Some Christmas cheer and a bonus song

Am I allowed to say that my daughter is the cutest thing in the entire world? I offer this as exhibit A.

And here's a bonus exhibit. Because a 2-year-old singing "Call Me Maybe" is too good to just keep to yourself.

Merry Christmas, happy holidays, happy weekend, happy it's-not-the-end-of-the-word, festivus and anything else you celebrate, because it's about the ones you love, and those who love you back. 

How to (grumble) eat better over the holidays (grumble) when you hate eating healthy and only do so in order to live longer

I do a lot of things that are healthy. I do a lot of things that are not healthy. But all in all, I think they yin and yang quite well.  And while it seems noble of me to work with The American Cancer Society strictly “on props,” I really do it to force myself to make sure the healthy keeps pace with the unhealthy. If I’m telling you how to live your life so that you can enjoy more birthdays, it forces me to more or less follow along, because if not, the internet troll that lives in my head will call me out on it. Congratulations! You are all unwitting participants in my self-help strategy.

That aside, let’s talk about holidays.

Over the holidays, you eat. That is what we are supposed to do as decent human beings. You are the ghost of ChristmasFAIL if don’t indulge over the holidays. I am all about going all out on the holiday table. Any dish can be improved with an extra stick of butter (name ONE thing that can’t be). Screw measuring the sugar. Carbs = love. Be a glutton for gluten. I’m not about to take this away from you. It’s only like half a dozen meals out of the year. Enjoy the hell out of them.

But what about the 30 or so other days during the holidays? Yang is such a buzzkill sometimes, I know. But that doesn’t mean healthier meals around those few indulgent holiday meals have to be lame. These are non-lame things that I actually do to keep my waist size the same as it was in college 20 years ago. 

Disclosure time: I hate eating healthy. I do it because I have to. I do it because I want to live longer and have more birthdays, because birthdays mean I can eat all the cake I want with whipped cream frosting (I hate buttercream frosting… how can anything with such glorious ingredients fail so miserably in execution?? That is fodder for another post, though). I am eating a donut right now as I type this. Transparency is the key to authentic blogging.

It is useless for me to write "without further ado" because ado is like my brand now (see above, and above that and above that).

Here are some recommendations from the American Cancer Society on how to live healthier, to which I have added some realistic ways to follow them in your day-to-day eating around the holidays. If you want more info, as well as actual recipes, click that badge on the left that I have worked so hard to try to align with this paragraph.

1) Eating lots of fruits and vegetables can reduce your risk of many types of cancer. I hate vegetables and I hate fruit (again, transparency). However, I recognize their importance when it comes to overall health. As a grownup, I will simply hold my breath and force a clump of vegetables down my throat whenever I get the chance. And I call my mom when I do, so she can tell me how proud she is of me (no, I REALLY do this. Shut up, before I punch your face).  For my kids, I try to incorporate them as seamlessly into dishes as possible. Here are some tips:  

• Smoothies. Once they are liquid and you use a silly straw, kids cease to define things as "healthy food." A little non-fat vanilla yogurt in there, and you're golden. I also throw some raw quick oats in there because I know oats are also good for you. But drop the kale and step away. Everything has its limits.
• Chop them into little pieces and put them into soup or on a pizza (whole wheat raw pizza dough is the best invention ever).
• Put cheese on them in addition to chopping them up. Anything with cheese on it becomes delicious. Also, anything dipped in tempura batter and deep fried, but I'm not about to replace cancer with cornorary artery disease, so let's move on. 
• Chop them up, stir fry with ground chicken or turkey, add hoisin sauce or terriyaki and make lettuce wraps.

2) Choose whole grains instead of refined grain products.  

• My kids have eaten whole wheat bread since birth. They don't know any different. I tell them white bread kills kittens. We hang effigies of white bread up and beat them with sticks. That's how you instill an affinity for whole grains.
• If violence against food isn't your bag, quesadillas made with whole grain tortillas are delicious, too. You can also incorporate the chopped vegetables and cheese into these. 
• If you're making any kind of pie crust, banana breads or other goodies, whole wheat flour works there, too. I find it tends to be a tad drier, so go heavier on the wet ingredients, by like 10%. If some of those wet ingredients are butter... well, then so be it. At least you're eating whole grains. Rome wasn't built in a day. 

3) Limit how much processed meat and red meat you eat. This one makes me a little bit sad, as I tear into slabs of meat on the regular. If you would like to follow this guideline, here are my tips on getting the most meat per mouthful without consuming a lot of meat.

• Take advantage of the concept of surface area. By maximizing the surface area of meat your mouth encounters, your body is somewhat fooled into thinking it has eaten more meat than it actually has. So take a piece of meat and cut it up into small pieces and add it to dishes like those below:
• Chili: probably the best hearty thing you can eat that's not bad for you. It's not cream based; it has cooked tomatoes in it (which contains lycopene, which fights prostate cancer); and you can throw beans and chopped vegetables in it. You can also use pretty much any kind of meat you have lying around from holiday meals.
• Stir Fry: while one steak can feed an individual, one steak can feed a whole family if you cut up the meat and use it in a stir fry with vegetables. I keep my stir frys simple: meat, scallions, onions, green and red peppers, mushrooms. Then I make a sauce using cornstarch, soy sauce, some broth, mirin or vinegar and honey. Serve some brown rice with that, and everyone is happy and has consumed 75% less meat. 
• Fried rice: my post-Thanksgiving meal is always fried rice. And if you go easy on the oil, it's really not that bad for you. When I make my Jim's Super Secret Special fried rice I would never use brown rice. But if you want to stay on the healthy side of things, I will look the other way if you choose to use it. A few months ago, I wrote a full no-holds-barred fried rice tutorial, if you're interested. 

4) Drink no more than 1 drink per day for women, and 2 for men. I offer this one with no comment or supporting tips. Just sadness.

5) Here's some other random things I do when I'm trying to live longer: 

• Olive oil and herbs (and a bit of parmesan) instead of cream sauces for pastas, or instead of mayo for pasta salads.
• Grill vegetables (I make a marinade out of balsamic vinegar, olive oil and fresh herbs). The smoke makes them taste like meat if you're drunk enough. 
• Chicken broth with chopped scallions as a soup base instead of cream. 
• Corn starch instead of roux as a thickener. That's actually an Asian thing. I can't take credit. But there are a butt load of non-obese Asians in the world, so they/we they must be doing something right.
• Make everything with spinach and feta. Although it isn't meat, the combination of spinach and feta wins my allegiance over any flavor combination on earth. I'm going to try and make a spinach and feta bundt cake this Christmas. 

That's all I've got. Don't stress out about holiday meals, stay mindful of healthier options on non-holiday days, hug your loved ones, and live for more birthdays, because the more you can stuff your face with cake, the more fulfilling your life will be. 

Costumes

I'm an aggressively heterosexual male. I slow down and admire the mannequins when I stroll past a Victoria's Secret. In middle school, I spent a disproportionate amount of time on the "Kiss My Bass" panties page in my Bass Pro Shops catalog. When the Body Shop in West Hollywood burned down in 08, I observed a moment of silence.

But today, I was disgusted at Party City. I'm using "at" in the locational sense, not the directional sense. This is not an anti-Party City post, because it could have been any store selling Halloween costumes. I just happened to be at Party City helping a buddy of mine pick up a costume for his kid.

As I perused the aisles, my eyes were naturally drawn to the requisite "slutty fill-in-the-blank" costumes that adorn the display shelves in any costume store this time of year. I have always taken this phenomenon with a grain of salt, and have even made social commentary slanted jokes about it. I've shaken my head, but never with true revulsion behind it. But then I saw this, and everything changed:

This is a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles costume for women. Ninja turtles are male, reptilian and a cartoon. You can have your vampires, you can even have your zombies, but when you take something as non-sexual and child admired as Leonardo, Raphael, Donatello and Michelangelo and make them slutty (technically, the term is *sexy* Ninja Turtle), we need to sit down and have a talk. 

When I take my daughter costume shopping in a few years, she'll notice this. She'll notice that while her brother can aspire to be a SWAT officer, Ninja, Doctor, Scientist, or Serial Killer, her future aspirations will include a police officer with a short skirt and handcuffs, a ninja with amazing cleavage, sleeveless dress and long gloves, a nurse who looks like she should be straddling a pole, a girl in a bun, glasses, a short lab coat, heels and a clipboard, or a girl in a tilted fedora and strategically torn dress mimicking the color pattern of Freddy Krueger's sweater. Of course, she can also opt to be a crime fighting turtle, with patent leather thigh high boots because, and I quote, "She's the smartest and sexiest of all the Turtles!" Oh, my bad, she's smart. Ok, the mini-skirt can stay. 

Upon realizing this, I took a stroll down the costume aisle to find anything non-slutty (sorry, I mean... sexy... and smart!) for women. I failed, but I did learn that Harry Potter, Minnie Mouse and even Big Bird can be quite arousing. If there were a bouncer at the door, I'd be fine with that. But there wasn't. I was in an establishment full of little boys and girls who are forming an association between aspiration and fantasy, admiration and imitation.

I'll be the first to admit that I'm not the ideal progressive male. I will never be. I will objectify. I will sexualize. I will walk into an establishment with a bunch of my buddies, armed with a stack of ones. There is a time and place for everything when you're a consenting adult. But just as there's room in this world for a woman who starts out as a girl choosing a Halloween costume to put her sexuality front and center, there is just as much room for her to put her writing talents, love of quantum physics, musical ear, punching and kicking ability, entrepreneurial drive, crime fighting instincts, leadership qualities, and etc. etc. etc. etc. in front of the world to see. 

These are the "fill-in-the-blank" possibilities I want to see for my daughter. When I finally take Lessi to buy her costume, I will try to shield her eyes, because there's some scary stuff out there this time of year.

Finding Zen (and donuts) in Business Travel

I started my first job three days after I graduated college, and that was only because I graduated on a Friday. I've never done a semester abroad, set foot in a hostel, or partaken in a cross-country journey of self-discovery, only to realize that what I really loved was right here at home the whole time.

I'm 40 years old, and I've never even taken a real vacation in my adult life -- the kind where you aren't there to visit or bury someone. My sedentary ass would be easy pickins for a drone strike if it weren't for business travel.

Most people I talk to hate traveling on business. The jet lag, the fast food, the rental cars, and of course, the hotels. "Nothing beats sleeping in your own bed," people say. While there is some truth to that statement, there's something to be said for hearing the "beepbeep" of a properly magnetized key card, walking into a tidy room with a made bed, throwing your stuff on the floor, sitting on the bed for a quick secon-- and then waking up at 3:30am fully dressed with your shoes on, trying to guess where you are. Because once you figure it out, you realize that nobody cares that you passed out, smell like $7 bottles of airplane booze and Designing Women is on TV.

The best part is you pick up the phone, hit zero, and somebody polite not only answers, but they call you Mr. Lin. Then you ask them to wake you up at 6:30. You can't even get your mom to do that anymore! You crawl under the blankets, shoes on or off because it's totally your choice, and fall soundly asleep because you don't have to worry about if you set your alarm for PM instead of AM. 

The next morning, you take a shower, throw your towels on the floor because you can, get dressed, and go do what you have to do. That night when you come back, guess what? Your bed is made, there are clean towels on the rack, your toilet paper has a pointy fold, and you have brand new shampoo. Some of my wildest fantasies don't even involve folded toilet paper!

When you know you've got a decent place to rest your head at the end of the day, everything else just falls into place. I offer some highlights from recent business trips as proof:

I got to fulfill my dreams of driving around like a jerk and still have everyone slow down for me because they think I'm a cop. Nothing like renting a Crown Vic for the week! 

Actually, there is one thing better... and that's driving around like Jack Ryan from Clear and Present Danger. Wearing a suit and driving a Suburban with tinted windows (in Washington DC no less!) makes you feel like a man's man. My only disappointment was that nobody tried to take us out with a rocket-propelled grenade. But fate more than made up for that by granting us a parking space. In NEW YORK CITY. Smack dab in front of THE APPLE STORE, when we were trying to find parking to go to the Apple Store! It was such a sign of divine intervention that we simply left the car there and walked back to the hotel, on principle, and picked it up the next morning. I know... pics or it didn't happen. See below. Amazing.

From the city to the country, I was all over the map the past couple years. And for most of it, Shannon was there to snap the most memorable moments (you should have seen her massive eye roll when snapping that Crown Vic one). But where our opinions differ on police vehicles, we both like donuts and fishing. This one below was snapped two hours before we had to be at a government conference in North Carolina. 

We caught this beauty, pictured below, in Portland. That is a maple bacon donut from the world famous Voodoo Doughnuts. We found this because we saw a line wrapped around a city block and figured something must be good at the end of that line, so we waited. We were so right.

I should really just end this post here because nothing tops a donut with bacon on it. Wait... this just in. Oh yeah, we also caught ourselves a double rainbow! 

Later that year, work brought us to the other side of the world, where I was able to do things that looked really official, like sign documents that celebrated some glorious spirit of partnership or something like that. I don't know. I'm just up there because the suit fits me.

I also got to do some planking. I say that like it's some privilege or something. It's not. It's just idiotic. Which simply ensures that I will do it. 

Here's me failing the "you must be this civilized to ride this ride" test in Shanghai. 

So why am I writing about business travel? Because all successful business trips have one thing in common: a good night's rest at a great hotel. And it just so happens that one of these great hotels is turning 50 this year. You might have guessed that it's the Radisson because you skipped ahead and looked at the graphic below. I cannot control you people. It's frustrating sometimes.

Anyway, Radission is celebrating its anniversary by giving away one room a day for 50 days, through 50 blogs. Today is my day to choose one of you to be the next winner. Just leave a comment by 9pm PST on Friday, Nov. 2 telling me what your favorite thing about hotel living is, and I will throw your name in a hat. Then I will think "This is so stupid and inefficient" and then use random.org instead to choose my winner. 

If you don't win, but want more chances, just go to Radisson's Facebook page for that day's giveaway blog. 

And in case you're wondering, yes, I did get some free hotel stays in lieu of cash compensation for this post. I fully intend to use them, ironically, for non-business travel. 

Not Winning

In second grade, I was on the baseball team that won the town championship. Part of the thrill of victory is knowing that the other guy didn't get your trophy. A few years later, I was on the soccer team that lost every single game we played. Nothing like knowing you suck to strengthen your resolve not to. That's the ebb and flow of life, and it's just as essential to one's development as knowing what foods to eat to avoid constipation. Of course I'm still bummed I didn't get selected for MTV's Singled Out when I auditioned in 1995, but it made me realize my energies could be better spent on less futile things than trying to impress women. I can quote you any line from Pulp Fiction.

Winning is good. Losing sucks. But losing gives us the opportunity to reinforce some really important things: self-confidence, resilience, perspective, and will power. By removing loss from the equation, we end up raising a generation of kids who cannot deal with things not going their way, and that leads to things like reality shows. So I guess you can tell how I feel about the "everybody gets a trophy" thing that permeates youth sports today.

Yes, sport is about about fun, it is about learning the value of teamwork, it is about pushing yourself beyond your perceived limits. But just as much, it is also about winning and losing. 

Fury had his first Brazilian Jiu Jitsu tournament this past weekend. As someone who has trained in martial arts for more than 20 years, I can say that this was one of those life-defining moments for me, characterized ironically by my inability to define the mix of excitement, pride, apprehension, and anticipation I felt as I saw him lined up, ready to do battle.

I was also pleased to see that, although every kid got a medal for participating, only one competitor's hand got raised at the end of each match. There was a clear winner, and a clear loser; and the loser got a different colored medal. As the matches progressed, I thought, "good on them, they totally get it." As kids' anticipation turned to disappointment when their names did not complete the sentence "and the winner is..."  I thought "hey, it builds character." As my own kid got taken down to the mat moments after the opening bell, and the tears in his eyes begin to well up, I thought "oh... shit."

When the final whistle blew, it wasn't Fury's hand being raised in victory.

There was my boy, who has seen the fire in my eyes when I talk about K-1, UFC or a sick KO clip on YouTube. My boy, who has heard a thousand times the story of how I bought him his first pair of Muay Thai shorts when he was just three months old. My boy, who has felt the pride emanating from every pore of my body when we talk about Jiu Jitsu practice at the end of the day. My boy, a 10 year old with expectations now turned to tears streaming down his face. 

What he saw was the other kid's hand being raised. What he didn't see was the one hell of a fight he put up against an opponent who was more experienced and a full rank higher than he was. He didn't see the hours in the gym that he's put into training -- the hours that transformed theoretical moves into an arsenal of instincts. Nor did he see the relentless hustle, the heart of a fighter, and in the end, the grace of a sportsman he displayed in defeat that we all saw, including his coach. 

Right after the match, before he even left the mat, his coach awarded him his next stripe. Right after that, Lisa hugged him as he cried and said the things that moms know how to say so well. And after that, I knelt down, put my hand on his shoulder looked him in the eye and told him today he was a warrior. 

Fury didn't win his first Jiu Jitsu match. And I couldn't be more proud.