Resveratrol: The new fountain of youth.

If Morpheus asks you, always pick the red pill if it contains Resveratrol.

Juan Ponce de León had a good idea: Find the Fountain of Youth. Alas, it didn’t work out for poor Ponce. 

But for millions of Baby Boomers, who are looking at a steady degradation of youth, there is a potential window left to reclaim their lost youth. What is the name of this magic substance? Resveratrol. It is a chemical found in red wine, red grape skins, purple grape juice, mulberries, and in smaller amounts - in peanuts. Now you know why the French are such notoriously great lovers, despite their poor diets and chain smoking. It is apparently their regular consumption of wine that has given them, 'joie de vivre!'

The “French Paradox”—the observation that mortality from coronary heart disease is relatively low in France despite relatively high levels of dietary saturated fat and cigarette smoking—led to the idea that regular consumption of red wine might provide additional protection from cardiovascular disease. Red wine contains Resveratrol and even higher levels of flavonoids. These polyphenolic compounds have antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and other potentially anti-atherogenic effects (in the test tube studies) and in animal models of atherosclerosis.

Personally, I have marveled at the individuals I’ve met who seemed to be in possession of a youth serum. If I must be French to be Peter Pan, sign me up. And while there are many, especially in Hollywood, and probably in France, who use plastic surgery to make it appear as if they are forever young, their internal organs don’t agree with the prima facie evidence. Because, as we all know, beauty is usually only skin deep. But Resveratrol works from the inside out by turning on the SIRT1 ‘longevity gene.’ http://www.johnsonupdaydowndaydiet.com/html/resveratrol-why-it-works.html

The largest study ever completed of organic food was done in 2007, and the results indicated that organic fruits and vegetables contain 40% more antioxidants than non-organic fruits and vegetables. So organic Resveratrol is better than non-organic Resveratrol. To obtain the potency necessary to turn on the cellular rejuvenation process, it would be necessary to drink about 300 bottles of red wine per day. I don’t know about you, but I can barely get through half a bottle of  Merlot on my own. Knowing the consumption of alcohol has negative side effects, and that no one could drink that much wine, manufacturers such as Reserveage Organics of Gainesville, Florida, put a whopping 250mg of Resveratrol per pill. Take two per day and get the benefits without the hangover.

I don’t want to grow old. Until I found Reservatrol, it seemed I was on the slippery slope of middle age. Having come from a competitive, athletic minded family, I figured I’d outrun Mother Nature. I tried running for a while, but gave it up because of laziness and lack of a running partner. I have played tennis for over thirty years, but at the present time I have no partner. Maybe staying young is all about having a partner. I do a fair amount of cycling. Both Portland and Eugene are bike friendly cities. Cycling has been good for my legs; I haven’t missed driving my car. Swimming would be the best exercise, but because of my allergy to chlorine, swimming would have to be in a saltwater pool, a lake, or the ocean. I also read about the positive boost to testosterone levels that can be achieved by short strenuous workouts. More testosterone means not only better sexual performance, but better health for a man. So I pump iron once a day. Stress is the enemy of good health. Thus, I have been working on being less stressed out. People think I am ten years younger than I am. Maybe by using Resveratrol they’ll think I’m in my early thirties. Or I’ll hover around, like Dick Clark, looking forty-five or fifty at age seventy. How I'll survive financially if I live to be 110, is another question. So obviously, if Resveratrol really works, maybe not everyone should use it. And they won't, because most people don't care about staying healthy. Because staying healthy requires discipline, and most people do not have discipline. But I may be hit by a bus, which is something not even a fountain of youth supplement can prevent.

 My commitment to consuming only organic foods has been strong the last fifteen years, and may be my ticket to living to age ninety. I have only one bad habit, and that is I don’t drink enough water; but finding water that is just water is getting ever more difficult. Tap water is so toxic I avoid it altogether. There are so many bottled waters that have fruit flavors. Bottle water is big business now. Fearing declining soda sales, huge companies like Coke have gone into the water business. Coke makes Vitamin Water, which has a pretty scary list of ingredients. My fear of Bisphenol A makes me paranoid of a lot of plastic bottled water. The fluoride they’ve added to the tap water makes me think of Nazi Germany. Pretty soon I will take up Howard Hugh’s habit of wearing white gloves. 

But I am digressing. Here are the three big benefits of Resveratrol.

• Reduces cardiovascular disease.

• Inhibits the growth of cancerous cells.

• Lengthens the lifespan of animals.

So, by now I hope you are eager to get your hands on this youth serum. And you can; though the price is a bit steep ($40 for a bottle of pills, and $30 for the tonic). But ask yourself if staying young and healthy is worth the investment. I don’t mind being a guinea pig. With Resveratrol, there appears to be no side effects.

http://lpi.oregonstate.edu/infocenter/phytochemicals/resveratrol/

Dancing With Sharks in Portland.

Trust is a main ingredient in dancing, and in life.

My brother invited me to his daughter's Bat-Mitzvah last weekend. I don't speak Hebrew, but it was interesting, though I am not big on religious rituals. I avoid them if at all possible. This is what happens to a lot of ex-Catholics. The ceremony was okay, but the best part was seeing my niece's sincerity and obvious preparation to do a Bat-Mitzvah. 

Catholicism and Judaism are not that different. Yeah, there is the difference of opinion about Jesus. That's a big thing for some people, but not for me. The liturgy, especially in the orthodox Jewish congregations I've been to, remind me of mass. In Temple Beth Israel, in San Francisco, the women wear scarves like in the old Catholic masses, and are seated on the left side of the temple. The men are on the right side, bobbing incessantly. Apparently, men are always on the right side of God. So I guess a woman rabbi is a welcome idea to a lot of women. 

We didn't do much bobbing at St. Mary's; we were genuflectors (kneeling, standing, kneeling, etc.). We had first communion and confirmation, instead of Bar-Mitzvahs and Bat-Mitzvahs. We had the stiff perfunctory prayers to memorize (which I have since forgotten). Now the thought of all that stuff numbs my mind. My kind of religious experience isn't found in a building. It could be helping a stranger push their car. That is God's love in action. Faith in God is, for me, all about being genuine. I talk to God as I ride on buses, or while I peel carrots. I guess I believe in a George Burns sort of God. Maybe that makes me John Denver. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNUUFVLkYII

In Denmark and Germany, my ancestors were probably Jews, Lutherans, and Catholics. Now I am not a member of any denomination. Memberships scare me. I also avoid political party affiliations. I even dropped out of Boy Scouts, but I had my reasons. I witnessed a kid plant a hatchet into his foot while pounding in a tent spike. That cured me of memberships for life.

Religious experiences are fine; I am simply not a big fan of the pageantry. Several of my brothers and one sister also attended my niece's Bat-Mitzvah. The rabbi was a woman; I had the impression she was a lesbian. I could be wrong about that. How that fits into Judaism I have no idea. She also seemed short on patience, though she was a great presenter. She reminded me of a stand up comedian. It was the little things she did, the curt way she talked to kids, and how she grabbed the challah from me. Maybe I just notice too much, or expect too much of those in the clergy. I should probably have mentioned my observation to my brother and sister-in-law, but who am I to tear down their temple? It doesn't really matter what I think about their rabbi. And possibly they would have told me more about the rabbi and I would have a different opinion. Maybe I was just looking for sharks that day.

I mention the rabbi because this is what Portland is like. People are hip or they pretend to be. But their dorsal fins are shark-like. After the Bat-Mitzvah ceremony a light lunch was served in the basement. The building is also used by The Church of Christ, so there were postings on the bulletin board about Christian events. I like the idea of a melting pot of faiths. Ultimately, we all could have gotten our beliefs wrong. Maybe we are stooges who swallowed lies. I enjoyed the communion of ideas as I ate lox and bagels, and drank Newman's Own lemonade. I gave my niece a cool CD from the Sounds True Collection, that featured a Jewish couple. One of their songs is 'Shalom,' which is like a meditation length song with only one word to remember: Shalom.  http://www.amazon.com/Shalom/dp/B0040PUKE2

I had time to kill after the ceremony so I hopped off the MAX rail at Pioneer Square, drawn by the sound of live music, where couples were dancing to swing music. I felt the stiffness of the temple ceremony sloughing away. It was balmy for the second day in March, and a few of the men had sweat marks on the backs of their dark shirts. I stood behind the five piece band checking out the dancers and the musicians. There was a man on an upright bass, a trumpet player with a muffle on the end of his horn, the lead singer sat in a chair strumming a mandolin. Brother, they were cookin.' They just needed a fiddle player, but they were doing pretty good with what they had. I didn't even catch the name of the group.

I love watching dancers. What intrigues me about men and women connecting in public is that they are often strangers to one another. This was also the case during my tango years. I am sure there is a voyeuristic element to it; but it isn't necessarily a sexual thing. I am simply amazed by humanity in all its multi-faceted beauty. On the dance floor, there are no political, religious, economic, or ethnicity barriers. You just bring your sense of timing, and ability to connect with your partner, and then you make art or you don't make art. Whenever I get down on humanity I get these doses of humanity's goodness and it really cheers me up. Why do most women love to dance and not so many men do? Women are romantics. This is why my bookcase has more books by women than men. As a man, I feel women have a great deal to teach me. And, who knows? maybe I have some things to teach them about men.

Many of the dancers appeared to know one another, so there is the possibility some of them were from dance clubs. Their steps were too well understood: Jitterbug, Charleston, and other dances of the 1920s and 30s. But wherever they got their knowledge, and chutzpah, they made my day. Some of them were hipsters, because Portland is a hipster-town. When you are walking in most parts of downtown you will quickly realize you are walking on an elaborate stage filled with characters who have made niches for themselves. Their language is cool and understated. Their common bling are tattoos, which rise up from their shirt collars or are displayed next to their rolled up sleeves. It is as if the men got their clothes from the Cherry Popping Daddies outlet store, and the women raided a retro Buffalo Exchange clothing boutique.

The same facade of confidence and showmanship pervades the work environment in downtown. When you go into the suburbs people are less hip. Further out, in the rural towns of the Willamette Valley, and almost all the towns east of the Cascade Mountains you could just as well be in the Midwest. The language is more rural too, sprinkled with the wrong tenses, euphemisms, but among the young - Internet slang is commonplace - as if heralding the demise of country lifestyles.

I was raised in the country, and I miss it. I do not care for the sound of traffic outside my window, or if I am branded uncool because I have no tattoos. I must find a way back to my roots. In the wee hours of the morning I attached a fiction manuscript to an email. It went to the Dundee Book Prize Competition. Dundee is eight hours time difference from Portland, so I only had until five in the morning to enter. I felt the presence of sharks swimming around me as I sat in bed doing the final edits to the manuscript. It had to be anonymous, so there was an element of trust. Sort of like the trust I witnessed in downtown Portland amongst the dancers. And, I suppose from my niece at her Bat-Mitzvah.

My comedic insomnia with 30 Rock.

My cure for insomnia isn’t a calcium-magnesium-zinc pill, or melatonin, or a warm glass of milk at 2AM. It is late night comedy. I have tried science shows about Galapagos iguanas, and the ancient mysteries of lost civilizations, and fallen in love with reruns of 30 Rock. It achieved what Seinfeld, The Office, and other sitcoms never could.

Stress may be at the root of my insomnia. Typically, I manage stress very well; after all I have worked in advertising for over twenty years. You get used to it. I almost never get sick, so my white cell count must be pretty high. I am almost a Vulcan in hiding my emotions. Sometimes, after a glass of wine with friends, I surprise people by my Kenneth Parcell-act-alike behavior. What I need to do is channel my inner Kenneth Parcell (Jack Mcbrayer – 30 Rock) all the time.

If I can keep a cheerful, almost naïve way of seeing the world I will get through whatever I am going through. Or maybe I just need a girlfriend. Nothing wears out a man like a girlfriend, and probably vice versa. Perhaps that is the draw to watching 30 Rock. It is, despite its many tangents, a story about people trying to find themselves and find romance. Who is the central character? Is it Liz Lemon, or all the characters combined? Or could it be that I am like Dennis Duffy, and that is why I identify with the Liz Lemons in my own romantic past. No, probably not. Probably the serious message that appeals to me is that beneath the comedy there is the bedrock that we must find ourselves, and in doing so we will find our soul mates.

Kenneth Parcell is my feel good pill before I crash out. Feel good companies have a gold mine in Jack Mcbrayer. Disney used him for Fix-It Felix in the 2012 Disney animated film Wreck-It Ralph http://disney.wikia.com/wiki/Jack_McBrayer But the world is a complicated place. We are not cartoons. We have insecurities like Liz Lemon, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQ3rPKJBteY we are egotistical loveable nut-jobs like Tracy Jordan, http://www.nbc.com/30-rock/video/memorable-moments-with-tracy-jordan/1334584/ we enjoy power like Jack Donaghy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1l0kGIIW66g - and we have all dated someone like Dennis Duffy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GSeVbj_mXg

But what if the world was made up of people like Kenneth Parcell? Would it be too scary – people helping one another with a cheerful, almost too helpful perspective? What is the charm of Kenneth? He seems to be sincere to the point of mania. As Jack Donaghy said of Kenneth, after narrowly beating Kenneth at a game of poker, "In a few years we'll either all be working for him, or be dead by his hand." I lived in Georgia for a few months in 2011. I saw a few Kenneth look-a-likes while I was there. Are all people from Stone Mountain like Kenneth? Or do they do what many men do in America on Friday nights - eat TV dinners and drink beers? Not all of them do Civil War reenactment battles. I saw a Civil War reenactment once, and the Confederate guy did not like my Yankee accent. No, not all the guys in Georgia are like Kenneth Parcell. With the exception of Atlanta, referred to as "The city of suits," by a lady lawyer I met in Decatur, where there seems to be an abundance of New Yorkers, Georgia men are like the men in any other state = straight and macho.

The cynics assume gayness when a man is too nice and too well groomed. Is it Southern culture that fosters this combination of hospitality to the point of being odd? What is wrong with being nice? Am I about to have my Midnight Cowboy moment? I hope not.

When a person’s sexuality is ambiguous it bothers people. Like, two days ago I was grocery shopping and saw a man in a dress. He was not a particularly pretty man. He would have probably called his Japanese schoolgirl dress a kilt. So I am a bigot for even mentioning him. But bigotry is comedic. I once accidentally dated a transgender guy. He fooled me, but $100,000 of surgery could make a lot of guys look like a woman. In this new world you are not supposed to raise an eyebrow when you meet a man in drag or a woman who looks like she just came from a logging camp. It is uncool to be honest. Fifty years ago people would have gotten seriously beaten up for their sexual ambiguity. I behave like Kenneth; I am polite to everyone, no matter how strange their lifestyle. You have to in this world because it is a world full of weirdness.

To further confuse and amuse viewers about Kenneth's sexual leanings, NBC/Tina Fey had Jenna and a homely girl named Hazel try to make Kenneth their boyfriend. They also had him hook up with an Asian gal, but none of Kenneth's hookups went beyond kissing. So Tina Fey was just messing with our heads. Kenneth’s true leanings are unknown, even to Kenneth. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uaiv0xzRLaY He could go either way – gay or straight. From Kenneth's POV, everything always works out for the best, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Xi5lPn2afA Even when overtly gay guys make a play for him, Kenneth maintains his innocence. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TP3srtDFYFc From Kenneth’s POV, staff members appear as if they are Muppets. Maybe that is the secret to his boundless joy. I am going to have to watch a lot of Sesame Street to get my brain around being nice like Kenneth Parcell, but gosh, it sure seems swell to try.