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The Jazz Diet
ByThe Jazz Diet will make you thinner, taller, smarter, richer, happier, hipper, leaner, meaner, keener, more attractive to members of every sex, and able to do those newspaper cryptoquote puzzles in one go.

So I went back to the drawing board (which I made myself out of an old sounding post, which itself came from a recycled soap box) and decided to combine my passion for furthering jazz with America's passion for dubious weight loss schemes. It was either that or lurid sex scandals, and try as I might I just could not seem to get Paris Hilton and Brad Mehldau in the same place at the same time.

As I was saying.
Americans are obsessed with weight loss. Every time one turns around, there seems to be another diet plan being foisted as the key to rapid, significant, permanent weight loss. I just turned around a second ago in the interest of factual correctness and sure enough, my parakeet was hawking his own diet of seed millet and an exercise regiment that consists of pecking obsessively at anything shiny. He claims it as a safe, natural way to drop from my current weight of 255 pounds down to his ideal weight of 4.2 ounces, and is filming an infomercial as I write this starring his diet's representative success story, Calista Flockhart, who went from a size .7 to a size .025 in just six weeks and is now no longer visible to the naked eye.

So then.
The place to begin with any diet plan is with extravagant promises of a new and better self. The Jazz Diet will make you thinner, taller, smarter, richer, happier, hipper, leaner, meaner, keener, more attractive to members of every sex, and able to do those newspaper cryptoquote puzzles in one go. Your hat will fit better. When you order eggs in a restaurant, they will be cooked exactly the way you requested them. Your cousin will finally pay you back that eight bucks he borrowed in 1986. Monkeys in the zoo will not throw their dung at you, nor will your elected officials.
No respectable diet plan can be without representative success stories. We must also have testimonials to accompany our grandiose claims. Weight Watchers has Fergie, Subway has Jared, and Cocaine has Mary Kate Olsen. I pondered several candidates, from Aunt Jemima to our own Senator Ricci, before finally deciding to take one for the team and be the face of the Jazz Diet my damned self.
Inheriting the thick-boned DNA of a long line of stocky mountain folks, and raised on the deep-fried-and-gravy-smothered diet of the Appalachian South, I have always been a big boy. I haven't been under 200 pounds since I was 15, and have soared to over 300 as recently as July of 2003 as a result of my heroic defense of Southwest Virginia from a Biblical-scale plague of beer and chicken wings. Down to a more manageable 255, and still losing, I credit the amazing Jazz Diet.

Which brings us to the first tenant of the Jazz Diet; namely, what you can and cannot eat. Unlike Weight Watchers, which has a complex system of points and nonsensical limitations like "don't drink more than a gallon of beer in a single sitting" and "use fat-free bleu cheese dressing when eating your own weight in Buffalo wings," the menu choices are virtually unlimited. The rule is simple: Only eat cool foods.

It isn't just foods with silly or embarrassing names that are verboten on the Jazz Diet. Though corn dogs would otherwise be acceptable, it is impossible to look cool eating any food that comes on a stick. Also, anything pretentious or trendy is off the list. No matter how deep your personal convictions, it is virtually impossible to order organic free-range chicken without coming off like a complete git.
Moving along.
It goes without saying that, since a myriad of foods are allowed, portion control becomes very important. Here is where the Jazz Diet sets itself apart from every other plan. Instead of carefully measuring each and every meal, the Jazz Diet allows you to load your plate till your heart's content. But, you must eat while listening to jazz and you can only eat at certain, prescribed moments. For instance, if you're listening to Free Jazz, you can only eat when they play a recognizable melody. If you're listening to anything but Fusion, you can only eat during the bass solo. If you're listening to Smooth Jazz, the overwhelming nausea should be sufficient to keep you from eating much of anything and keeping it down.

Sound good, kids? Of course it does. But what if it isn't working for you? What if you're eating only the hippest foods while listening to jazz and the pounds still aren't coming off? Well, every diet must have a contingency for just such a possibility. The Jazz Diet is no different, and there will certainly be some difficulties along the way. Sales of Dave Koz CD's will skyrocket among bulimic teens, while Charles Mingus will become a favorite among wily cheaters. So if all else fails, I recommend the Miles Davis Method; just turn your back to the table and be cool.
So there you have it, the entire plan. The beauty is in the simplicity. America gets a new diet craze and jazz finds a new audience, albeit in a roundabout way. And can you imagine the marketing possibilities? Jazz CD's included with specially-prepared foods in grocery stores, restaurants offering jazz-friendly entrees, the outlets are virtually unlimited. Take a look around at the current landscape, then substitute the word carb with the word jazz. This is why I am a Genius.
Till next month, kids, exit to your right and enjoy the rest of AAJ.
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