The Davey G and the Keyboard 10th Anniversary Show (s)

Flyer courtesy of Alex Fine.

On the 10th anniversary of his landmark album, “Generica” Davey G celebrates with you …
In the year 2000, I released my very first album, “Generica,” in cassette form. It had 21 tracks, some of which were very good, some of which were not very good. But it was the start of something fantastic, and ten years later it is time to celebrate the “achievement” of that magical debut album which launched the career of Davey G and the Keyboard. Come see me, Davey G in 2 very special shows in which I will be drawing heavily from that first album…



Saturday, May 22
The Windup Space
12 W. North Avenue
Davey G and the Keyboard
Pfisters
Paperback Tragedy
Scott Alexander
Man-Friend (The Davey G tribute band)

Saturday, June 12
The Sidebar
218 E. Lexington Street

Davey G and the Keyboard
The Mandroids
Rare Candy
Markitect
4th Grade Security Risk








Doors at 9 p.m for Both Shows.

3 Quick book reviews

The last several books I’ve read have been kind of similar so I’m going to throw them into one blog post here.

SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes And Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance by Steven D. Levitt


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I’m probably short-changing this fairly brilliant book by simply saying that it is an excellent follow-up to Freakonomics, applying the same off-beat approach to human behavior based upon incentives. I would say that I’m a little annoyed that they opened the book with the whole bit about prostitutes, as it really prevents me from being able to recommend it to, say, somebody’s smart but uptight dad, because it is otherwise a hugely entertaining read and a great way to start thinking about the world around us.

The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell


My rating: 5 of 5 stars
After reading both the Freakonomics books, Gladwell was an obvious follow-up. This is a brilliant examination of the forces at work which cause an idea to become an epidemic (like the Macarena or Hush Puppies or maybe Bill Clinton). For examples, he uses Paul Revere’s Ride, NYC Subway vigilante Bernard Getz, and a fascinating correlation between suicide and smoking. My only thought about this book is that it could very well be used in a cynical way in some evil marketing plan by say, the vile food of KFC or something.

Blink by Malcolm Gladwell


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This is a brilliant book about the power of “thin slicing,” or the ability to make decisions based upon a person’s reactions in the first few moments of any situation. It explores this phenomenon in the world of art, music, politics, and crime. I was a big fan of Gavin de Becker’s The Gift of Fear, and this book would probably make a great companion piece for that.

All three of these books are worth checking out for their off-beat thinking and fast-paced writing.



SF= 4 stars
TTP= 5 stars
Blink= 4 and a half stars


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236 or… Davey G and a dramatic attempt to lower his cholesterol Part 3.

The final part of a three part series...I was told I had high cholesterol and needed to bring it down or else have to go on medication. This is what I did to try to prevent that.

I’ve been reading so much these days, I actually find it comforting to have such an ordinary problem for which there is a whole wealth of literature out there addressing. A book by Dr. Janet Brill called Cholesterol Down has given me some semblance of a program with which to work, and I’ve adapted many of it into my current routine. Some of the advice I did not take: I wasn’t crazy about the suggestion that I take Metamucil, so I decided to skip that one. I had trouble incorporating Flax Seeds into the diet. But overall, it was a very powerful plan that helped me a great deal so if that sounds like an endorsement of this book, then go ahead and check it out of your local library.

Whole grain oats. Every day I eat Cheerios, which this book considers to be an acceptable substitute for cholesterol-lowering oatmeal (which I also eat). I have also substituted whole grain bread for all my sandwich needs
(I keep a stash at work). If there is only one thing of which I am sure about all this, it is that a diet of whole grains is absolutely necessary in any serious attempt to lower cholesterol. A side note: I also laid off the mayonnaise, but I’m sure it will find other work real soon. (sorry, bad pun).

Apples and nuts. An apple a day. Red delicious are supposed to be the best for my purpose, but fujis are right up there. I cut up an apple and eat it with a handful of almonds, which are good for your cholesterol but are also high in fat. Therefore, just a handful a day to get the benefit of this food.

Overall, I’ve found that the biggest changes in my diet are an increase in fruits and vegetables (for the necessary fiber) and the elimination of cheese, which is fatty and raises cholesterol--in fact, high cholesterol seems to be a result of consuming animal products, of which I must say I do consume a lot.

Soy. I probably didn’t follow this one religiously, but I tried. I ate boca burgers, I used soy milk in my coffee. If nothing else, soy milk in my coffee turned out to be a very yummy thing (vanilla flavor was my favorite.)

Exercise. Would you believe I joined a gym? Would you believe that I have been running 25 minutes at a time 4-5 days a week? Would you believe that I actually find myself liking it? There’s something about routine that I obviously must crave, and indeed I thrive under it. Writing every day helps me to write better, and running every day helps me to run better. Going to a gym and running on a treadmill, listening to music that I like and knowing that I am burning calories, to boot--well, it’s pretty great. I am at that point where I need to maintain my body or watch it fall apart, and while my generally active lifestyle keeps me from gaining weight, putting in that extra effort has helped me to lose weight. In 80 days I went from 160.2 pounds to 150.4, almost a whole 10 pounds. While it wasn’t the objective of this project, it certainly didn’t hurt it either.

So…how did I do?
After almost 2 months of this diet and routine, would all of these things really reduce my cholesterol? Even just a little bit? Or would I be forced to give in to the inevitable and take medication? I can only speak for myself on the issue of medication. I know that for some people, diet and exercise are not enough, and medication provides a solution. But I just really hoped that this would not be the case for me, and that is why I took so many steps to ensure that this wouldn’t happen.

April 17.
I went to the Dr. on Wednesday and got my blood drawn again. I had nothing to eat and then to be on the safe side, I didn’t even have a beer before bed. I called back today and asked for my results, and the Dr. said everything was good--and I asked him how good: What was the number?

“154. Good Job--keep doing what you are doing!”


154? Down from 236?
82 points??? In 82 days???
I did it!


It’s very empowering to know that simply by taking direct and positive action, I could affect a change in myself this profound.

I’ve changed, albeit, in a small way. But it is definitely something real. When I go to the store, I look in my basket and I see things I had never seen in it before: apples. Carrots. Salad mix. Skim Milk. Bananas.
And I think about how even that is a big switch, a small but important step away from a general apathy about my health I felt before.
It helps that I’m not really a food person. Or at least there is nothing previously in my diet so important that I couldn’t learn to live without it (I don’t like bacon THAT much.) That said…
I’ve got a gift card for Outback Steakhouse that we’ve been sitting on for months now. Now that I know my number is down, I think it’s time for a little indulgence (I’d say “Hello Bloomin’ Onion if I actually liked onions). And then we’re back on the good stuff Monday because I rather like my healthy, 10 pound lighter self.

Don’t worry, I’m not going to become an obnoxious health nut--this is not going to become “The Doctor G Health Blog.” I just wanted to let people know that I am a regular guy with a common problem that I believe I have conquered. Much like when you fall in love, you want to tell the world, I want to tell the world that I lowered my cholesterol. If any of this helps you, great. If not, great--thanks for reading anyway.

That’s it for now. Feel free to comment or ask questions, otherwise, I’m getting back to book reviews and Davey G shows and other Davey G related things, and tomorrow I going to enjoy my yummy steak.
--Davey “I lost 10 pounds and 82 points off my cholesterol and I’m not even selling anything to profit off of it” G.

236 or…Davey G and a dramatic attempt to lower his cholesterol Part 2.

In Part 1, I was told I needed to lower my cholesterol from the very high number of 236 (it should be under 200). It led me to think about some of my bad habits. Here were my thoughts.
(NOTE: I AM BY NO MEANS AN EXPERT IN HEALTH OR CHOLESTEROL MANAGEMENT--WHAT FOLLOWS IS MERELY MY OBSERVATIONS OF MY OWN STEPS I’VE TAKEN TO TRY TO LOWER MY CHOLESTEROL.)

I considered some of the things in my life that I was doing and was forced to admit that not all of it was very good. Some of this may seem harmless, but actually some of it was really hurting me:

Alcohol.

Oh, for me it’s tough to imagine a life without alcohol. I admit, it’s been a constant in my life for many, many years. I have never been a binge drinker (well---once in awhile, as some of my friends know)--usually I drink to relax. To this end, I drink every day, about 3 to 5 beers a night.
But tell a Doctor or a non-drinker that you have “3 to 5 beers a night” and it sure as hell sounds like a lot.

Because I am serious about lowering my cholesterol, I need to change this.

Because I do not feel that I want to completely cut alcohol out of my life, I must compromise.

What I changed:
“3 to 5 beers a day” gets reduced to 1-3 a day, usually no more than 2.
What this does, I realize, is it makes me look at alcohol from a different perspective. I start to notice that if I am aware of the fact that I am only “allowed” 1-3 a day, then I want those “1 to 3” to count. So I don’t want to waste one of my “1 to 3” by say, drinking one in the afternoon or drinking one when I don’t really want it, or say, drinking one after I’ve already had a few when I really won’t appreciate it. I’ve found that since I started rationing and thinking about it, I’m usually okay with just one a night, which as far as I can tell from any of the on-line sources I’ve read about cholesterol, is perfectly okay (2 a day for men, 1 a day for women because women metabolize alcohol less rapidly.) (A note on this: if you don’t drink, don’t start. And I may be rationalizing my rationing of alcohol by quoting possibly biased information.)

The point being, this is a big change for me. And the whole point is that I needed to do something.

Cheese.
The hardest part of this whole thing has been cheese. I truly believe it is the one area in which I have never considered as part of a problem, but when I think about it, I eat it every day. It is on every sandwich, it is on every pizza, and it is bad, bad, bad. And damn, it is so good. But I have to cut it out.

What I changed:
I gave up cheese. Or I looked for a low-fat cheese: under 3g of fat per serving--it was harder than I thought it would be. I learned that I could live without it. Or I learned that I could live with less of it. Still haven’t quite figured out the pizza thing…
If I were to completely dumb down any info or wisdom I have gained from this experience of changing my diet and habits, it is that no cheese and less beer and more exercise equals less weight and (hopefully) lower cholesterol.

Whole Milk.
Fatty and bad for me. I always used whole milk on my cereal, in my coffee…
What I changed:
I went from whole milk to 1% now to skim milk in my cereal. And you know what? I got used to it. I started putting soy milk in my coffee. Much less fat and it gets some soy into my diet, which is good for lowering cholesterol.

Bacon.
It’s just really bad for you, as are hot dogs, as is bologna, because it is all just processed crap (as Jamie Oliver would say in his Food Revolution). Bologna really is just one big hot dog, by the way. When I used to work at a deli and had to slice it, I could see that it really was just a giant hot dog put into slice-able form.
What I changed:
I just don’t eat it anymore. It’s just not worth it. Plus, I already had experience with giving up bacon.


Next up: Specifics. Things I added to my routine that helped me.

236 or…Davey G and a dramatic attempt to lower his cholesterol Part 1.

(Note: I’m splitting this up into multiple parts due to its length and due to the fact that part 2 still needs work. And to add dramatic tension. Hang in there.)

I’m going to write about something that may or may not interest anyone, but I write it out of the hope that maybe I can pass along a little of what I have learned in a relatively short period of time. I have found in the many years that I have been writing semi-publicly, I have been surprised at the positive reactions I receive when I simply write from the heart. Today, ironically, it is about the heart that I write.

Or more specifically, cholesterol.

I have always been in reasonably good health--no major diseases, I don’t get sick very often, and I am fairly active. I ride a bike to work, (and recreationally--read here) I walk frequently, and I work on my feet in a fairly un-sedentary life. I would consider my eating habits--well, not the best, but I have only ever had a vague sense of caution about what I eat. For example, I have always known that it is not a good idea to eat a lot of fried food, and that maybe red meat all the time is not always such a good idea. Once, back in high school, I was so freaked out by something the health teacher said about bacon that I didn’t eat it for 2 years. I don’t eat fast food, because I hate the way it tastes, I don’t eat potato chips---I could go on, but the point is that I have always believed that my lifestyle and eating habits were much better than the average American.

But overall, that has meant that I have gone under the assumption that because I was “active” and “ate well” that I didn’t really need to think about things like fat content or nutritional content because after all, I’m not fat and I take vitamins, and beyond that, I also don’t smoke.

So little did I suspect that I would have a problem with high cholesterol.

I hadn’t been to a Doctor’s office in over 12 years until I got insurance and began seeing one regularly. The first time I went I was holed up for 2 hours while I was given every conceivable test and questioned extensively about “family history” and my own personal habits. I was given kudos for not smoking, chided slightly for a 3 to 5 beers a day habit (only partly as a bi-product of working in a bar for so many years) and overall given a clean bill of health.

The next time I visited, I was told that my blood-work was “excellent” but that my cholesterol was just barely on the higher end of okay--just under 200. I figured that was fine, and I wasn’t told to change anything, so I didn’t.

On a later visit, I was told that my cholesterol had risen--up to about 214, and I was given the Fear of God speech, about how cholesterol builds up in your system and takes 15 years to get to your heart, which would put me right on schedule for a mid-life heart attack. The Doctor wasn’t worried, because there was no history of this in my family, but it was merely a friendly warning. I left the office with the thought that the one thing I was absolutely going to change right here and now was to go back to my boycott of bacon that had been so successful almost 15 years ago.

Then a few days later, I got a phone call from the Doctor’s office. “We need to see you. It’s about your test results.”

That’s never a good sign. But I went through all the possibilities, crossed out the more unlikely ones--if I had cancer or something, they wouldn’t tell me, they’d send me to a specialist first, right?--and tried not to worry about it until I could actually know what it was.

I made an appointment and saw my usual Doctor’s counterpart, a man with whom I was unfamiliar. He gave me the bad news: my cholesterol number had shot up to 236, and they wanted to put me on medication…

How did this happen? How could a healthy person like me have such a problem like this?

At the risk of being overdramatic, I have a lot to live for. In addition to a wife who loves me enough to keep me healthy and many animals who need me, I have so much I want to do. I have always planned on living to an old age and always being mentally and physically capable to write (speaking of which...) and make music and otherwise make the world at least marginally better for other people. I want to write many great books and travel to see wild polar bears and none of the things I want to do can be done if I die or become incapacitated when I’m 50. So I need to stay healthy and for the first time in my life, I need to care about what I eat and what I do to stay fit and avoid costly medication or future hospitalization.
**********************
I told the Doctor “Wait, hold up,” and then told him that I needed some time to work on this before they put me on medication. Up to this point I had taken no steps to fix this, because no one had ever really told me how dire a situation it was. It was only then, sitting in that office that I became convinced that now was the time to take this seriously, that I could no longer “take my health for granted.”

I had to completely re-examine my life, and what I could do differently. Avoiding bacon is a good first start, but where else was I going wrong?

Next up: Things I love, but might have to cut down on…

Books: Food Politics

Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health by Marion Nestle


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Food is indeed political. At least this is a message that I’m being hit with a lot recently. Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution on TV, a show that takes on America’s bad eating habits and tries to change them, also documents an incredible amount of resistance to this change. “We don’t wanna sit around and eat lettuce all day!” says the local radio show host in Huntington, West Virginia (a city which, according to the Centers for Disease Control, is the unhealthiest city in America). It seems that people will eat their crap food, earnest and well-meaning English chef be damned.

So it goes. In the context of what is wrong with the food industry, corporate America, Government and human attitude, Marion Nestle’s Food politics is a must-read. Everyone must eat to survive, but there is a fundamental battle between the Eat Less and the Eat More camps. What we need, Nestle stresses, is an Eat Less mentality, but every day and on many fronts, we are encouraged to Eat More. While what is best for people is a rational diet (preferably full of non-processed food, as Jamie Oliver tirelessly advocates on the TV program) and exercise (Eat Less), the food industry, in collusion with marketers and Government do everything in their power to sell more product, and therefore encourage more consumption (Eat More).

If only it stopped there.
This book shows:

“How the food industry uses lobbying, lawsuits, financial contributions, public relations, advertising, partnerships and alliances, philanthropy, threats and biased information to convince Congress, federal agencies, nutrition and health professionals and the public that the science relating diet to health is so confusing that they need not worry about diets: when it comes to diets, anything goes.”
--p. 358.

As Food Politics shows, there is simply a broad range of issues with the food industry that affect every single one of us: dubious health claims for products, “food pyramids” that are skewed toward consuming meat than is good for us, and armies of lawyers and a shit-load of money for any corporation who needs to mow down opposition to their goals which are often in conflict with public health.

Your Libertarian self may sneer at these conclusions. We have free choice to eat what we want, you’d say. You’d be correct. But if Food Politics and Jamie Oliver shows nothing else, it is that options for eating healthy are much less plentiful than options for eating crap. It doesn’t matter if our poor diets and lack of exercise are literally killing us via heart disease and other avenues. No--to many, our diets are written off as “personal choice.” But the options for eating well are far overwhelmed by the options for eating poorly. If you don’t believe that, then you should count the number of fresh fruit stands on the interstate and then compare that to the number of fast food chains.

Food Politics is eye-opening, though not always fun to read--it takes less of a position than you might think, given the topic. Although its essential theme is about how the production and distribution of food is run by a scary consortium of people who do not have public interest at heart, it doesn’t have the “gotcha” moments that make reading, say Al Franken or Michael Moore so much fun. Food Politics is more textbook-like, presenting the information and letting the reader draw his own conclusions. It does not ask for our anger, but it certainly supplies a reason for it. This book belongs in the library of anyone who needs a reason to support locally grown food, or to have their eyes opened to the fact that when it comes to diet, food is very political indeed.

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