How to Deal With Stress in Los Angeles or Canada

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.

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.

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.