Lüc Carl's Blog, page 10

NEW INTERVIEW WITH LÜC

From Examiner.com

As a host on SiriusXM’s Hair Nation six nights a week and author of The Drunk Diet, Luc Carl is rarely, if ever, at a loss for words. But ask him what it was like running his first full marathon in Las Vegas in December of 2010, just nine months after he quit smoking and more than 40 pounds removed from his former self, and finding the right words becomes an issue.

“It’s kinda hard to explain what it’s like in a nutshell,” he admits. “It’s pretty much impossible to describe the feeling you go through around mile 20, 21, 22. That’s when you’re kicking into survival mode and every last calorie has been depleted from your bloodstream, there’s no glycogen left in your bloodstream, and your brain starts freaking out and says why are you doing this? And you’ve just gotta push your way through it. It’s definitely the most difficult thing that I’ve ever done in my life.

He pauses…

“You have to be right kind of person to appreciate the misery that it puts you through, for sure,” he laughs. “It’s as difficult as you think it is, if not more.”

Yet he continues to run marathons, five in total at the time of this interview in late-May, and this November the Nebraska native will run in the marathon in his adopted hometown of New York for the first time. And yeah, it’s tougher than quitting smoking.

“That wasn’t even close to as difficult as it is to run a marathon, which is why I fell in love with the distance,” he said. “It’s definitely something that requires your entire life. You have to dedicate every day to training for it. It has to be the most important thing every single day, and it keeps me motivated and healthy on a daily basis, and it keeps me out of the bar a little bit here and there.”

One look at Carl, and you will say without hesitation that he is the unlikeliest of unlikely marathoners, and while diet guru is probably something that would raise his eyebrows before he broke out into laughter, his Drunk Diet book is full of informative nutritional and health tips that he picked up during his own journey from junk and fast food eating rocker and bartender to someone who puts health in front of everything else. Just don’t think that picking up his book will be the literary version of being around someone who used to smoke five packs of cigarettes a day and watching them ask that no one else smoke once they quit.

“When I quit smoking, I wanted to be around other people that were smoking for some reason,” Carl laughs. “I wanted to go out there and be part of the smoking crew. It’s been a couple years now, so I don’t even really think about it anymore. Every now and then I’ll smell a cigarette and kind of have memories of it, but the main thing is that people don’t want to be told what to do, and I wanted to maintain that relationship with people throughout my book. I just wanted to say ‘hey, this is what I did, and hopefully you can relate this to your life.’ That was one of my goals from the beginning. Nobody wants to be told what to do and me, as a guy, we’ve got an ego, so I didn’t want to be told what to do. And that’s how the whole book kinda came about. These diet books were telling me I had to do this and that, and I was like ‘well, first of all, I don’t like being told what to do, and second, I don’t like what these people are telling me.’ I want to hear how somebody did it, and that’s how the story came about.”

Basically that’s what the book is – it’s a memoir in the guise of a diet guide. And while there is material in there that would be helpful for anyone trying to shed a few pounds or begin leading an active lifestyle, Carl doesn’t want you to pass his tome on the shelves and dismiss it as something it’s really not.

“There are quite a lot of people that don’t get it. They see the cover and they just automatically relate it to the Atkins Diet or something like that and they say ‘well, I don’t need to go on a diet,’” he said. “The title is nothing more than a title; it’s not a diet book at all. To me, it’s like my Rocky movie. It’s going from being a guy on the street to a champion that turned his life around and has now become a better person. I came up with the title before I even wrote the book, and not to toot my own horn, but I think the title is absolute genius and hilarious. But it definitely has confused some people.”

Born and raised just south of Omaha, Carl’s die was seemingly cast at the age of nine, when he found his father’s cassette of ZZ Top’s Deguello. A year later he was banging away on a drum set, and as soon as he was able, he was playing in bands and harboring a bad case of rock and roll dreams. He ended up in New York, living the lifestyle to its fullest. The bands didn’t work out, but he kept the lifestyle, and eventually he realized that while he wasn’t twice the man he used to be, he wasn’t happy with the way he looked or felt. A trip to the bookstore for some advice didn’t pan out, so he figured he would write his own book.

“I was basically just pissed off at all these doctors and experts that were telling me to do this and do that,” said Carl. “I said no, I don’t want to do that. I want to do this my own way, and that’s where the title came from. It came out of spite.”

It didn’t even come out of a desire to make a few extra bucks or make the best seller list. But before he knew it, he had a completed manuscript and had dropped 40 pounds.

“I did it the old-fashioned way,” he said. “I actually wrote the entire thing before I showed it to anybody. My brother was the first one I showed it to. I emailed it to him and I had something like 18,000 words at the time. He called me three days later and he said ‘hey man, this is pretty good.’ And that’s when I knew I had something because my brother doesn’t like anything. (Laughs) I found out later that non-fiction is normally written with a ghost writer, and I had no clue. I didn’t know anything about the book business. I always had a knack for writing – the only courses in college I didn’t fail were English and Literature – and I just sat down and started typing. And it turned into a book. Then I found an agent who believed in me, she said ‘wow, you’ve really got something here.’”

Picked up by Kathy Huck at St. Martin’s Press and released in March, The Drunk Diet has been a hit, featured in numerous national mainstream publications while Carl does a tireless job of promoting it. Yet not surprisingly, rock and roll still remains his true love, specifically the 80s hair metal he plays during his SiriusXM DJ gig.

“I’m doing my job every single day to preach to the people that rock and roll will save your soul,” said Carl, who, at 31, didn’t even grow up in the heyday of Ratt, Motley Crue, and the rest of the Sunset Strip stalwarts.

“I grew up with Nirvana and Pearl Jam, and I didn’t like that stuff, so I went back in time and found stuff that I liked,” he said. “And for whatever reason, it’s been looked down upon to do that in your life. We’re taught to listen to what’s on the radio in your time and place, which is usually your 20s through your 30s, and you’re just kind of stuck with whatever that music was.”

Not Carl though, and whenever he gets the opportunity, he’s preaching the gospel to both the converted and hopefully some new recruits.

“Rock and roll really makes me happy, it makes me excited, and I want to convey that to other people and I want everybody else to feel the joy that I feel from rock and roll,” he said. “So you’ve got to make the old stuff fresh, and it doesn’t have to be brand new to be fresh. You can be a 16 year old kid right now in 2012 and be given a copy of Appetite for Destruction for your birthday, and discover it for the first time. It doesn’t have to be on the charts.”

And while the Crue, Ratt, Poison, and their peers were never critically acclaimed or darlings of the so-called ‘hip’ crowd, they played music that actually – heaven forbid – made their fans feel good.

“That’s why I didn’t like Nirvana,” said Carl. “Yeah, it was kind of rock and roll and it had loud guitars and stuff, but he was singing about all this depressing stuff, and I don’t want hear about that. I want to hear about having sex with fat girls and getting drunk and breaking stuff. (Laughs) I don’t know why people decided that they didn’t want to have fun anymore.”

Not having fun isn’t anything Carl will be accused of anytime soon, if ever. His enthusiasm is infectious, and if you read his book, you are basically hearing him talk through the page. That’s a rarity for any writer to achieve, and he nailed it the first time out, even though he had to tread over some delicate territory to get there. But as he puts it, there was no trepidation about revealing himself to the world, warts and all.

“I always wanted it out there,” he said. “I wanted to tell my story and I wanted everybody to feel the joy that I was going through throughout the whole process. I’ve always been excited about it, and the book has been many things to me. One of the reasons for the book was I’d write down all my successes for the day – I ran this far today or I didn’t eat this today or I ate this today or I tried this new thing today and it worked out for me – and I wanted everybody else to feel the joy that I was going through. My mom said one time ‘you’re putting yourself out there and I don’t know why you want your whole life to be on the internet.’ (Laughs) But I’m just telling my stories, and I hope other people enjoy reading what I’m going through as much as I’m going through it. I like to have a good time all the time and that’s what it’s all about.”

And what could be wrong with that?

 

 

ROCK N ROLL IS NOT POPULAR AND THAT’S OK

It’s not on TV. It’s not in the papers. It’s nowhere to be found. But it still exists. I have a closer full of records and hardrive after hardrive filled with MP3s which means it is real. It’s tangible. I can touch it, I can feel it, I can hear it, I can fuck to it. I have a radio sitting on top of my giant speakers with 25 different channels of rock n roll.

Rock n roll is not now nor has it ever been about fitting in.

As rock n rollers we should be encouraging other people to grow their hair long and buy an AC/DC record for the first time. But all too often we condemn others for wanting to try something new. Especially when we were their first. “You’re a poser. I’ve been listening to Rush since I was 18.” Well guess what asshole, someone else was listening to it before you no matter how early you discovered it.

If your 16 year old cousin decides to grow his hair long, tell him it looks cool. The world needs more people with enough balls to do something different.

STAY HYDRATED!

It’s hot out there. If your piss isn’t clear like water, you’re not drinking enough water.

It takes 60 minutes to digest liquids. Therefore, don’t drink much in the one hour leading up to a run, take a piss right before you leave your house, and you won’t have to stop to pee mid-run.

And remember, drinking alcohol dries you up even more. Drink one glass of water for every 2 beers.

 

WELCOME TO THE WEEKEND

A time for you to fuck up all the progress you made this week. Do your best to get to bed early!

If you can’t get better at it, stop doing it.

NEVER DRINK BEFORE YOU EAT

Never drink before you eat for many reasons. First, it will cause you to eat something you perhaps wouldn’t have eaten if you’d been sober. For instance, if I’m shit wasted and haven’t eaten in 10 hours there’s a good chance I’m going to eat some onion rings before I eat some french frieds with a 3/4 lb. hamburger. Three things that I would never eat had I not been drinking.

Also, drinking alcohol on an empty stomach makes you you blood sugar spike causing your body to think it’s receiving some nourishment. If you haven’t eaten in 7 hours your body is frantically trying to figure out a way to fuel itself with whiskey, which may be high octane, but not a great way to fuel the fire.

Eat first. Give your body something healthy and delicious to power itself with, then get a drunk as you want to.

 

FREE TICKETS TO STEPHEN PEARCY AT THE WHISKY!

The first 5 people to email me at info@drunkdiet.com with RATT in the subject win a pair of tickets to see Stephen Pearcy at The Whisky A-Go-Go this Friday night!!!! Don’t forget to include your full name.

(Contest limited to people 21+ and US residents only. Airfare and accommodations not included. DrunkDiet.com is not responsible if you break a bone at this show)

 

 

IF THEY CAN DO IT….

Today I volunteered for a race in the park which featured a great deal of wheelchair  and handicapped participants. It was incredibly inspiring to watch these people run, walk, and wheel past me. It made me realize that I should be trying that much harder during my training.

As for those of you who “can’t run” because of some “knee pain”   -take a look at this kid kicking ass….

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WHAT’S COOL HAS ALREADY BEEN DONE

Everyone is always looking for what’s next. The next type of pop music, the new type of rock n roll, the new hair cut, the new car, the new condom.

Everything cool has already been done. Your track bike makes you look like a d-bag and your ironic band singing about how poor you are although your father is a nuclear physicist needs to get kicked in the balls.

Put on some Aerosmith and crank it up. Asshole.

 

JAMESON

I made it into the Jameson coffee table book!

CLICK HERE to scroll through the on-line version.

 

PARTY WITH ME ON THURSDAY!

I’m DJing at Hotel Chantelle in NYC on Thursday from 11:00pm-1:00am.

Join myself, Steve Lewis, Tommy London, and Sam Valentine.

A star studded rock n roll dance party. Dress Sexy!!

BlackBook Magazine

Who: Lüc Carl DJs

What: Sex and Rock n Roll

Where: Hotel Chantelle 92 Ludlow Street @ Delancey

When: Thursday 10:00pm-4:00am