December 29 – Sunday – Meat Loaf – Bat Out Of Hell

I loved this album! I was 21 in my first apartment and I used to crank this up. Actually, I was a much more considerate neighbor than that, but it was cranked up in my mind’s ear. All the songs were written by Jim Steinman and sung by the rotund Meat Loaf, who I recognized from Rocky Horror Picture Show fame. I tired of “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” pretty quickly, but still love the title song and others on the album like “All Revved Up With No Place to Go.”

But “Paradise” was the song that got the album noticed as it has this sex/baseball thing going and contains a bit of a narrative by then Yankee baseball announcer and former Yankee shortstop Phil Rizzuto. I had no clue who he was at that time. My friend told me that Meat Loaf presented Phil Rizzuto with an award or something on the infield of Yankee Stadium. As Meat Loaf was known for his girth, I asked if there were dents on the field. He answered – Why yes, there’s a dent between 2^nd and 3^rd base. I thought he was being facetious and ignored him until I soon became an avid Yankee fan. I watched every game over the next few years, and if it wasn’t televised, I listened to it on the radio. If the game was on the west coast, I stayed up as late as they did. And that dent on the field, then shortstop Bucky Dent was pretty darned cute, but my heart belonged to Reggie Jackson.

And speaking of being rotund, I have been bemoaning the fact that I’m not losing any more weight nor belly. I had noticed the tautness to the sides of my torso that occurred during the first month of the project, but my stomach still protrudes almost as much as it did when I started. However, I just noticed, moments ago, that the sides of my protruding stomach are slightly indented and less of a solid round mass. If I continue to tighten the sides of my torso and the sides of my stomach, but retain the outward bulge of my belly, it could prove to be an interesting look.