I am not an advocate of a low-carb diet—or any diet for that matter. But let’s face facts. Sometimes—like for instance after a week in Philly spent stuffing your face with cheese steak, pizza and homemade ravioli, and with the holiday binge fast approaching—it pays to slow down a little.

I’ll admit that one of my guilty pleasures is reading bad celebrity magazines. I usually restrict my reading to airplanes and at the dentist’s office (where no magazine, no matter how trashy, will distract me from my fate). But I’ve never really understood Us Weekly’s “Just Like Us” bit, where they catch celebs jogging, say, or buying toothpaste, then slug it with “Stars! They’re Just Like Us!” Yeah, just like us, save for the million-dollar paychecks, throngs of paparazzi and houses in Beverly Hills. Well, like somebody’s mother once said, we all put our pants on one leg at a time. And, apparently, like Crest.

I just got back from a week’s vacation in Cartagena, where fresh-picked fruit and just-caught fish are always at your fingertips.



The eating was good, which is one reason why I stepped out to run a few miles on the beach every other day, despite the three-digit temperatures. During these morning runs, I’d exchange thumbs up with all the fishermen pulling in what looked like very heavy nets. With such abundance from the sea, it’s no surprise that breakfast was my only fish-free meal.

This photo was taken at 11 a.m. in the morning. I know that the idea of me having a shot and a beer at that early hour confirms many people’s suspicions about me, but this was a special occasion. In fact I had worked behind the bar at Cantina from 3 p.m. to 10 p.m., come home and stayed up all night working on a story for Wine and Spirits magazine. Actually, I slept for two hours and got back up at 4 a.m. and kept working. I finished the story between 10 and 11 that morning, and then it was time to have a drink and go to bed.