Monthly Archives: May 2011

Tavis Smiley had Dick Van Dyke on his PBS show the other night. I'm not going to embed the video here because it seems to be deathly slow and it might screw up the loading of this page. But if you'd like to see if you can play it on your computer, here's a link. Dick is on again with Craig Ferguson next Thursday.

And thank you for the 300+ messages I received overnight telling me I've won the lottery in some country I never heard of and I need to send them all my banking information to collect. I can't wait to get that money. That's better than the magic genie.

If a magic genie granted me a wish, I'd wish for a million more wishes. Then with the first of those million wishes, I'd wish for the wisdom to know how to make the other 999,999 without any of them ever backfiring on me or making me wish I'd never made them. Then with the next wish, I'd wish to have enough advance notice of my remaining wishes running out, just in case it ever did, so I could wish for some more.

And then once that was all done, I'd make my third wish, which would be for a new big screen TV.

Good night, Internet! Stay connected.

Keith Olbermann has opened up a Countdown website which will not only feature clips from his new show once it debuts but which will, he pledges, be full of web-only content. I already don't like the logo and music, and Olbermann's commentaries are getting a bit too intense and angry for me. I like a lot of what the guy says but I often don't like the way he says it…or the fact that he sometimes turns what could be a two-minute commentary into a six-minute one by rephrasing everything three times.

It's starting to look like the idea here is to turn Current TV into what right-wingers wrongly think MSNBC (and maybe even CNN) already are…although Ed Schultz may already be there.

Looks like it's about time for my annual joke about how if you need a parking space for Comic-Con International, leave now. Yes, it's hard to believe but we're less than two months from that annual gathering and, you know, for all the bitching and moaning I hear about crowds and costs and Too Much Movie Stuff, I always have a good time when I make the trek down to San Diego for one of these, as I've done every year since the first one in 19-friggin'-70. As I probably say here too often, it takes a bit of planning but just about everyone I know, including the chronic complainers, thinks it's worth it. But it's really worth it if you do a bit of prep so that you control your convention, instead of your convention controlling you. Don't go in unarmed if you know what's good for you.

Yes, I will be hosting panels and events. At the moment, the list is fifteen including all your old favorites. It'll be a while before I can announce days and room numbers.

If you have no ticket to the convention: Uh, I think you're outta luck. A few more tickets may become available but the con's been sold out for months, which you should take as a lesson to sign up earlier next time. In any case, please do not write me with your sad "I promised my sick children" tales and ask if I can get you in. You'd be amazed how many of those I get a year. I get the feeling there are some people who are adopting sick children just because they think that will get me to work some magic and get them passes. Sorry, folks. No can do.

If you have a ticket but no hotel room: I believe there are still quite a few available via the convention hotel link. They may not be across the street from the convention center and they may not be as cheap as you'd like. But it certainly is possible to procure lodging in the same time zone.

Getting back to the need to plan: Check out the convention website. It's full of useful information. Half the questions I get can be answered if the questioner would take the nine seconds it takes to look it up on that site. Make out an itinerary for your travel — when you'll go, how you'll get there, etc. Every time I travel very far these days, I do a bit of Googling and jot down the addresses and hours of restaurants I may need, a nearby drugstore and other possible necessities. When the convention programming schedule comes out — and we're at least a month from that — take the time to read it and jot down what you want to see.

And we'll have other tips, most of which will be to check out Tom Spurgeon's annual survival guide…which he should have up any day now. Gee, I'm starting to get excited just writing this.

Five years ago today, I had Gastric Bypass Surgery. It was all part of my continuing effort to persuade my stomach to withdraw to its 1967 borders.

I have not written a lot about it here in the last few years because I thought it would bore those of you who aren't considering such a procedure and it might mislead any of you who are. I really and truly had an ideal experience with no real discomforts or complications, and I don't want anyone to take the plunge, thinking they'll have as easy a time of it as I did.

I'm still in touch with a lady who had it done at the same moment and she's had a helluva time, including three follow-up surgeries and a lot of hospitalization and physical problems. Still, she says she does not regret doing it since what she would have experienced without it would have been worse…and not just because that might have included death. Others who've had it done, I'm sure, may feel they would have lived longer and happier without it.

My weight still fluctuates within about a twenty pound range which doesn't seem to have a lot to do with what I eat. It probably has more to do with how often I get up from this here computer and go out for a long walk. At the moment, I'm inching downwards. I've lost about ten in the last month. I'll go up, I'll go down but the general trajectory has been very, very slowly down. That's a bit of a disappointment after the immediate results of the surgery. I lost the first 65 pounds in the first 65 days.

Almost immediately, I began to sleep less and better. I eat less…and find that many of the foods I used to eat are no longer as appealing. High on that list is anything with a lot of sugar in it. In January of '08, my sweet tooth inexplicably disappeared and I no longer had any interest in cookies, cake, ice cream or even fruit. I am told this is not usually or even often a side effect of G.B.S. and could even be unrelated. At the same time as the pleasure from sugar disappeared, my list of acceptable beverages dropped down to water and almost nothing else. I do have the occasional protein shake and even those can't have sugar in them. Never having cared for artificial sweeteners, I use a protein drink flavored with Stevia.

I could go on and on about the health benefits of what I had done but I won't because someone reading this might become convinced to try it based on my experience…and then they might not have my experience. I've learned enough about this process to know that many, perhaps most do not. I do suggest that if it sounds like something you need, you look into it. You'll need to weigh the costs and risks and benefits, all of which may be unique to you, and then decide.

It helps an awful lot to have a great personal physician — someone you really trust — and you should go to a really good surgeon, preferably someone your physician knows and recommends. Clearly, there are a lot of doctors and clinics out there doing this procedure who should not be doing it and I'd be especially wary of those who advertise lap bands like some new cell phone rate plan. Heck, I'd be wary of those who advertise at all. But the main thing is to do the research…and then have the surgery, if you have the surgery, because you decide and not because someone nudges you into it.

All of that is, of course, common sense. So is the simple premise that if you can lose the weight without surgery, you should.

I couldn't. My physician (who sadly, is no longer my physician because he's now on special assignment, doing amazing missions for your United States Government) guided me through several attempts, then concluded they would not work for me. He had a whole technical explanation that I will muck up if I attempt to replicate it here. It had to do with my blood sugar levels and a tendency for my body to retain amounts of water that equalled the capacity of Lake Michigan.

So five years ago at this moment, I was sitting in the waiting room over at Cedars-Sinai Hospital — or as most people call it, Cedar-Sinai. I was waiting for a 10 AM surgery that didn't happen until…well, they started jointly prepping me and the lady I mentioned above around 1 PM and we went under our respective knives in adjoining operating rooms around 2. Only they didn't use knives for the serious stuff, at least with me. It was laparoscopic surgery, which means they make tiny incisions which heal invisibly. When you sign the consent form, you give them permission to switch to the old-fashioned, cut-you-open path if the presiding surgeon suddenly decides it's necessary…so when a patient awakens after, the first thing most of them ask was, "Were they able to do it laparoscopically?"

That's apparently not what I asked. A nurse in the recovery room told me I asked, "Can we send out for pizza?" That sounds like me and I'm sure I meant it as a joke.

But this kind of surgery is not a joke. It's pretty darned serious, which is why I never want to encourage anyone to do more than look into it…and to not trust just anyone who's available or affordable. And like I said, if you can drop a hundred or more pounds without it, by all means go that route. I have only envy for those who can do it themselves.

Roger Ebert explains why some movies don't look the way they oughta in movie theaters.