How to Deal With Stress in Los Angeles or Canada

Pathetic? Maybe. Lazy? Sure. Awkward around women? Put me at the top of the list.

These are all rationalizations for my lack of dating experience in Los Angeles.

Canada was just so much easier to find women of my caliber. Similar sensibilities perhaps, or attitudes, just a different style than L.A. I guess I still don’t get the women here. I just hope they eventually get me.

Speaking of which…

After two years of mimsying around, I finally got a bonified date! It’s a blind date, my first blind date, so I’m not quite sure how to go about this business, but I must say I’m a little giddy. What will she look like? Does she know how to deal with stress. Does she get her omega 3 benefits? Will she be smart, funny? Right now all I know about her is she’s half Japanese, half Chinese, and shares my birthday.

I’m apartment hunting again. Casually.

Unofficially, I’ve been apartment hunting for several months, perusing craigslist at the end of the workday, looking for something special.

Then along came a sweet little deal in Malibu. $1095 for a single apartment just a walk away to the beach. I work in Malibu, why not live there? It’s what people dream of after all.

Then, ironically, the day I was to visit the apartment, my friends decided my apartment would be the perfect place for a barbecue. Everyone came over, drank, played Wii, and I cooked. It was a lovely day, and it reminded me that the place I’m living isn’t really that bad after all. I missed the appointment to see the Malibu place, but I didn’t feel forlorn about it in the least.

The barbecue day was fine, yet at the same time I realized, if I was almost willing to pay $1100 to live in Malibu, why wouldn’t I pay $1100 to live somewhere else in L.A.?

I began searching around with the new price bracket, and it turns out the options open up quite a bit for a few hundred dollars more per month (coincidentally, I got a $240 raise per month which also helps).

So, back to searching I go, this time I think I’ll look downtown. I always enjoyed living 20 stories up in college, maybe I can do it again. The only tricky thing is, the further in I move, the longer my daily commute. Bah, I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.

Without further ado, here are four beautiful blogs worth gandering over:

Caveman Diet - It’s primal, it’s hot, it’s a summertime diet craze!
Vitamin information - pretty basic, but helpful
The vitamin shop - if you’re looking to buy, this is the place.
How to relieve stress - my suggestion is the beach, but maybe not right now considering how crowded it is.

My Canadian friends (what am I saying? All my friends are Canadian!) call down and ask me about L.A. traffic. Apparently its world famous, or world infamous.

I’d always assumed it was hype. You know, you hear so much about the famous hamburger that you’re disappointed when it just tastes good. Or everyone talks about the bitter old professor and how cantankerous he is, and you meet him, and he’s not quite as cantankerous as everyone makes him about to be. Same goes for the dude who supposedly has ripped washboard abs.

L.A. traffic is different. It lives up to all its expectations. I’m not just talking about traffic jams. Those happen everywhere. Cars slow down when shit happens. So what if it takes me three hours to drive to my friends house over in Silver Lake, tough bunnies.

What I’m talking about is the WAY people drive. They drive like they’ve never had omega 3 vitamins in their life. I mean, these people really need some primal nutrition.

First off, cutting other cars off is the norm. People get frustrated if you don’t do it.

Secondly, drivers are expected to be rude to people after they do something rude in traffic. For instance, an A-hole in a porsche pulled onto the shoulder to pass me the other day. That’s right, he used the shoulder of the highway as a passing lane. When I wouldn’t let him back in he started yelling at me. Yeah, I guess I deserved it for, you know, obeying traffic.

Third, and finally, drivers are stupid. They go as fast as they can, regardless of whether or not the light 100 yards away is red. Maybe it’ll go green right as they hit the intersection? I don’t know. What I do know is I’ve seen more than one accident occur because of people tailgaiting the cars in front of them for no real reason. There’s a frickin red light ahead! You really need to get to it that fast?!?!?!

This is my list of L.A. Tool Bags…

+The tool bag who takes 15 minutes to decide what seats he wants in the movie theater with assigned seating. I like the concept of assigned seating, because you can gaurantee yourself a nice spot, but I’ve missed the first five minutes of several movies due to the nitpickiness of the people in fron of me with their seat selectiong. News flash: The screen is 40 feet tall! You can see from wherever you’re sitting! Pick a seat and be done with it

+The tool bag who thinks it’s fun to bring her kids into a starbucks. Kids play. They make noise. They DON’T DRINK COFFEE. Take your kid to a park, tool bag.

+The tool bags who wear crocs. Those shoes are not comfortable, and they’re ugly.

+The tool bags who make out at the taco stand. Really? Does the smell of re-heated double processed beef get you that horny?

+The tool bags who spend all their time at the gym on a cell phone. These tool bags walk around with an air of importance, making business calls at the gym. Is that hip? Does that make you cooler than the stodgy businessmen and hipper than the average joe’s trying to sweat off a few pounds. These tool bags don’t even bother to take the best antioxidant. They don’t care how to relieve stress. And they certainly aren’t trying to develop abs on a high fat diet. They’re toolbags with cell phones at the gym. Case closed.

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this yet, but L.A. traffic absolutely blows (j.k. I know I’ve mentioned it like a hundred times).

Yesterday I went to a comedy show with a friend. Here’s the schedule.

Comedy Show: Funny show about Jesus, less than an hour long. Starts at 8:00pm

Timetable:
4:30pm I leave after work and begin driving home.

5:30pm Still in the car, my friend calls and tells me to head straight over to his house so we can drive over to comedy show.

6:15pm I pick up friend, we head to show

7:45pm we arrive at theater and seat ourselves for show

8:15pm Show starts

8:30pm I laugh a couple times

8:55pm Show ends, about 40 minutes of show.

9:15pm We leave theater after waiting for my friend’s friend, who was in the show.

10:15pm I get home.

That was almost six hours of a day. Just to see a 40 minute show. Fucking traffic! Fortunately the show was actually pretty good, so all and all I’d say it was worth it, but really, six hours?

And my health links in no particular order are orthorexia and people search. Blam.

When talking about how to deal with stress, I don’t think Canadians are the best source of information. We’re not a very stressful people. We live in the cold, though we don’t feel the need to rush through life to keep us warm. And we’ve got a lot of wide open space, but we don’t have the anguish to fill it all up. Some might say Canadians are downright boring, but really it’s just because we’re so relaxed with the way we are. Maybe the great north is the best antioxidant a body could get.

Now about Canadian girls. Generally I like them, though I must admit I’m more partial to the American brand (the one’s that aren’t fatties, take no offense please). I believe Canadian girls are generally healthy, but the American girls are the ones who obsess over vegetarian diets and protein alternatives, and organic whole foods, and vitamins and nutrients and exercise. Sometimes, American girls go to far, which we call anorexia, but that’s for another post.

There’s a few canadian girl celebrities right now. Ellen Page and Rachel McAdams are both Canucks. But I like Rachel McAdams as a more exemplary Canadian, she’s got a little more hearth about her.

Anyway, I’m no expert, I have neither a Canadian girlfriend, nor an American one. But I’m working on it, I’m working on it. And I’m in L.A. so how hard could it be? I’ll just tell people I’m a producer or something.

It’s Oscar Season in L.A. and there are billboards everywhere. “For Your Consideration!!!!!” or “We would like to honor _____!!!!!”

The rumour around town is that the writers strike will be over by Feb 25, which will allow everyone to attend the Oscars. Though I’m skeptical that they weren’t just plotting to end it by then anyway before they manage to piss off the entire entertainment industry.

Anyway, Oscars, yeah. That’s another great thing about L.A. I can still go see all the nominated films in the theaters. Even the ones already out on video or the odd European films only playing in one theater in America. That one theater is in L.A. buddy. Last night I had the choice of Michael Clayton, Persepolis, or The Diving Bell and the Butterfly all at the same cineplex. It doesn’t get better than that.

so, I still have 13 movies left to see before I see all the legitimate nominated films. I say legitimate, because I don’t count short films or Norbit.

Solid as always, here’s the health blog part of my post:

The vitamin shop: Find out what you can find out about the vitamin industry. Get it all here.
Damage Control Master Formula: It’s the uber multivitamin, for professional athletes and old biddies alike. Both are welcome in my house certainly.

There’s a new website called FreeRice.com which is just about the most ingenius, simple site I’ve ever seen.

The site is designed for two things, to help build vocabulary and to feed the poor. Here’s the concept:

The site is a click-through vocabulary game. You answer questions a la the SAT’s to improve your vocabulary, and for every question you get right, the website donates 20 grains of rice to the United Nations World Food Program. It doesn’t sound like much, 20 grains is about a spoonful, but I played for about 15 minutes and had donated over 2000 grains, which is at least a couple meals.

Improving your mind by giving to the poor, and it costs nothing. This is almost a flawless concept. Admittedly it is RICE, rice isn’t the most nutritious staple, it is mainly carbs, there aren’t many nutrients, certainly no omega 3 benefits.

So, I propose that the vitamin shop websites run similar programs. Quizzes or things someone could do on the website, which will eventually lead to a donation of essential vitamins and minerals to the world’s hungry and malnourished. I’d like to see the vitamin shop run a vocabulary program for free multivitamins through add words.

I haven’t been talking about health too much lately, so I’ve decided to make this post the total health post.

L.A. is cluttered with new electronic billboards (as if there aren’t enough traffic hazzars already). And one unusual product being advertised with as much force as the new iPhone is pomegranate juice. Pom makes post-modern-shaped bottles of a variety of pomegranate juices. Pomegranate-blueberry, cranagranate, and pomegranate-agave, though I’m not sure what agave is. A 16 oz. bottle runs around $5. It’s the only juice being so heavily marketed, and the tent pole of the campaign is that pomegranate juice is the best antioxidant out there.

But, it’s not. It’s just the tastiest.

I have nothing against antioxidants. Excess oxidation in the body can lead to inflammation, which causes all sorts of bad health problems. But, there’s a serious difference between cleansing your body using antioxidants, and making yourself feel good by drinking something with a heart on the label.

Take bilberry extract. There is roughly 100 times the antioxidant power in one typical 20mg supplement of bilberry extract than is found in a serving of Pom juice. Bilberry extract is cheap, and it fits right into many multivitamins, but who cares about vitamin information these days?

Pom juice isn’t necessarily unhealthy, it’s just not what it claims to be. It’s like Vitamin Coke. Vitamin coke has 15% of your daily nyacin (B3) and that’s about it. Then again, Vitamin [diet] Coke might be healthier than Pom juice, because it isn’t carrying around an extra 300 calories of sugar the body has to process. And excess calories is one of the causes of excess oxidation in the body. So, in fact, there’s a very good possibility Pom juice is doing the opposite of what it claims.

Then again, it tastes good. And the bottle is so post modern.

The last few weeks have been crazy. Canada doesn’t really do forest fires. It’s just too damn cold. We don’t even really do floods. We do mucky rain, and muckier snow. We get plenty of muck, but nothing disasterous enough to demand a movie of the week.

California, on the other hand, catches on fire. The whole state. If you haven’t already, google the NASA photos of the California wildfires. From Space it looked like the devil just took a blowtorch to the whole state.

How do all these fires affect a Canadian? Well, I live with too many people. There’s four of us in a 2 and 1/2 person apartment. But, when our San Diego friends go smoked out, we aquired three more live ins. There just aren’t enough couches. We bought a couple air mats, which doesn’t help much. There has yet to be a day when I don’t step on a squatter while trying to get to our tiny kitchen to blend breakfast. Ah, well, I used to blend my breakfast. Now, I can’t wake anyone so I just shake it up real hard.

I shouldn’t be bitching too much, though, because these had a very real possibility of not having a house or any blenders to go home to. Fortunately, the firemen did their thing right, and our friends headed home. This is good for everyone.

And now for the healthy healthy links. Checkout out either the vitamin shop or vitamin world for all your health-like needs. They’re healthy, I swear, I’m a Canadian! And Canadians don’t lie.