Category Archives: Personal

I've written about this before here but it's been a while and it's time for an update.

My drinking problem is not about alcoholic beverages for I have never tasted one. The closest I've come was a swig or two of Nyquil back in my teen years. My drinking problem is what to drink.

I've never liked tea or coffee. I drank a lot of milk when I was young but at some point around age 16, my body stopped liking milk. I largely gave it up and felt better for it. Some other liquids were in opposition with my many food allergies and intolerances.

For years, I drank vast quantities of carbonated drinks, always ones with sugar or its mutant twin, high fructose corn syrup. I suspect artificial sweeteners are not good for me but it doesn't matter because I can't stand them anyway. So I drank non-diet Pepsis all day and non-caffeinated drinks (7-Up or Canada Dry Ginger Ale) starting around six hours before bedtime. And I drank a lot of orange juice, apple juice and, of course, water. I tried and failed a couple times to give up the Pepsis.

I'd consumed colas and other sodas all my life but I cranked up my consumption of them during frequent periods of intense professional deadlines. There were times when I needed to stay up late to get things done. I also had developed Sleep Apnea and didn't know it so I was falling asleep at inopportune times, including once when driving on the freeway. There is no less opportune moment to doze off, even for half a second as I did, than when you're doing 70 on the 101. Other folks resort to cocaine or other drugs when they need to stay awake. I opted for Coca-Cola or its brethren and also for eating unwisely and/or often. As I gained weight, the apnea got worse so I drank more caffeinated/carbonated potions…a devious and vicious circle. I finally managed to cut back but not enough.

In early 2006, I began the long process of qualifying for and prepping for Gastric Bypass Surgery. I wasn't sure if I'd wind up going through with it but to get the surgeon I wanted, I had to get in a very long line so I signed up, began the tests and counselling and told myself, "You can decide later if you want to actually do it." One thing that made me think I might not is that I was told that post-surgery, I'd have to give up all carbonated drinks and I wasn't sure I could do that.

In February of that year, I came down with cellulitis and spent four days in the hospital — the first time I'd been in a hospital since my age was a single digit. After my first day there, I had a startling realization: I'd gone 24 hours sans cola. That might not surprise you but it sure surprised me. I could have ordered one with my meals or asked Carolyn to bring me a six-pack but I decided to see how long I could go without one. The outcome of that experiment? I haven't had a soft drink since…and that change in my diet was probably the main reason that between February (when I had cellulitis) and May (when I had the surgery), I dropped twenty pounds. There was no significant difference in what I ate. I just didn't have two Pepsis with every meal.

After the surgery, I drank only fruit juices and water. And then a year or two later, an odd thing happened. My sweet tooth went away. My doctors cannot explain any sort of cause-and-effect relationship between anything I did and my new disinterest in cakes, cookies, candy or anything sweet but I suddenly quit them. The fruit juices became too sweet for me too so I started watering them down and eventually eliminated them. For the last few years, I have only consumed two beverages. One is Jay Robb brand protein drinks, which are sweetened a tad with Stevia. I have one of those a day. The other is water. I drink a lot of water.

Recently, I found a couple of new drinks to drink. I'll tell you all about them tomorrow.

WonderCon is next weekend so the next few days will probably be filled with me rushing to clear the time and prep, occasionally pausing to foolishly wonder if there's any way I can get the event postponed a week or two. I know folks who average two or three conventions a month and I don't understand how they do it…or in some cases, why.

I have much to get done and it didn't help any that I lost that hour last night. In reality, it makes no difference but I now feel like my life is an hour behind and that's disconcerting.

Years ago, I was in Laughlin, Nevada when it came time to change the clocks. Laughlin is on the border there with Arizona, which is a confusion to begin with. Nevada is in the Pacific time zone and Arizona is in the Mountain time zone. So I found myself sitting in a restaurant in Laughlin that overlooked the Colorado River…and on the other side of the river, I could see the time on a huge digital display and it was an hour later than where I was.

I couldn't just ignore the time over there because the airport I'd be flying out of was over there — in Bullhead City, Arizona. From my hotel, it was close enough to walk to the airfield but I had to remember I'd lose an hour as I did. The nice part of that of course is that if your plane lands at 10:50 AM, you might think, "Oh, I'll be too late for the breakfast buffet at the hotel. It closes at 11!" And then by the time you get to your hotel, it's 10:05 and you still have time for waffles.

That can be baffling enough but Arizona does not, as a state, practice Daylight Saving Time. There are periods when it's in sync with the state to its west and periods when it is not. Right this moment, it's 11:30-whatever in both California and Arizona but twenty-hour hours ago, it was an hour earlier in my state. I'm sure to some it feels like Arizona is wrong and everywhere else, they're right. But actually Arizona is the place that has 24 hours in every day and doesn't move one of those hours six months later. (I'm told there are border cities in Arizona that do so much business with people crossing the state line that they roll their clocks back and forth in recognition of that. This is done just to confuse things further.)

I kinda like the extra hour of daylight…now. I have dozens of things in this house that run on timers and it used to be that I'd lose an hour just resetting them all. I once had six VCRs here, every one of which had its Time Set controls in a different place. Just remembering how to add or subtract an hour from each one was daunting. These days, fortunately, most of them adjust on their own but I do have to go around and check and then fix the ones that don't.

This morning when I awoke, the clock by my bed said it was 9:15. I couldn't recall if that clock recognized the change so I told myself, "It's either 9:15 or 10:15," and in a groggy, half-asleep fog told myself, "If it's 9:15, I probably need to go back to bed for another hour." It turned out it was 9:15 and that clock has a little switch on the back that you flip to add an extra hour or remove it. It doesn't adjust itself because, I guess, the manufacturer wants to be able to sell these in Arizona.

Okay, it's a little funnier now.

Why am I working on a script now? Nothing's funny at this hour.

Thanks to everyone who sent well wishes yesterday when I turned the big six-oh. I can't acknowledge all of you individually — I had over a thousand birthday messages on Facebook alone, some of them even from people I've met — but I do appreciate the nice thoughts and even the intermittent remarks about being old and therefore closer to death.

Sixty is no big deal. I was originally due on February 29 and if I'd been born then, yesterday would have been my 15th birthday, which is about how old I feel. I didn't come out as scheduled — I think I was blogging and hosting panels in there — so finally on March 2, the doctors sent in Seal Team 6 to get me out. It turned out to be a good day to be born. I have a couple of friends who were born the same day and they like it, too. If you ever get the chance to come out of the womb again, I highly recommend March 2, especially back in 1952.

(I got an e-mail from accordion-playing journalist Barry Mitchell, whose links and videos we sometimes feature here. He told me he was born on March 6, 1952. I wrote him back and said, "Ah, I remember when I was your age…")

Anyway, thanks for all the messages and I want to thank all but one friend for not giving me a present and not singing "Happy Birthday" at me. You don't really sing "Happy Birthday" to someone. You sing it at them.

Longtime readers of this blog have seen me rave about the Jennie-O Turkey Pot Roast. This is something the Jennie-O company makes in two forms. One is an offering to retailers. Your local market can get these in, heat them up and then sell them in the same display case as the hot rotisserie chickens. This is not a great way to experience a Jennie-O Turkey Pot Roast but it's better than nothing.

Much, much better than nothing is the way I like 'em, which is the refrigerated version. You take them home and keep them in your refrigerator until you want/need a quick 'n' delicious meal that serves many and is high in protein and taste. A Jennie-O Turkey Pot Roast is slow-cooked dark meat turkey. You pop it in your microwave for, the package says, 12 minutes. I leave mine in for 13. This is just to warm it because it comes fully-cooked.

Once outta your microwave, it's a big load of tender and moist dark meat turkey that shreds easily so as to resemble pulled pork. I suppose some folks use it in recipes and make elaborate concoctions but I usually eat it straight with a side dish and later I make sandwiches out of it. You can get a lot of sandwiches out of one.

I like them 'cause they're handy. At times, my life gets chaotic and I can't always plan meals far enough ahead to buy the proper fixings to cook or have something around for dinner that may be time-sensitive. But I can realize at 6 PM that I need to fix dinner here and by 6:20, I can be dining on a pretty good entree. I also like them because they're cheap. And I especially like them because they're high in taste and low in calories.

But I've said all this before here. What's new is that I no longer have to hunt and phone and search to find a source for them. I originally discovered them at Costco but after a while, the Costcos around here stopped carrying them. The Customer Service folks at Jennie-O, while I'm sure they're fine at telling you how to stuff your bird, were of zero help. At first, they didn't seem to know their company even made this product. At one point, I directed a lady on the phone to go to this blog where I'd posted the above photo. She looked at the image and exclaimed, "Oh, we make those?" Later, I found a Customer Service person there who was of a bit more help. She told me they only made them for Costco and only when Costco ordered more. She didn't know if Costco had lately but said that if my local Costcos weren't stocking them, there was nothing they or I could do.

Apparently, that was true at one time…the part about only making them for Costco. Soon though, through the help of smart readers of this site, I found out that the Fresh & Easy market chain had begun carrying them and for a time, I bought them there. Then Fresh & Easy stopped stocking them and when I called their Customer Service department, I think I got that first lady who used to work for Jennie-O. She told me they had decided not to carry them again. That was apparently not the case.

Eventually, I connected with a nice and efficient executive of the Jennie-O company who was thrilled that I'd been promoting their product in this blog and she was eager to assist me. She explained that it wasn't that Costco and Fresh & Easy had stopped carrying them. It's that Jennie-O had stopped making them between June and September. The product sold great during the other three seasons; not so great in summer. She gave me the dates when my local Costcos and Fresh & Easy outlets would again be stocking them and darned if they didn't show up there just when she said. Since then, I've had enough of a steady supply to eat at least one per week. Since one lasts me 2-3 days, we're talking about a pretty significant portion of my diet. Could it get any better?

Yes, I think it just did. Early Sunday AM, around 2:30, I drove over to a nearby Ralphs Market to stock up on the things I eat besides Jennie-O Turkey Pot Roasts. And what should I find in their meat display case but Jennie-O Turkey Pot Roasts?! They had four there and I bought three. The checker lady had never seen them before and I wound up telling her all the things I just told you. "Oh, this is great," she said. "The hours I work here, I can never arrange to cook anything." As I left, she was going over to the display case to buy the one I'd left behind.

I don't know if this is test marketing or if they've become a part of the regular Ralphs repertoire. If the latter, it might mean they'll be turning up in Kroger stores, as well. Should you see them on sale anywhere, give 'em a try. I want this product to be so successful that markets everywhere carry them and I can buy Jennie-O Turkey Pot Roasts wherever I go.

I had a 180-minute lunch today with one of my favorite bloggers…and I hear he also sometimes writes and/or directs TV and also sportscasts baseball games. His name is Ken Levine and if you're not checking out his weblog every day, you're missing out on some of the cleverest writing on the web. The funny stuff is funny and when he writes about teevee, you're reading the words of someone who's been there, done that. The guy really knows his business.

I am not posting this just because he paid for lunch. But he did.

Last evening, I took my pedometer and went for a walk. It was 4.6 miles from my home to my bank to the Five Guys that recently opened near me, then to one store and back to my house.

The Five Guys was crowded, which surprised me a little. It's in an area where restaurants get tons of lunch traffic from all the offices around but are usually empty after work lets out. A Koo Koo Roo that closed down nearby always had a line out the door if you went at 1 PM but you had the place to yourself after about 7:00. Guess that's why it closed down.

The folks at the Five Guys looked like they'd been doing it for years. Nothing I saw tipped the fact that the place had only been open since Tuesday. Nothing except that most of the customers were eyeng the Five Guys menu like they'd never seen it before.

As I waited to place my order, a woman was studying that menu and moaning that a hamburger was more than five dollars. "You can get a hamburger at McDonald's for a dollar," she said to no one in particular. Being no one in particular, I responded. "Yeah, but these have meat in them," I said.

This is one of my — you'll excuse the pun — beefs. You can't compare two items of different content. When I see a sign that says "Slice of Pizza, $1.50" I don't think, "Wow, what a bargain for pizza." I think, "Gee, wonder if it's the low quality or the small size that enables them to sell it for that."

The lady was dressed in clothes that suggested that she was either homeless or that was a distinct future possibility. She asked me if I'd eaten there before. I said, "Not at this one but I've been to other Five Guyses." She asked me if I thought they were good. I consulted the pedometer and told her I'd just walked 2.2 miles to get to this one. "These are the best fast food hamburgers and fries I've ever had."

She wanted to try one but was concerned about the cost. I told her the Little Hamburger, which was three and a half bucks, was more than enough for a meal. That's what I was ordering. She decided to give it a try. She got one but apparently didn't have enough money for fries or a beverage. She got the counterman to get her a paper cup of tap water.

When I got my order, I separated out the fries with skin on them (the ones I don't eat) and passed them over to her at her table. "Be my guest," I told her. She was quite grateful for them and told me she liked her meal very much. When I finished mine, I went over to the cash register, bought a Five Guys gift card and gave it to her. She thanked me so many times that I told her, "If you want to thank me, stop thanking me." She thanked me for telling her that.

We were leaving at the same time and she told me, non sequitur, that she had five children and never heard from any of them. I asked her if she had a place to stay. She said, "For now." Then she added, "I guess the way the economy's going, we're all like that." Then she headed for wherever she was going and I went wherever I was going.

As I've mentioned here before, I like tuna sandwiches…and I like mine simple. You mix tuna with Miracle Whip or mayo, you slather it on bread and that's it. No lettuce. No relish. No little chunks of celery to ruin the texture. If just the tuna, dressing and bread aren't enough for you, you're doing something wrong.

The tuna I buy is Star Kist Chunk Light Tuna packed in sunflower oil and in those little foil packets. I am informed that tuna in foil packets is better than tuna in cans for the following reason. The packaged tuna we buy at the market is cooked in its packaging. Canned tuna is cooked in its can. Because the foil packets flatten the tuna out to a uniform thickness, the tuna cooked in them cooks evenly, whereas the tuna cooked in cans is more cooked on the outside and less cooked on the inside. At least, this what I've been told. I mainly like the foil packets because you don't have to drain them.

In L.A., it is quite easy to find Star Kist Chunk Light packed in water, not as easy to find it in the oil, which I prefer. I never found out why but there was a period a year or two ago when you couldn't find it anywhere. Now, you can. Near the end of that drought, when I did find a source for it, I bought about sixty packages. I knew I had plenty of time to use it up because of the expiration date stamped on the package…

Product of Ecuador
Best by 12 10 13.

Now, notice it doesn't say it'll go bad on December 11, 2013. It just says it's best by the day before. I will not be testing this because at the rate I use this stuff up, I'm almost out of 60 packages I bought more than a year ago.

Today, I stopped in a Von's Market and they had it in stock. I bought a dozen packages, took them home and put them in the cupboard with the last few packages from the old stash. Before I did, I decided to consult the expiration date on these and look what I found there…

Product of Ecuador
Best by 12 10 13.

In other words, this batch is from the same time and place as the batch I bought a year or two ago. I could have bought 72 packages back then and saved myself the purchase today at Von's. I would have gotten the exact same tuna.

I guess this stuff keeps…which is amazing because it seems to have no real preservatives in it. When something has a shelf life like this, you figure it's going to be pumped full of Sodium Benzoate or Calcium Propionate or other substances I probably had in my old Gilbert Chemistry Set when I was a lad. But the ingredients on this tuna package are light tuna, sunflower oil, water, vegetable broth and salt.

So my question is: Did the Star Kist people just buy a few year's supply of fish from Ecuador one day? Naw, that can't be it. This tuna wasn't just caught at the same time. If two packages have the same expiration date, they must have been processed on the same date. Maybe it was Von's Market that bought tons of it…but how could Star Kist have packaged that much at one time?

I dunno. I'm just thinking that when I get to be around 80, I may have myself encased in one of these thin foil pouches. They're really good at keeping things fresh.

This one's coming at you from San Francisco International Airport where I'm awaiting a flight home, exactly 24 hours after I got here. Just a business-type trip. The airport seems quite uncrowded since, I suppose, all of America is off watching pre-game shows.

Going through security, I had a brief encounter with a man whose uniform had gone to his head. He had insisted on patting me down because, he said, the full body scanner showed "something made of metal" in my pocket. I showed him what was in that pocket — a piece of paper — and he replied, "Well, sometimes paper reads as metal on the scanner."

I asked him, "Does metal ever read as paper?" He thought a second and said, "I don't know. If something reads as paper, we wouldn't check it." Gives you confidence, don't it?

I love San Francisco though I despair of ever mastering its geography. I can usually find my way around a strange town but the more I visit this one, the more bewildered I become. The one thing I know is that no matter where you go, no matter what direction you're facing, the next street over is always Polk. And in the grand tradition of M.C. Escher, if you walk somewhere and then walk back the same way, it's uphill in both directions. Still a great place to visit and I'm sorry WonderCon will be elsewhere this year.

Recently here, I referred to my childhood pediatrician, Dr. Arthur Grossman, as legendary. That's a bit of overstatement but let me tell you why it's only a bit…

Dr. Grossman was often written about in local newspapers for either of two reasons. One was that he was "The Pediatrician to the Stars." He treated the children of celebs like Jerry Lewis and Jack Lemmon. If you read the official biography of Jack Lemmon, you may remember how Mr. Lemmon put a little of his career on the line to narrate a TV documentary that ripped into the auto industry for air and water pollution. My Dr. Grossman was the man who recruited Lemmon for that project.

Not only that but Dr. Grossman was also a talented musician. He was a member of a group called the Los Angeles Doctors' Symphony Orchestra that used to perform at charity events. I found this clipping online in a 1957 magazine article and hi-lighted him…

I don't know why but the notion of an all-doctor orchestra always intrigued me. I had a dream one night where I'm attending one of their events and a person in the audience passes out. The faintee's companion calls out, "Is there a doctor in the house?" and the entire orchestra drops its instruments and runs down to treat the guy.

The thing about Dr. Grossman was that he was everywhere. He had one of the busiest practices in Beverly Hills but he still made house calls when appropriate. One time when it was appropriate was when I was very young and had Scarlet Fever. He came to our home not once but several times…and I still think of that when I'm at a hospital or doctor's office and see folks who look like it took every ounce of energy they had left just to get there…and they're coughing and hacking and sending out germs by the fleet.

Even after I'd graduated to adult-type doctors, he kept popping up in my life. He was involved in every campaign to protect the health of children. When I met anyone else in the world of medicine, personally or professionally, I could drop two names. One was Dr. William Swanson, who lived across the street from us for a few years. I'll tell you about him in a separate piece soon. The other was Dr. Grossman. Everyone who'd ever graduated med school seemed to know both of them and to swear by their integrity as much as they did the Hippocratic Oath.

One night — this was around 1973 — I took a date to the Music Center downtown to see a play, then we went over to Chinatown for a long, late dinner. Around 1 AM, we were driving back down Wilshire Boulevard and we were nearing the intersection of Wilshire and Robertson, which is where Dr. Grossman had his office. I had not been to that office in at least ten years.

A Chrysler driven by someone who'd obviously ingested too much liquor came roaring up behind me doing well over the speed limit. It swerved to pass me, entered the intersection, swerved again in some way we didn't see, ran up onto the curb on the opposite (oncoming) side of Wilshire, then flipped over. A very ugly crash. Looking at it, I would not have been surprised if that driver had been killed on impact.

I pulled over and my lady friend and I dashed over to the wrecked car, which had done a complete 360° rotation and was sitting, rightside up but largely destroyed, in the middle of Wilshire Boulevard. The driver seemed to be alive but the car was starting to smolder, like it was on fire and likely to explode. It never did explode but at that moment, it seemed awfully possible.

The door on the driver's side was locked but the window on the opposite passenger's side was down enough that we were able to get in. She pushed and I pulled a drunk-outta-his-mind driver out and dragged him away from the vehicle. The man was injured and bleeding and not sure what was happening.

A few other cars had pulled over around us and I started to yell towards them, "Somebody call for an ambulance." Before I could, the driver of one ran up…with a doctor's bag.

We just stepped back and let him handle things…and by the time an ambulance, a fire truck and several police cars arrived, he'd stopped all the bleeding and had the man laid out on the street in a position that would do not further damage to his broken bones. When the paramedics arrived, he supervised the treatment and the load-in to the ambulance. The paramedics, I noticed, seemed to know who he was…and I started to think that I did, as well.

As we were giving statements to the police, I heard him give his name and, sure enough: Dr. Arthur M. Grossman.

I must have shrieked, "Dr. Grossman!" I told him who I was and he said, "You've grown."

We had a nice moment of bonding/reunion in the middle of Wilshire Boulevard with street flares burning around us. Then we got into our respective autos, drove off and I never saw him again. He passed away — in the late seventies or early eighties, I think. I just recall reading the obit in the L.A. Times and being amazed at all the accomplishments they listed for him. Quite a guy.

In the mid-nineties, it dawned on me that I didn't really have a doctor. I had a dentist and an opthamologist and a few other specialists but no general practitioner. I was almost never sick so I didn't need one but obviously, one can only stay that way for so long. I went to one that my dentist recommended and didn't like him. Then I went to one that a friend recommended and I didn't like him. Then one day I asked my opthamologist to recommend a physician and he referred me to a Dr. Paul Geller who was, he said, the best doctor in Beverly Hills. I later learned this was a widely-held opinion among others. Anyway, I made an appointment to meet Dr. Geller and kind of interview him, and I went to his office, which was on Wilshire, a few blocks west of Robertson. He was a nice, wise man and I liked him instantly.

He asked me who my previous doctor was. I said, "I really don't have one. I was under my parents' Kaiser account in my teenage years and after that, I never needed a doctor for the longest time. I guess the last steady doctor I had was my pediatrician. He was just down the street from here."

Dr. Geller asked me, "Was it by any chance Dr. Arthur Grossman?"

I was startled. I said, "You knew him?"

Dr. Geller pointed to a photo on the wall of his office. It was a picture of a much-younger him with his best friend and roommate from medical school…Arthur Grossman. "A great guy," Dr. Geller said. "Except that he used to wake me up all the time practicing that damn flute of his."