Taking a break from storytelling this week to do a little health update. Basically, just a couple links:

1) Weight loss shake: Or the protein shake, whatever you may call it. Whether whey or soy protein, these little puppies typically have a bitter aftertaste, and often come choc-full-of splenda. I personally don't have a problem with splenda, but many people do. Anyway, there are a number of juicy little goodies you can mix with a weight loss shake, I like to do an extra tablespoon of cocoa powder and some almond butter in mine.

2) Buy vitamin: This is pretty standard fare. Buy the vitamin, take it, get healthy.

There's plenty of mythology about the American presidents.

I've mentioned Washington and the cherry tree, but it seems most presidents developed their own folklore. Teddy Roosevelt killed a bear with his bare hands. Jackson once scalped an Indian with a butter knife. Kennedy had sex with Marilyn Monroe in the oval office. Some are outlandish, and others are true (Teddy really killed a bear charging at him, but he did it with a rifle).

However, recently folklore and mythology have been catching up too quickly.

HBO's newest TV film endeavor is a clever, twisted, political thriller. The subject? The 2000 election. That's right, Bush's election, only eight years ago. Many of the actors in the film were doing the same thing then as they are doing now. The nation hasn't changed enough for a story about something we all simply remember as "news."

But it gets worse.

Oliver Stone is coming out with a George W. Bush biopic later this year (titled "W"). It's a biopic about a man STILL IN OFFICE. Isn't that akin to giving Dakota Fanning a lifetime achievement award? The man will still be a president when his biopic debuts, and of course Oliver Stone has never been known as an impartial observer.

I don't know. I like a good tale about a historical figure as much as the next guy, but can't we wait until they actually become historical?

In other news, I want washboard abs, so I'm going to healthy websites like primal nutrition where I can find damage control.

When I was seven, my grade school took a field trip to the house in which Jesse James' was shot.

It had been turned into a state park.

There were old men dressed in corduroy three piece suits with pocket watches and leather brim caps. Our tour guide was a heavy-set, sweet faced coed, excitable and fast, her name was Mindy or 'Manda or Maisey. We were seven, she talked to us like we were four, and we could all tell. her eyes danced around at us, not knowing who to tell her probably-untrue tales to. She fixated on me, probably because I was in the front, and Alex and Aaron said, "Douglas has a giiiirl-friend! Douglas has a giiiiirl-friend!" I think there might have been a fist fight, but no one was bruised enough for the teacher to notice.

The inside of the house had been left pretty much alone. It was rotting, but the bullet holes were still visible. There were other bullet holes spackling the outside of the house from previous brawls or celebrations, but Mindy didn't have any information on these. I tried to count them. It was difficult to distinguish some of the bullet holes between wood knots, or boll rot. I came up with the number 48 and told everyone.

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The house is much smaller today. There are more than 48 holes, not many from bullets, as this dusty house wears away from the outside. The interior has been shellacked and roped and is halfway to looking like a Disney Land attraction, but no one in my crowd seems to care. The tour guide looks like another Mindy or 'Manda, and I absent mindedly flirt with her as we wander back toward the creaking saddle lot that starts the trail ride. It's surprising how much I remember after 20 years, the thinness of the trees, the smell of the turpentine or whatever they use against trunks of the oaks to keep the weavils from destroying what is left of the woods. I don't remember enjoying the trip as a kid, and I don't enjoy the place now. I want to leave, but my dinner engagement isn't for another four hours, and I've already paid for the horse ride. The children are gone from this place, I wonder if the PTA has concluded something unsafe about the state park where Jesse James died.

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Vitamin information and how to relieve stress. These are two topics of which I could speak at length, but will just link them to other websites as I'm told works quite well.