More Natural Cures? Get Out of Town!

Ever heard of a little book called Natural Cures "They" Don't Want You To Know About by Kevin Trudeau? Well, if you haven't, then you must obviously be a sheep to the system, because They don't want you to know about it. But overrall, the nefarious FDA, FTC, FBI, etc. have been foiled because this tome of salvation has sold millions of copies nationally. Inevitably, Mr. Trudeau would be kind enough to dispense another rendition from his genius, which he has.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the first set of Natural Cures, I can illuminate -- I've got a copy next to me right now. See, my dad's a commercial photographer who shoots for catalogs and ads and things, which has added perks; sometimes the copies of products he shoots are his to keep if the company won't miss them. These items have included solar-powered fan hats, no-slip daisy stickers for bathtubs, and recently Kevin Trudeau's Natural Cures "They" Don't Want You To Know About.

I'm telling you, it's really quite an opportunity to come into the possession of a book like this without actually having to go out in public and buy it.

So I'm giving it another good skim, and right away I'm recalling its strengths, which no doubt contributed to its stratospheric sales. First of all, what's really nice is that it's written at a fifth-grade level so folks what don't read so good can understand it. The second thing is I'm sick of doctors and scientists telling me how to take care of my body; Kevin Trudeau is just some guy! And that's refreshing. Lastly, before bestowing medical advice, Natural Cures starts off with some thunderous Stick It To The Man chapters, and who better to write them than a man who's actually gone to prison?

Well, "They" got him locked away years ago, but I'll let him tell you that story. The book isn't really about that, anyway, it's about saving your life.

While we're there, here are some actual nuggets from Natural Cures that have certainly changed my life:

"Do not eat after six p.m. Do the best you can on this. However, the good news is that you can virtually eat like a pig all day long. And if you stop eating after 6:00 p.m., you will still lose weight!"

It's true. In fact, I've been especially successful with this since I don't get up until 3.

"If you can't eat it, don't put it on your skin."

It's all about eliminating the toxins that enter your body. I take a bite out of every new stick of deoderant just to make sure it's safe.

"Buying food already prepackaged and made by major food companies means you are buying food where no love has been added. The energy a person adds to food by preparing it himself actually causes the electrons to spin in different directions, causing a much healthier product for the body."

So there you have it: that's why my cooking always tastes best to me. The love I add to it just doesn't apply to other people who eat it. It's nothing personal -- just science.

And to think that there are MORE natural cures now? I'm near goddamn immortal from putting Trudeau's last book into practice... what could I do with more? That must be why sales are way down for his new book: too many people already read the first one.

Heck, when you look on the original's cover and see that Over 1.5 Million Copies Sold sticker, how can you not be filled with hope for all humanity?

For most people who would watch Last Comic Standing, it was the only reality show they'd admit having an addiction to. I was one of these folks.

If you've never seen it, it's basically a mix between American Idol and Big Brother, only instead of singers or smelly beautiful people you've got standup comedians. They live under one roof and piss each other off so, when voting time comes, they can challenge each other to head-to-head performances in front of a live audience. In these weekly showdowns, the less-funny person goes home (theoretically). It's a great setup for a show, and while it hasn't made a Dane Cook out of anybody, Last Comic Standing has made many comics a lot more famous on their circuits. Not mention providing entertainment for people who aren't that fond of reality shows.

Now, I never understood why NBC is in 4th place for network ratings. Then I realized their bungling of LCS was just an example.

The show's a mess, really, but most of what has people miffed is the casting. It's not the Real World, and LCS' fans watch it partly for that reason. The other reason, of course, is that we want to hear funny jokes. NBC never caught on to that, inciting fans to call for everything between boycott and what sounds like Marxist overthrow.

Traditionally, the show casts the 10 (or this year's 12) comics by taping a performance in LA for about 40 of the contestants, complete with a panel of celebrity "judges" to "choose" who gets in the house. But contestants who earned standing ovations for their incendiary performances were often passed over for someone who would add diversity to the cast or butt heads with the other comics. This was a surprise even to the judges, themselves, and comic greats Drew Carey and Brett Butler stormed off the job last season when they learned what was really going on. It turned out that the judges only counted as three votes; the many others came from a table full of NBC producers who seem to hate both comedy and people who watch television. That's still the case.

In this season's final audition, for example, they looked at Stella and thought, "she's the comedic equivalent of passing a kidney stone, but wouldn't it be something to have a pregnant drama queen in the house?"

It's like affirmative action if it were based not on race but obnoxiousness, and that's just not fair no matter what your political sensibilities are.

Stella's gone now, since she expectedly bombed her elimination performance in Week 1, but it's a waste of an episode to have to get rid of hacks like her, and it'll take many more episodes to finish that job.

That's a harsh thing to say about some of these performers who no doubt work very hard at their craft, but the truth is that they didn't get cast for their talent. For the second straight season, NBC cast Last Comic Standing like it was the Real World, and fans just felt betrayed again.

I thought this show was going to do something really nice for standup, which is the oldest and purest form of comedy we have. It seemed that having a major network display the tension, drama, and (of course) fun of trying to succeed as a comedian would help the art gain more respect and popularity. People expect every reality show to do this for its showcased profession. LCS just won't have that effect, unfortunately, and I won't be surprised to find it canceled early like it was last season.

But standup is mostly a niche thing in America and will probably stay that way for a long time. As far as I know, the public sees it as a job funny people do until they get their own sitcoms or movies or spots on Saturday Night Live, and only then can they be taken seriously as performers (well, maybe not the SNL part anymore, but you know). Still, can you think of some comedians who should really leave well enough alone (*cough* Chris Rock *cough*)?

So for now, standup comedy will keep living in its corner on Comedy Central, with the occaisional HBO special. I just hope standup doesn't become what music videos are to MTV, that's all.

Shame about the US team. I won't drone on about our failure, but questionable officiating aside, Ghana's been playing like they belong, and, for the most part, we haven't. At least for two out of our three matches. I know we played nothing but great teams, but I'm surprised with how a #5 ranking can start to seem so utterly mysterious.

I'm also surprised with how much I care about this.

Soccer's been a subject of American ridicule ever since our Founding Fathers, it seems. I know because I've partaken in that ridicule feeling that it was my constitutional obligation, and because Americans have been playing it like delicate pansies compared to the rest of the world. But consider the idea that soccer threatened to overshadow the NBA Finals this summer and contributed to the invisibility of this year's Stanley Cup. Granted, Carolina vs. Edmonton wasn't exactly the clash of the titans that would otherwise remain embedded in the American consciousness for all time, but remember when World Cup soccer was that way?

Fencing's really more of my sport, so I can relate to the continuing stigma of impotence that male soccer players carry; our women can kick major ass where we can't. Since they were way ahead of the global curve, winning the World Cup hasn't been a novelty for American women for some time now; they're just waiting for the guys to catch up. Much like soccer, America is struggling to gain some clout in men's fencing, but it will take plenty of time because fencing's just not our thing, man. Fencing's for elitist, cheese-tasting Frenchmen. Just like how soccer was for girls.

But the latter changed back in the day when a couple of boys got a backbone and said, "No, Dad, I don't really want to play football this year," which is something that provoked disownment in some places. Did these boys care that American soccer was, as a matter of public acknowledgement, a girl's sport?
No!
Thus began a youth movement for popularizing an alternative to football/baseball/basketball that was seen as slightly manlier than gymnastics. And eventually this smashing of stereotypes would yield threatening consequences to the rest of the globe's superiority.

No longer would the US settle for being inferior at the sport just because we "never really liked it, anyway." A lot of Americans do really like soccer now -- many in my generation are borderline fascist about it -- much to the confusion of their other countrymen.
And I see more interest in this little game every four years. While we didn't exactly set aside civil war (Ivory Coast) to watch our team play soccer, the World Cup was quite a presence in America this year. After their recent showing, though, I certainly doubt the our team will enjoy the same hype in 2010. But we will have a contending team in the next decade to come: I'm sure the Soccer Mom Generation will see to that.

In Colorado, they sell a bumper sticker that looks just like our license plates, and in large white lettering it displays the word "NATIVE".

They sell these to many Coloradans who want to deny allegations that they are really Californian or Texan. I've lived in Colorado Springs for all 21 of my years so far, and I'd buy one, too, if my dad had never taught me that a man's car is no place for a bumper sticker. Still, I was tempted to sock it to the permanent tourists that populate my home, until one day. My friend, Kiel, who was also born in the Springs, saw a parked car with one of these "Native" stickers on there and shrugged. "What is anyone supposed to say to that? Thanks for not moving?"

If you've ever been here, you'd probably describe Colorado Springs to be the epitome of suburban sprawl. Driving through much of it seems like watching a looping reel of upper-middle-class housing occasionally interrupted by churches and liquor stores (and there are more of the latter). Denver, which is 60 miles north of here, has around 570,000 citizens and at some point has to start growing vertically, like a constricted city inevitably does. Colorado Springs city limits, on the other hand, encompass such a vast plain of land that we can keep rolling a carpet of houses for years and years, and our population's not that far off from the state capitol's.

Colorado Springs is now populated by 400,000+ residents who subconsciously believe it's still a small town. They're not wrong, in certain respects. I've never lived anywhere else, but from what I'm told, small-town recreation tends to be limited to getting drunk and going to church -- and oftentimes in that order. Colorado Springs can relate, except it offers more for you to do on a Friday night, like go to the movies. Sure, I'll concede that a lot of small towns have movie theaters, too, but they don't have an IMAX theater, and that's just what makes the Springs so worthy of their envy.

Dr. James Dobson.

I can probably end the paragraph like that and move on. But what I will say is that if you don't count The Goose, he's the closest thing to a national celebrity that we have in Colorado Springs. This makes many of us very, very angry, but that's a subject for another time.

"Californication" is not only an excellent Red Hot Chili Peppers album but also a cultural phenomenon that has been affecting Colorado Springs for the past fifteen years or so. Folks from the West Coast who were sick of earthquakes and their tiny $500,000 homes flocked to Colorado in what some have regarded as a "Great White Flight". Contracting and developing companies jumped on this and made a killing here, especially on the north and east ends of town. That's where you still see plenty of expansion going on, which is nowadays punctuated by a new Chipotle/Panda Express/Noodles & Co./Cold Stone in each area that gets the developers' attention. It's nice, in a way, because I like the food at those places, but they make me feel dirty. It's not what Jews feel if they are to eat bacon, I'm sure, but it does hurt my soul to eat at Panera.

This might give you another idea of the town's metamorphosis: Before the Californian rush, Coloradans typically drove 1,500-dollar cars with 3,000-dollar bicycles mounted on them. Now we drive vehicles akin to panzerkamphwagens in which you can fit five bikes or more, if you want to. Sounds like much of America, to be sure, but we were doing this before it was a national joke.

Then there are the Texans, who also certainly influenced the SUV thing, but this post is getting long-winded as it is.

Both natives and "semi-natives" can agree on what keeps them here, though: the weather and the scenery. There's an advantage to the suburban sprawl because you can get a view of Pikes Peak from almost anywhere in city limits. To someone just visiting the Springs, the view is often described as breathtaking, nothing less.

To native Coloradans, it starts to seem like wallpaper. Still, it's very nice wallpaper, and that's enough for a lot of people.