Fruit Roll-Ups, rice crackers and whiskey: How I lost 50 pounds without exercise

Chubster author Martin Cizmar, before and after losing 100 lbs.

Sorry for the non-music post, but it looks as if Fat Kid vs. Fit Kid isn't much longer for this world, so I figured I'd compile all my dieting posts over here so they're all in one place. For those of you who don't know, I started a diet on April 2 of this year and, over the course of four months, lost about 50 pounds. I owe a great deal of my success to Martin Cizmar, my former editor at Phoenix New Times and the author of Chubster: A Hipster's Guide to Losing Weight While Staying Cool. While I'm not a hipster and I never really fancied myself as particularly "cool" to begin with, Cizmar's book and his own remarkable weight loss were an inspiration to me, and I'm happy to report that the Chubster plan flat-out works. I managed to lose all that weight without so much as a regular exercise routine.

If you're interested in discovering how you can lose a significant amount of weight via simple calorie counting, I strongly urge you to pick up a copy of Martin's book. To find out how I did it, read on. I've added an epilogue at the end, since I never really wrote a proper ending to this tale. Enjoy and happy counting!

Baroness - Yellow & Green (Album Review)

Baroness - Yellow & Green

Release date: July 17, 2012 (Relapse Records)

It's been a while since I've heard an album that I felt compelled to write about. In fact, I haven't posted a new album review since October of last year, when I boldly declared that Elder's Dead Roots Stirring was the best hard rock/metal album I'd heard in half a decade. Well, either my standards are rapidly diminishing, or we may be on the cusp of the next great era of heavy music, because as much as I loved Elder's album last year, I love the new Baroness double album, Yellow & Green, even more.

Funny thing is, I can still stand behind my Elder proclamation, because Yellow & Green is decidedly and unrepentantly not metal, and it only sporadically qualifies as hard rock. With the amount of buzz this album has already generated, I'm hardly the first person to make that distinction, but if it seems as if every critic and blogger is preoccupied with what this album isn't, it's probably because it's so hard to put into words what, precisely, it is.

Concert Review: Anthrax, Testament & Death Angel at the Marquee Theatre on 1/24/12

Anthrax's Scott Ian performing at last year's Big 4 Festival in Indio, Calif.

If you've been reading this blog for any length of time, you probably already know that I'm a huge mark for classic '80s thrash metal, so it will probably come as no surprise that, in this writer's opinion, last night's show at the Marquee Theatre was a resounding success. Anthrax, Testament and Death Angel -- three of thrash metal's longest-tenured acts, with more than 80 combined years of experience amongst them -- put on a helluva show in front of a capacity crowd that seemed to have no qualms with moshing the night away at a midweek show.

Three Questions as Kip (3?aK) - The Complete Series

Well, I guess I can scratch one New Year's resolution off my list. It might not be as significant an accomplishment as quitting smoking or losing 30 pounds, but I finally got around to doing something I've been meaning to do for quite some time now -- nearly as long as I've been writing this blog, actually.

What is this remarkable achievement, you ask?

I went back through all the "3?aK" posts and added links to tie them all together and make the entire series more navigable. This should make it quite a bit easier to revisit the infamous yearlong experiment I undertook during my tenure as music writer at College Times, in which I asked numerous musicians and celebrities to spontaneously get into character and answer three questions as 1980s hair metal icon Kip Winger.