By Tobin Barnes
I’ve been flirting with the idea of becoming a health nut. You know, weighing the pros and cons. Right now, they’re running neck and neck, almost like it’ll come down to flipping a coin.
The comedian Redd Foxx used to say, “Someday health nuts are going to feel stupid, lying in hospitals dying of nothing.”
Until recently, when I was lying in a hospital after surgery, I had thought Redd’s comment was pretty funny. Then I underwent a conversion of sorts. “Dying of nothing” started sounding pretty good.
In the throes of self-pity for what I’d just undergone, I even gave my wife free rein to remind me of healthy behavior whenever she wanted: stuff like, “You need to be exercising” or “You shouldn’t be eating that.”
I told her she could toss out these reminders as she thought necessary, and I wouldn’t complain about being nagged.
“Can I get that in writing?” she asked, knowing who she was dealing with.
I said (and this shows how far gone I was), “Yes,” virtually tossing my long-cherished arrogance about health to the wind. Thus I had traded my prior state of health obliviousness for random, inconvenient reminders of healthy habits.
But now, with the hindsight of a cooler head, I wonder whether I should resume the macho stereotype of allowing health advice to go in one ear and out the other or supinely submit to taking care of myself.
The choice is not as obvious as it would seem to the average female mind.
It takes time and trouble to be healthy, especially once in the midst of middle age. Men do not easily dispense of time doing nothing or accept the trouble it takes to practice good habits, even if it means avoidance of heart attack, cancer, surgery or whatever other mayhem an unhealthy life might conjure up. We’ve got reputations to maintain.
Nevertheless, imbued with the spirit of the new, though somewhat reluctant, convert, I decided to total up the damages thus far. I went to realage.com to take the test that’s been trumpeted everywhere in the media.
That in itself isn’t a simple thing. The test takes time--once again, time that males treasure so dearly as time that could be used doing nothing of value. So I went through it as quickly as I could.
One of the results of the test is a comparison of your real age to your health age. In this, I was gratified to be told that though my real age is 54.6, my health age is many years younger. My total disregard for health issues had evidently worked.
When I gleefully reported the results to my wife, her reaction was “Ha!” To say the least, she was skeptical. It was as though she wasn’t happy that I might live longer than expected.
“What’d you put down for your blood pressure?” she pounced.
I told her what I thought had been a reasonable estimate.
“Ha!” she said.
She then asked other indelicate questions about my responses, again finding that I’d perhaps been a tad optimistic about past results and present behaviors. She persuaded me to go back and put down real answers. After all, the site is entitled the Real Age Test, not the Wishful Thinking Test. So I did...mostly, or at least I revised the more egregious answers.
And again the results weren’t all that bad. My real age, 54.6, was obviously still the same and my health age was a pretty-good 51.1. Hey, I was cheating the logic of a healthful life by more than three years. (I think not being a smoker is the thing that helped my case most. I’ll be the first to agree that I have other areas that need work.)
The results also detail an extensive list of improvements the test-taker can make based upon the answers given. By following the advice, and, at least in my case there was a ton of it, a person can lower his health age significantly.
However, I’m thinking if I did all it advised, it’d be close to a full-time job, but I can see where every bit that I do is bound to help.
Right now, I’m leaning in the “every bit” direction.
Dying of nothing is a thoroughly attractive idea, though dying later than normal is the more realistic one.
Saturday, November 25, 2006
Sunday, November 19, 2006
COLUMN: If You Can't Stand the Heat
By Tobin Barnes
“Heat.” That’s the name of a book I’m reading. Title sounds like some big-city detective thriller, doesn’t it?
I wish.
Instead, it’s about the literal and metaphorical “heat” in the kitchen of a big city three-star Italian restaurant. Uh huh, not exactly the stuff of a white knuckle page-turner.
Tell you the truth, other than getting a good review, I don’t know why I’m reading this book, or even more pertinently, why I’m continuing to read it. But I am.
The author, a New Yorker who enjoys entertaining friends at his dinner parties, one night shockingly realized that the friend of a friend he’d invited turned out to be a famous chef.
Barely able to control himself from worshipping at the chef’s feet and totally humbled by his own relatively meagre abilities, the author turned the night’s cooking responsibilities over to His Largeness, none other than THE Mario Batali.
That’s right, that Mario Batali. Ring a bell?
Yeah...didn’t think it would. So let me tell you more. He’s the Mario of the famous New York restaurant Babbo and of the hit cooking show “Molto Mario” on the Food Network.
Still doesn’t do it for you?
Don’t sweat it. I’d never heard of the guy either. Once I get beyond good-grub-type cuisine, I can’t tell the difference between gourmet eateries and those chain style hash-and-dashes.
Nevertheless, according to the book, Mario is bigger than life, and not only in girth. Expressive and irrepressible, the guy can down vast quantities of whatever-is-served at a sitting while sloshing through half a case of wine.
Wondering where you can get this book?
No? I understand.
Actually, big Mario, despite his bohemian bonhomie, is the book’s sidelight. After striking up a friendship, which seems easy with Mario, the author asks if he can learn the trade at his chic restaurant. And that apprenticeship in Mario’s kitchen makes for the best parts, despite the fact that Mario’s ample shadow seldom darkens the tiles.
The poor writer, Bill Buford, endures contempt from his fellow workers for his lack of skills, demoralizing scoldings from his superiors for his mistakes, arm-hair loss and painful burns during his stint at the volcanic grill, and the pressure of the President amidst a missile crisis when he works the pasta station.
Unbeknownst to us diners, it can oftentimes get downright back-bitingly ugly in a steamingly hot restaurant kitchen while we’re dining out front, maybe getting a little shirty and thinking about sending the whole meal back because the snow peas are a tad rubbery.
Some nights the author comes off a 12-hour shift, his once-white jacket darkened with sweat and ironed onto his chest by the grill heat, feeling beat up like he’s been in a title fight with Muhammad Ali. All he can manage to do is crawl home and stare zombie-like out the window until daylight breaks across the Manhattan skyline, get a few hours sleep, then head in for another twelve.
If the book has value to the average reader, it’s in an appreciation of how tough restaurant work can be and in amazement that people not only want to do it but even somehow love it. Many of the “characters” in the book worked in Italy for little or no pay and much abuse, including Mario, to better learn their craft.
But it’s not for me. I spent one summer and one summer only working in a restaurant. It was the worst employment experience of my life, and I hardly scratched the surface because I was merely a lowly busboy. But even from that vantage point I could see there was no part of that existence I wanted. I saw how hard everybody worked and how thankless it oftentimes seemed to be.
And to put an exclamation point on it, the manager used me like a cheap dish tub. He somehow convinced me--as a teenager, I could have made Charlie Brown seem sophisticated--to punch in only for the peak serving times during breakfast and lunch and to punch out and go home during the slack times. I spent more time commuting back and forth from that cheapskate’s restaurant than I did working at it.
Anyway, I’ll continue to read “Heat,” even though it’s not a big-city detective story, appreciating the devotion and ungodly hours restaurant people put into their work.
“Heat.” That’s the name of a book I’m reading. Title sounds like some big-city detective thriller, doesn’t it?
I wish.
Instead, it’s about the literal and metaphorical “heat” in the kitchen of a big city three-star Italian restaurant. Uh huh, not exactly the stuff of a white knuckle page-turner.
Tell you the truth, other than getting a good review, I don’t know why I’m reading this book, or even more pertinently, why I’m continuing to read it. But I am.
The author, a New Yorker who enjoys entertaining friends at his dinner parties, one night shockingly realized that the friend of a friend he’d invited turned out to be a famous chef.
Barely able to control himself from worshipping at the chef’s feet and totally humbled by his own relatively meagre abilities, the author turned the night’s cooking responsibilities over to His Largeness, none other than THE Mario Batali.
That’s right, that Mario Batali. Ring a bell?
Yeah...didn’t think it would. So let me tell you more. He’s the Mario of the famous New York restaurant Babbo and of the hit cooking show “Molto Mario” on the Food Network.
Still doesn’t do it for you?
Don’t sweat it. I’d never heard of the guy either. Once I get beyond good-grub-type cuisine, I can’t tell the difference between gourmet eateries and those chain style hash-and-dashes.
Nevertheless, according to the book, Mario is bigger than life, and not only in girth. Expressive and irrepressible, the guy can down vast quantities of whatever-is-served at a sitting while sloshing through half a case of wine.
Wondering where you can get this book?
No? I understand.
Actually, big Mario, despite his bohemian bonhomie, is the book’s sidelight. After striking up a friendship, which seems easy with Mario, the author asks if he can learn the trade at his chic restaurant. And that apprenticeship in Mario’s kitchen makes for the best parts, despite the fact that Mario’s ample shadow seldom darkens the tiles.
The poor writer, Bill Buford, endures contempt from his fellow workers for his lack of skills, demoralizing scoldings from his superiors for his mistakes, arm-hair loss and painful burns during his stint at the volcanic grill, and the pressure of the President amidst a missile crisis when he works the pasta station.
Unbeknownst to us diners, it can oftentimes get downright back-bitingly ugly in a steamingly hot restaurant kitchen while we’re dining out front, maybe getting a little shirty and thinking about sending the whole meal back because the snow peas are a tad rubbery.
Some nights the author comes off a 12-hour shift, his once-white jacket darkened with sweat and ironed onto his chest by the grill heat, feeling beat up like he’s been in a title fight with Muhammad Ali. All he can manage to do is crawl home and stare zombie-like out the window until daylight breaks across the Manhattan skyline, get a few hours sleep, then head in for another twelve.
If the book has value to the average reader, it’s in an appreciation of how tough restaurant work can be and in amazement that people not only want to do it but even somehow love it. Many of the “characters” in the book worked in Italy for little or no pay and much abuse, including Mario, to better learn their craft.
But it’s not for me. I spent one summer and one summer only working in a restaurant. It was the worst employment experience of my life, and I hardly scratched the surface because I was merely a lowly busboy. But even from that vantage point I could see there was no part of that existence I wanted. I saw how hard everybody worked and how thankless it oftentimes seemed to be.
And to put an exclamation point on it, the manager used me like a cheap dish tub. He somehow convinced me--as a teenager, I could have made Charlie Brown seem sophisticated--to punch in only for the peak serving times during breakfast and lunch and to punch out and go home during the slack times. I spent more time commuting back and forth from that cheapskate’s restaurant than I did working at it.
Anyway, I’ll continue to read “Heat,” even though it’s not a big-city detective story, appreciating the devotion and ungodly hours restaurant people put into their work.
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