Over at ModPaleo: a guest post by me!

The nice folks over at ModPaleo, a paleo-food service in both North Carolina and Ohio, asked me if I would like to do a guest post on their blog as part of their Beyond Food series. As you can guess, the series focuses on other things you can do, "beyond [paleo] food," to optimize your life. I weighed in on meditation. Go here to read my spiel.

(A pic of me in the Supai Tunnel, at the Grand Canyon, a short ways down the North Kaibab Trail from the North Rim. What's that have to do with meditation? Not much, but happiness sure does.)

Live Review: Godspeed You! Black Emperor at Union Transfer in Philadelphia, 10/16/13

The drone starts before you know it.

I realized, while I was talking to a friend of mine, while we were waiting for Montreal "post-rock" collective Godspeed You! Black Emperor to take the stage, that a bass-heavy drone had already begun on the empty stage. And it was getting louder.

You could see -- and hear -- over the next ten minutes or so, people ending their conversations and turning toward the stage. And then the lights went out, band members appeared and the films began.

The only illumination onstage for the nearly the next two hours came from the red glow of amplifiers and the ever-present black-and-white movies that played behind the musicians.

It was arty and totally weird, and fucking amazing.

GYBE works a soft/loud/soft dynamic similar -- in a generic sense -- to other instrumental bands like Mogwai and Russian Circles. But sheer numbers -- there are eight members of GYBE (two drums, two basses, three guitars and a violin) -- and a sense of patience that other bands can't approach, mean that the soft-to-loud build of most of their songs is long, drawn out and ultimately more overwhelming. The listener that hangs in there through the early drone, into the build, and then beyond, is rewarded with a level of attack that is simply pummeling. The best description I could come up with was a melange of 1968 instrumental Pink Floyd with the late-1980's Butthole Surfers with a symphony along for the ride. But I'm not sure that's adequate. And the sheer disruptive chaos of the films behind the band only adds to the power of the performance.

That early quiet drone built over ten minutes or so into a frenzied roar and the word "HOPE" flashed intermittently on the screen, and remained in place only then to cede way to "Mladic." This band's politics can be a bit of a mystery, but its ability to convey the dread and fear caused by the title's namesake is awe-inspiring. When what appears to be the soundtrack to a chaotic Serbian war dance of some sort began (see: about 7:10 of the video below), believe me when I say that there was no one in the room doing anything but staring at the stage, in rapt attention.

Somehow, after that, the band kept it all going at that level through three more extended pieces that were similar in that they all rose and fell, rewarding the patient listener with brutal levels of volume and thunder. But "Gathering Storm," "Moya" and "Behemoth" each distinguished themselves with unique twists on the dynamic theme. And "Behemoth" was a particularly apt closer: nearly 45 minutes of a draining, pounding attack that took a break for a quieter interlude, only to return, even louder, and then drone to a close, with the band members individually leaving the stage and one of the drummers turning down the last guitar to signal the end.

It truly was a stunning spectacle that GYBE put on by simply walking onstage, playing their asses off in near complete disregard of the location, setting etc., and then leaving. It was my first time seeing them, but I don't think I will ever miss them again. This show was like nothing else I have ever seen or heard.

Live Review: Mark Lanegan at Underground Arts in Philadelphia, 10/12/13

Sometimes time passes faster than you realize.

The first time I saw Mark Lanegan onstage was a late 1980s Screaming Trees tour when the band opened for fIREHOSE at a small Philly club, long since defunct, called Revival.

Until last Saturday night, that was also, somehow, the last time.

And really, I have no idea how that happened. That late-'80s show was cool, but, for my money, the Trees never hit their full-on groove until Barrett Martin signed on as drummer for the Sweet Oblivion record. Released in 1992, SO is, as far as I am concerned, the single greatest album to come out of the grunge era. It has competition, for sure, from the likes of Mudhoney, Nirvana and Temple of the Dog, but SO is flat-out perfect. The bottom end of that record undulates like the best Black Sabbath (which would be Volume 4, if we are keeping track), while Gary Lee Conner wah-wahs and wails on lead guitar and Mr. Lanegan finally fully discovers the power of the low-end range of his voice amidst songs that give the band a little space and room to move.

It may be a notion without any actual facts behind it, but it's been my theory -- and I am sticking to it -- that what finally flipped the Trees into awesomeness, from merely being a very good band prior to Sweet Oblivion to the zenith of that record, is that Mark Lanegan got musically out and about, courtesy of his first solo album -- a stunning, brooding piece of melancholy and anger called The Winding Sheet -- which was released in 1990. Very different from the Trees records that preceded it, TWS ditches most of the psychedelia in favor of an indie/Americana hybrid that just plain seethes. The Trees album that immediately followed, 1991's Uncle Anesthesia, hints at incorporating aspects of Lanegan's newfound style, but it is Sweet Oblivion where the whole deal gets fleshed out, fully hybridizing the strongest points of the Trees with the best of Lanegan's solo side, and, yeah, Barrett Fucking Martin on drums. (Yes, that's his middle name). It is a perfect record.

Anyway, I missed the Trees after SO came out, missed 'em again when 1996 brought a solid effort from them called Dust, and then... they broke up. In the meantime, Mark Lanegan released another great solo record, Whiskey for the Holy Ghost in 1994, and then he got really busy. There were numerous solo releases, and also collaborations with Greg Dulli, Isobel Campbell, Queens of the Stone Age and the Soulsavers. Every single one of those records is solid, and a few are pure genius. In fact, I don't think you can find any two better albums from the last ten years from anyone than Bubblegum (2004) and Blues Funeral (2012). Those two, while very different from the Screaming Trees, share one thing with Sweet Oblivion: they showcase all sides of Mark Lanegan -- a deep whiskey-drenched tone on the slower, quieter songs and a range from a whisper to a roar on the more uptempo ones.

But still, somehow, I never saw him live during any of that time.

So, with great anticipation -- for good reason -- I bought tickets for his October 12, 2013 show at Underground Arts in Philadelphia. But I was a little wary too. I had heard that he wasn't touring with a band this time. OK, much of the solo stuff burns so beautifully at a reduced level of attack that *that* was OK, but then there was the new album, a covers record that Lanegan seemed, from interviews, to really enjoy making, but it wasn't grabbing me like the rest of his catalogue. Yeah, I love the John Cale cover, and a couple others are cool, but I feared a covers-heavy set at the expense of a broad career-spanning setlist.

Let's be clear: I'm a dope, and my fears were completely unwarranted.

First of all, about those stupid fears, he only did a few from the new album. Three songs mid-show from it were a solid sampler, and their lessened level of grit, compared to the rest of the set, was a fine demonstration of a wide range of styles. Secondly... no band? It may have been even better this way. Everything buzzed with tension, except when it roared, and yeah, when you bring along a guitar player as accomplished as Jeff Fielder... wow. The dude can play. He was covering for a whole lot of sound on some of the Blues Funeral and Screaming Trees songs, and he did it brilliantly. And where he just needed to back off and smolder a bit, like on the B-side "Mirrored," you could hear the smoke rising from the strings. I was impressed.

And the man himself? Even on a stage bathed solely in red light that makes everything a shadowy affair, when Mark Lanegan speaks -- or, better, when he sings -- he commands your complete attention.  The room was duly enraptured, start to finish.The setlist featured songs ranging all the way back to the Trees' Buzz Factory album, his first solo record, many of the solo albums in between (with wonderful emphasis on Blues Funeral, Bubblegum and Field Songs), a Soulsavers song, and even a stunning take on a B-side. It was truly brilliant.

And it all ended with a trip back first to The Winding Sheet for "Wild Flowers" and then a "Halo of Ashes" from Dust that rose and fell with dynamic tension, astounding guitar-playing and Mark Lanegan vocally letting loose even more than before. He said, "Thanks for your no-bullshit attitude, Philly. I like it here." Right back at you, sir. It was a pleasure.





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Full awareness: reaching health/fitness goals without getting in your own way

It seems like an easy concept, but, somewhere amidst all the hoopla of life, it gets a little, I dunno.... murky.

The most important thing to you is ______, so your goal is, no matter what, to be able to do that thing, or, better yet, to optimize the way you do it. And you proceed accordingly.

I think where some folks get lost is in that last part.

Actually, come to think of it, some people never get past the first part either....

I heard skier/CrossFitter/trainer Eva Twardokens on Robb Wolf's podcast a while ago and she said something like this (quotation marks for effect, not accuracy; I am paraphrasing): "The single most important thing to me is surfing. It's what I love to do most. So everything else that I do in training is done with a simple thought in mind: 'If I do this, is it going to help or hinder me at surfing?'"

Seems easy, right? You have a goal, and, every time you come to a fork in the decisional road, you ask yourself a simple question: "Which choice furthers, or at least doesn't hinder, reaching my goal?"

And I'm not really just talking about exercise. But let's start there.... With an example of a goal and then a plan from there. For me, I have two overall goals, and they aren't perfectly compatible. I want to generally be healthy, fit and live long, on one hand, and, on the other, there is no single thing that I do for fun that is more important to me than drumming. I love making music with a band.

So, on the general scale, even though I am a CrossFitter, when I exercise I don't do things that are geared solely towards, say, "training to be a really good CrossFitter" that potentially come at the expense of general health and longevity. Put differently, CrossFit is not a competitive sport for me; it is simply a way to be really freaking fit and healthy for my age. And on the more specific end of things, I don't do things that will mess me up for drumming. So.... a lot of kipping pull-ups? Or, more extremely, doing butterfly pull-ups at all? I don't do them. You can't be a really good competitive CrossFitter without at least a lot of kipping pull-ups, and, more likely, without butterfly pull-ups, but I am more interested in the long-term health of my shoulders. So I subscribe to the Greg Everett theory: "Kipping pull-ups? I like to think of them as kipping labrum tears."

Another example: heavy overhead Olympic lifts. Again, you cannot be a really good CrossFitter without them. But they further destroy my right elbow that drumming has already done a pretty good number on for the past 30-some years. If I want to drum well, my arms cooperate a lot more if I am not spending my free time catching overhead O-lifts with an arm that simply does not lock out. So I O-lift a little. It's fun, but I don't go very heavy, and don't do it very often. I save pushing really hard for deadlifts and squats.

That's easy to understand, right? Know what you really want, and then make choices that complement reaching that goal, rather than tripping yourself up at every turn. It's all about making choices with full awareness of how that choice affects the goal. There's rarely a "right" answer to the question, "Should I do X or Y?" until you set the goal.

And, like I said, goals are sometimes contradictory. *How* contradictory they are will determine whether you can pursue them at the same time. My health/longevity goal is at partial odds with my drumming goal. The condition of my right elbow at, say, age 75, is going to be worse if I keep drumming. But I don't care -- to a degree. So I have, on one hand, continued to play, but, on the other, backed off the continuous high-speed thrashfest that really wrecks me, and just plain effing hurts. It's a choice, and my exercise decisions are made in keeping with that choice as well. I am trying to live long and be happy... with a moderately (but not extremely) wrecked right elbow.

Other goals may be *so* at odds with one another that the choice is more of an either/or one. For instance, take the classic example: dude joins a CrossFit gym, significantly unhappy with body composition. He's fat, metabolically messed up and not very strong, and he wants to change that. Under the theory that all exercise is better than the slothful life he has been leading, he dives in, full-on, into an unlimited membership at the gym, doing long metcon work, taking few rest days, and, yeah, there is some initial progress, but then fat-loss stalls because his exercise has become so unfocused, haphazard and constant that he is actually stressing his body into retaining fat. (If this sounds like you, read The Paleo Coach by Jason Seib. Now.) This guy needs to stop training like he is being chased by a pack of wolves, and settle into a fat-loss-oriented regimen. Why? Because fat loss is his goal!

Or maybe you have started competing at powerlifting and want to be the absolute best powerlifter you can, and, at the same time, you want to be the best CrossFit athlete that you can and compete at CrossFit regionals. Both of those things are probably not going to happen simultaneously. You have lots of options -- doing OK at both, one over the other, whatever; it's your call -- but *both* together at a high level? No, that doesn't work.

And, remember that I said that I wasn't just talking about exercise? Yeah, food, sleep and stress-management all involve choices too. Eating gluten, vegetable oils, all the stuff that isn't paleo? Getting seven-plus hours sleep? Meditating to relieve stress? Understand the choice, make it, and go with it whichever way furthers your goal. Or say, "Screw it! I can't live without ____," but understand exactly how *that* choice will hamper (or fully impede) reaching your goal. Another example... This guy: "I love drinking alcohol regularly" *and* "I want to qualify for the CrossFit Games, or even regionals." He is going to need to shelve one of those, because the behavior (regular drinking) and the goal (qualifying for high-level CF) are contradictory.

So, how do you do better with this stuff?

First you have to have to have a goal. Second, you have to *actually* have a goal -- i.e., something, in the future, that you want to achieve. It can be general -- live long, healthy, happy, stress-free, with full mobility and cognition at age 80 -- or really specific: like making CrossFit regionals, or running the fastest you can in a particular race on a particular day. But it can't just be a haphazard amorphous blob of "whatever, dude" like: "I just want to go really hard with fitness" or "I just want to see what my body is capable of." Those types of non-goal "goals" either don't really mean anything other than "whatever I feel like that day" *or*, taken quite literally, they mean: "pushing myself right to the limit to see what happens."

I think we know what happens.

That isn't to say that you can't have a goal that is damaging to your body. Let's be serious: training for a marathon is, frankly, a fairly effed-up thing to do if your goal is basic health and longevity, but it makes perfect sense if your goal is to see how fast you can run a marathon.

But then.... being a modern person, you are likely going to have multiple goals. You have to organize them so they either: (1) aren't contradictory, or (2) aren't attempted simultaneously. So, yeah, you can run fifteen half marathons this year, but if you are significantly fatter than you want to be and fat-loss/body-comp is your primary goal, half-marathon training is not going to be the optimal way to get there.

Realistically set goals. Your goals. Not someone else's. Know what you want.

But then there's the next step: living your life in a way to reach your goals. Once you have the goal(s) in mind, you can tailor your training, food, sleep and stress management. Or you can say, "The hell with it," and never get there. That's your call.

But whichever road you take, make sure you do it with full awareness of how what you choose to do affects your ability to reach your goals. Because, as far as I am concerned, the sad thing isn't when someone doesn't achieve something in the gym, or in the fat-loss department, because he or she throws in the towel and makes a fully-aware choice to opt for gluten, booze and crappy sleep. That's just an adult running his or her own life. The bummer is when someone wants something really badly -- you know, has a real goal -- but doesn't know *how* to reach it, or is making choices about food, sleep and exercise without realizing the negative affect it is having on ever reaching that goal.

So... don't feel bad for the person who willfully scraps a good-health/fitness goal for beer, popcorn and good times. What bums me out is the woman or man who is working hard toward a goal, but unwittingly is doing all the wrong things to get there. Or the person who thinks he or she has a goal, and it's not really a goal at all, just an idea to "go hard" or "see what happens if I push my exercise limits." Or the person who has valid goals, but those goals conflict so much that pursuing them simultaneously guarantees failure.

In the end, it all revolves around a pretty simple concept: learn. Set some real goals, and then start finding out how to best reach them. We live in a pretty cool time, with web resources galore dedicated to paleo food, smart exercise, even sleep and stress management. And there are scores of smart trainers and others willing to guide you when you can't quite figure it all out. Your ability to tailor your life to get you where you want to go is greater than it ever has been. What are you going to do about it?













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Book review: Well Fed 2 by Melissa Joulwan

Paleo cookbooks and I have a funny relationship. I am a pretty strict paleo eater, and I do most (but not all) of the cooking around here. I *really* like to cook. It's positively *soothing* -- damn-near a Zen experience for me.

But I am fundamentally lazy about it too. Plus, both my wife and I have a rather storied history, pre-paleo and currently, of eating the same basic six or seven meals almost all the time, and being pretty happy with them.

So... "easy" is pretty critical for me when it comes to meal prep. And if I can meld easy and delicious with paleo, honestly, I go with it pretty often, and, as a result, I hardly ever crack most cookbooks open.

Oh, I *own* plenty of them, but there are very few that I actually use on any kind of regular basis.

The glaring exception to the rule: Well Fed by Melissa Joulwan.

Ever since that first volume came out in 2011, I've made delicious grilled chicken thighs with Melissa's Moroccan dipping sauce many more times than you would expect for a guy who routinely says things like: "Chicken is pretty stupid." I've prepared her Czech meatballs with pork (whoa) and then upped the ante and subbed in lamb (double whoa). I've adapted her recipe for Rogan Josh (not actually an action-hero who rivals MacGyver for awesomeness, but a curry dish from Kashmir) to fit my wife's paleo autoimmune protocol, and even done a decently credible crockpot version of it.

And I have been to parties that feature her Bora Bora fireballs more times than I can count.

I think the reason the original Well Fed keeps me coming back, when other cookbooks sit around looking pretty but collecting dust, is that, somehow, it strikes the perfect balance between being interesting -- read: I never would have thought of these recipes -- and yet easy enough that either I can make all of the recipes as-is or bastardize/adapt them to fit my lazy-self needs.

(A digression: you might think, as enthralled as I am with the first Well Fed, that, when I finally got a chance to meet Melissa at a book-signing event, I might have told her how much I love the recipes, how great they are, or how I love to adapt them as needed. Nah. We talked about Social Distortion. She's cool that way too).

So... When I first cracked open my copy of the brand-new Well Fed 2, I did so with a pretty high level of certainty that I was going to dig it immensely. But seriously... Melissa Joulwan outdid herself here.

And I guess I should have expected something like this from an author who struck the aforementioned interesting-but-easy balance so, well, easily, but... somehow -- and I'll be damned if I know how -- she has written a Volume 2 of an awesome cookbook that works perfectly for: (1) the person who already owns Volume 1 of said awesomeness, *and* (2) the person who only wants to ever buy *one* paleo cookbook, ever.

What that means is that the early "chapters" of Well Fed 2 bear a striking facial resemblance to much of the early parts of the first volume. You can learn all about the basics of paleo, and how and why Melissa went paleo, but there is also a hell of a lot more detail this time around about doing a Whole 30 food challenge, tips on being "a paleo social butterfly," and a particularly great piece on "emotional" eating and why you need to ditch that shizz in favor of eating to address "true hunger."

And no chapter of a cookbook was ever better-titled than "Burgers, Balls and Bangers." It's all about how to turn out 15 different kinds (e.g., Lebanese, Chorizo, Turkey and Cranberry, Thai Green Curry and one called Turkish Doner Kebab that, if there is a misspelling involved, either implicates one of Santa's better-known reindeer or something much, um, more prominent; let's just say that I hope the editor/proofreader got it right) of (your choice) burgers, meatballs or bangers. It's not just clever. It's freaking genius. If you were, say, me, and a devoted fan of all things grassfed ruminant (y'know... beef or lamb), you could spend a very very long time in just this chapter and not exhaust the possibilities.

In the ensuing 150-ish pages *after* she has already given you a gazillion sauce recipes and the many burger/ball/banger options, Ms. Joulwan then launches into recipe after recipe of main courses and veggie sides that range from: (1) so mouthwateringly tantalizing that I currently have a complicated ranking system of how to begin preparing, well, almost all of them, to (2) just a couple that are so wonderfully weird that I may actually make *those* first. A small hint is all you get regarding the latter category: there's an "Elvis" adaptation listed for one of them.

*Now* I have you thinking. Heh. (Buy the book!)

Anyway, I think I am going to start my cooking from the new volume with Plantain Nachos, and then maybe Moo Shu Pork, then Thyme-Braised Short Ribs, and then Beef Stew Provençal. Thai Pink Grapefruit Salad sounds insanely delicious, as does Sweet Potato Soup with Bacon. And that list barely scratches the surface of the many recipes of a book that is nearly 100 pages longer than its predecessor, just as gorgeously laid-out, and, well, pretty damn perfect. There is even a special section on adapting all the recipes to an autoimmune protocol. Yes, really.

Hell, these recipes are so well put together that Melissa even gives you special warnings about longer/more-involved prep on the few that require it.

You simply cannot do better than this cookbook, whether you already own the first one or not. Two words: Get it.




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200 Yards

I belong to a CrossFit gym, and I love it.

I'm not likely to enter any competitions, and it's not really a vehicle to being a "badass" for me. I just like that it makes me stronger, faster and healthier than most people my age.

But I also like something else about CrossFit: the sense of community. And I don't just mean the fact that I get to hang out with a lot of great people from our gym at pool parties, BBQs and holiday parties. "Community" is all over CrossFit: gyms banding together not just in the spirit of healthy athletic competition, but to do volunteer/charity work as well.

It's inspiring as hell.

I also like the fact that, from what I can tell, CrossFit HQ doesn't micromanage local gyms. Those affiliates are free to plot their own courses of programming, so every gym is, in large measure, a unique membership experience. They are all a little different, and HQ is not watching their every move.

And that freedom extends to a more libertarian ideal too: HQ doesn't step in and tell individual potential gym owners that the CF market is saturated in a particular area. They let the market, and the individual gyms' business models and ethics, sort themselves out.

But yesterday I was reminded of something an old, wise high-school teacher told me a long time ago: "Just because you have the freedom to do something doesn't make it the right thing to do."

I'm not sure what all the potential motivations would be for a new CrossFit owner to open up a CF gym 200 yards from one that has been in business for over three years, but none of the ones that keep coming to my mind have anything to do with the CrossFit vision of community that keeps me coming back to CF.

Instead, all the potential motivations that I can think of have names like greed, avarice, selfishness and whatever the opposite of "community" is.

Because "community" in CrossFit isn't just what goes on inside your gym's walls. It's getting together with the gym across town, or two towns over or maybe two states away, and raising money for Boston Marathon bombing victims, or the families of dead firefighters, or Steve's Club.

It's putting your self-interest in proper, ethical perspective and giving something back.

And honestly, I don't know how the Upstart gym could do that "charity" and "community" stuff with a straight face when, as I understand it, the Upstart never walked that 200 yards to go talk to the Established Gym before the Upstart decided to pull the trigger on the new enterprise. See, maybe there's somehow a justification beyond a verse or two of "Money, That's What I Want" for opening a CrossFit affiliate *that* close to one that's already there. But when the Upstart never even broaches the subject with the Established Gym, any possible such justification (and let's be serious: there aren't many anyway) evaporates, and the entire exercise becomes one of the Upstart taking a figurative dump on the Established Gym's lawn and then trying to crush their business into powder.

Community's a big fucking deal in CrossFit. Or at least I thought it was until I heard about this crap yesterday. Maybe it's all gone to hell, like someone said to me: "Dude, the CF market is saturated. I saw four different people wearing CrossFit shirts yesterday. And I was wearing one too. Didn't start one conversation. Two years ago I would have been best friends with all of them."

But it was never like that around here, until yesterday, and, in some fit of libertarian ideals, I still think the market will ultimately reward the skilled, conscientious, ethical CF gym owner/trainer with business and, get this, a *community* that the Upstart -- who can't walk 200 yards because all he sees are piles of money -- will never be able to touch, and likely never be a part of.







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Review: Peter Hook and the Light playing New Order at the Troc in Philadelphia

You may recall that a while ago I reviewed the reissue of Greg Everett's brilliant "fictionalized autobiography" of his formative years -- Screaming at a Wall. In it, there is a repeating theme: Life is short, and I am running out of time; so let's go.

I fully concur with that particular notion, and so it was with great interest that I read a few interviews with Joy Division/New Order bassist Peter Hook in which he seemed fixated on the same notion. In Hook's instance, a few years back, he started a project: play every song he ever recorded live, on tour, with his band The Light. He began -- as well he should have -- with Joy Division.

I could do three or four blog posts alone on what that early-1980s gloomy Brit scene meant to me at the time. I *liked* lots of it, but two bands -- Echo and the Bunnymen and Joy Division -- stood head and shoulders above the pack, for my tastes. Amidst a scene dominated by what Lemmy once called "a bunch of blokes in long overcoats moaning about how miserable the world is," those two bands -- while undoubtedly all that -- were full of raw power, especially in live recordings. They seemed to understand that gloom and grit were much more, well, *powerful* when harnessed together. I dug, immensely.

And I got to see the Bunnymen a whole lot of times (those memories could fill a whole 'nother blog post waxing about the one-two punch of Will Sergeant's guitar and Pete deFreitas' drum attack.... that'll be another day....) But Joy Division never got themselves over here to play. Right before their first U.S. tour, lead singer Ian Curtis committed suicide, and the remaining band members moved on, becoming New Order.

And then New Order quickly moved on as well, morphing from a very brief sonic foray into Joy Division Take Two (their first album, Movement), through a period of epic genius (the second album, Power, Corruption and Lies, and the singles of that era as well) that merged the JD sound with a more electronic approach, and thereafter into poppier, more *commercial* songcraft that, frankly, lost me a little.

So, in the last few years, having left New Order amidst some rancor, Hooky formed this band, Peter Hook and the Light, and his first move, a couple years ago, was to tour playing Joy Division songs, eventually expanding the band's repertoire to include, I believe, every JD song.

I missed those shows. I am somewhat unclear *how* I missed those shows. I saw the Bunnymen play their first two albums, raw and loud, on a reunion tour in 2011, but Hooky's JD appearance? I skipped it. Maybe I doubted his vocal skills (he wasn't the lead singer in either Joy Division or New Order)? I don't know, but I fucked up.

I heard good post-show reports from those tours, and then I heard an interview with Mr. Hook on the Sound Opinions radio show on NPR. What I heard from him there sounded nothing like what I expected, which was a jaded twat of a rock star bitching about his former bandmates. Instead, he seemed genuinely, and humbly, into a simple notion: Joy Division and early New Order had great songs, and no one had been playing them for years; so, life is short; let's go do something about that. Better yet, let's do it really spectacularly well and powerfully, with respect and, yeah, *joy*.

So, almost simultaneously upon hearing that interview, I did two things: bought Hook and the Light's Live in Australia album, where the band plays all of Joy Division's first album, Unknown Pleasures, plus some early singles, and bought tickets to see the band playing in Philly -- touring, get this, the first two New Order albums in their entirety, plus early singles.

Best decision I made all year? Quite possibly.

The live album is spectacular. The songs are, unleashed from the sterile production of the studio records, almost Who-ish in their scope. And the vocals are nearly perfect. No, Hooky doesn't have Ian Curtis' vocal range, but he has learned how to work brilliantly in the range that he has, often adding a gleeful "Yah!" as the band drives forward at full power. Highly recommended, particularly for curious JD fans wondering how these songs sound, 30-some years removed from their beginnings in Manchester.

But the live show? My god, man. Go see this band.

First of all, there are two bass players -- Hook and his son Jack. Jack plays all Hooky's parts when Hook sings, and then the man himself joins in, going, of course, way up high on that bass neck to deliver his trademark solos and riffs. The interplay between the two of them is wonderful to watch. At more than one point, Hook stood, poised to take over, as Jack pounded out his riffs and smirked, shaking his head, as if to say, "Hold on, dad. It's still my turn." And then, done with his part, Jack grinned, nodded his head and Hook took over, the two of them crouched down in the same stance, beating the living bejeezus out of the bass strings. The rest of the band are no slouches either, expertly (OK, mostly.... There were a few glitches, comically laughed off) recreating the full power of the early New Order albums. Let's just say that their epic post-punk glory has a fair share of right-now punk in it. This band roars and thunders.

But all of that wasn't even the best part.

I went into this show with only one regret: that it was, seemingly, entirely focused on New Order, and not Joy Division. I dearly love early NO, but Joy Division? Whoa, it's much more than love. So Hooky did us all one better than the already-epic step of playing the first two New Order albums: he and his band opened for themselves with a quick set of Joy Division.

Billed as the Slaves of Venus -- an early, thankfully rejected, name for JD -- they blasted out seven Joy Division songs, returned to the stage a short time later, and did all the early New Order, and left us with minds blown. The setlists? Slaves of Venus on the left, Peter Hook and the Light on the right:





Knowing about the Slaves of Venus in advance was great. It allowed me to make a request of Mr. Hook beforehand, via Twitter, for my two favorite Joy Division songs: Disorder and Twenty-Four Hours. It went like this, a few hours before the show:

"@SteveThrash62: psyched to see @peter_hook1 + band do New Order's first 2 albums, and opening for themselves with Joy Division. 24Hrs? Disorder? Please?"

As I left my house for the show, Hooky retweeted it. Totally geeked by this exchange, I was pretty sure I was going to get my wish, and I did, with the added extra of my *third* favorite Joy Division song -- Interzone-- sandwiched between those two. It was glorious,and, for my money, the finest use of social media ever.

Other highlights? I kid you not when I say that it was *all* a highlight. New Order's Movement is a brilliant record, but it can be murky. It's not murky at all when Hook and the Light get a hold of it. The dynamics of this band are unbelievable, and they turn a run of songs like, for example, all of side two of Movement--which is solid on album, but not mindblowing--into a force of nature that seems just a short leap to, say, Quadrophenia.

And the "big" songs -- you know, like Age of Consent, Leave Me Alone and Temptation? Let's just say that this is not one of those shows where the "hits" seem rote or by-the-numbers.

I may have even uttered the words: "Now I think I can die happy," after the band finished turning Temptation -- what is already one of my favorite songs -- into something even more. They put punch and guts and glory into a song that I didn't think had room for any more perfect than it already had.

Word is that, in pursuit of his noble goal of Playing It All Before He Dies, Hooky and band will be back next year touring New Order's Brotherhood and Low-Life. I don't love either of those records (although Sunrise is a serious keeper of a song), but I am pretty damn sure that I will be there front and center to see this band roar through them. Well played, Mr. Hook. Well played.









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"Ain't it amazing all the people I meet...." The value of volunteering.

The head trainer at our CrossFit gym has a great saying, "Be nice to someone. It'll change your life."

In the early 1990s, I volunteered as a "patient escort" at a women's reproductive-health clinic. They offered a whole array of medical services there, but the fact that one of those services was early-term abortions was the reason for the presence of the escorts. See, I don't really care what your personal view of abortion is, but if it includes really angry people spewing hate and waving signs, gross photos and fake body parts at scared women (sometimes not women at all, but teenage girls), then really, fuck you. I am completely unclear on the details of how I originally got into escorting patients there, but it quickly became very rewarding if your definition of "rewarding" is "feeling good about doing something good."

The patients would park at the facility on private property, so, usually (but not always) the angry protestors were confined to the public sidewalk out front. But, man, those protestors were noisy, and obnoxious, and the patients could easily hear and see them. The escort's goal was, first, to assure the patient knew that he was one of the good guys ("Hi, my name's Steve, and I'm a patient escort here at the center. I am going to walk you into the building"), and then, basically to distract them from the crap going on ("OK, when we round this corner and head for the door there are a bunch of people with nothing better to do today than yell things at us and wave signs. Don't watch them. Don't listen to them. They're dumb. I have better words, but we'll go with 'dumb.' Just talk to me, about anything. The weather. The Phillies. The Eagles. The Flyers. Your favorite flavor of ice cream. Anything. Just keep walking and talking to me"). The patients generally thanked us profusely when we got to the door. There were a lot of patient tears caused by those idiots out front, but I like to think we escorts did our best to minimize them.

Eventually, after quite a few years of this nonsense -- and more than one "rescue" attempt by the protestors in which they tried to form a human chain, trespassing on private property, to block the doors (the cooler ones amongst the responding cops would allow us to gleefully point out which particularly gross and obnoxious "rescuers" to arrest first; "Him, officer! He likes to scream obscenities at teenage girls," and so it went....) -- the protests mostly stopped and the center said they didn't need us very often anymore.

Around this same time, my kids started getting old enough that they were playing sports -- a lot of sports. And they needed coaches, so I hung up my escort duds and coached as a volunteer for almost ten years: baseball, soccer and indoor soccer.... It was fun, and, undoubtedly, a whole bunch of kids benefitted, but competition and modern parents being what they are, it rarely felt as purely humanitarian/helpful as the escort gig did. The pursuit of victory, can -- over the long haul -- conflict a bit with trying to always just be a helpful volunteer. By the time my kids' athletic abilities outgrew my coaching prowess, I wasn't terribly sorry to let more skilled folks take over. The grind of overcompetition (by other parents, and, more often than I like to admit, myself) had worn me down a bit.

Then my dad's health (mental and physical) took a multiyear slide into the abyss that I have detailed on this blog quite a bit, and.... I got out of the public volunteering business while I did my best to help him out from a bit of a distance.

But then he passed away a few months ago, and my wife and I started talking about how, with kids off at college and grad school, we suddenly had a boatload of free time.

And, man, we *love* dogs.

See, our local county animal shelter is, technically, a "kill" shelter. They will euthanize if there is no room for that animal in the shelter. But they are really good about notifying rescue groups first to get the dog or cat out to a foster family, and so euthanizing is pretty rare there. But the shelter employees have a lot of work to do, and *entertaining* the animals with exercise is not one of them. So there is a "friends of the shelter" group that handles dog walking.

We jumped on the chance to join them as volunteers. It's been a few weeks now and I think this may be more rewarding than even the escort gig was. We have four big dogs of our own; we are used to a bit of fuzzy chaos. So we graduated pretty quickly to being cleared to walk most of the dogs in the shelter. Only the most behaviorally challenged pups are off-limits to us at this point. So in we go, a few times a week, for an hour or more, to take these guys for walks. They are a blast. They do happy dances when they realize you are going to pick them. They smother you in affection, and, yes, sometimes they poop so much that you run out of poop bags. Their zeal for getting the hell out of there is often matched by their ability to tug harder on the leash than you ever thought possible to get to the gate to get outside. It's like a core strength/balance workout. And once you start returning to volunteer fairly often, the dogs start recognizing you, and throwing a special "celebrate you" party that is so gleeful that it's hard to describe.

We leave there feeling great *every* time. And the dogs feel better than when we got there. (And, yes, *our* dogs just about strip-search us when we arrive home, trying to figure out where we have been and why there were so many dogs there). It's a sad place, but we get to add a little happiness to the mix, and that makes everyone involved, dogs and people, feel better.

So what's the point of all this, you might ask?

It's my small pitch to get you to go volunteer somewhere doing something. Anything. Anywhere. Pick it. But, invariably, the benefits of it are more than just the obvious assistance to whomever you might be helping. Because whether it's the happy look of a just-walked dog, the "thank you" whispered by the scared girl you just walked into a medical clinic, the appreciation expressed by the parents of the kids you just coached for a season, or some other indication that somehow you made the world a little nicer place with a little giving of your time and effort, you'll personally get a world of benefit out of the whole experience as well. Go be nice to someone. It'll change your life.



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

F#%k the dietary "cheat." Or why eating has nothing to do with "cheating."

Here's most of what the Free Dictionary.com says about the word "cheat":

"Cheat

v. cheat·ed, cheat·ing, cheats
v.tr.
1. To deceive by trickery; swindle: cheated customers by overcharging them for purchases.
2. To deprive by trickery; defraud: cheated them of their land.
3. To mislead; fool: illusions that cheat the eye....

v.intr.
1. To act dishonestly; practice fraud.
2. To violate rules deliberately, as in a game: was accused of cheating at cards.
3. Informal To be sexually unfaithful: cheat on a spouse.

n.
1. An act of cheating; a fraud or swindle.
2. One who cheats; a swindler."

Do you see a repeating theme?

Dishonesty. Doing something wrong. Something you are going to feel guilty about.

Yet, in paleo/CrossFit-land -- but also all over your television -- you hear constantly about dietary "cheats," as if there's some set of ironclad rules somewhere that you ought to feel guilty about breaking.

I've hit on points related to this topic once or twice before, but some things I have read lately about "emotional eating" raise the subject again. So I thought it was worth another quick look.

I'll start with a "confession" of sorts: I don't *really* understand emotional eating. Food is fuel to me, first and foremost. Do I sometimes indulge in delicious things that aren't the best for me? Sure, but not out of some sort of desire for emotional comfort; I occasionally eat less-than-optimal food because it .... (wait for it) .... tastes good.

I also won't pretend that I have some grand strategy for completely getting those of you who *are* emotional eaters out of your rut in that regard, but I *do* have one small suggestion.

It's about dietary "cheats."

You really need to stop thinking of the consumption of any food item -- yes, even gluten -- as a moral wrong. You are not dishonest, a deceiver, a "swindler," or otherwise a bad person in any way if you eat food that isn't good for you.

And I think the whole drama of the emotional-eating roller coaster would be greatly lessened if you stopped beating the living crap out of yourself for supposedly doing something "wrong": you know, for "cheating."

Now, on the other hand, do you need to figure out a way to eat that makes you happy? (Note, I said "happy," not healthy).

Yeah, you do, and, for me, happy *is* pretty damn healthy. It feels good to feel good. But that decision, and the path by which you get there is your personal choice, not a moral right or wrong. Personally, I think the path to happiness for me involves smart exercise, eating clean primal food almost all the time, *and* occasionally enjoying something that's not quite so primal. And when I do that not-so-primal meal, I enjoy the hell out of it. I also occasionally think, in retrospect, that it wasn't such a great idea, and I adjust my behavior thereafter. You know... I *learn* from it. But I never ever feel "guilty" about food, and I certainly don't feel like I did something "wrong."

Getting to that state of mind where you can just treat food as food -- some healthy, some not-so-healthy -- begins by not turning the decision whether to eat something into a morality-filled choice. You have never "cheated" when you have eaten something. You just ate something. You are still the same person you were before you dug in, whether what you ate was a grassfed steak, a plate full of vegetables or a double-fudge brownie with CoffeeCoffeeBuzzBuzzBuzz on top.

I like to think that if you remove the "cheating" lingo, there's no moral wrong implied. Remove the implication of a moral wrong and there's no reason for guilt. Remove the guilt and there's no reason for the drama. And if the drama's gone, you have to think the emotion/food connection is going to start to loosen up a little. At that point, you might just consider food as just food.

Then you can figure out how to eat it in a way that makes you really happy.







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Leaving the regular doc in the dust (a.k.a., Part Two of "A Visit to a Paleo Doc")

You may recall that I recently had my first appointment with a local doc from the Paleo Physicians Network and Primal Docs. I ranted. I raved. I generally was thrilled with the notion that you could talk to a paleo doc about crazy stuff like inflammation, paleo eating, K2, and a host of other subjects that would make my regular doc either squirm or look puzzled.

Today, I had my paleo-doc followup to review the incredibly detailed bloodwork (it's like 8 pages long!!)....

My diagnosis: inflammation markers are awesome. Blood-sugar management is great. HDL is high and triglycerides super-low. More awesome. It's like I eat paleo or something. But... LDL-p (particle number, not the LDL on your "regular" bloodwork) is on the high (bad) side of normal. Vitamin D is "normal" but not optimal. Most surprising to me, my Omega 6 to 3 ratio is 3.5:1. I was hoping for closer to 1:1. ("Normal" -- but awful -- for most people is 10:1 or worse, by the way, so I'm hardly terrible on that count, but my copious intake of grassfed ruminants and wild-caught salmon and sardines had me hoping for a lower/better O-6:O-3 ratio).

My "prescription" for those "bad" issues: no "prescription" at all, but here's what the doc suggested....

--reduce intake of O-6s and up the O-3s. So chicken, pork, nuts and avocado are going (almost entirely) out the window. I'll likely eat them a little if I am out, but no more at home. I'm concentrating, as I (mostly) do already -- but "already" has not been "entirely," mind you... after all I am the sausage-and-kale guy -- on grassfed beef and lamb plus fish for my protein. I'm adding some daily fish oil (containing 1000 mg of O-3s). So, "Bye-bye" to sausage."Auf wiedersehen" to avocados. "Later, dudes" to nuts and nut butters, and we'll dial the bacon down to what the lawyers call a "de minimus" amount..
-- get more Vitamin D. I'm going to supplement my daily fermented cod-liver oil/butter-oil capsules with a drop of liquid D3.
--keep otherwise eating paleo and exercising the way I do. There was one particular blood marker that the doc referred to as "the easy way to call BS on someone who lies about not eating grains," and mine was great. "You obviously don't eat any grains," he said. Plus, he told me my inflammation markers were super low from the CrossFit/paleo combo.
--stop eating my *ridiculously*-oversized meals and opt for something slightly smaller, with a bit less fat and added protein subbing for that fat. Apparently, the wise doc thinks, part of my high LDL-p is the fact that I eat gargantuan-sized (good)fat-loaded meals -- an interesting theory.... because I do.
--Come back in four months to see if all that made a difference.

I love it. Keep eating paleo. Keep doing CrossFit the way I do now (three days a week plus a day of heavy lifting). Make a few minor tweaks. Feel (and be) even better.

Or I could go to my regular doc and take a statin and eat whole grains. Hahahahaha. I crack myself up....






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By the way, the longest no-alcohol experiment of my adult life has reached around six weeks. I feel so good that I just have no idea when I will have a drink again, but it's definitely not going to be at least until that 300-pound front squat arrives.