Tag Archives: health

May 22, 2012

Kenny Chesney: He Works Hard So You Can Relax (Men’s Health)

By Jeff Vrabel

Men’s Health — ONE OF KENNY CHESNEY’S BREEZIEST songs has the comforting title “Be As You Are.” It’s basically what would happen if you folded up the island of St. John and slipped it into a cassette deck—an acoustic carpe diem about finding an idyllic Caribbean harbor within yourself. This is a nice sentiment, and elements of Chesney’s life mirror the song. He spends an enviable amount of time in the tropics, and even when landlocked he seems to fully embody life in paradise. No man is an island? Tell that to Chesney.

On his epic summer tours, he creates a tiki-bar atmosphere on football fields in places like Indianapolis and Kansas City. He makes 50,000 people think they’re at a tin-roofed beachside canteen that seats nine. He preaches simplicity and oceanside afternoons in songs that hit a demographic sweet spot: folks young enough to feel free and old enough to reminisce about easier times. This recipe has made Chesney really, really popular.

Read the full article at Men’s Health.

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1 comment   |  tags: , , , , , | posted in Feature Articles, Interviews, Men's Health, Music Writing

May 21, 2012

Coffee found to have added benefits, such as making you die less

By Jeff Vrabel

Pictured: Right before then became now.

GateHouse — I rarely pay heed to news out of the world of Science, mostly because we’re in a recession, people, and I’m not made of heed.

But it’s also because such news often arrives in the form of sizable and startling-looking words, many of which contain prefixes (ugh), in periodicals that I do not subscribe to, such as the New England Journal of Medicine, Philosophical Transactions Of The Royal Society and Redbook. I also find it overly scientific, and the people who write it tend to be like super-obsessed with things like molecules and dark matter and large hadrons colliding, and I had plenty of biology in the 10th grade, thank you very much. If Science talked more about Facebook and quidditch, maybe we’d have something.

You disgust me.

That said, now and again Science produces some actual news that makes me sit up and call my momma, which apparently is something I have to sit up to do, as it is very hard to dial the phone while reclining. Last week Science announced that coffee not only provides your primary reason to get up in the morning (yeah, I said it, CBS’ “The Early Show”) and is literally the only reason I can complete all basic tasks between the hours of 2:30 and 6 p.m., but it has other, more additional health benefits as well, such as not-dying, which is a pretty good benefit, frankly. I’d like to see other beverages come up with a benefit like that. Looking at you, Mello Yello, what do you got in the way of extending the average life expectancy? What’s that? Jack squat? I thought so. Just sit there and be mello, loser.

Anyway, and it goes on for a while, but the study basically reveals that coffee is good at making you die less. Now, depending upon the kind of either human or Romney you are, this news will elicit one of two reactions:

  1. “AIEEEEEEEEEEEEE!” (joyously, followed by tearful hugging of increasingly uncomfortable strangers at the bus stop)
  2. “I guess that’s good news, but I’m not really a coffee drinker so” and it is here that I would stop listening to your boring mouthwords, because if you are not a coffee drinker I cannot imagine what further conversation we would remotely hope to have, as I would literally be half-listening to every fool syllable dribbling out of your face thinking, “You get out of my house you get out right now.”
 
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14 comments   |  tags: , , , , | posted in Culture And / Or News, GateHouse, Humor Columns

April 13, 2012

Zac Efron’s full body transformation (Men’s Health)

By Jeff Vrabel

Men’s Health — It’s a warm southern California morning, and I’m meeting Zac Efron in Studio City at a place called Weddington Golf & Tennis. With a name that stuffy, I expect marble and money. The course turns out to be public, with a plastic-cup snack bar where a waitress, without looking up, informs the 24-year-old movie star that she doesn’t take credit cards. They’ve reserved us a private tee, which is approximately 4 feet away from the adjacent public one.

Here at the practice range, Efron—in T-shirt, oversized cap, shorts, and Vans—strolls around in disarming anonymity, though to be fair, it’s hard for even the preeminent teen pinup of the 2000s to attract notice in a crowd that includes this many codgers in lavender pants. After talking and meandering (not especially well) through a bucket of golfballs, we encounter Roger Dunn, a California golf-shop magnate who gives lessons wearing a Panama hat and smoky sunglasses. We’d heard that Dunn is just shy of his 50th year of teaching, and he’s been introduced to us as a man of considerable local repute. Mostly Dunn has something to teach, and Efron is drawn to that.

Read the full article at Men’s Health.

5 comments   |  tags: , , , , , | posted in Feature Articles, Interviews, Men's Health

November 21, 2011

Veggie Tales: Why Congress wishes to beplumpen your children, and 9% of you are totally OK with that

By Jeff Vrabel

GateHouse — Last week a Washington Post poll revealed that the United States Congress currently enjoys a nationwide approval rating of 9%. That is nine percent, as in one integer, as in Very Close To Zero, as in if you asked “Do you approve of the job Congress is doing?” to a group of zinfandel-sipping monkeys with typewriters in a warehouse in Des Moines, they would all say “Dear God no not at all are you NUTS?,” because monkeys are actually pretty smart.

Needless to say this 9% statistic is shocking, mostly because I would have guessed somewhere between 9 to 40 percentage points lower. NINE percent approval? Are you sure you didn’t mean nine people? Where do you thumbs-up smiley-faced keep-up-the-good-work types LIVE I wonder? Do you live in Congress? Are you all Boehners? Do you know what the Gallup people meant by “Congress?” Do you think they meant “Con-Air?” Do you think you were approving of Nicolas Cage? Because if so that’s still a dismayingly high number.

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Trailer approval rating: 16%

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6 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , | posted in Awful Political Things, GateHouse, Humor Columns, Terrible Things People Eat

August 22, 2011

Rick Perry is correct: Science is pretty much a huge loser

By Jeff Vrabel

Pictured: Basically what all Scientists look like.

GateHouse — So, just to straighten this out, just to quell the controversy, there’s a new study that says watching TV is a drain on your lifeforce somehow? WELL THANKS FOR KEEPING ME CURRENT, SCIENCE. What’s next on the list? Is it teleporting? I hope it’s teleporting.

To jump back to before the previous paragraph (yes, I have solved COLUMN TIME TRAVEL), a recent study published in Australia revealed that watching too much TV increases your chance of dying early from health problems. It also apparently reveals that science is out of things to study. No no, guys, thanks, since we’ve got all of our other problems so skillfully figured out, I guess it’s OK for you to start going back to the mid 1950s to CHECK YOUR WORK. It’s a good thing our Future Republican President is planning to make sure all your textbooks are flamethrowered.

See, people, this is why Brave Patriots like Rick Perry and the additional 400 GOP presidential candidates are so wisely poking holes in Science things like “evolution” and “global warming” and “Avogadro’s number” and “the atomic weight of cobalt” (the “Periodic Table” will tell you that it’s 58.933, but that’s just a theory that’s out there): Not because Science is filling our children’s precious spongebrains with facts and empirically proven evidence instead of merely our own desperately held belief structures, because it’s MOSTLY REHASHING THINGS WE KNEW ALREADY. Last week saw another round of stories about how eating processed meats made from the feet of animals you would hit with a subway train if you could might not be so good for the ol’ Heart. WELL THANKS A HEAP, SCIENCE. I suppose next you’re going to report some bungling nonsense about how easy access to “guns” increases “the rates of violence in America.” Science is such a loser.

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5 comments   |  tags: , , , , | posted in Awful Political Things, Culture And / Or News, GateHouse, Humor Columns

August 8, 2011

Are your children plump and sweaty enough for Michelle Malkin?

By Jeff Vrabel

Problem. Solved.

GateHouse — Yep. I like McRibs.

You can talk all day long about their ghoulish caloric content, you can walk me line-by-line through the roster of vitamins and minerals they don’t contain, you can provide me with photographic proof of the dog-meat which is smooshed into a grey paste in Cambodia and shipped via donkey, unsupervised ocean liner and nonrefrigerated truck to an outdoor McProcessingfacility/wastewater plant/shooting range in North Carolina, and I will not care because I like McRibs. Someone please rip this out of the newspaper, or three-finger-swipe-left on the iPad or whatever you do to save things, and bring it to my funeral, which will take place in about eight weeks, so everyone can enjoy a good long laugh before the luau. (Note: My funeral is going to be awesome.)

Otherwise, and occasional McGriddle aside (I AM BUT A MAN) I try not eat at McDonald’s. Not for any militant reason I’m gonna tweet about 12 times a day — I just don’t. And for the most part, neither does Little Man — though that’s not always easy to do, because at some point it’s 7:45 p.m. and we haven’t had dinner and the idea of crafting an organic, multi-course Meal out of locally raised and humanely caught fish loses by about a billion to the idea that I can sate my moody and undernourished child immediately, through nuggets.

We can’t boast a 100 percent success rate, but we try hard. In this regard (and few others) I’m like Michelle Obama, who despite Republican objections to her existence/face, has for years promoted healthy eating and living among Our Nation’s Youth.

McDonald’s, you may have seen, recently announced that it would begin offering more “fruit” and fewer chemicals/discarded animal legs in its Happy Meals, by way of atoning for forcing billions upon billions of preservative-filled meathorks on kids for 200 years, but I mean it’s not like there’s been any recent appreciable change in childhood obesity rates or anything.

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13 comments   |  tags: , , , , , | posted in Awful Political Things, GateHouse, Humor Columns, Terrible Things People Eat

April 18, 2011

Denny’s Bacon Maple Sundae: Wait, Denny’s is pushing an unhealthy food product of some kind?

By Jeff Vrabel

I'm bringing sexy back

GateHouse — “You’re welcome for your next column,” my friend Bradshaw said with great satisfaction upon sending on a news story about Denny’s new Bacon Maple Sundae, which, as of press time, had killed 239 people in test markets in Iowa. Ha! I’m just kidding, Denny’s Fans And Lawyers: Most of the victims remain safely in Iowa hospitals and/or makeshift baseball fields having their intestines removed, but doctors are optimistic that in the coming years they’ll be able to subsist on a reasonably stable diet of gruel and pudding, which is, incidentally, the name of the worst breakfast buffet in London.

I suppose we should get out of the way that the Bacon Maple Sundae looks like the thing that my dog did after she devoured that entire box of chocolate Santas that one year, but who are we kidding: Denny’s has already gotten what it was looking for when it began the lengthy, probably international process of launching a dessert product that resembles dog chork: Pinheads on the Internet writing about a dessert product that resembles dog chork.

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Morrissey – Every Day Is Like Sunday

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4 comments   |  tags: , , , , | posted in Humor Columns, Terrible Things People Eat

July 5, 2010

Krispy Kreme + Cheerwine donuts: 85% of your recommended daily allowance of goo

By Jeff Vrabel

I know, it's like you don't even know where to start eating first, right? (Photo: Raleigh News & Observer)

GateHouse — Oh hey, great, I’ll bet you, America’s elitist class of health-obsessed spin-class-overfilling radish-snacking plutocrats and people who purchase “cereal bars” because they might taste a very little like the Pop-Tarts which are sitting on THE ADJACENT SHELF waiting for you to inevitably come crawling back, I suppose now you and your skinny jeans are going to HATE this new idea that just walked into my newsroom, the one where Krispy Kreme donuts are stuffed with Cheerwine-flavored filling. I’ll bet you are going to HATE the idea of glorfing down, Kobayashi-style, liquefied warmed-up donut/goo pluffed to the bursting point with synthetic materials that are designed to taste a little like a cut-rate carbonated beverage. Well SORRY FOR NOT BEING GOOD ENOUGH FOR YOU FRESH-MARKET-FREQUENTING SHOE-HATERS, with your homegrown vegetables and biodegradable carts and ability to walk a half-mile without stopping to suffer a few moments of legally defined death. Here’s some frogurt that’ll pair nicely with your contemptuous judging, Horse Spirit.

For the rest of us true-blue, red-blooded and other-color-referencing Real Americans, allow me to celebrate the fact that in this time of great unease, conflict and tension, a fragile peace has been forged between two of the greatest forces in all of North Carolina: Your friends at Krispy Kreme and your enemies at Cheerwine, which is a bargain beverage, though not the kind sprayed indiscriminately at Insane Clown Posse concerts (shout-out to my homes for the Juggalo-fact check, y’all are some straight-up marketing-identification ninjas).

And it has provided, in short, a food in which Cheerwine soda — whose name includes at least two inaccuracies — is injected into a donut and topped with chocolate and sprinkles. USA! USA!

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Download: cC50De

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10 comments   |  tags: , , , | posted in GateHouse, Humor Columns, Terrible Things People Eat

February 19, 2010

Coffee Makes You Immortal, or, Last Night A Decaf Saved My Life

By Jeff Vrabel

This has nothing to do with anything, but is awesome.

GateHouse — Because Science is difficult and includes many absurd words and phrases with which I am not familiar, such as “continuum” and “polyphenols” and “mice,” I have a new personal rule in which I only read studies in the news that pertain directly, indisputably to me.

I am not interested in studies about “global warming,” or “people who have scurvy,” or “ways I can personally improve the greater good by changing a few minor, convenient personal habits, such as not driving a Nissan Armada or setting the thermostat lower than 82.” I am a very, very busy person, and Science is a large field that also apparently covers rocks and outer space, and I don’t know who has the time to keep up with all this flip-flopping — eggs are good for you, no they’re bad, and you should drink eight cups of water a day except that you shouldn’t, and you’re not supposed to eat walrus meat when you’re pregnant, etc. etc.

So unless Science can magic me up a helper monkey or something to take care of all this “reading,” I’m gonna just choose which studies to subscribe to (Note to Science: I would also accept a helper walrus, because I am not a picky man, and tusks are neat).

Anyway, shortly after enacting this new set of personal bylaws, I came across a study in the Newspaper — which is the weird, papery thing that will print tomorrow news that you read on the Internet an hour ago — that said that people who drink coffee may, in fact, live longer than those who do not.

This news caused my hands to begin shaking uncontrollably, although I don’t know if that was due to the study or caffeine, because on any given morning I put down enough coffee to kill anyone over the age of 55; enough coffee to, if distilled properly, actually power an oscillating fan; enough coffee that I would basically save tremendous time and effort by just chawing on beans. (Note: I am kidding; chawing on beans tends to make teeth the color and consistency of a saloon barrel, not that I’ve tried or anything).

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Download: b2qLT5

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4 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | posted in Crippling Caffeine Addictions, GateHouse, Humor Columns

January 28, 2010

Read this, then wash your hands thoroughly and down a quart of Zicam

By Jeff Vrabel

Shower with this, for health

Island Packet — If you’re anything like me, you’ve spent the last month engaged in some combination of coughing, sneezing, cough-sneezing, whining about cough-sneezing, amassing a pile of tissues large enough to suggest you’re constructing a border wall out of them, waking up feeling like someone poured a couple of gallons of vanilla pudding mix into your lungs and, of course, the always-delightful snort-sneezing, which is something that can make you get a cramp in your sinuses while sounding like you’ve briefly turned into a rhinoceros who is giving birth inside a submarine.

I say this not to turn readers off, but because there’s a good chance that most readers are sick, because everyone is sick, because apparently this area has been made ground zero for a nefarious federal Cold and Flu Experiment of some kind, like a “Lost” thing, only with fewer aliens and infuriating asides.

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Download: bXnzlI

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8 comments   |  tags: , , , | posted in Culture And / Or News, Humor Columns, McClatchy-Tribune

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