No diet will remove all the fat from your body because the brain is entirely fat.
Without a brain you might look good, but all you could do is run for public office. – Covert Bailey
Somewhere there is a semblance of an article about a fitness conference in Reno, Nevada and I somehow got there from Salem, Oregon. I remember Covert Bailey had a series of slides projected on the screen. He’d throw up a photo of some smokin’ hot babe in a shiny bikini and just about the time you start to sense a tingle, he hollers, “FAT!”
Next, he’d offer up a photograph of a normal-enough-looking lady, maybe in a black one-piece and announce proudly, like it’s a discovery, “Fit.”
To be honest about both the tingle and the discovery, it was a lesson learned. Nobody had ever explained to me body fat percentages quite like Covert Bailey.
Covert Bailey was later a popular PBS personality and best-selling author on fitness and nutrition, whose Fit or Fat series of books sold nearly six million copies. One of the first to emphasize body fat and body fat testing, he taught millions of people about low-fat eating and adopting flexible exercise programs that are both fun and healthy.
Bailey was born (1931) in Boston, and briefly attended Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, before dropping out to enlist in the U.S. Army in 1952. After graduating from the Army Language School in Monterey, California, he served in the U.S. Army in Germany during the Cold War. [Likewise, I graduated from DLI-Monterey and served in Germany during the Cold War. – JDW] After his service, he re-entered college and earned a bachelor’s and a master’s degree from Boston University in geology.
In 1967 he enrolled in the master’s program in nutritional biochemistry. He likes to say that his training in graduate school was spent with fit rats and fat rats. He began his career as a nutritionist working for the California Dairy Council, giving lectures on diet, and gradually built up his skills as a lecturer.
I don’t recall anything else about the actual conference. Think I wrote about it for a running magazine.
Somehow I managed to locate front row seats for the big hotel show. Didn’t care who was performing. And now I don’t remember the opening act, but I do know I raced up to my room during the break. Washed my face, drank some water and smoked the biggest joint you can imagine outside a Cheech & Chong movie.
How big was it? So big, I chuffed it all, too stoopid just to stub the thing out.
Talk about stupid. I forgot to breathe and I was already in the elevator.
So, well, I exhaled. Just as the door opened and a rhinestone cowboy got on holding the hand of a buxom twelve-year old. Cleavage like that, she had to be at least twelve.
I admit it, I was mesmerized. They both literally glowed and their hand-holding looked like a Federal crime for sure.
He nodded his cowboy hat and she kinda curtsied and giggled shyly. Then the door opened again sometime later and they disappeared.
I was back in my seat by the time the intro music decrescendoed.
“The One, The Only…,” the announcer commenced and the same fuckin’ cowboy walks out.
It’s him, whoever he is. The star.
The cowboy star comes to the microphone and beams a smile as grateful applause dies down.
“Howdy, folks, I’m Johnny Lee, thanks for waiting, sorry I’m late.” He apologized, then shifted the blame.
“It’s the band’s fault actually. They were all busy playing Ear. That’s why we’re late.
“Anybody here know how to play Ear?,” he asked, as he scanned the crowd from under his hat brim.
His eyes eventually landed at my front-row table. I think a spotlight might’ve followed.
Johnny Lee, country music headliner, was looking directly at me.
“You, sir.”
I feigned innocence, even turned to look behind me. Surely he was talking to someone else.
Nope.
“I know you know how to play Ear.”
I shook my head horizontally, speechless in my negative response.
“No, no. You can’t fool me. I know you know how to play Ear.”
At this point, he put his hand to his mouth, in the manner of someone smoking a marijuana cigarette, mimicked taking in a huge breath and then as he boldly exhaled, he held his hand with the fake joint up to the microphone and said, “‘ere!”
Laughter ensued.
Lee was born in Texas City, Texas, and grew up on a dairy farm in nearby Alta Loma (now part of Santa Fe, Texas). In high school he formed a rock n’ roll band, “Johnny Lee and the Roadrunners”. After graduation, Lee enlisted in the United States Navy and served a tour of duty on the USS Chicago, a guided missile cruiser. After his discharge, he had his name legally changed from John Lee Ham to Johnny Lee. He played cover tunes in Texas nightclubs and bars throughout the late 1960s.
Lee worked 10 years with Mickey Gilley, both on tour and at Gilley’s Club in Pasadena, Texas. The soundtrack from the 1980 hit movie Urban Cowboy, which was largely shot at Gilley’s, catapulted Lee to fame. The record spawned several hit singles, including “Lookin’ for Love.”
Lee also had five other songs reach the top of the Billboard magazine Hot Country Singles chart: “One in a Million” (1980), “Bet Your Heart on Me” (1981), “The Yellow Rose” (1984, a duet with Lane Brody and the theme song to the NBC TV-series of the same name), and “You Could Have Heard a Heartbreak” (1984).
A Jamaican man saunters into a bank with a 25kg bag of marijuana and hands it over to the cashier. Shocked, the cashier asks.. What’s this for!? The man, a Rastafarian, replies; “Me ‘ere to open a joint account, mon!”
Charlene L. Tilton (born December 1, 1958) is an American actress and singer. She is best known for playing Lucy Ewing, the niece of brothers J. R. Ewing and Bobby Ewing (played by Larry Hagman and Patrick Duffy), on the television series Dallas.
Tilton had early roles on such television series such Happy Days and Eight Is Enough. She made her first film appearance alongside Jodie Foster in Freaky Friday (1976). In 1978, Tilton made a cameo appearance in the John Milius film Big Wednesday.
The following year, she made her big break by landing the role of Lucy Ewing, the sly, vixenish, frequently frustrated granddaughter of John “Jock” Ewing Sr. and the former Eleanor “Ellie” Southworth on the television series Dallas, alongside actors Jim Davis, Barbara Bel Geddes, and Larry Hagman, from 1978 to 1985 and from 1988 to 1990. She also appeared on one episode of the series’ spin-off Knots Landing in 1980.
At the height of her Dallas fame, she received a $50,000 salary per episode, appeared on 500 magazine covers, and drew 65 million viewers for her 1981 TV wedding.
Tilton is approximately 4′ 11″ (1.50 m).
Tilton was married to country singer Johnny Lee from 1982 to 1984.
Got that from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Thank you.
Was hoping to meet them for drinks after the show.
But they somehow eluded me.
I probably saw another shiny object.