I started Weight Watchers a little less than a week ago. One thing that’s come up a lot is the topic of beer. I love beer. But beer is not a terribly friendly Weight Watchers food. Moreover, it’s pretty hard to find any definitive lists of PointsPlus values (i.e. the new system) for beer. So I’ve gone ahead and made one.

Here’s the things you have to know about beer, and how the points are calculated:

• Beer has zero fat
• Beer has zero cholesterol
• Beer has very little sugar
• Most beers don’t list their nutritional values, making it awful hard to calculate
• IMPORTANT: The majority of the calories in beer come from alcohol, which is not part of the standard PointsPlus formula. If you’ve tried to calculate the PointsPlus values for most beers, you’d come out with 1 or 2 points, since the fat/carbs/protein/fiber contents are all very low. So I’ve used the calorie count instead to come up with a general idea of the PointsPlus values for these beers.
• Don’t judge a beer by its color: darker beers don’t necessarily have more calories (but in my opinion they taste better!)
• PointsPlus rule of thumb: approximately 35-45 calories for every PointsPlus point. My calculations below are based on 40 points, then rounded to the nearest point value.
• I owe a huge debt to One More Pound for the great beer list and points guide found here, which I used to make my own chart.

The Weight Watchers Beer Cheat Sheet
(click link above to open the Google Doc)

Questions? Discrepancies? Please leave a comment. This is very much a first-draft right now.

Almost four years ago I moved to Los Angeles.  Fresh out of grad school, where I had spent inordinate amounts of time stressing about the failing music industry, I haphazardly decided it might be a good idea to try my hand in the movie business.  I’d been trained in audio and music, and figured I could make a living in movies.  But after 6 months of delivering tapes around LA for 10 bucks an hour, I figured I should try to put my skills to some other uses.  Along came an amazing opportunity at the X PRIZE Foundation, where I spent a year honing my skills as a community manager.  And I followed that with two years of leading the most amazing team ever at Warner Bros. Records, helping to build the Community Department into the thriving group that it is today (Can you believe WBR has a Community Department?  Believe it.).  I’d found home, back in music where I belong.

But the time has come for me to move on again.

I’m extremely excited to announce the next chapter in my life, a little venture I call Tiny Jetpack.  There will be much more detail to come, but for now just know that I’ve decided to use my 1337 social media skills in a bit of a different way.  (Ahem, and if you’re a band or brand that needs any help in that area, drop me a line.)

Wait, there’s more.  I’m moving to Nashville, Tennessee, with my beautiful girlfriend.

I’ll go on record here for a moment and say that I love a great many things about Los Angeles.  The diversity, the incredible food, a never-ending supply of live and recorded music, a rich history, and proximity to so many incredible things, among them the ocean and a plethora of national parks and monuments.  I moved to LA because of a vision I had for my own life, for the life I could be living.  I chased a television fantasy of the American Dream (and I’m openly admitting that).  I still believe that Los Angeles is the home of that Dream for a great many people, a place where you can find opportunity, culture, financial security, and more.  However, I now know I’m not one of those people.

I work in the music business, for better or for worse.  I love it.  It makes me feel complete in so many ways.  Even on my worst days, the most stressful and awful days, I still get to see photos of smiling fans online, and I know that I’ve done something right.  I know that I’ve helped, in some small way, to give back to fans, the way music once gave to me, and often still does.  But Los Angeles is too expensive, too hectic, too cutthroat for my tastes, and Nashville seems to be the opposite of all of those things.  The music business in the US is based in three cities, LA, NYC, and Nashville, and of the three Nashville is the place where I can see myself, and my beautiful girlfriend, thrive.

And so I’m leaving Hollywood for Dollywood, the Wiltern for the Ryman, Chucks for boots, Dodgers for Sounds, traffic for, um, no traffic.  And maybe I’ll eat a salad every now and then just for the nostalgia.  I love you LA, but we just weren’t meant for each other.

My grandfather once told me this story, I vividly remember, his old age having claimed his vision, and me sitting next to him trying desperately to sustain a vicious onslaught of bad breath and overgrown nosehairs (I can’t help it, I loved him, but that’s what I remember).  He sat me down, not more than 10 years old, and told me about a train full of butter.  Yep, butter.  Wait, you’ve heard this one?  Oh, well this butter was being sold at pennies on the dollar, and it just happened to right around World War II, when apparently butter was in pretty high demand.  He could have bought that butter, and sold it at his grocery store.  But he didn’t.  And he spent the rest of his life wishing he had.  Now I have no idea whether this story is true.  I can only imagine he’s probably not the only person to ever tell this story either.  And for that matter, I have no idea why anyone would want an entire train full of butter (except that its tasty and delicious).  But I’m taking his moral to heart.  Opportunity knocks, and it’s always better to regret something you have done than something you haven’t done.

Let the fun begin!  I’m staying at WBR until the end of the month, and Courtney and I (and three kitties) are heading out Route 66 on May 31.  It’s coming up fast, and we’d like to invite you along for the ride.  We’ll be blogging the whole way.

And finally, I’ll leave you with this little song, ‘Belt of Orion,’ by a band I’ve had the utmost pleasure to work with over this past year, The Belle Brigade.  For whatever reason, it seemed particularly poignant.

Rock on.

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2010 has come and gone, and marks my first full year of working in the music business. I present here a little overview of my favorite records from this year. I’ll spare you the lengthy diatribes and colorations – I’m most likely going to write several other posts about the year in music – and leave you with this rubric for selection on my totally awesome list:

1. Only albums released in 2010.
2. Full disclosure: I worked on some of these records.  Also full disclosure: that has nothing to do with my selections.
3. The first 3 albums are ranked in order, based mostly on how much I listened to them, and not necessarily on how good I think they are. Everything else is in no particular order.
4. It just happened to be 11 albums long. There were many other good ones, but this seemed like a nice round number.

[Also note: I've included Rdio players below. Last year I used Lala players, but all of those are dead now. Hopefully Rdio won't have the same fate. In any case, you should get yourself an Rdio account so you don't have to listen to 30s samples. I've also linked out to Amazon where you can buy this stuff - all affiliate links, FYI.]

1. The Black Keys – Brothers



2. Jamey Johnson – The Guitar Song



3. Yeasayer – Odd Blood



4. Janelle Monae – The ArchAndroid



5. The Bird and the Bee – Interpreting The Masters Volume 1: A Tribute To Daryl Hall And John Oates



6. Midlake – The Courage of Others
Not on Rdio, sigh. But here’s an Amazon player.



7. Ray LaMontagne & the Pariah Dogs – God Willin’ and the Creek Don’t Rise



8. Blake Shelton – All About Tonight



9. Eluveitie – Everything Remains (As It Never Was)



10. Mumford & Sons – Sigh No More



11. Zac Brown Band – You Get What You Give



Really, really worth mentioning:
The Punch Brothers – Antifogmatic
Periphery – Periphery (and the killer instrumental version of the whole album)
The Sword – Warp Riders
Dimmu Borgir – Abrahadabra
Opeth – In Live Concert at the Royal Albert Hall
Dierks Bentley – Up On The Ridge
Flying Lotus – Cosmogramma
Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti – Before Today

Two months ago, I set out to purchase a bike. Being short on cash, I decided to try a cheapo mountain bike from Wal-mart. Total price after tax: 85 bucks. Three hours of assembly, one brakeless ride, and one flat tire later (though I never ran over anything), I took the bike back to Wal-mart, sad, but determined to find a suitable replacement. Score one point for Wal-mart for not questioning my return, and politely giving me my money back. But needless to say I wasn’t too happy.

Frazzled and baking in the Panorama City sun, I whipped out my GPS to find the nearest Target store, where I was certain to find a slightly pricier, but better quality replacement. An hour later, I walked out of the Pacoima Target store, fancy tri-ax mountain bike in hand…. and fully assembled! Total price, after tax: 150 bucks.

Took her out for her maiden voyage, and came back happy. A nice couple miles, back and forth along the LA River Bikeway, and nary a problem. A slight adjustment to the deraileur was all it needed. I was pretty certain I had made a good purchase. So I took her home, anxious to make another ride the following weekend.

But just as before, one week later I had two flat tires, and no explanation.

I threw my hands up in the air (and waved them like I just didn’t care), and took the bike back to Target – though this time in West Hollywood, close to my house. Surely they’d take it back without any hassle.

Nope. Think again.

David, the extremely polite and friendly guest services rep informed me that they don’t take back bicycles, but that the Pacoima location where I bought it might have a better return policy. So I asked him to call the Pacoima location, which he did. They said no, they won’t return bikes either, but they’ll gladly make adjustments to any pieces that aren’t working. After informing him that you can’t really adjust a flat tire, he started towing the company line: no bike returns.

Only one problem here: I’m pretty good at reading, and the return policy doesn’t state anywhere that I can’t return this bicycle. See for yourself:

So David called over the assistant manager. A young guy named Henry, who clearly had worked his tuchas off to reach this exalted position, restated that they don’t return bikes, and that the return policy says so. “Oh really?” I say. “Please show me where.” Confused, but certain that he was correct, he asks me to wait while he goes and prints a copy of the return policy.

And there I stand, patiently, for about ten minutes. I took that opportunity to peruse the Target.com website on my Blackberry, where it clearly restates the return policy. Note: no mention of bicycles.

Ten minutes later, still throwing my hands up in the air and waving them like I seriously don’t care, Henry returns with his boss, a nice lady whose name I can’t recall, so I’ll just call her “The Manager.” Oh, and he brought this, a printed copy of the section in the Target return policy that says they don’t return bikes:

The Manager, who tells me she’s a biker as well, says that she understands how unhappy this probably makes me, but that the return policy clearly states “Other restrictions may apply.” So I ask for some clarification, to which she says she’ll go consult with some of “her peers” to determine some kind of remediation. Now I haven’t ever worked at a Target store, but if I’m not mistaken, The Manager doesn’t really have any peers, at least not any that could make a decision better than her. I could be wrong about this, but everything I know about corporate hierarchy tells me this is the case.

So there I sit, and wait some more. But as before, it turns out I can read! Not only that, but I know a thing or two about the intarnetwebz. You see, while I was perusing the Target site with my Blackberry, I couldn’t find any magical linkage to the “Other restrictions” section of the website. And as it turns out, there isn’t one. No really, go look for yourself. That page above isn’t available anywhere. Then I noticed that the URL was printed at the bottom: http://insidetgt.target.com

Sure enough, it’s on an intranet:

When The Manager returned, I pointed this out to her. I also pointed out that an alternate version of the return policy is not available anywhere in the store. I also pointed out that me, the customer, the person who just bought a bike at Target, would never be able to access any return policy that states that bicycles are not allowed to be returned. Knowing full well that she has no real way around this argument, she relented in giving me store credit.

Sigh.

I fully plan on making this known to Target corporate customer service, but for the time being, please take my advice when I say that buying a bike at Target is a poor idea. Not just because their bikes suck, but because their customer service is garbage, and their return policy is at best misleading and at worse fraudulent.

Oh, two fun sidenotes:
1. On seeing a guy about to purchase a bike, I informed him of what had just happened to me. It may not have changed his mind, but at least it made me feel better.
2. When I snapped that photo of the return policy with my phone, David, the pleasant customer service guy, freaked out. “Did you just take a picture of me??” he said. To which I responded: “No. Should I have?” I mean it when I say that he did a complete Jekyll & Hyde on me, his personality changed instantaneously when he realized I had the power to report him.

Moral of the story: the customer is always right, and if some asshole customer service people try to tell you otherwise, tell them where they can stick it.