One of my first literary crushes was the late Nora Ephron, who back in the 70s wrote for Esquire magazine. She was funny, and from the looks of her little caricature icon drawn by David Levine, she was cute. To me, at least. She went on to success in Hollywood, writing the screenplays for “When Harry Met Sally,” “Sleepless in Seattle,” and “You’ve Got Mail.”
And so it was with some dismay that I read her collection of essays: “I Feel Bad About My Neck and Other Thoughts on Being a Woman.”
If only, I thought, she had known me back when I was putting together my Thirty-Year Plan for Long-Term Neck Maintenance, she wouldn’t have felt bad about her neck.
That’s right. I was thinking about how my neck would look in the 21st century back when you were watching Grizzly Adams and The Brady Bunch. If you were even alive.
My long-term perspective on neck upkeep was prompted by Jabba the Hutt, the Star Wars character who bore more than a passing resemblance to Richard J. Daley, the long-time Mayor of Chicago whose neck melded into his pot belly shortly after the 1968 Democratic Convention.
Jabba was my nightmare–what I would look like if I didn’t take care of my neck; a double or even triple-chinned blob of a man, cast aside while hard-charging up-and-comers half my age blew by me on the Dan Ryan Expressway of life. I wasn’t going to end up a flabby mound of blubber, dammit! Like William Faulkner, I would not only endure, I would prevail!
And so it is that I end up, approaching the sixth decade of my life, without a double chin (or “chin scrotum,” as fitness freaks like to call them). From some angles. If the light is right. With the wind at my back. Unlike the guys I read about in The Wall Street Journal who are paying $6,231 for face lifts (proper name, rhytidectomies), money they could be spending on cheap red wine if only they’d taken care of themselves.
How can you achieve the same semi-tough neck–with the approximate firmness of a trout’s belly–at my advanced age? Simple–follow this E-Z Home Neck of Steel program, and you’ll never feel bad about your neck.
Go Out for High School Football. High school football is a great way to build neck muscles so that you end up at +70 years with very little flab on your neck. Or sometimes no neck at all. Consider Tommy Nobis, my role model when I was a budding young middle linebacker. Tommy built up his neck to a robust 19.5″ circumference by daily neck exercises of the sort our coaches made us do; we would drop down on the ground in push-up position, but support the upper half of our bodies with our heads instead of our arms.
With this type of conditioning, we could use our heads as human battering rams, which led to some neck injuries, but that was a small price to pay for a neck that looked like an Ionic column. Hint: start work early on this part of the program, preferably four decades before you wish to avoid anxiety about a flabby neck.
Whiplash: Whiplash is a great conditioning tool for the neck. The best way to acquire it is to drive a car in the left-hand lane of a state highway while three girls drive behind you, talking and laughing so that they don’t notice you have stopped for oncoming traffic. When they finally see you, it will be too late and they will slam into your rear-end (I mean your car’s rear-end), causing your head to snap back, then bounce off the head rest.
When your car finally comes to a stop, the girls will surround you and apologize profusely, enveloping you in the scent of perfume while their long hair gently brushes your face and–I had a point back there, before the crash.
Oh yeah. Whiplash results in pain that can be alleviated by yoga, especially the cobra position, which also tones your neck muscles. Again, remember to start early–give yourself plenty of time, like, say four decades.
Buy Executive Health Briefs. In the late 70s ads began to appear in leading business publications for an expensive newsletter called “Executive Health Briefs.” For an exorbitant annual subscription price, you would receive a weekly collection of health tips that would keep you trim so that when you discarded your first wife in an expensive divorce you could acquire an aerobics instructor who shortened her name to a diminutive with the letter “i” in it just so she could dot it with a smiley face.
As a come-on, the publisher offered a free copy of “How to Avoid a Double-Chin and Pot Belly” to new subscribers. In a risky arbitrage move, I signed up for Executive Health Briefs, then as soon as I’d received the Double-Chin/Pot Belly teaser, I canceled my subscription. After all, I couldn’t afford to spend what little beer money I had on a magazine whose price point was set for six-figure CEOs!
But three decades later, I still refer to that handy collection of exercises, which cost me $3 (adjusted for inflation through the Carter administration, $1.2 billion). I am now willing, nay happy, to share key double-chin fighting exercises with you–free, because that’s the Way of the Internet!
1. Interlace fingers across forehead. Bow your head forward until your chin touches your navel. Dig down, remove belly button lint, resurface. Repeat six times.
2. Turn your head towards and then over your left shoulder. Place chin on left shoulder blade, scratch patch of dry skin that you have been unable to reach using your right arm. Return to original position, and repeat over right shoulder. If neck becomes stuck behind shoulder, call Fire Department.
3. Place palms against side of head. Press until lymph nodes in head pop, sending colorless liquid streaming out ears. Repeat until neck is drained of fluid. Adjourn to singles bar to receive admiring compliments from people two decades younger than you who would like to inherit your estate.
Now you tell me.