The government is going to help you count those calories

     Food is fuel. Literally. Energy is locked in the proteins, fats and carbohydrates that we eat, and our body, acting like an engine, burns them, combining them with oxygen to create heat and work.
     Quite powerful fuel, actually. A single slice of bread contains enough energy to bring a quart of cold water to a boil.
     The potential energy in food is represented with a concept we call “calories,” a word certain to make most dieters flinch, evoking as it does the endless struggle and frequent failure that is dieting.
     Last week the Food and Drug Administration announced sweeping changes in its rules, requiring chain restaurants, movie theaters and pizzerias to post the calories in their fare. Whereas once we dwelt in blissful ignorance about what we eat when going out — a third of Americans’ calories are consumed outside of the home — now we’d know.
     Nutritionists hailed this as an important step toward reversing our society’s steady slide toward universal obesity.
     Conservatives, of course, damned this as tyranny. “A shocking power grab” is how the Heritage Foundation described it.
     Of course, these were the same people aghast at Michelle Obama’s efforts to keep schoolkids from getting fatter than they already are, which is just plain sense, if you consider us to be a nation of united citizens whose fates are intertwined, where we all benefit from encouraging healthful habits.

     But if we're all just isolated individuals, then there is a definite buzzkill aspect to being told how many calories are in our indulgences. I used to enjoy polishing off a bucket of popcorn at a movie, since popcorn is not that fattening if you don't put butter on it: 50 calories a cup. Or so I told myself.
     But there are 20 cups in one of those movie buckets, which means you're eating 1,000 calories, plus enough salt to hire a Roman legion. Now I smuggle in one of those 110 calorie bags of Trader Joe's kettle corn and eat them slowly, one kernel at a time.
     Although you should never underestimate the genius people have to ignore what's good for them. Given the greatly increased odds of an early, gasping, agonizing death, nearly a quarter of Americans still smoke.
     But that's down from nearly half, due to 50 years of relentless public information, and telling the public exactly what they're eating can have a similar beneficial effect. I've always been prone to fat, and counted calories for, gee, 40 years, off and on, not because it's a guarantee of slimness, but because it forces you to think not only about what you're eating, but how much of it you're eating. You have to eat fewer calories than you expend in order to lose weight.
     In anticipation of the change, some chains are already posting calories, and it does affect customer behavior, at least mine. When at Au Bon Pain, I grab a Thai Chicken Salad (190 calories, 350 with the dressing). If I tire of the Thai Salad, and my hand strays toward the Southwest Salad, and I see it has 160 more calories - must be the avocado - and yank back my hand. Thai once again.
     A reminder that calories are only one aspect. I would eat fewer calories if I skipped that salad and went over to McDonald's for a cheeseburger (290 calories). But a cheeseburger is gone in five bites, while a salad not only takes more time to consume, but has more nutritional oomph that stays with you.
     I'm not expecting too dramatic an effect on America's waistline. You have to care. McDonald's has been posting the calories of its menu for years, and it's a safe bet that the people you see in line there aren't racing home to record how many calories that Big Mac, large fries and a milkshake cost them (1,600 calories, or about a day's recommended intake for a small woman).
     Our oldest boy came home from college in California last week, and of course asked his mother to prepare his favorite meal of hers: Lou Malnati's deep dish spinach pizza.
     Deep dish pizza packs a wallop. I estimated a slice is about 500 calories (it's actually 550, according to their website, a reminder that people tend to estimate low). I made sure there was plenty of salad, so as not to fill up on pizza. A good idea, in theory.
     So I had my slice. We were all sitting there, chatting happily. The others were still working on their pizza. (Another diet tip. Eat slowly). So I took the pizza slicer and cut just the smallest sliver of a piece. And another. To make it worse, my younger son, who watches himself like a hawk, had his one slice and stopped. Willpower.
     Not me. Sliver by sliver until I had eaten three, count 'em, three slices: 1,650 calories. Dutifully recorded that night, in sorrow and shame. Ah well. A skirmish lost in the battle that never ends. There's always tomorrow.

     Postscript: The very first email I received in response to this column, which goes on to mention sneaking sensibly-sized bags of popcorn into movie theaters, was this:

     As the Executive Vice President of the National Association of Concessionaires I am aghast that you "smuggle" snacks into a movie theatre from Trader Joes. First of all it is against the policy of the establishment and against Health Department regulations in numerous municipalities.
                                     Daniel C. Borschke, FASAE, CAE                                     Executive Vice President                                     National Association of Concessionaires

At which I smiled, shook my head, and replied: "Given your job, I would expect nothing less. Thanks for writing."

Pies courtesy of Janice Sackett, except the key lime, which my son Kent baked.
 

"You are going to hell!" (We are already there)

        Downtown on Friday, not to shop—we never set foot in a store—but to take a family visit to the David Bowie exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art. Quite enjoyable, and I marveled how Bowie, always a master at manipulating his image, managed to celebrate every aspect of his life, raise public awareness of his music, promote his new album, and no doubt pocket considerable cash in the bargain, all by cleaning out his closets. 
        The new album promotion aspect did give me pause. One display said it "provoked a phenomenal response"—I suppose you could argue general indifference and light snickering represented a new phenomenon in Bowie's long career, but it seemed more press agentry and less museum curation. That said, we all liked the show well enough.
        Afterward, we crossed Michigan Avenue to go to lunch. RL was full to the rafters, so we called an audible and headed to Flaco Taco across the street. 
        On the way back, we encountered this knot of religious fanatics.
       "You are a sinner!" one shouted at us as I hotfooted by.
       "Every chance I get," I muttered under my breath, as we crossed Michigan. 
       It says something—something good, I hope, though I'm not sure—about our tolerance, as a society, that zealots can drag their medieval belief systems out into public, use them to berate random passerby, inflict annoyance, or at least inconvenience, and then go home feeling smug, certain they've done the Lord's work.
      Though it hardly seems fair. It isn't as if the secular society shows up in their backyards, condemning their children, urging them to abandon their beliefs, to drink and fornicate and commit any of the wide range of activities that they consider sin, which is basically anything beyond praying and working and mowing the lawn, and not even that on Sundays.
       Then I realized—and I hate to bat for their team, but it's true—that that is exactly what happens. Free-to-be-you-and-me liberal consumer capitalism certainly radiates its values across the landscape, through a spectrum of finely crafted, technologically advanced forms of communications: movies, TV, video games, songs, and on and on. You can't avoid it.  
     In that light, can you really begrudge the losing side, the remnant who haven't yet been crushed under the steamroller of progress, to show up on a street corner with their low tech signs and megaphones, to hector pedestrians? Have the sympathy for them that they would never extend toward us. Sure they're impassioned and angry. Because it hurts to be wrong, and to believe something idiotic: I'm convinced that, somewhere, in their hearts, they must know this, which is what makes them so generally unpleasant, shrill and insistent. If they were actually nestled under God's wing, they'd be more content. Which is why they need to create converts, as a away to reassure themselves, to shore up their shaky position. They can't calm down, can't pause to think, because doing so, they'd realize how crazed it all is, their imaginary, vengeful God peeking down your pants to see if you make the cut into eternal bliss, sending you to hell for dancing. They've wasted their lives peering through their keyhole of a worldview and their only redemption now is to browbeat a few credulous stragglers into following them over the cliff and wasting their lives too. Blessed are we who realize it, and enjoy the divine gift of being able to hotfoot past. Bad enough to pass them in the street; imagine being them, and have pity, and forgive. 

While you're trying to figure out where that bronze abomination is located...

     I thought I would dig out the column item that caused Frank Kruesi to send me his tie. (If you don't remember Kruesi, he was head of the Chicago Transit Authority for nearly a decade, and is perhaps best known, not for his neckwear, but for goading Richard Daley into digging up Meigs Field in the dead of night. Or so people said).
     This column gives background on the special prize for today's Saturday Fun Activity, posted below. It also, if I recall, inspired a men's store to send Kruesi some decent ties that a man would not be embarrassed to wear. A good government sort, when he wasn't egging unbalanced mayors to midnight illegality, he sent me $100 to cover their expense. Only the men's store refused to take the money, which put me in a delicate situation which, if memory serves, I managed to resolve to everyone's satisfaction.

     The Chicago Transit Authority crisis builds to a crescendo, with millions to be slashed out of the budget, service to be strangled, routes to be canceled, riders and politicians up in arms.
    And what am I thinking about? Frank Kruesi's necktie. Kruesi is the president of the CTA, and every time I see him he's wearing the exact same tie, one showing a CTA route map, the same kind of thin, jokey tie that sometimes have fish or whatever on them.
    I hate those ties. Weisenheimers wear them because they make the wearer seem like a goof. Which I suppose is the point, to say hey, aren't I wild and crazy and unconventional? But what they really say is that you are a goof in a bad, why-do-we-have-to-deal-with-this-goof-send-in-the-adults kind of way.
     Which isn't so bad if the buses run. If you're stopping by for a routine checkup, you might not mind if the doctor has on a tie with Marilyn Monroe's face silkscreened on it. Funny tie, Dr. Katz.
     But when he's delivering the bad news -- they'll have to operate and soon -- suddenly the tie isn't so funny. Suddenly you don't want to glance at his chest and worry your life is in the hands of Chuckles the Clown.
     Maybe if Kruesi wasn't wearing that tie, the Legislature in Springfield would take the problem seriously and give the CTA the money it needs. Or when Kruesi goes before the cameras to announce that the system is bankrupt and buses are being replaced by ox carts, at least he should wear a serious necktie. Something in a somber black.

                          —Originally published in the Sun-Times, April 15, 2005

Saturday fun activity: Where IS this?

    Okay, you guys. You think you're so good, just because you've cracked every "Where IS this?" I've thrown at you so far, even that chunk of stone that turned out to be tucked in a corner of the Baha'i Temple.
    Well, I think I was being kind. Letting you off easy. Lobbing you softballs. Which I wasn't even aware of, not until I saw this whatsit sitting right out in this ... very public place. 

   I have no idea what it is. Something allegorical. The  scupture evokes a certain 1940s painting, Peter Blume's "The Rock," in the Art Institute. Not that it's there, though it is ... within 10 blocks. 
     Have you seen this bronze thingy? You needn't know what it is, but you need to answer: Where is it? The correct guess will win something very special—this CTA sent to me, years ago, by Frank Kruesi, when he was the head of the CTA, after I wrote a column mocking his choice of neckwear (I basically said he shouldn't be announcing major cutbacks and CTA snafus in a joke necktie).
     The tie is silk, and has a lovely (okay, not so lovely) CTA map of downtown Chicago on it. (hideous, really). It's never been worn, obviously, but it's a true piece of Chicagoana that has hung in my office for years, certain to spice up your holiday parties and gatherings. The winner snags it. Good luck. Post your guesses below. 

The last time I saw "The Seventh Seal"

  

     "Let's watch a movie!" my older son, fresh from college, said brightly, as soon as we had polished off our Welcome Home pizza. If life were a TV sitcom we'd all groan and exchange glances.  But really it was more of a collective flinch. Ross has many wonderful qualities, but his effect upon the family movie-watching dynamic is not one of them. He wants films that are challenging, disturbing, edgy. It's always, "Let's watch 'Lost in Translation' for the fifth time," or some art film with Bjork. In the three months he was away at school, the Steinbergs happily reverted to watching old films we like, or seeing new movies that seem entertaining. Now, for the duration of winter break, that is over, and we are back to obscure Italian comedies. I believe the boy takes as much pleasure in our squirming as he does in whatever movie he supposedly wants to see.
     We ended up not watching a movie of any kind (we did, just as in the column below, play chess, only it was Blitz, with me getting six minutes on my clock and him getting two. He beat me every time). I was reminded that, with my older boy, it is now as it twas always, as this column from a dozen years ago is evidence.

    There are 8 billion people on Earth, so I hesitate to call any human scenario unique. But as I stood in my 7-year-old's bedroom one morning this week, reading to him from the Book of Revelation, it occurred to me that he is probably the only Jewish first-grader to be absorbing Christian end-of-the-world theology before his Rice Krispies.

     Furthermore, the terrifying thought struck me, standing there, open Bible in hand, reading about the Beast and the Lamb and the wasps with human faces, that this is how people lose their kids to the Department of Children and Family Services. One wrong comment in school—"Can I have a red crayon for my sea of blood?"—and there's a white van in the driveway and our boys are being hustled into foster care.

     All my fault. I admit it. I'm a bad dad. One morning, two weeks ago, I was playing chess with the 7-year-old. He was taking a long time to move. I am also a blowsy kind of guy who feels compelled to fill silences. So, vis-a-vis nothing, I raised my hand, waggled my fingers, and said, "This is my hand, I can move it, feel the blood running through it. The sun is high in the sky, and I, Antonius Block, am playing chess with death."

     Which is more or less what Max von Sydow, the knight, says in "The Seventh Seal."

     You'd think this isn't the sort of thing that would catch a first-grader's attention. But that's the crafty thing about kids—you never know what is going to click. My son snapped out of his what-move-next? reverie and asked about what I had said. I told him about the movie.

     Everything else faded away. He whined, morning, noon and night, to see "The Seventh Seal." I, of course, resisted. "It's not for little boys," I said. "It's about death, plague." His eyes glittered, hungrily. "Besides," I said, groping. "It's in Swedish. I'd have to read you the subtitles."

     This went on for days. To my credit, I held my ground. Until last Saturday morning. We're in the Northbrook Public Library, getting movies to watch over the weekend. I tell the boys to pick one movie each. They run off. My 5-year-old returns with some cutesy cartoon thing. And my older boy—you see this coming, don't you? I didn't—returns with "The Seventh Seal."

      There was a slogan during World War II: "Is this trip necessary?" used to encourage people to avoid needless travel. I have adopted it as a maxim of parenthood, and I trot it out when I find myself going over the same ground again and again. With all the exploding heads and fountains of blood that pass for entertainment, is 90 minutes of dark Ingmar Bergman imagery really going to damage my boys? I hadn't seen the movie in years, but remembered pretty well the scenes that might disturb him. The corpse of the plague victim. Grim allegories of cruelty and suffering.

     And, of course, old Mr. Death. I was about to put the movie back, when I saw that it was dubbed into English. I weakened. At least I wouldn't have to read the subtitles. I rented it. He was happier than when I took him to the circus.

     We all gathered on the couch the next night, with our snacks and our blankies, and followed Antonius Block and his more-or-less faithful squire on his journey home from the Crusades, through his famous chess match with the stern master, Death.

     I tried not to look at my wife, particularly when the penitents—dragging huge crosses, beating themselves, wailing—came onscreen. But when Block said he'd keep asking questions, even if he didn't get answers, we did exchange a look. Our oldest asks lots of questions.

     After, I asked each what they thought of the movie. "Good," said the 5-year-old. "Good," said the 7-year-old. "Very good," said my wife.

     I was pleased. I thought I had gotten off scot-free, but the oldest wanted to know where the seven seals were in the movie. He thought there'd be actual seals, the kind with flippers. I explained about how in olden times important letters were sealed by wax, and about how in the Christian Bible there is a story about the end of the world.

     The next morning, he ran into my office, hugged me, as always, but instead of asking for our chess game, he asked for "the story of the movie." I wasn't quite sure what he meant — at first I thought he wanted me to read from Roger Ebert's The Great Movies, since my wife and I had read the entry on "The Seventh Seal," afterward, as commentary. But no, he wanted the Book of Revelation.

     Tell me, what would you do? Say no? Make it a Big Deal? A Mystery? So I sighed and grabbed my New Testament — kept for reference not reverence — and started to read.

     Eventually, my wife came in and sat down on the bed. I was reading, "When he opened the sixth seal, I looked, and there came a great earthquake, the sun became black as sackcloth, the full moon became like blood, and the stars fell to earth ... " Finally, I worked up the courage to look at her, and was greeted with that just-what-kind-of-idiot-are-you? look. Eventually, skipping ahead, I got the seals opened, and managed to close the book. Then the questions came. Did this friend believe it? And did that friend? And what did we believe? ("We believe," I said, making it up as I went along, "that the world will just go on and on.")

     A few days have passed. DCFS hasn't shown up, yet. I'm hoping the danger has passed. Next time we're playing chess and I feel like opening my big yap, I'm going to quote from "Scooby-Doo: The Movie."

"Was that today?"

 
     For all the talking, talking, talking we do—in person, over the phone, or through conversation written out in emails, tweets and texts—very rarely does someone say something witty.  We can gossip and pontificate and bore. But it's rare, nearly a miracle to deliver the exact right word at the exact right moment, a quick, short, sharp—and it must be all three—rejoinder. Just a word or two, a phrase, that shuts down any further conversation. The French call it a "bon mot"—literally "good word"—or a "mot juste," the "right word."  
     The instance I always think of as the perfect example of this is a comic strip, of all things, a 1960 "Peanuts" Sunday cartoon where Linus is teaching Charlie Brown's little sister to clutch a blanket and Charlie -- well, it's easier if you read the strip.

 
    "Like her brother?" That's perfect, plucking a string that everybody is familiar with, the universally understood slough of unhappiness that is Charlie Brown's life. A great riposte does that, ringing down the curtain of truth on a conversation. For all my struggles to say something concise and cutting in print, I can't recall ever doing that myself; I need to edit, to fiddle with the phrasing first.

Kate Moss

     My wife, however, is a master. She coined one just as good as Linus' if not better. I think I told this story in a column, years ago, but it bears repeating. We were driving downtown—pre-children, back when we lived in the city, we would commute together in the car to work, she going to Jenner & Block in the IBM Building, me to the Sun-Times across the street. A CTA bus pulled up with a Calvin Klein poster on it featuring Kate Moss, the gaunt and boyish British model. There was some debate about whether she was indeed attractive, and I mused, idly, something along the lines of, "Well, I don't care what people say, I'd have an affair with her." 
     At which my wife shot me a glance and I realized to whom I was talking, and quickly added, "But I'd always come running home..."
     "To what?" Edie interjected crisply.
     I loved that. I'm as proud of that as if she had climbed a mountain. 
     This skill is passed down in the generations, apparently. On Wednesday morning, looking forward to my older son flying home from California, where he has been at college for the past three months, I sent him a text wishing him safe travels, reminding him that I would be at the airport waiting at the foot of the escalators leading into baggage claim, and asking that he let me know if the plane he is taking is delayed.
     Now there is an infinity of ways a teenager can reply to that. I suppose if I had to imagine one, I would come up with, "Sure pop, can't wait to see you." Or some such banal thing.
    Not my boy, not his mother's son.
    He replied, "Was that today?"
    Which caught me off guard. First: Could he really...? Then: No, of course not... Then: Or could he? Perfect, because for a moment I thought he was serious, or at least had to figure out that he wasn't, falling into the trap and thrashing around for a few seconds. Then trying to climb out by formulating my own smart reply, failing, coming up only with "In theory, yes," which was lame, and I didn't even send, deciding that was being too gullible. Instead surrendering and mutely waving the white flag of an emoticon: ; )
    I wanted to communicate: I get it. 
    To which he didn't reply at all. Silence is sometime even more eloquent. 
    Anyway, enough of this. Happy Thanksgiving to all. Hope you conversation around the turkey is sharp, well-informed and tempered with love and kindness. Just because you think of a really witty retort doesn't mean it has to be said.  Shutting up, as I like to say, is an under-appreciated art form. 
     The boy, by the way, got home fine. Wearing shorts and a t-shirt. No coat. No shoes, only flip flops. He didn't even pack shoes. A true Californian already. 

The opera is over if the fat ladies sing

     The good news is: advertising works. Ever since the newspaper started running an ad (Page 27 today) promoting our Sun-Times Goes to the Lyric contest, people who never brought up the subject before are asking me about opera.
     “How do I get those tickets?” asked the Thomas-the-Tank-Engine Metra conductor.
     “You’ve got to enter the contest!” I breezily replied to him and to the security guard who asked the same question, and to the other random folk who brought it up.
     Another surprisingly common reader reaction is succinctly stated by Bill Anders:
     “I think it is wrong not to give some attribution in the ad to the lovely woman you stand next to. She is not identified.”
     “I’m sure it’s unintentional,” adds Sharon McGowan, “but it feels disrespectful to me.”
     Can’t have that. The purpose of journalism is to clarify mysteries, not create them.
     The woman to my left in the orange dress is Adina Aaron, American soprano, singing Bess at the Lyric’s production of “Porgy and Bess.” I sat down with her last week for a surprisingly candid conversation about the future of opera — so candid that I almost blurted out, “You know this is going into the newspaper, right?” But, I figured, opera has no purpose if not to excite the passions.
     I began by asking Aaron, who grew up in Florida and has starred internationally from Finland to Tel Aviv, how people react when they find out she’s an opera singer.
     "They're a bit in awe because they don't know much about it," she said. "I know, the first thing is, they don't expect an opera singer to look the way I look, of course."
     "You mean," I said, groping for the proper word, " tall?"
     "Just not obese," replied Aaron. "Unfortunately, you see commercials with the big horns and Wagnerian look. They still have that perception. So they look at me like, 'Really?' "
     Aaron was always athletic and had no interest in opera growing up. Instead she played piano, and was "heavy into sports: basketball, tennis, karate, you name it."
     She got a basketball scholarship to one college and a music scholarship at another.
     "I had to sit down and decide," she said. "I loved both, but at that time there was no future in basketball. No WNBA. You had to go to Europe. I said, 'You know, I don't really want to go to Europe.' " Which is ironic.
     Only in college did she discover opera.
     "A teacher said 'go to the library, go look at these opera videos,' " she said. "I saw 'Traviata' by Verdi. That was the beginning."
     But she keeps an athlete's discipline - she rode her bike to our interview.
     "It's so important to stay healthy," she said. "To me, health and singing are one and the same. I never imagine giving up one for another. I don't know how singers do it who don't exercise, if you gain too much weight and you're too out of shape."
     Modern productions require agile singers.
     "In Europe, all of the productions are updated," she said. "You never get a traditional production; it's a miracle if you get a traditional production. You always know you'll be asked to do something physical."
    Yet the public thinks of opera as a 300-pound Brunhilda standing in one spot, holding a spear and warbling — what Aaron dismissively calls "park and bark."
     "Opera has to get away from that," she said. "I don't see opera surviving if we don't get away from that: stand and sing, the cliche. You know, it's taught. You still have teachers who tell you, 'This is the hard part, just tell the director you can't move.' That, to me, is the death of opera."
     As an opera goer, while I certainly appreciate a well-formed star and so understand Aaron's point, my focus is on the music and the staging. I don't consider the cast's bulk when deciding what operas to attend.
     "I'm not saying you have to be skinny," she said. "But you have to be fit enough and comfortable enough to move. And if you're too overweight, you're putting a lot of pressure on your body. You're going to huff and puff. Look at Pavarotti. By the midpoint of his career he couldn't even walk because he let himself get so out of shape. It's insane to think that's a good way to make a living. Opera has to adjust. We can't compete with all the different art forms if we do that."
     Which brings us back to "Porgy and Bess." You can win tickets until Sunday; the performance we're seeing is Dec. 8. Aaron said it's a truly wonderful opera, especially for newcomers.
     "I steer them in the direction of the most accessible: 'Boheme,' 'Butterfly,' 'Aida,' '' she said. "This is obviously a great one. You can't get anything better. It's genius."