The Perils of “Low T”

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advertising, androgel, blot clots, cancer, drugs, fda, low t, testosterone

Some television commercials are so ridiculous, it’s impossible to parody them because they do such an effective job of parodying themselves. Such is the case with this commercial for AndroGel, a new drug for low testosterone, or “Low T,” as the hip middle-aged guy in the ad calls it. You can find the commercial here on the drug company’s website.

If you invested two minutes of your life into watching this advertisement, you’ll notice that much of its running time is dedicated to disclaimers about all the strange and/or horrible things the drug might do to you, all on the off-chance that it will improve your performance in the bedroom. Here are all the disclaimers, courtesy of the handy transcript that the drug company provides:

Women and children should avoid contact with application sites. Discontinue AndroGel and call your doctor if you see unexpected signs of early puberty in a child, or signs in a woman, which may include changes in body hair or a large increase in acne, possibly due to accidental exposure…

Women and children should avoid contact with application sites. Men with breast cancer or who have or might have prostate cancer, and women who are, or may become pregnant or are breastfeeding, should not use AndroGel. Serious side effects include worsening of an enlarged prostate, possible increased risk of prostate cancer, lower sperm count, swelling of ankles, feet, or body, enlarged or painful breasts, problems breathing during sleep, and blood clots in the legs. Tell your doctor about your medical conditions and medications, especially insulin, corticosteroids, or medicines to decrease blood clotting.

Yes. You should be very worried.

It’s the mentioning of “blood clots,” and “possible increased risk of prostate cancer” that really grab my attention, much more than the cozy images of the middle-aged guy sporting around in his Mustang convertible and lighting a Chinese lantern with his wife. “Just how did this drug receive FDA approval?” and “How many guys out there actually need this?” are two thoughts that run through my mind when watching this. Apparently a lot of guys need it, as the number of prescriptions for “Low T” drugs have tripled in the past decade or so.

Well, I guess you have to give the makers of AndroGel credit for taking a “warts and all” approach to advertising – the legally prudent thing to do. But I know I won’t be rolling the dice in the hopes of raising my testosterone number anytime soon.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go out and light a Chinese lantern with my wife.

Image courtesy of CaryCitizen.com.

The Story Behind the Photo… Maybe

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bear, fiction, fitness, grizzly, humor, jackson hole, personal trainers, television, weight loss, wilderness

Amanda Armstrong
Fitness Trainer
Hollywood, CA

Dear Miss Armstrong,

Let me just start by saying that I’ve been a huge fan of yours since Season One of Ultimate Hardcore Weight Loss Challenge. What you accomplished with that 460-pound woman from Little Rock convinced me that there was someone out there who was strong, passionate and caring enough to help me with my own weight problem. I’m writing to ask you to consider working with me on your show, and I’m not exaggerating when I say that this may be the very last chance for me to change my destructive eating habits.

As you can see from the above photo, I’m a bear. There I am, tipping the scale at more than 700 pounds shortly after an unfortunate eating binge in which I devoured four campers and their Labradoodle. This was just outside Jackson Hole in the summer of 2012 and, as the picture illustrates, I’m not feeling too good about myself. There was a time not long ago when I was a trim cub of under 350 pounds, splashing around, scoring fish, and mixing it up with my buddies in the river. As I packed on more weight over the years, however, my metabolism took a real hit and I had to feed on slower, more docile prey. Like tourists, for instance.

I don’t want to live this kind of life. I’ve tried all sorts of diets and other weight loss programs over the years. Some were successful, but I always ended up gaining back the pounds I lost, and then some. Now, I’m pretty close to just giving up. Some days it’s all I can do to drag myself out of the cave and dig through the trash of a nearby campground. Other days I’m too depressed to even do that. I just veg out in front of the TV, counting the weeks until hibernation.

Miss Armstrong, I know you’re a busy woman, and that you get letters like this all the time. I also know that having a man-eating grizzly on your show might be considered a risk. All I can say is, if selected to participate in Season Two of U.H.W.L.C., I promise that I will do everything you ask of me, and then some. I know my health and happiness depend on it.

Best Regards,

Hungry Bear

The Power of the Writers Conference

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a plot for pridemore, chattahoochee writers conference, fiction, mercer university press, writers conference

If it weren’t for the Chattahoochee Valley Writers Conference in Columbus, Georgia, I would still be searching for an agent or a publisher for my first novel. I attended the 2011 conference at the urging of my mother, who lives in Georgia and who has been the number one fan of my writing for a very long time.

I didn’t know anyone at the conference when I arrived at the Columbus Public Library in late September two years ago. But I met two people who turned out to be instrumental to me and my book. The first was the Florida-based agent Nicole Resciniti, who critiqued the first few chapters of the novel (which was then titled An Incident in Paragould), and was very enthusiastic about my work, even using the word “brilliant” a couple of times to describe the book’s characters (I have never in my life been associated with anything that someone described as “brilliant,” so my conversation with Mrs. Resciniti is forever wired in my memory synapses). While Nicole did not decide to represent me, she did help make my book better, getting me to rewrite the first 20 pages so that they were more action-packed and arrived at the story’s key conflict – a small town’s struggle with its diminishing fortunes – more quickly.

The second person I met was Dr. Marc Jolley, director of Mercer University Press, who handed me an entry form for the 2012 Ferrol Sams Award for Fiction. Luckily, I kept that form and entered my book, revamped chapters and all, the following spring. A few months later, I got a call from Dr. Jolley, and my 10-year quest to become a published author hit the fast tract to reality. A Plot for Pridemore will debut as a paperback in May 2014.

If you’ve written a book, or have a good idea for one, I strongly encourage you to attend a writer’s conference. There’s nothing quite as effective as meeting face-to-face with people who might directly influence your career. I attended exactly one conference – after two years of sending out unsolicited query letters to every literary agency I could find – and I managed to land two key contacts. So, if you have the money, go to a conference. And if you’re in the South, consider The Chattahoochee Valley Writers Conference on Sept. 26-28. I highly recommend it.

Painful to Recall, Impossible to Forget

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9/11, attacks, current events, history, new york, sept. 11

What were you doing the moment you learned that two jet airliners had hit the World Trade Center on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001? I posed that question this morning on Facebook, and this response from a high school friend sent a chill down my spine:

“I was in my Manhattan apartment, which was above a fire station. Despite seeing the second plane hit on live TV, I still headed for work, where I knew I’d have a landline phone and internet access. As I left my building, I saw the fire engines roar out of the station, heading downtown. Hours later, when I returned, candles and flowers already adorned the sidewalk in front of the station, and teary-eyed people stood around comforting each other. Just about all of the men I watched depart never made it back.”

My own recollections of that day are not nearly as powerful, but they are as crisp in my mind as if they had happened last week. My wife and I had returned from our honeymoon just a few days prior, and were settling into our life together in south Kansas City. The morning of Sept. 11, I got into my car around 7:30 a.m. and turned on the local sports talk radio show. The discussion about the Chiefs’ home opener quickly turned to a plane that had crashed into the World Trade Center. From the way it was being reported, I thought that a small aircraft had hit the skyscraper. When I arrived at The Kansas City Business Journal, my coworkers were watching a television in the conference room, which beamed footage of smoke and fire coming from the North Tower. Moments later, a very large commercial jet hit the South Tower, and all of us rushed into the newsroom to figure out how to cover the story from our eighth floor office in the middle of the country.

The rest of the day was a flurry of phone calls to public officials and updates to our web site, punctuated by one tower collapsing, then the other, then the attack on the Pentagon, then the crash in Pennsylvania. At one point, all the government buildings in our city were closed and cordoned off from traffic. It sounds silly now, but it seemed very possible that, at any moment, a hijacked airliner could suddenly crash into downtown Kansas City. At some point I returned home from work, and we watched the news late into the evening.

Thinking back on the events of that day, it’s hard to believe that it happened 12 years ago. The memories are still fresh, still painful, and most of what I experienced came from television footage. I can only imagine what it was like to be in New York or Washington on that day. Sept. 11 changed everything. Its anniversary is another annual reminder that we still have yet to recover from it.

Image from Washingtonpost.com.

Upgrade This!

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advertising, airlines, delta airlines, Facebook, fees, travel

Never let it be said that the airlines don’t care about their customers. Over the past few days, I have received regular posts on my Facebook news feed from Delta Airlines, “inviting” me to upgrade to economy class on my upcoming flights and get “up to four inches” of additional leg room. Of course, this means an additional charge of at least $9 per seat. The skies may be friendly, but they aren’t free!

Airline annoyances aside, I am a little disturbed by the number of advertisements appearing on my Facebook news feed from businesses that I have patronized but never “liked” on Facebook. And some of the entities that I have actually “liked” are now inundating me with rambling posts that I don’t have the time or interest in reading (for example, I thought I liked R.E.M. until I starting getting updates from them every day. Someone should tell their marketing person that the band broke up two years ago).

I know, I know… if I don’t want to be marketed to, I should just cancel all my social networking accounts. It may come to that some day. Until then, there’s a new post on my feed about how to power my cell phone with a solar charger that I absolutely must ignore.

Image from Delta Airlines’ Facebook page.