The World According To Carl

On Wednesday, I met with my surgeon, Dr. Elliot Sieloff for a scheduled followup (one in a series) to my roux-n-y gastric bypass surgery that I had on March 2, 2006. On the official scales, I am now down to 233 pounds as opposed to my alltime high of around 425 pounds back in 2006. I was probably heavier than that since the scale upon which I was weighed back then at my primary physician’s office only went up to 425. I have lost almost two whole feet (24 inches) around the waist since 2006. I am very happy about this. I am now only 13 pounds to my weight when I was senior in high school. Now 220 may sounds like a lot but back then I had very little body fat and was heavily into power lifting so I was very bulky with a lot of muscle mass. Eventually I hope to get below 200 pounds.

Gastric bypass surgery isn’t a magic bullet, but after trying (and failing) with just about every diet imaginable, surgery was a last resort. In my case, it has worked wonders in my life.

Incidentally, the two screencaps above came from a report by Ilyssa Trussel at WCTV (I worked at WCTV at the time and offered up the idea of following the days leading up to my surgery and subsequent progress afterwards) back in 2006. {NOTE: See my most recent “before-and-after” at the bottom of this post.}

Seeing that news report again brought back memories. One of which was concerning an idea I had. I found out that they played music in the operating room during surgery and I asked Dr. Sieloff if I could have some of the music I enjoyed playing. He agreed and before the surgery, I set out to make a 2 CD set of various songs from my personal collection. But I could just have two CD’s. I had to make a production out of it with a custom cover and playlist. Here’s what I created for the cover of the CD case:

With my sense of humor, I just had to come up with something humorous. Especially since I was so nervous at the time concerning the surgery.

And this was the songs that were on the two CD’s:

Disc One
1) Esther Golton & Friends - What Can I Say
2) The Dirty Dozen Brass Band - Night Train
3) Madness - House Of Fun
4) Dr. John - Such A Night
5) Professor Longhair - Go To The Mardi Gras
6) Chuck Brodsky - Radio
7) Brian Tyler - The King’s Highway
8) Joe Walsh - Ordinary Average Guy
9) Frank Zappa - Sofa No. 1
10) The Persuasions - Might As Well
11) The Meters - Jambalaya
12) Jerry Garcia & David Grisman - The Thrill Is Gone
13) Warren Zevon - Hit Somebody! (The Hockey Song)
14) Jimmy Buffett - Stars Fell On Alabama
15) Jimmy McCracklin - Good Old Days
16) North Mississippi Allstars - 51 Phantom
17) Super Chikan - Staingy Wid It
18) The String Cheese Incident - Joyful Sound
19) Willie Mabon - I’m Mad
20) Robert Randolph & The Family Band - Going In The Right Direction
21) Mac Rebennack - Storm Warning
22) Suburban Legends - Rose Tint My World (Horn Interlude)

As you can see, my tastes in music are quite eclectic. [BTW, if anyone has any questions or comments about any of those tunes, please email me {my email address is at the very top of the left column} -- I love talking about music.] I have a few tidbits of info on some of the songs. On the second CD I have listed “Iron Butterfly - In A Gadda Da Vida (Extremely Short Version).” This is an edited version of the extremely long song that I intitially did back in the 80’s when I worked for a radio station in Panama City, Florida. I liked playing around with the reel-to-reel decks and editing some very goofy things on them. One day I had an inspiration and took the intro and outro of “In A Gadda Da Vida” (a seventeen minute and ten second rock song that we referred to as a “bathroom break song” — “bathroom break songs” were songs the DJ’s threw on whenever they had to go on an extended potty break and no one was around to watch the boards — this was commonplace with the overnight jocks, myself included), spliced them together and reduced the seventeen minutes and ten seconds to about 13 seconds. I put it on cart and played it for the morning drive-time DJ who loved it so much he debuted it that morning and would use it about once a month as a running gag. There was a standing order at the station that certain songs like “In A Gadda Da Vida,” “Stairway To Heaven,” and some other long and overplayed rock classics were limited to one play a month per jock no matter how many times it was requested. And those tunes were requested often every day. So I recreated the gag electronically with a digital editing program and put it on the set.

Another song worth mentioning is “The Saints” by Coolbone. “The Saints” is a very unique take on the classic “When The Saints Go Marching In.” Think of it as a juxtaposition of that classic tune along with elements of dixieland jazz, New Orleans Brass Band, and…hip-hop. Yes, hip hop. Coolbone actually coined a term for it: Brass-Hop. It not only stays true to the classic tune but adds hip-hop rhymes and rhythms proudly promoting all the various genres of music found in New Orleans. It’s a great tune and Coolbone’s album Brass Hop is where you can find “The Saints.” They can play it traditional. They can play it funky. They can play it with a hip-hop beat. But most of all, they play it all great.

Trackposted to Rosemary’s Thoughts, The Random Yak, 123beta, Maggie’s Notebook, Right Truth, Oblogatory Anecdotes, Cao’s Blog, The Amboy Times, Phastidio.net, D equals S, Chuck’s Place, Nuke Gingrich, Wake Up America, Woman Honor Thyself, McCain Blogs, Blue Star Chronicles, Pirate’s Cove, The Pink Flamingo, A Newt One, Right Voices, and OTB Sports. Also thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

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