch, one of the bloggers I read daily. Matt writes for the Times, but he also has a quirky blog on the stuff that interests him along with insider Los Angeles info and a lot of funky music videos that I really enjoy. The times article deals with the law of unintended consequences (one of the most powerful laws in the universe that few people ever think about) as related to passports and fathers who run out on their child support.

A great YouTube video of Luciano Pavarotti singing a duet with Bryan Adams. Shows just how weak the voices of the mega rock stars are when compared to someone who really has a voice.

This site has a great chart of all the lab result conversion factors. Most medical papers are starting to use the Systeme Internationale (SI) units when discussing lab values. Here in America we still use US units, which, as far as I’m concerned, are the ‘real’ units. When I was in my training all the hospitals used US units except for Arkansas Children’s Hospital, which, inexplicably, had gone metric, at least in terms of temperatures. When I would get called about a sick kid the nurse would always give the the kid’s temp in Centigrade, as in 38 degrees. I would always say, what’s the kids temp in real degrees? (answer 100.4). I still have to convert when I’m given a temp in Centigrade – I just don’t have a feel for it the way I do for Farenheit. In fact, here is a temperature conversion calculator that I use.

If you want to make your workouts more fun and if you’re female, here is a blog post for you. My friend Adam Campbell at Men’s Health writes about an exercise that strengthens the core and provides an unexpected and welcome benefit for many women who perform it (it’s called the Corgasm, so that should give you a clue). I encouraged MD to try it without telling her what the ‘other’ consequences might be.  I was curious.  But, alas for her, despite being able to do several slow reps (I could do only two) all she got was a strenuous core workout. Remember, do it slowly.

I’ll let Dr. Hotze do some of the heaving lifting on the subject of L-glutamine and GI health. MD and I have had remarkable results giving patients with severe GI diseases such as Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis with large doses of L-glutamine.

Loren Cordain has a nice piece on grass fed beef. As is typical of Loren, who is extremely interested in fatty acid content of everything, has the fatty acid breakdown laid out.

Chris Masterjohn, who I believe is a reader of this blog, has a great site on cholesterol. Learn everything you need to know on this site. It’s written from a low-carb perspective, so you won’t find the all-too-typical advice to cut the fat in your diet. Enjoy.

And finally a little fun. In the below YouTube a potential victim of a medical study gets scammed.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The world of opera has lost a true giant. Probably no one since Enrico Caruso has so electrified audiences the world over. He will be missed.

(Link to the LA Times obituary for a mini biography of Mr. Pavarotti.)

Here he is singing what had become his signature piece: Nessum Dorma from Puccini’s Turandot.

To see just how good Pavarotti was, go back and compare his singing of Nessum Dorma to that of Paul Potts, the Welsh car phone salesman who won it all on Britian’s Got Talent. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not demeaning Mr. Potts or his considerable talent. I mean this is Pavarotti, after all, that we’re comparing him to, so it’s no wonder that Mr. Potts comes up a little short.