Christopher J Hartzog Music

Bassist, Guitarist & Composer

Christopher J Hartzog Music

Bassist, Guitarist & Composer

Christopher J Hartzog Music

Bassist, Guitarist & Composer

Christopher J Hartzog Music

Bassist, Guitarist & Composer

Christopher J Hartzog Music

Bassist, Guitarist & Composer

Christopher J Hartzog Music

Bassist, Guitarist & Composer

Christopher J Hartzog Music

Bassist, Guitarist & Composer

Christopher J Hartzog Music

Bassist, Guitarist & Composer

Christopher J Hartzog Music

Bassist, Guitarist & Composer

Christopher J Hartzog Music

Bassist, Guitarist & Composer

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Dave Barry’s Colonoscopy Journal

A friend sent me this today in an attempt to cheer me up and break my nervousness over my impending colonoscopy.  BUT, I almost don’t need a colonoscopy NOW…..I think I just had one reading this.

ROFLMAO!! OH, I CAN BARELY BREATHE NOW!!

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This is from newshound Dave Barry’s colonoscopy journal:

…….I called my friend Andy Sable, a gastroenteritis, to make an appointment for a colonoscopy. A few days later, in his office, Andy showed me a color diagram of the colon, a lengthy organ that appears to go all over the place, at one point passing briefly through Minneapolis .

Then Andy explained the colonoscopy procedure to me in a thorough, reassuring and patient manner. I nodded thoughtfully, but I didn’t really hear anything he said, because my brain was shrieking, quote, ‘HE’S GOING TO STICK A TUBE 17,000 FEET UP YOUR BEHIND!’

I left Andy’s office with some written instructions, and a prescription for a product called ‘MoviPrep,’ which comes in a box large enough to hold a microwave oven. I will discuss MoviPrep in detail later; for now suffice it to say that we must never allow it to fall into the hands of America ‘s enemies.

I spent the next several days productively sitting around being nervous. Then, on the day before my colonoscopy, I began my preparation. In accordance with my instructions, I didn’t eat any solid food that day; all I had was chicken broth, which is basically water, only with less flavor. Then, in the evening, I took the MoviPrep. You mix two packets of powder together in a one-liter plastic jug, then you fill it with lukewarm water. (For those unfamiliar with the metric system, a liter is about 32 gallons.) Then you have to drink the whole jug. This takes about an hour, because MoviPrep tastes – and here I am being kind – like a mixture of goat spit and urinal cleanser, with just a hint of lemon.

The instructions for MoviPrep, clearly written by somebody with a great sense of humor, state that after you drink it, ‘a loose watery bowel movement may result.’ This is kind of like saying that after you jump off your roof, you may experience contact with the ground.

MoviPrep is a nuclear laxative. I don’t want to be too graphic, here, but: Have you ever seen a space-shuttle launch? This is pretty much the MoviPrep experience, with you as the shuttle. There are times when you wish the commode had a seat belt. You spend several hours pretty much confined to the bathroom, spurting violently. You eliminate everything. And then, when you figure you must be totally empty, you have to drink another liter of MoviPrep, at which point, as far as I can tell, your bowels travel into the future and star t eliminating food that you have not even eaten yet.

After an action -packed evening, I finally got to sleep. The next morning my wife drove me to the clinic. I was very nervous. Not only was I worried about the procedure, but I had been experiencing occasional return bouts of MoviPrep spurtage. I was thinking, ‘What if I spurt on Andy?’ How do you apologize to a friend for something like that? Flowers would not be enough.

At the clinic I had to sign many forms acknowledging that I understood and totally agreed with whatever the heck the forms said. Then they led me to a room full of other colonoscopy people, where I went inside a little curtained space and took off my clothes and put on one of those hospital garments designed by sadist perverts, the kind that, when you put it on, makes you feel even more naked than when you are actually naked.

Then a nurse named Eddie put a little needle in a vein in my left hand. Ordinarily I would have fainted, but Eddie was very good, and I was already lying down. Eddie also told me that some people put vodka in their MoviPrep. At first I was ticked off that I hadn’t thought of this, but then I pondered what would happen if you got yourself too tipsy to make it to the bathroom, so you were staggering around in full Fire Hose Mode. You would have no choice but to burn your house.

W hen everything was ready, Eddie wheeled me into the procedure room, where Andy was waiting with a nurse and an anesthesiologist. I did not see the 17,000-foot tube, but I knew Andy had it hidden around there somewhere. I was seriously nervous at this point. Andy had me roll over on my left side, and the anesthesiologist began hooking something up to the needle in my hand. There was music playing in the room, and I realized that the song was ‘Dancing Queen’ by ABBA I remarked to Andy that, of a ll the songs that could be playing during this particular procedure, ‘Dancing Queen’ has to be the least appropriate.

‘You want me to turn it up?’ said Andy, from somewhere behind me. ‘Ha ha, ‘ I said. And then it was time, the moment I had been dreading for more than a decade. If you are squeamish, prepare yourself, because I am going to tell you, in explicit detail, exactly what it was like.

I have no idea. Really. I slept through it. One moment, ABBA was yelling ‘Dancing Queen, Feel the beat of the tambourine,’ and the next moment, I was back in the other room, waking up in a very mellow mood.

Andy was looking down at me and asking me how I felt. I felt excellent. I felt even more excellent when Andy told me that It was all over, and that my colon had passed with flying colors. I have never been prouder of an internal organ.

ABOUT THE WRITER
Dave Barry is a Pulitzer Prize-winning humor columnist for the Miami Herald.

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Celebrity Before and After Pictures

A friend of mine sent me this by email originally and I thought it was hilarious.  After looking at it I wondered what some other stars that I grew up with look like now, so I added a few of my own celeb findings which are also quite astonishing.

If you have days when you wonder why YOU have to get old and think if you only had the money and resources that money can buy to stop and reverse the aging process, if you think that then even you could finally find that elusive fountain of youth that even eluded Ponce de León, then read on and you will see that you and I are not the only people getting old!  This confirms the wisdom of the Bible:  “Vanity of vanities,” says the Preacher, “Vanity of vanities! All is vanity.” Ecclesiastes 1:2

Check out Paul McCartney.  Paul:  What have you done to yourself?  How did you go from jet black hair and beard and dark eyes to strawberry blond with no beard and a face that looks like grandma?  You should have just let yourself age naturally like your mate Eric Clapton.

And Burt….Burt….man, you look like you belong in Madame Tussauds wax museum.

Jack:  Have you no dignity?

Kirstie:  What can I say?  Life’s been hard.

Nancy Wilson:  You still lookin good girl.

And Robert Plant:  Could this be Johnny Depp in 30 years?

 

Paul McCartney

Paul McCartney

 

Billy Joel

Billy Joel

Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan

Boy George

Boy George

Brigitte Bardot

Brigitte Bardot

Burt Reynolds

Burt Reynolds

Carrot Top

Carrot Top

Clint Eastwood

Clint Eastwood

Cybill Shepherd

Cybill Shepherd

David Lee Roth

David Lee Roth

Eddie Van Halen

Eddie Van Halen

Gary Busey

Gary Busey

Grace Slick

Grace Slick

Jack Nicholson

Jack Nicholson

Joan Rivers

Joan Rivers

Kathleen Turner

Kathleen Turner

Keith Richards

Keith Richards

Kenny Rogers

Kenny Rogers

Kirstie Alley

Kirstie Alley

Linda Ronstadt

Linda Ronstadt

Michael Jackson

Michael Jackson

Mick Jagger

Mick Jagger

Mickey Rourke

Mickey Rourke

Nancy and Ann Wilson

Nancy and Ann Wilson

Nick Nolte

Nick Nolte

Ozzy Osbourne

Ozzy Osbourne

Robert Plant

Robert Plant

Steven Tyler

Steven Tyler

Wayne Newton

Wayne Newton

 

Sylvester Stallone

Sylvester Stallone

Arnold Schwarzenegger

Arnold Schwarzenegger

Now, don’t we feel better? Misery loves company!

Please Click here to check out my music!  Thanks! 🙂

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Music is Good For Your Brain

I am not a scientist or academic.  But I have always had the gut feeling that somehow listening to music is somehow therapeutic, that it might bring healing and even if it didn’t, it surely could bring pleasure.  I have felt this no matter the genre or artist within a genre (well, OK, there is indeed some “bad” music out there, but I try to avoid those anyway…) whether it be John Adam’s Harmonium, Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, Dvorak’s Slavic Dances, Mozart’s Requiem , Robert Johnson’s Crossroads, BB King’s Every Day I Have the Blues, The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, AC-DC Back in Black or Coldplay’s Viva La Vida….it doesn’t matter too much….music like this moves me.

Now there is a paper out in Nature Neuroscience documenting what happens in our minds and bodies when we listen to music we love.  Wired Magazine ran a story on this here that included this great bit of information:

Because the scientists were combining methodologies (PET and fMRI) they were able to obtain an impressively precise portrait of music in the brain. The first thing they discovered (using ligand-based PET) is that music triggers the release of dopamine in both the dorsal and ventral striatum. This isn’t particularly surprising: these regions have long been associated with the response to pleasurable stimuli. It doesn’t matter if we’re having sex or snorting cocaine or listening to Kanye: These things fill us with bliss because they tickle these cells. Happiness begins here.

So, go put on your favorite tunes first before you pop a pill and relax and soak it up.

This research adds additional credence to the benefit of bringing music to places such as nursing homes, rehabilitation centers, hospitals and facilities and homes for the developmentally disabled.  Music is cheap and risk-free therapy!  Rock on!!  (The fine print:  Make sure to protect your hearing.)

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The Super Moon and the River

We had a “Super Moon” the other night.  I have never seen the Duwamish River in Seattle this low.  I wonder if it was due to the “super moon” influence on the tide levels?  And I learned some interesting history of the river system after reading the Duwamish River entry in Wikipedia:

Until 1906, the White and Green Rivers combined at Auburn, and joined the Black River at Tukwila to form the Duwamish. In 1906, however, the White River changed course following a major flood and emptied into the Puyallup River as it does today. The lower portion of the historic White River—from the historic confluence of the White and Green Rivers to the conjunction with the Black River—is now considered part of the Green River. Later, in 1911 the Cedar River was diverted to empty into Lake Washington instead of into the Black River; at that time, the lake itself still emptied into the Black River. Then, with the opening of the Lake Washington Ship Canal in 1916, the lake’s level dropped nearly nine feet and the Black River dried up. From that time forward, the point of the name change from Green to Duwamish is no longer the confluence of the Green and Black Rivers, though it has not changed location.[1]

The native Lushootseed name of the Duwamish River (and of the Cedar River) was Dxwdəw. The Lushootseed name of the Duwamish tribe was Dxw‘Dəw?Abš or Dkhw‘Duw’Absh. Both of these have been anglicized as Duwamish.

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A Quick Intro to Christopher J.

I am Chris Hartzog and this is my website, Christopher J. Music.  I live in the beautiful Pacific Northwest in the Seattle, Washington area.

I’ve loved music as long as I can remember.  During many years of being a special needs parent to a very high needs child with autism, I started playing guitar again and started writing music.  And through that experience I learned that music not only transcends languages, it also transcends disabilities.

Today my music covers a variety of styles and instruments from folk to blues/jazz, and classical to pop-rock. I am a multi-instrumentalist, playing guitar, bass (electric and upright), ukulele, keyboards, and a singer and songwriter.  I also enjoy playing classical music on the double bass with my local community symphony orchestra.  And, I write, arrange, record and produce songs and put them on this website for people to download and hopefully share and enjoy.

Some Music

Go to the music store page for a complete catalog.

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Some Videos

 

Some Photos

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