Month: September 2008

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lesamy

Lesamy – Week 2

Here we are again, monday is weigh-in day.

So what I learnt this week is that even if all you decide to do is limit your calories you end up changing what you eat anyway. It just makes more sense for example to eat an apple instead of one of those low-calorie yoghurt biscuits that I like. The apple is more filling and the biscuits come in packs of two and so even though it’s roughly the same on its own, in terms of what you end up eating it’s two apples’ worth of calories. Similar logic leads me to buy lower fat yoghurts which I can have as part of my lunch rather the thick and creamy ones that would have to be my lunch. And so on.

So even though I started this regime with the idea of not changing too much too soon, I have drifted towards a more healthy and varied diet anyway.

I’ve been off work this week and so instead of my inside exercises I’ve been taking brisk walks in the part every day (2-3miles). This is quite pleasant, I strap on my ipod and head off, and the weather’s been quite nice, although the one day it rained was actually welcome as it cooled me down.

I’m telling you this as it may go some way to explain this surprise:

Weight loss this week:   3.2kg (7lbs)

Total loss so far:  5.3kg (11.7lbs)

I’m still waiting for this to settle down – I really don’t want to lose the weight too quickly – but I can’t deny being happy.

Categories
reviews

The Mentalist

Imagine Derrin Brown as a detective.

If, like me, you’re enough of a pedant to sigh whenever someone uses “beg the question” when they really mean “prompt the question”, then you may get a slight measure of satisfaction when a word is used properly. So the first thing I noticed about The Mentalist that it’s not about someone with a learning disability. OK, of course if that were really the subject of this show they’d never call it that, but they could have called it “Cop-Psychic”[1] or simply “Jane”, so  I take it as a small indication of the producers sensibility that they got this part right.

The Mentalist is about a John Edward style TV psychic who after a personal tragedy gives it up to become a police officer. As a medium he was a fake, using cold reading techniques to gather enough information to give a convincing performance. He now uses the same techniques to solve crimes. A simple and yet interesting concept.

Being the Smartest Guy in the House

The show reminded me a lot of House, and let’s face it medical shows are just cop shows where the criminal is a disease, the cop is the doctor and the symptoms are the evidence. (In fact I’m pretty sure House used that metaphor explicitly in dialogue early on.) They both feature arrogant central figures who are impossibly brilliant at what they do and know it. At one point Patrick Jane, our psychic-turned-cop, says that he doesn’t like seeing doctors because “they always want to feel like they’re the smartest guy in the room, when obviously that’s me.” They even both share a disdain for belief. When one of his colleagues states she has a cousin who is a real psychic, Jane says “he’s either deluded or dishonest or both.”

I think that where they differ is that Gregory House is a startlingly misanthropic figure where Patrick Jane is merely annoying. Also, it’s really unfair on the evidence of one show but I think Hugh Laurie beats Simon Baker in both acting ability and screen presence generally.

Suspect Device

Anyway, what separates this show from a thousand other cop/medic/lawyer shows is its gimmick, its device, so how well does it use it? Quite well I think. One potential problem is that whilst it’s enough for a TV psychic to get a few details in the right ballpark to let the person feel like they’re having a real contact with the “other side”, the police ultimately have to prove what they think they know. However they tackle this head-on and within the first five minutes one character has shot another on the basis of Jane’s, let’s face it, educated guesses. Later in the episode he uses his techniques to get the murderer to incriminate himself, a pattern I suspect we’ll see again.

It’s also interesting that after the initial scene where we’re shown what little pieces of information he uses to construct his guesses, that after that we only hear his (always correct) insights. And of course they use his talents for comic relief, allowing him to embarrass his colleagues.

I do foresee a trap here, that the writers might just get lazy and have him know things he couldn’t possibly know, simply by establishing a pattern of credibility with the audience. However I hope they don’t do that, or not straight away. The fresh thing this show has to offer is its device and so they should keep it to the fore. Like Derrin Brown, show us the trick and then, at least some of the time, show us how it’s done. The formula works because it includes us the audience in on the “clever” side of the transaction, and so we’re flattered and will love you for it.

A good example is near the end when the criminal says,

“I knew it might be a trick but I had to be sure.”

“Yes. That’s how the trick works.”

And The Trick Worked

I definitely enjoyed The Mentalist and if you enjoy police procedurals then this looks like it will be a good one. I haven’t spoken much about the fact that this is a pilot and therefore needs to set up the concept, establish the characters and introduce an on-going story element. I haven’t done that because it does all that well enough for it not to be distracting.

I have too much TV where I need to keep up week to week so that I’m not sure if I’ll become a regular Mentalist viewer, but it’s enough of a new twist on the genre, with enough intelligence in the writing to be highly enjoyable when I do catch the odd episode.  8/10

[1]Yeah ok, that’s a terrible title but you get my point.

Categories
lesamy

Lesamy – Week One Results

First week of the new regime over, more importantly first weigh-in. In time honoured fashion I’ll keep you waiting for the result, first some thoughts on what kind of a week it’s been and what I’ve learnt.

Hey this is easy!

Okay, don’t laugh, but in the first couple of days I really thought it wasn’t going to be that hard. Of course almost anything is easy for a couple of days (except maybe holding your breath). I think the fact that I was eating what I’d normally eat, just sticking to meal times and a calorie “budget” made it feel like not that big a change. Of course the effect is (and needs to be) culmative. The later in the week the harder it got. And by hard I don’t really mean that I felt hungry. There were a couple of times when I felt my stomach nagging me but as much as anything that’s because I tend to eat my tea quite late (9pm sometimes) so that doesn’t really count when I could have easily got up from the computer and gone and made my meal.

So what made it hard?

The Real Meaning of Comfort Eating

It’s funny how you think you know about something when you’ve never really experienced it. I’ve always been the kind of guy to eat what I want more or less when I felt like it. So I’ve always associated “comfort eating” with the kind of thing you see on Friends where they eat a tub of ice-cream when the latest boyfriend dumped them. And whilst there are times when I pig out because I’m fed up it’s not something I do much.

The things is, eating less makes you think about when, how and why you normally eat, and whilst it may not fit my previous definition of “comfort eating” there are definitely a lot of times when I eat because I’m bored, or as a kind of “entertainment” – something to do that gives me pleasure. And it’s this later that’s hardest to give up.

Spreadsheet not Helping?

Last time I spoke about how I made a spreadsheet like I did for my Harry Potter Reading Marathon. I think overall this is a good thing. It’s a motivator to watch my progress and I like numbers (which is why, in the end, calorie-counting, which I hadn’t originally intended to do, works for me rather than against me.) However since the parallel was there this automatically made me think about the Harry Potter experience.

I got a tremendous sense of satisfaction out of achieving something that I wasn’t sure if I could do. I did so by keeping an eye on the target, via the spreadsheet, but towards the end there was something of a sense of grim determination about it. In order to make my ridiculous targets I was eating, sleeping, working and reading, and that’s all. I longed to just flop in front of the TV and watch a film but usually couldn’t spare the time away from the books (I still enjoyed them by the way, just not the reading itself, if that makes any sense). Once I’d finished I don’t think I picked up a book of any kind for several months.

So apply this by analogy to my dieting – what I don’t want to do is work hard for a few weeks or months, make some progress, hit my target and then be so fed up that I go back to eating too much and put it all back on, and to some extent the spreadsheet symbolises that. Whatever I do, whatever changes I’m making, have to be sustainable indefinitely.

Soooooo…. back to the “entertainment eating” thing, giving up of. When I’m sitting down at the end of the day thinking I really fancy something, not am hungry, or even fed up or bored, just really fancy eating something, the following train of thought goes through my mind:

“I really fancy something to eat. Not much, maybe a slice of toast, or one of those yoghurt bars.”

“but a slice of toast is 85 calories and the yoghurt bar is 70 and you’ve only got 50 left”

“so? I’m only going over by a few”

“it’s week 1 and you’re cheating already!”

“good point. Oh well think about the target, I’m weighing myself tomorrow. Once I hit the target…”

“Sure but it’s not about just hit-the-target-and-quit, this is your life now – or it’ll not work”

“Oh. So from now on I can’t just eat a slice of toast (never mind chocolate etc) when I fancy it? That’s my life? Thinking twice over a frikking slice of toast?!”

“Pretty much. But it’s only food. Is your life so empty that giving up comfort eating is such a terrible thing?”

(sadly) “yes. maybe?”

We’re not in Hogwarts Anymore Harry

This is all pretty downbeat but I think there’s room for optimism. I think that there are a number of reasons why it doesn’t have to be like the Harry Potter thing:

  • My goal is much more realistic. The Harry Potter marathon was the equivalent of a crash diet adn I’m not doing that.
  • It’ll get easier as I get used to it.
  • The hard part is psychological. As I said I don’t really get physical hunger pangs.
  • I’m starting to exercise. As I get fitter I’ll be able to do more i.e. burn more calories, which means I won’t necessarily be on 1800 calories a day forever.
  • Over the next X months I’ll be aiming to burn more calories than I eat in order to lose weight. Once I hit my target weight, I can find a balance between diet and exercise that allows me to maintain that weight.

So I’m not as pessimistic as the previous section makes it sound. In any case, it’s a helpful thing to have to re-consider the place of food in my life. It reminds me a bit of fasting when I used to do that (for religious reasons)

And the Magic Number is…

OK, I’ve rambled long enough. In the first week on my new diet/exercise regime I have lost 2.1Kg or 4.6lbs. More than I thought but not too much. It is the first week and I know that you always lose most in the initial stages so I’m not expecting to keep up that rate of loss.

But I’m pleased.

Categories
reviews

Merlin (or “Camelot the Early Years”)

Ok so that’s not original but clearly, the BBC’s new flashy drama Merlin is a Smallville for medieval times. You’ve got the younger versions of the main characters, not necessarily settled in their hero/villain roles (Arthur’s a jerk, Morgana seems ok), nor in their eventual romantic configurations yet (Arthur fancies Morgana, as does our young wizard, though there’s some Guenivere-Merlin banter that must be going somewhere). The formula works (for Smallville, time will tell for Merlin) because you get to play with people’s expectations whilst having a sense of familiarity. Plus you can do all those oh-so-funny wink at the audience jokes such as Guenivere’s “Who on earth would want to marry a king?” line.

I enjoyed it but it felt padded. They really overdid the setting up the fact that a) Merlin and Arthur not getting along and b) Merlin can move things with his mind. Maybe the budget was overstretched by the CGI dragon (not that great to be honest) but some of the later seemed rather minor and once the point had been made (e.g. by saving the falling Gauis) I’d’ve cut the others.

I also can’t quite understand why you’d cast Richard Wilson as the mentor when you’ve got frikkin’ Giles on the payroll! Failing that (and allowing for the fact that possibly Tony Head wanted to do something different) you’ve got John Hurt, although he may have just signed up for the voice work knowing that it would be a lesser commitment.

Having said that I did enjoy enough of it to watch again. Eve Myles did a great job in making the witch creepy and threatening – enough for a saturday teatime audience anyhow – and I enjoyed the ‘spell-singing’ at the end.

Overall – a bit of nonsense with enough about it to keep me watching, for now – 6/10

Categories
lesamy

Lesamy

Lesamy, pronunced “Less-oh-me” i.e. less of me, is my new made up blog tag/category word in the fine tradition of flubbage. Technically I suppose it’s a sub-division of flubbage but because it is a project in its own right, a specific endeavour like Buffy Rewatch, it therefore deserves it’s own category and word.

So what is it?

Ok. Basically I’ve decided to try to lose some weight. I have pretty much always been overweight and not minded much. As long as my general health and fitness was ok I didn’t feel inclined to go chasing a particular body image. However lately I’ve noticed I’m not as fit as I was. So I started to think about upping the amount of regular exercise I get.

This led to me deciding, this last saturday, to do specific exercises every day and increase the amount of walking I do. I did this for a couple of days and started to wonder if I’d feel the effect in terms of my waistline and so thought I’d weigh myself. Which led to the discovery that my scales are bust. Which led to the purchase of a new set. Which led me to thinking more about weight than fitness per se.

The Harry Potter Effect

One of the things that occurred to me as soon as I thought about weighing myself was to set up a spreadsheet. Some readers will remember my Harry Potter read-all-the-books marathon of last year, in which my use of a spreadsheet was both a kind of helpful distraction and motivator. Silly but true. So I set up a spreadsheet to record my weight. And really, only because it gave me another formula to plug in I added a column for BMI (Body Mass Index).

That was perhaps a mistake.I knew I was overweight. I thought I was probably “technically” obese. But the number I cam up with seems to be in the “Are you sure you’re not dead yet?” category. Oh well. In the end it’s just a number. I would have liked to make a goal of getting into the overweight category but since that would probably involve somehow stretching to 3m tall I don’t think that’s realistic.

The Sensible Approach

Looking up the formula for BMI did help me in one way though. It led me to some useful, reputable, websites with sensible advice. The Harry Potter marathon was the reading equivalent of a crash diet and I think I was already aware that I need to go for slow and steady if I want to keep the weight off, so reading just that along with some reasonable goals and advice was actually encouraging. So based on what I read I’ve come up with the following:

  • I’m doing a few minutes worth of exercise morning and evening. I intend to start slow and build up, so maybe in 3-4 weeks I’ll increase the number/duration of that.
  • I’m cutting out snacks and having just the two meals a day that I theoretically already have – lunch and evening meal.
  • I plan to add breakfast in at some point but it’s never been a major meal for me and I don’t want to change too much all in one go so I’m leaving that one until later.
  • I’ll aim for ~1800 calories a day most days with the occasional (no more than weekly) cheat day of 2300.
  • I’ll expect the progress to be slow, aiming at no more than about 1-2lbs or 1kg loss a week.
  • I’ll only weigh myself once a week (and more and you get discouraged with progress or frustrated by fluctuations)
  • I’ll expect the occasional set back but won’t be phased, will carry on, and will seek support and encouragement.
  • My goal initially will be a 10% reduction. Doing this by Christmas is achievable.

Having just followed this full regime for a day or two it’s not so hard that I can’t see myself carrying it on – potentially indefinitely as I want to keep the weight off. 1800 calories is a lot less than I was having but with a slightly smaller lunch I can still have what I consider to be a perfectly reasonable evening meal, with a nice desert. I just can’t have all the extra snacks. I have to choose between the nice yoghurt, the ice cream and the chocolate and just have one of those and not all three.

In a word it’s doable.

My Mean Mother’s Method

I said above that I’ve been ok with being overweight in the past so long as I’m generally healthy. However one person in my life wasn’t and that was my mother. She means well but it comes across as nagging. Recently I got home to find an envelope addressed in her handwriting. There was no note or letter, just a clipping from her local newspaper about a guy who’d lost some amazing amount of weight and his secret apparently was getting support through his blog. I just thought “not too subtle mam” and figured she’d thought of me because she associates me with all things computery. And fatness obviously.

A few weeks later having independantly decided to do this one of the things recommended in my reading was to get moral support. There’s no way I’d join a slimming club. I’m just not that much of a joiner plus I knew a guy who did weight-watchers and they were very civil to him but being the only bloke made it a bit uncomfortable. Best case scenario I think you’d be treated as a rare and special specimen and worst case you’d be seen as invading their safe female-only space. Besides it costs money. Bugger that.

So the blog it is.

Hence this.

Hence Lesamy.

Categories
reviews

Fringe

I watched the two hour pilot to the new JJ Abrams produced show, Fringe, the other day so here’s a quick review.

I told M that this was coming up and asked her if she was interested (she’s a huge Lost fan). In trying to describe the show based on the brief bit of blurb I’d read, I think I made it sound like a version of Heroes. When I tried to correct that impression after reading more, I told her it sounded a bit like X-Files (I knew she’d liked X-Files when it was on). She still wasn’t feeling any excitement about it. In the end she explained:

“Looking back I think a lot of the appeal of X-Files was David Duchovny.”

which is fair enough. But now having watched the first installment of Fringe,

  • I can see that Fringe is not just “a bit like” X-Files, it really really wants to be X-Files. Fringe wants to marry X-Files and have its cute little alien babies. More importantly,
  • How many people out there are going to watch for the pleasant day-dream inspiring delights of Pacey from Dawson’s Creek? Ok, ok – unfair I know. I’m sure Joshua Jackson has his fans but, and I could be way off but it never struck me that they were the kind to get drawn in to a pseudo-science pseudo-scifi thrillery thing with a, no doubt, soon to be very convoluted back story.

Now all this sounds very negative which is a shame because I don’t think it’s a bad show, I just can’t quite see it finding a huge audience, but what do I know? Anyway I’ve not really started reviewing yet, so let’s do that.

Fringe is about a CIA-FBI liason officer who gets involved in the case of a flight full of people whose flesh literally melted off their bodies. In the course of investigating this her partner (and lover) gets blasted with a dose of the chemical agents responsible, thus setting up a “solve it in 24hours before he dies” scenario. In order to reverse the effects she needs the assistance of a crazy chemist locked away in a mental institution. To get to him she needs his estranged genius drifter of a son i.e. the aforementioned Pacey/Jackson.

Thus the roles are all neatly defined. She needs to solve the crime to find the plane-poisoner and extract vital information for the cure. Mad old Dad assists with forensics and the final cure. Pacey can speak crazy/science to M.o.D and therefore acts as both handler to him and sidekick to her. In fact his role is a little thinly defined right now. There wasn’t much he did – chasing someone down an alley, a bit of particularly harsh interrogation – that someone else couldn’t have down. In a way he played the traditional female sidekick role, seemingly involved but with little to actually do. However since I don’t believe a golden dawn of radical feminism has yet arisen on Hollywood I suspect he’ll have more of a job to do in upcoming episodes.

But back to the neatness. This was a perfectly serviceable piece of television but I think the thing that stopped it being more than that was that I was too aware of the pieces of series setup slotting neatly and smoothly into place. The core team and relationships. The mysterious billionaire who seems destined to be the ongoing bad guy and his apparently benevolent organisation. The hints at what kinds of things we’ll be exploring in future. Mention of shadowy agency-within-an-agency machinations and some vague idea of a connecting threat called “The Pattern” (which I fear will end up as a holdall container for whatever mystery-of-the-week they want to write[1]) It was all efficiently and relatively unobtrusively done. But I was still aware of it. Maybe that’s just a problem with pilots, or a problem with viewers like me who’ve seen too many pilots.

Overall, ok but nothing here to tempt me into regular viewership – 6/10.

[1]As a Buffy fan I can hardly complain. What else is the Hellmouth but a built-in excuse for so many monster stories in one place?

Categories
flubbage movie

Why What Works Works

Yesterday I happened upon a list of the top ten cheesiest movie lines, as decided by some site linked to by J. Random Blogger. I was slightly disturbed to see some of my favourite movies up there with what I consider to be reasonable lines. However one I could definitely agree on was from Four Weddings and a Funeral where Andy MacDowell, soaking to the skin but basking in the fact that Old Floppy Hair has just told her he loves her, says:

Is it still raining? I hadn’t noticed

I groaned the first time I saw it and ever since. The film as a whole I quite like (though there’s a story behind that, maybe another time) but that line really doesn’t work.

Then it occurred to me that there’s a similar scene in As Good As It Gets which I think does work. It’s where Jack Nicholson’s grumpy OCD-sufferer has finally woo-ed, so we think, Helen Hunt and they go for an early morning stroll to the bakery. As they’re walking and talking she notices he’s moving away from her, looks down and notices she’s walking on a patch of cobble-stoned pavement, and he’s avoiding the cracks. She tells him it’s not going to work, he ignores her and gives a big romantic speech and then kisses her. The camera then pans down to show that they’re both now standing on the cobbles.

Of course these two moments aren’t exactly the same, but they’re using a similar technique, the idea of being so distracted by being in love that one forgets one’s normal concerns. But the effect, for me anyway, only works with As Good As It Gets. I’ve been thinking about why that might be. What I’ve come up with so far is

  1. The Four Weddings line is on the nose whilst the other isn’t even a line. Four Weddings tells us exactly what the character is thinking whereas As Good As It Gets lets us make the connection ourselves, even if it’s reminded us of what “stepping on the cracks” means a few minutes earlier.
  2. The Four Weddings line is a throw-away. It’s meant to be charming and romantic but it could be any line that achieves that. The As Good As It Gets moment is the culmination of a theme developing through the movie – the idea that he’s so in love with her that he’s willing to try to change for her.
  3. Specifically it recalls one of the most romantic and thematically important moments in the movie – the “You make me wanna be a better man” line. Four Weddings most romantic scene is arguably when he stops her on the street to tell her he loves her. There’s no connection with that, or any of the other key moments of the movie for that matter.
  4. Maybe I just like As Good As It Gets more so I’m more forgiving. I don’t think that’s true but maybe it is.

What do you think?

Categories
not of this blog

Someone New to Hate

Don’t you hate it when you find someone doing what you’re trying to do, only better? Someone to whom, if you’re honest, you can point and say, “look that’s what I meant!” and all your indulging friends will smile faintly and say, “Oh, I get it now.” Well turns out there’s someone like that for me and I’ve just read his blog.

Those of you with a long memory, or who’ve skimmed the archives for the good bits will know that I did a humourous recap of both the series 2 and series 3 finales of the new Dr Who. And you may have been wondering (if you are vaguely in step with the changing of the seasons, the rise and fall of the tides, the TV schedules and so on) whether I had forgotten to do so again, or whether my utter laziness just meant it was late.

The fact of the matter is that I had pretty much decided not to bother because some things are so bad that even to point and laugh is not worth the effort. Or so I thought…

Then I read Mr Andrew Rilstone’s reaction to the final couplet of Dr Who episodes. Check it out. He’s funny, clever and insightful. He makes important points about things I agree with. He understands that there’s a difference between silliness for silliness’ sake and silliness that gets you somewhere. He goes on a bit, but then so did that bloody finale.

He says the kinds of things I’d like to say but does it better. And he’s actually so funny and clever and all that I almost don’t hate him at all.

Almost…