Tag Archives: Frank Terranella

Christmas Decorations: I Don’t Want to See You in September

08 Tuesday Oct 2013

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Frank xmas

Too soon to be awash in evergreen and sparkly lights.

BY FRANK TERRANELLA

OK. Now they’ve gone too far. Christmas advertising this year began in September! Some stores are now beginning the holiday season as soon as they take down their back-to-school decorations. The Hallmark Channel is advertising its Christmas movies already.

Now, I love Christmas as much as anyone, but do we have to celebrate it for the entire fourth quarter of the year? There was a time, not too long ago, when Thanksgiving was the Christmas firewall. Nobody dared begin Christmas advertising until the turkey was cleared from the table. All this pent-up Christmas demand soon erupted into a media-created shopping holiday – Black Friday. And as soon as that became established, it became necessary to advertise the pre-Black-Friday sales beginning just after Halloween.

Halloween held up for many years as the new Christmas advertising firewall. In fact, all the attention that Halloween received as we focused on it as the prelude to the Christmas season transformed it from the kid’s day it used to be to a sort of Fall Carnivale. It’s much more popular as an adult holiday today than it ever was when we were kids.

But now it seems that the Halloween firewall is giving way as well. Oh sure, the Rockettes don’t open their Christmas show until just after Halloween, but especially in the online world, Christmas in October and even September is a reality. Think I’m exaggerating? Have a look.

The commercialization of Christmas is nothing new. In fact, it was the theme of, “A Charlie Brown Christmas” nearly 50 years ago. But what we have today is simply out-of control capitalism.

Religious Christians have long complained that American society has secularized Christmas to the point where it is no longer recognizable as a religious holiday. I think that the fact that many American children of Jewish, Muslim and Buddhist backgrounds hang up stockings and await the visit of Santa Claus every December 25th is a testament to the fact that there is no longer any Christ left in the Great American Christmas. And I think that’s OK – as long as we recognize it for what it is.

American retailers have created a winter holiday that, coincidentally, corresponds with the date of the religious observance of the birth of Christ. It’s not the Christmas of Silent Night – it’s the Christmas of Frosty the Snowman and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Religious Christians have to accept that their holy day has been co-opted. They need to think of their religious Christmas as a separate, parallel-track holiday that they can observe in religious ways separate from the Santa Spectacular.

But even the secular Christmas has to have its limits. Christmas sales are becoming as unseemly as those Going-Out-of-Business sales that last for months. I know that there is no hope of rolling the commercialization back to after Thanksgiving. That ship has sailed. But can’t the honchos of television agree not to show Christmas ads until November? And while we’re at it, can we perhaps not begin the 2016 presidential campaign for a few more months?

Private Planes Bring Clearer Skies

25 Wednesday Sep 2013

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frank 9.20.13

By FRANK TERRANELLA

We over-50s came of age just at the time when air travel was becoming dominant. We saw the decline and fall of the dominance of rail and steamship travel.

I can remember when I was a kid, we went to bon voyage parties aboard the cruise ships my grandparents were taking to Italy. I can remember my school friends taking the train to Miami. But by the end of the 1960s, it was all air travel.

Back in those pre-terrorism-mentality days, people who were meeting a flight could go right to the gate. Needless to say, there was no searching of passengers, and their carry-ons, although simple metal detectors were brought in after people began hijacking planes to Cuba.

Anyway, people our age grew up with air travel. It wasn’t special like it was for our parents. It was just transportation, faster than the train or steamship. And that speed meant that getting there quickly took a priority over enjoying the sights along the way. While trains had big, glass-enclosed touring cars so that you could see the countryside, airliners climbed to 40,000 feet, and showed you the tops of clouds.

But air travel doesn’t have to be this get-there-quick-with-the-shades-drawn-while-we-watch-a-movie-and-eat experience. It’s possible for air travel to be just as leisurely, and scenic, as train travel – you just have to know someone who has their own plane. frank again

Fortunately, I have a friend my age who learned how to fly his own plane after he reached the right side of 50. Brian lives in upstate New York, and flies his plane all over the East Coast. Sometimes he flies down to a small airport in New Jersey, and visits with me and my wife (we were all college classmates together). And sometimes we drive to where he is and he takes us up for a scenic view.

Recently, we drove to Cape Cod to meet Brian and his 92-year-old mom. Brian had his plane at the Provincetown Airport, and he took my wife and me up for a leisurely tour of the end of Cape Cod. We were high enough to get the Google Earth perspective of the Cape, but close enough to the ground to see the details of houses and shoreline below us. It was marvelous.

While we were out flying, there were some hot air balloons in the distance and it occurred to me that that is another way to get a leisurely air view. It’s travel where the trip is all the fun, and you get there when you get there. That type of travel is more and more appealing to me all the time. My wife and I will be taking a Mediterranean cruise next month, and I look forward to just sitting on my balcony and watching the world go by. I don’t know whether that means I’m getting old, or just that I have come to appreciate taking the time to stop and smell the roses. I like to think it’s the latter.

I’ll Always Have a Love for a “We’ll-Always-Have” Story

18 Wednesday Sep 2013

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Frank Robert and Francesca.

BY FRANK TERRANELLA

Those who follow my writings on this blog may have picked up on a theme that runs through most of my favorite books, movies and even songs. I am a lover of stories about people who meet, enjoy a brief time together, and then are forced to move on. It’s been described as ships-passing-in-the-night fiction.

A famous example of this is, “Casablanca.” Rick and Ilsa enjoy a short time together in both Paris and Casablanca, but they part at the airport. And as Rick reminds Ilsa, “We’ll always have Paris.” And that’s the way I like to refer to these stories. To me they are the, “We’ll-always-have(fill in the blank)” stories.

Over the years there have been many, “We’ll-always-have” stories.  One of my favorites is, “Two For The Seesaw,” a 1962 film starring Shirley MacLaine and Robert Mitchum that was made into the musical, “Seesaw” a decade later.  Stories like this are naturals for musicalization because the emotional level is so high.

A more recent example of this is, “The Bridges of Madison County.”  A few weeks ago I saw a performance of the pre-Broadway run of, “Bridges” up in Williamstown, Massachusetts.  Most people known the story from the 1995 Clint Eastwood/Meryl Streep movie, but the original Robert James Waller novel is much more heartfelt. Anyway, the musical version of the story comes to Broadway early next year and I heartily recommend it for those who love a good, “We’ll-always-have” story.

For the uninitiated, “The Bridges of Madison County” revolves around Francesca Johnson, an Italian-born war bride who marries an American GI right after World War II, and accompanies him home to his farm in Winterset, Iowa. She raises a family and has a good life there. But then one day a photographer named Robert Kincaid arrives at her farmhouse. He’s lost and looking for directions to a nearby covered bridge. Francesca is home alone because her family is at the Illinois State Fair. What transpires over the next week is one of the great love stories of all time. But just as Rick knew that the right thing to do was to let Ilsa go off with her husband, Robert and Francesca painfully reach the same decision. Francesca must stay with her husband and children. And so, even though they would never see each other again, they’d always have that week in Winterset.

But perhaps you have experienced your own “We’ll-always-have” story in real life. It doesn’t have to have been the love of your life. Maybe you had a dear childhood friend, and the family had to move away. I can imagine a tearful farewell scene where you promised to write, and never forget one another.

I had that kind of tearful farewell 40 years ago at a train station in Baden-Oos, Germany (now known as Baden-Baden). My cousin Bob and I were in college, and backpacking through Europe. We met two sisters in Budapest, and hit it off so well that we couldn’t bear to say goodbye when our planned time there ended. So they invited us to visit them at their home on a Canadian military base in Germany. We had such a tremendous time in those few days that there were tears at the train station when we had to get back to Munich for our flight home. We promised to write, and I did diligently for several years. Eventually life moved on for all of us. But even though Bob and I are not likely to ever meet Rosemary or Linda again, we’ll always have Germany.

While there is something sad about two friends or lovers separated by life, what makes these stories bittersweet rather than tragedies is the fact that they did enjoy a brief time of true happiness. In fact their happiness is so strong that it’s enough to last a lifetime. So whether it’s Robert and Francesca, Rick and Ilsa or even you and that special someone you had to leave behind, there is much truth in the words of Tennyson: “‘Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”

And we’ll always have our memories.

A B&B Can Be “Home” on the Road

10 Tuesday Sep 2013

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frank bab1

By FRANK TERRANELLA

Staying at a bed and breakfast (B&B) is not for everyone. It takes a bit of a leap of faith, and more than a little effort to be sociable. So if you’re really not a morning person, and just want to be left alone while you eat breakfast, you’re better off staying at the Hilton, Holiday Inn, or any of the other cookie-cutter hotel room providers. But if you are up for a bit of adventure, and just love meeting new, interesting people, there’s nothing like a B&B. Recently, I was reading that in the 19th century many inns did not provide private rooms. Strangers shared rooms, and even in some cases, they shared beds. Meals were, of course, communal.

Well. 21st century B&Bs have maintained the shared meals and shared living rooms, but the rooms in most B&Bs are now private, and come with private bathrooms. Yet it is the communal part of the B&B experience that makes it special. My wife and I were in our 50s when we tried our first B&B.

It was a wonderful home in Bennington, Vermont called The Four Chimneys. We had some trepidation about how communal an experience this would be. We quickly found out that at a B&B you can be as social or as unsocial as you want. Those who want to keep to themselves can do so. But the real fun is sitting around the communal living room and meeting the other guests. Invariably we had met fascinating people, and had a great time. Some B&Bs are just large, old houses that the owner sets up for guests. You stay in a guest bedroom; you eat in the dining room; you hang out in the living room of what was once a normal house. Newer B&Bs are built almost like a hotel with all the modern amenities except that care is taken not to get larger than a large house. So typically, there are five or fewer bedrooms.

One B&B we stayed at in Mendocino, California, the MacCallum House, had both the old-fashioned-house guest rooms, as well as a newly-constructed annex. Mendocino is one of those places that are full of B&Bs. Most recently, we stayed at a new B&B in Williamstown, Mass., up near the Vermont border. It was called Journey’s End, and I hesitate to mention it because I fear I may never be able to get a reservation again once people discover it.

Journey’s End is a beautiful new construction B&B. It’s a log cabin on a hill with a gorgeous view of the Berkshires. The people we met there were mostly over-50 travelers, so we had a lot in common. But probably the best thing at Journey’s End is the food that Carlos feeds his guests for breakfast. That’s something that’s common to all B&Bs. You get a real home-cooked meal every morning. B&Bs are perfect for making you feel like you’re at home while you’re on the road. I recommend them to all over 50 travelers who may be looking for a cross between a motel and the youth hostels we stayed in while backpacking 40 years ago. A B&B provides a great communal traveling experience but with private rooms. It’s the best of both worlds.

A Song With a Story Sings to Me

04 Wednesday Sep 2013

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the girl with the bow

The girl with the bow. By Julie Seyler.

BY FRANK TERRANELLA

I have always loved songs that tell a story. Many songs over the years have told simple stories. Thinking back to my childhood, “Silhouettes,” “Leader of the Pack,” and “Society’s Child” come to mind. But I’m not talking here about songs that tell simple stories. I’m talking about songs that could qualify as bona-fide short stories. Harry Chapin was the master of this genre with songs like, “Taxi” and “A Better Place to Be,” and many others.

One of my favorite story songs is one that was a hit for the Dixie Chicks in 2003. It’s a song by Bruce Robison called “Travelin’ Soldier.” Although written in the 1990s, the song is set during the Vietnam War. It’s about a boy, “two days past eighteen,” waiting in his army uniform for a bus that will take him off to war. He walks into a café, and is waited on by, “a girl with a bow in her hair,” who takes his order, and smiles at him because she can see he’s shy and all alone. This encourages him enough to ask her to sit and talk because he’s, “feeling a little low.” She tells him that she gets off in an hour, and she knows a place where they can go and talk. So they go down, and sit on the pier. There, the young soldier asks if he can write to her because, “I got no one to send a letter to.” She agrees and the young man catches his bus. Soon the letters start to come from an army camp in California, and then from Vietnam.

The young soldier pours out his heart to the young girl. He says that he may be in love with her. He also tells her of the things that scare him. He lets her know that when things get, “kinda rough over here,” he thinks of that day sitting on the pier with her. He tells her, “Don’t worry but I won’t be able to write for awhile.”

Of course, the last verse of the song is the most poignant:

One Friday night at a football game
The Lord’s Prayer said and the Anthem sang
A man said folks would you bow your heads
For a list of local Vietnam dead
Crying all alone under the stands Was a piccolo player in the marching band
And one name read but nobody really cared
But a pretty little girl with a bow in her hair.

I have to admit that I get a tear in my eye every time I hear the song. “Travelin’ Soldier” was the last hit the Dixie Chicks had. While they were introducing the song at a concert in London on March 10, 2003, lead singer Natalie Maines said that they were ashamed that George Bush was from Texas. Country music stations immediately stopped playing the song, and it dropped from the charts. The Dixie Chicks never recovered from their shunning from the country music community. But their recording of “Travelin’ Soldier” remains a musical work of art.

Yep, You Can Start Calling Me Grandpa

29 Thursday Aug 2013

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Frank sonogram

Too soon to spoil?

BY FRANK TERRANELLA

My son told me recently that his new bride is pregnant, and that I was going to be a grandfather for the first time early next year. My reaction was pure joy. It was surreal. And then when I saw the first sonogram picture of my grandchild, it all became real.

Bill Cosby used to say that no one is a real adult until they’ve become a parent. Well, I think no one is a real senior citizen until they’ve become a grandparent. And at age 60, I am now ready to be a grandparent.

Grandparenthood, from all reports, is one of the most marvelous things we over-50s can experience. Our friends who already have grandchildren say that it’s the best of parenthood, with none of the downside. You can leave all the unpleasant things for their parents to take care, and you can spoil them by letting them do all things they can’t get away with at home.

I know this from personal experience as a parent. When we had our children, my wife would often watch her mother’s interaction with our kids and say, “Who is this woman? This can’t be the strict parent I grew up with.” Things that were inviolate rules when they were parents, now become mere guidelines when acting as grandparents. In fact, grandparents sometimes seem to conspire with grandchildren against their parents. It’s like they have a common enemy – that mean parent who says the kids can’t have a pet.

From my standpoint, grandparenthood is really a do-over. You get another chance to be a parent, and correct all the mistakes you made. It’s like a parenting mulligan. Now that I’ve learned what works and what doesn’t, I’m ready to do it right this time. But more to the point, I won’t be phoning it in this time, which looking back, I fear I may have done the first time more that I’d like to admit.

I think most over-50 parents feel as I do that our children’s childhoods flew by too fast. I know that at the time it felt like an ordeal to get through. I used to joke about how on their 18th birthday my kids would get a birthday card from me with a notice that the lease on their bedrooms was up, and they were now financially independent. Of course, that didn’t happen. Our daughter still lives with us, and I’m glad of it. She and her boyfriend provide invaluable assistance to her aging parents.

But I do think there’s something about being a grandparent that gives those of us on the right side of 50 a feeling of a chance at redemption. Sure, I may have delivered a mediocre performance as a parent, but I’m going to blow them away in the second act as a grandparent.

Now, how old do my grandchildren have to be before I can introduce them to the joys of licorice and pretzel sticks?

The Constant “Call” of the Telephone

21 Wednesday Aug 2013

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The journey of the phone from inside the house to on the body.

You can’t leave home without it.

By FRANK TERRANELLA

It’s vacation season, and I’m amazed at how reachable my vacationing clients are. The 21st century electronic leash is a long one. People can be reached no matter the time, the place or the importance of the call.

Those of us over 50 know that this is a very recent phenomenon.Back in the 1960s (when some of us still had party lines), if someone left their home, they were truly out of touch. This was OK with most of us. Of course, there were exceptions.

You may remember the scene from Woody Allen’s film, “Play It Again Sam,” in which Tony Roberts plays a frantic businessman who is on the phone constantly. As he’s leaving to go to dinner, he says into the phone, “I am leaving 555-1234 now, but I’ll be at 555-4321 in 20 minutes.”  Woody Allen’s character is put off by this constant need to be in touch and says, “Hold on, there’s a phone booth we’ll be passing along the way. Let me get the number for you just in case.”

Well in 2013, most people are like the Tony Roberts character. We have a need to be in touch at all times. Sure this need is stronger among our children, but the truth is that few people today of any age travel without a cell phone. I am not going to say that it’s wrong either. Certainly, some moderation is called for – such as not taking calls in public restrooms. But all in all, being reachable by friends and family is (as Martha Stewart might say), a good thing.

I think we over 50s can provide some wisdom on this issue to our children by describing to them a time when, not only were there no cell phones, there were no answering machines. Back then, if you missed a call, you really missed it. You had no idea that anyone had called you, much less what they were calling about. This often led to bad consequences if the caller had an urgent message.

I remember one night I was out late because of evening classes, and didn’t get home until after midnight. My boss had been calling me all night to tell me that we were starting work two hours early the next day. Since I wasn’t home, and I didn’t have an answering machine, I never got the message. It was embarrassing to walk into work the next day two hours late. Soon after that, I bought one of the first answering machines on the market.

Our children cannot imagine such a scenario. Their bosses can always reach them. Oh sure they can pretend that their battery died, but that’s about as believable as, “the dog ate my homework.” Our modern world demands that we be reachable.

I have always found this electronic leash to be obnoxious. I was one of the last people I know to buy a cell phone, and for many years I used it only to make calls, and immediately turned it off afterwards. I enjoyed going into the subway – a cell-phone-free zone. Now it seems a little dangerous to be in an area with no service. We have become so used to being able to reach out and touch our friends and family that it’s a bit uncomfortable when we can’t.

A few summers ago, my wife and I were staying at Glacier National Park in Montana. There was a beautiful hotel, but no cell phone service. The over 50s quickly adapted back to pre-1980 mode when vacations were telephone-free. But the younger people could be seen hiking to a remote hill where someone said you could get one bar of service. They couldn’t help themselves. They were just answering the call of the dial tone.

Formatting My Music Includes Keeping it “Reel”

12 Monday Aug 2013

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Music 5

BY FRANK TERRANELLA

If you are on the right side of 50, you have lived through a music migration from records to cassettes to CDs to MP3s. And if you’re someone who never throws out music in any form, you may also have 78s, 45s and 8-tracks. These days, I have to think of the vintage of the music I want to hear to know where to look for it in my house. Beatles – look for records. Bread – look for 8-tracks. Bee Gees – look for cassettes. And if you’re like me, you probably have bought CDs of your favorite albums from the ‘60s that replace records that have more skips than a five-year-old girl. Music 2

Because I have gotten tired of buying and re-buying music in different physical formats, in recent years, I have taken to buying MP3s of my music and storing them on my computer, my phone, and my iPad. I back them up on the Internet. But despite all this redundancy, I don’t trust digital formats. They’re too ephemeral. I prefer to have physical backup. That’s why I still keep all the original source material that the old music came on. I also buy CDs as a backup of my most vital music.

Music 6

Back in 1972, I purchased yet another music source – a reel-to-reel tape recorder. I used it primarily for recording, but I also purchased commercial “albums” that were available in that format back then. For example, I have the Moody Blues’ “Days of Future Past” on a reel-to-reel tape. Recently I dusted off my old reel-to-reel, and played some of those old tapes, and I was surprised at the great sound. Audio enthusiasts insist that records have better sound than CDs, but to my ears, reel-to-reel tapes have better sound than records. More than 40 years of sitting in boxes has not degraded the quality of the tapes. Of course, my children look at my reel-to-reel as if it was a contemporary of Edison’s wax cylinder. But they can’t dispute the great sound.

Frank music

In addition to music, being on the right side of 50 means maintaining machines to play video cassettes, DVDs and Blu-Rays, but that’s another story.

All this is why I have a home entertainment center that looks like NASA launch control while my son has an Ipod connected to a speaker and an Ipad to stream video. I don’t care. I’m not throwing out any of my music and video formats. Someday I may want to listen to my 8-track recording of “Winchester Cathedral.” What? It’s available for 99 cents in the iTunes store? Anybody want to buy an 8-track player?

Herman Hupfeld: A Jersey Boy From a Time Gone By

06 Tuesday Aug 2013

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Herman Hupfeld will never be forgotten.

Herman Hupfeld will never be forgotten.

By FRANK TERRANELLA

It’s one of the most famous songs ever written because it is the centerpiece of one of the most famous movies ever made. But its author is largely unknown – the answer to a trivia question. The movie is “Casablanca,” and the song is, “As Time Goes By.”  But who wrote it?

Earlier this year I attended a screening of “Casablanca” at the State Theatre in New Brunswick, New Jersey, with the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra providing the music. Max Steiner’s classic score never sounded better. But Max didn’t write the song that people remember most from “Casablanca” – the song that Ilsa asks Sam to play again. Max Steiner, for all his musical genius, did not write “As Time Goes By.” A man by the name of Herman Hupfeld did that.

Who, you may well ask, was Herman Hupfeld? He was the son of a church organist in Montclair, New Jersey. He began his career in 1912 singing his own songs in Ziegfeld’s Midnight Frolic. This was the after-hours entertainment that Florenz Zeigfeld staged after the Zeigfeld Follies on the roof of the New Amsterdam Theatre on 42nd Street. Hupfeld went on to serve in World War I as a saxophonist in the United States Navy Band. In the 1920s, he wrote songs for various Broadway shows. He was the “go-to-guy” for what they called “additional material.”

In 1931, Hupfeld provided additional material for a musical called “Everybody’s Welcome.” The show had a book by Lambert Carroll, lyrics by Irving Kahal, and music by Sammy Fain. Fain and Kahal wrote, “Let a Smile Be Your Umbrella,” and Fain went on to write, “Love Is a Many Splendored Thing.” But “Everybody’s Welcome” did not produce a hit for the duo. The hit of that show, which ran for 139 performances, was the additional material provided by Herman Hupfeld – “As Time Goes By.” Rudy Vallee had a successful recording of it.

Fast forward to 1942, and Hal Wallis is producing a movie inspired by the 1938 Charles Boyer, hit “Algiers.”  It’s based on an unproduced play by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison called, “Everyone Comes to Rick’s.” The screenplay adaptation by Julius and Philip Epstein has as a key plot-point, a song played by Sam, Rick’s pal and piano player, that used to be Rick and Ilsa’s favorite when they were in Paris together before World War II. Max Steiner tells Wallis that he would write a song for the movie. But Wallis feels that the song should be something old and familiar, a song that Sam actually would have played in the late ‘30s. The choice was Hupfeld’s, “As Time Goes By.” And the rest is history.

While the song became world-famous, Hupfeld remained in near obscurity at his home at 259 Park Street in Montclair, a short walk from the Watchung Avenue train station. Reports say that he rarely left his hometown. He wrote many other songs with titles such as “When Yuba Plays the Rhumba On the Tuba,” A Hut in Hoboken,” and “Let’s Put Out The Lights (And Go To Sleep).” He died in 1951 at the age of 57. He’s buried in the Mount Hebron Cemetery in Montclair.

While few people remember Herman Hupfeld, his creation lives on in film history. It’s safe to say that a century after his death, people will still be echoing Ilsa’s request, “Play it Sam. Play,`As Time Goes By.’”

Having My Cake and Wearing it Too

30 Tuesday Jul 2013

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frank belly

Frank Terranella Presents.

BY FRANK TERRANELLA

You may recall, “Alfred Hitchcock Presents,” Alfred Hitchcock’s television show from years ago. It started with a silhouette of a man with a large stomach, and Mr. Hitchcock coming onscreen to fill out the silhouette. Hitch was not ashamed of his girth. He flaunted it. It was his trademark.

sweets

No gym needed. I do enough heavy lifting.

I have come to understand that point of view. It’s sort of like, “I earned this large middle from years of good living. I don’t apologize for enjoying food and hating exercise. That’s just being human.”

Personally, I would prefer to be slim. Clothes fit better, and it’s certainly a lot healthier – or so my cardiologist tells me. But the reality is that I love sweets, and I have not seen the inside of a gym since high school. Years ago, when I was 123 pounds, I was talking with a guy from Georgia who had migrated north. He had a huge gut, and when we kidded him about it he said that when he went home to Georgia, his family was pleased with his size. They would tell him, “You look like you’re doing well up there in Jersey.” His girth was the look of prosperity to his family.

The truth is that I was a skinny kid, and never had to worry about my weight until I hit 40. Then my metabolism slowed down, and my appetite for candy, cake and ice cream did not. Soon I was 20 pounds overweight, and it was up to 30 pounds by the time I had a heart attack when I was 47. That got my attention weight-wise, and I lost 20 pounds. But after a few years, I put it back. I found that all diets were like that. You lost some weight, and you put it back. The whole diet thing seemed unhealthy to me.

So now I have forsaken diets. I have taken to the treadmill to burn off calories, and I have cut back on sweets. Notice that I say cut back, not eliminate. I still enjoy my cake and ice cream occasionally, but it’s now a special occasion. My weight goals are more modest than they used to be. Losing one pound a week is the plan. But I have come to accept the fact that for now I have a stomach to rival a pregnant woman. But I know that someday that will change. For now, I am embracing the Hitchcock look.