Month: October 2010

Vegan Diet Is Helping My Knees – Maybe

2010 has been a year of dealing with health problems for me.  I’m turning 59 next month, and this year I started feeling like I was really getting old.  For the past two years I’ve been on and off Zocor and Pravachol because my doctor wants to get my cholesterol down.  Concurrent with that I’ve been having back and leg trouble because of spinal stenosis.  I used to walk 2-3 miles a day for exercise, but now walking and standing compresses my spinal cord and makes my legs go numb.  So I’ve essentially stopped getting any good exercise except that do a lot of walking and stair climbing as part of my job – but even then, if I get too active at work my back and leg suffer.

I’ve tried the statins three times in the past two years, with each time me giving up because they make me feel like I’m sick all the time.  Plus they give me weird circulation problems that make my arms and legs go to sleep easily.  I was trying the statins again this summer because my doctor says I’m at high risk for a heart attack or stroke.

Even more of a bummer, this summer my knees started going out.  It really felt like I was getting old.  I could barely climb stairs going between floors at work, and I had to be very careful because it felt like my right knee was going to blow out on me.  I just assume this was part of getting old, maybe arthritis, because so many of my friends have bad knees.

By September 1st I had given up on the statins again.  I started reading about diets that might help with cholesterol and decided to try a vegan diet.  I’ve been a vegetarian for over forty years, so going vegan is like a health diet for vegetarians.  My doctor said if I lost weight my cholesterol numbers would go down.  So what the hell, I figure I would give it a try.

Now here’s the odd thing.  My knees have been getting better – much better.  The vegan diet can, if you choose the right foods, be an anti-inflammation diet.  Because I also quit the statins I don’t know they could have been making my knees go bad.  Two weeks after I stopped taking the drug I started feeling better in general, but I still had knee problems, and now almost four weeks after starting the vegan diet my knees feel much younger.

Can giving up eggs, milk, cheese and yogurt really have helped my knees?  I can’t say conclusively.  I’ve also been able to stop taking my diclofenac sodium anti-inflammation pills too, which is another clue that my diet is anti-inflammatory.  But I also have to consider that I’ve stopped eating so many sweets, and that might be anti-inflammatory too.

So as 2010 rushes to a close, I’m now feeling more like I did in 2008, which is reasonable good except for the spinal stenosis.  But that’s a physical problem, but one I can deal with by doing daily physical therapy exercises.

My doctor insisted I do a full checkup this week, and all the blood tests said I was doing great except for 161 LDL and 30 HDL.  I was particularly proud of my 117/68 blood pressure, which was 132/90 at my last checkup.  My doctor finally accepted I couldn’t handle statins and I told her I started the vegan diet.  Our goal is for me to get down to weighing 199 pounds in six months.  I’m at 229, down 5 pounds since I started the vegan diet about a month ago.

I already feel younger, like I’ve reversed a downhill slump in health.  That’s making me feel very positive about the diet.  Maybe if I can get down to 199 I’ll even feel younger still.  I’ll let you know.

What I’d like to know is how many things do I eat that makes me feel bad?  I have several friends that had horrible health problems until they discovered they were gluten intolerant and now they are dramatically better on a gluten free diet.  I remember back in my early 40s having painful prostrate problem that I eventually figured out was caused by the orange juice.  Decades ago I gave up caffeine because it was causing too many headaches.  And I know that wine and chocolate inflame my rosacea.  People talk all the time about good foods that make you healthy, but what are the good foods that make you unhealthy? 

JWH – 10/9/10

Katy Perry vs. The Beatles

There is a kind of age prejudice in pop music that I’d like to explore.  When I was growing I thought Perry Como and Dean Martin were for over the hill folks, like my parents.  The Beatles and Bob Dylan defined my generation, even though older college kids looked down on us teens from their folk music purity.  And let’s not forget the smugness of classical music fans or jazz aficionados who sneer at three chord rock and roll from their hipster highs.

But I have to admit, we baby boomers are terrible music snobs.  Many of my generation stopped listening to music after 1975.  For people coming of age in the 1960s, The Beatles are the yardstick that all other pop music is measured.  To many of us the art of music has been in sharp decline since 1969’s Abbey Road.  But has the music declined, or just our youthful enthusiasm?

I’m now a generation older than my parents were when we all first watched The Beatles on Ed Sullivan back in February of 1964.  The Beatles, The Byrds and Bob Dylan have become my Perry Como, Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra.

When I tell friends my age that I’m listening to Katy Perry most of them do not have a clue to who she is, and if they do, they think of her as some kind of under-aged, under-dressed young woman who doesn’t really sing but flaunts her body to loud noise.  “Oh those girls don’t sing they sell sex.”  But what emotional response were all those screaming teenage girls buying when they heard:

Oh please say to me

You’ll let me be your man

And please say to me

You’ll let me hold your hand

Now, let me hold your hand

I want to hold your hand

Almost a half-century from when the Beatles sang to little girls, girl singers now dominate the pop charts, and sing songs like “Pearl,” that rebels against the tyranny of love and men,

Oh, she used to be a pearl, oh

Yeah, she used to rule the world, oh

Can’t believe she’s become a shell of herself

Cause she used to be a pearl

She was unstoppable

Moved fast as light, like an avalanche

But now she’s stuck deep in cement

Wishing that they’d never ever met

When we were young we were more than willing to accept the wisdom of Lennon and McCartney, who were no older than Katy Perry now.  Why, when we’re two or three times older than Paul and John in 1964, do we cling to their music and reject the artistic expression of today’s youth?  You’d think we’d be listening to something old and fuddy-duddy by now, like our version of Perry Como.  Do The Beatles sound square to the modern listener?

Do we all get stuck in our own teenage dreams?

Pop music has never been that deep and I don’t think Katy Perry’s album Teenage Dream is that different any of the Fab Four’s early LPs.  We are told Perry is involved with the writing of her songs, but that could be PR, but don’t the lyrics represent the young of 2010?  Her hit song “Teenage Dream” does not show the poetical sophistication of “Eleanor Rigby” but it’s sentiments are far more sophisticated than the early Lennon-McCartney love songs when they were her age.  Remember, in 1964, things were much more innocent than this video.

What does this say about this generation?  And what if you heard your answer back when you were a teen – don’t you sound like our parents?  My Mom and Dad hated The Beatles and thought they were vulgar, lacking in talent.  My father claimed they played noise.  But we thought The Beatles were cutting edge brilliant.  They expressed our desires and dreams – but don’t those dreams and desires seem so innocent and unsophisticated now?  Children under ten today love The Beatles.  Older kids want Jack White, whose anger is hard to fathom to us, but obvious to them.

Of course, I wonder if today’s high school and college kids are really more mature than we were?  The Beatles were living what we see in this Katy Perry video, we just didn’t see it.  And we were no angels either.

And if we graying baby boomers, now over the hill by our earlier philosophy of not trusting people over thirty, stop listening to twenty-something art, doesn’t that put us out of touch like we thought our parents were back then?

Or maybe pop music encapsulates every emerging generation, and the normal mature thing to do is to hate the music of young?

I listen to music like it’s a drug.  When all The Beatles albums were recently remastered I went out and bought most of them, but I only played them once.  Their potency as a musical stimulant has worn off.  But I’m playing the Katy Perry songs over and over again because they get me high with restless energy.  To me its new music that thrills.  As I’ve gotten older it’s gotten much harder to connect to the young, so I return to my old favorite albums, but it’s a nostalgic thrill, not a let’s go out and conquer the world defiant dance.

Just being current doesn’t make music powerful.  There is something else.  I think the powerful emotion I crave in music is the strong emotions of ambitious artists.  I think we loved The Beatles music because of the passion of John, Paul, George and Ringo to succeed.  And I think the reason Katy Perry is popular now is because of her passion to be on top of the world musically.  She expresses that desire in her song “Firework.”

Do you ever feel already buried deep

Six feet under scream

But no one seems to hear a thing

Do you know that there’s still a chance for you

Cause there’s a spark in you

You just gotta ignite the light

And let it shine

Just own the night

Like the Forth of July

Cause baby you’re a firework

Come on show ‘em what your worth

Make ‘em go “oh, oh, oh!”

As you shoot across the sky-y-y

In the song she is singing these sentiments to someone else, but she’s talking about herself.

JWH – 10/7/10

The Social Network – aka The Facebook Movie

Above all, The Social Network (2010) is a magnificent work of storytelling.  Especially considering that it’s a story based on boring litigation over the tedious topic of computer programming.  On the other hand, it’s a rare example of cinematic creative nonfiction.  How do you dramatize the truth, especially when all the action is cerebral?  I hate to say this because it might jinx some people from going to the movie, but The Social Network is an incredibly educational movie, especially about the nature of what it means to be an asshole.

The litigation over the creation of Facebook reminds me of the fight over who invented television, but few people will know about that.  Ditto for the radio, and many other major tech inventions of the past we take for granted.  It’s very hard to give exact credit when everyone stands on the shoulders of giants.  Few characters in this film come across as nice, many are assholes, most are viciously aggressive, and we see the very worse sides of greed and sex.

At a naturalistic level The Social Network is about alpha males fighting over intellectual territory while alpha females throw themselves at the perceived winners.  At the class level the story is about old money, old social networks, descendents of WASP wealth fighting Jewish upstarts who out maneuver the class incumbents to climb even higher on the social ladder.  At the economic level The Social Network is about the marketing of an idea as an invention and who really deserves the spoils of business.

The film is bookend by two women who try to enlighten the Mark Zuckerberg character about the specific traits of his asshole personality.  These are two of the three nice people in this film, the third being Eduardo Saverin, the nice guy who is fighting out of his league.  People who get into Harvard are by nature driven by ambition, if not naked aggression, so we need to factor such drives out of the equation to make all things equal.  But a bitch fight over billions is not pretty, so it’s hard to see the positive qualities of the combatants.  I’ve got to say the movie reflects the efficiency of our modern legal system because it took decades to solve the legal battles over television and radio.  And The Social Network does an apparently fantastic job of explaining to the public the complicated legal issues dealing with the foundation of Facebook.

To me, the saddest part of this movie is how poorly young women come across in this film.  For the most part, the females in this story are the prized toys that males win in battles of aggression.  They throw their beautiful bodies at any guy who succeeds, even the social challenged Zuckerberg, they frolic around lesser males who do the sweatshop programming, taking bong hits and acting sexy to spur on their coding success, and they lay on their backs to provide flat bellies for the rich to snort cocaine from.  The strong independent women in this film are savvy lawyers, but the endless hordes of legal teams, male and female, come across as brainy vultures.

Of course, the sex-toy women also reflects badly on the males, because they don’t see women as other than prizes for success.  Zuckerberg is portrayed as driven by envy, jealousy and desire, and the film makes a good case that Facebook exists because Zuckerberg was rejected by Erica Albright, and that he wanted the success of Facebook to give him another chance with her.  It wasn’t about the money, but female approval.

More complex to understand is the exact quality of Zuckerberg’s asshole-ness.  He’s brilliant and aloof, but he’s so lacking in social graces that you have to wonder if he has an autistic background.  Mark tries so hard to be liked while looking down on all others and squashing any attempts of communication with a towering superiority.  But isn’t that how most average folks see super-geeks?

I attended The Social Network on its opening weekend, a Saturday afternoon, and I expected the theater to be packed because of the overwhelming wonderful reviews and great word of mouth, but we sat in a mostly empty room.  Moviegoers might not find the topic of this flick appealing, but director David Fincher and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin have created a powerful, riveting and engaging story of our times.  It really shouldn’t be missed.

Finally, because the movie uses real names I must ask how much are the characters in the movie like their real life counterparts?  I’d love to find interviews with all of them where they talk about their portrayals in the film. Actually, someone should make a documentary of that.  Essentially the movie is metafiction, and that’s a fascinating topic by itself.

JWH – 10/3/10

SACD Not Dead After All, At Least Fans Hope

In my last post, “The Rise and Fall of High Fidelity” I suggested that the Super Audio CD (SACD) was dead.  A reader, Steve Cooney let me know this was not true, and I started researching the subject.  A major online clubhouse for SACD fans is http://sa-cd.net – where diehards keep the SACD fires burning.  Other fans, like Teresa at SACD Lives, worry contrary to her blog’s name, that the SACD is really dying. 

My research taught me that SACDs are still being produced, with almost 7,000 titles created to date, and that some audiophiles still back the format.  So I immediately went out and ordered two more SACDs for my meager collection because they do go out of print fast.  Most of the major SACD record producers have called it quits, but not all, and after Telarc threw in the towel, many of the faithful SACD fans are having a hard time seeing a rosy future.  They cling to the idea that if LP buyers can have a niche market, why can’t they.  There are specialty producers like Linn Records that cater to the high fidelity crowd, but they specialize in classical and jazz music, so popular music on SACD is extremely uncommon.

As far as the royal rulers of music, their attitude towards the masses is let them eat MP3s.  They believe people who listen to Arcade Fire, Kings of Leon or Katy Perry aren’t concerned with quality sound, and they are probably right.  Audiophiles HATE CDs.  They love LPs or SACDS, and Studio Master FLAC downloads, which are more expensive formats, requiring very expensive, hard to configure equipment to play.

Audiophiles, like those at positive-feedback, have always been a small subculture, mainly people who love classical and jazz.  Audiophiles are rich, or middle class fanatics willing to spend a significant chunk of their income on their hobby, so it should have been no surprise to me that these people did embrace the SACD format and have clung to it because it’s about the only show in town featuring the best level of high fidelity.  These guys don’t flinch at $4,000 SACD players, but they are also quick to point out that us poorer folks can find $300 players too, and that many Blu-Ray players, especially from Sony still support the SACD format.

It’s a shame that all Blu-Ray players don’t support the format.  If you build a high definition television entertainment system with surround sound, and have the appropriate Blu-Ray player, you have everything you need to try out SACD audio.  If you don’t, there’s a lot of equipment to buy just to hear what all the fuss is about – and that’s why the SACD format hasn’t caught on.  Or least one of the reasons.

Most new SACDs are imports with $29.99 list prices.  If you balk at spending $18.99 for a CD, then SACDs are poison.  You’d think record companies would be promoting a format that can’t be ripped on a PC (because SACDs can’t be played on PCs users can’t make copies).  Why wasn’t SACDs the answer to CD piracy?

We are living in an age of abundant technology, and the reigning rule of thumb for most citizens of this era is the “Good Enough” principle.  Don’t spend too much money, don’t waste too much time on consumer research, don’t get involved with anything requiring too much learning, just settle for good enough.  SACD technology is expensive, requires lots of consumer research, and a great deal of technical knowledge to use correctly.  iPods and iTunes are cheap and easy, so their sound is good enough.

What I want to know is why high fidelity isn’t cheap and easy?  Most people can afford high definition TV sets, and cable and satellite companies make it reasonably easy to see HDTV shows.  Why has the music industry failed to bring HD music to the masses?

I gave up on SACDs several years ago when I was afraid the format was going to be another Betamax.  I should have kept buying SACDs as they came out and helped support the cause.  I’m sorry I didn’t.  I was sidetracked by streaming music from Rhapsody and other online sources, and figured that was the future of music.  Many SACD fans hope the DSD download will be the future of streaming music, but that mostly seems to be a gleam in their eye right now.

Since sales of CDs are in sharp decline, it could be the the music industry feels the CD will be the niche market for audiophiles as plebian music fans flock to the good enough MP3 file format.  But audiophiles who have gotten used to the extreme quality of SACD don’t want to go back to CD – a format they’ve always hated anyway.  In fact, they may be the ones buying LPs again and improving its market share.  Doesn’t it seem strange to be going back to 1948 technology to get high fidelity?

For years now I’ve been listening to streaming music as my main source of music.  It’s convenient and I have access to millions of songs and albums.  It has been way to easy.  But when I do play my SACDs and actually sit and listen to their quality I wonder if I’m sacrificing too much for ease of use.  Maybe “Good Enough” really isn’t all that good?  I could return to LPs like my friend Lee has.  He’s even giving me a turntable to convert me to the cause.

And there’s another issue that my friend Luther pointed out.  He says there is so much content that people don’t discriminate anymore.  In the old days most people had a shelf of LPs (or a crate of them) but a very small number.  They were albums they cherished and knew.  I have over a thousand CDs, maybe even as many as 1,500, and most haven’t been played in years and years, and I can’t even remember what I have.

Wouldn’t it be better to have fewer albums, ones of of the highest fidelity, that I knew intimately?  I should use the wealth of Rhapsody to only find new albums to buy and cherish on my living room stereo instead of using it as my only source of music.  Audiophiles are telling me that true, and they bitterly complain those albums shouldn’t be on CD, but LP or SACD.  If I go by availability, the LP is the answer.

When I sit in my La-Z-Boy and crank up my SACD copy of Blonde on Blonde, and close my eyes and listen, the experience is so much fuller than playing music as the background soundtrack to my activities.  Music deserves our full attention like watching a movie.  Teresa, the writer of the blog SACD Lives listens to music in a total dark room without clothes so she can give her fullest attention to the experience.  Now that’s an extreme audiophile.  Makes me want to have a sensory deprivation chamber outfitted with SACD sound, so I could float in music.

JWH – 10/2/10