Categories
reviews

Lesamy Week 25 – Big Breakfast

When we moved offices at work back at the end of January it had an effect on my eating habits. It became easier to make and take my own sandwiches. Which meant that I was eating slightly more calories for lunch than I had been. Which in turn meant that I compensated by having a smaller breakfast. Probably over-compensated because I found I regularly had 400+ calories spare at the end of the day so my usual one treat had become three.

Which would be fine – as long as it’s in the budget – except I was feeling quite hungry toward the end of the day. Plus I was also struggling a bit with my morning sit-ups. If you recall the reason I started having breakfast at all was so as to have something inside me before I attempted these. I guess I forgot that, or thought that a 100 calorie yoghurt was somehow helping with that.

So now I’m back on my 361 breakfast of cereal. It’s made a huge difference to my feeling less hungry in the afternoons and has, I think, helped my mood. I wish I could say it has made the sit-ups easy, but I definitely think it has made them easier.

So anyway here’s some figures:

Weekly loss: 1.4kg (3.1lb)
Total loss: 33.1kg (73lb or 5st 3lb)
To target: 34.8kg (77lb or 5st 7lb)
Current weight: 111kg (244lb or 17st 6lb)

So I’m now over 5 stone down!


Categories
movie reviews

Ghost Town

Ghost Town Poster
Ghost Town Poster

They seem to love Ricky Gervais in the US. Something I can’t quite understand – for the simple, arrogant reason that I personally think he’s just ok. I can’t see why many other fine British actors or comedians never get the reception he gets.

Anyway they obviously like him enough that someone thought he could star in a romantic comedy. And you know what maybe they’re right because it oh-so-nearly works. And as you may know if you’ve read this blog for a while that’s quite an acheivement for a rom-com in my opinion. The nearly-great ones are rare enough never mind the tuly great.

Gervais plays a mildy misanthropic dentist, Bertram Pincus, who dies briefly on the operating table and acquires the ability to see ghosts. This is not much fun as they all want something from him – all that unfinished business with the living – “tell my daughter I love her”, “the will’s hidden behind the…” and so on.

Chief amongst these is Greg Kinnear who is the dead husband of Téa Leoni and it’s his attempts to frustrate Leoni’s new relationship via Gervais that occupy most of the film. Naturally Gervais falls for her and thus we have a story, albeit a fairly predictable one.

Which is not to say this movie is without its charms – it looks great, it manages to find some shots of New York we’ve not seen a million times before – but let’s get to the key question: does Gervais pull it off as a romantic lead?

Well yes and no.

First the no. At the end of the day he doesn’t look like a leading man. It’s not actual looks per se it’s the way he holds himself I think. He’s too used to being the figure of fun. Also whilst I think he’s likeable and has some chemistry with Leoni, when Greg Kinnear comes on screen you realise what a great comic actor he is and what’s lacking a little with Gervais.

Also, and this is not Gervais’ fault really, there’s this thing that happens in some comedies with a forceful comic personality at the centre where the comedian steps outside of the plot and basically does his schtick – his well-known sitcom character, or even his stand-up routine – and the characters around him/her carry on as if this is nothing unusual. You see it in everything from Woody Allen to Groucho Marx and it makes for a certain kind of comedy, but I don’t think it works in a rom-com because it distances you slightly from the emotional reality of the characters.

What works is that Gervais does sadness well. Cleverly David Koepp co-writer and director, has fashioned a story in which Ricky’s character is more sad than bad. He doesn’t really hate the world he’s hiding from it because he’s been hurt. This is where Gervais’ training as a comic loser comes in, because such characters as David Brent are really tragic figures. So Gervais knows how to make us feel sorry for his dentist Pincus. It’s a short step from there to empathy and to imagine why Leoni feels something for him.

Overall it’s a brave attempt and I did enjoy it. As a movie per se it’s no better than quite good, but if you have to choose a rom-com from the last 5 years you could do an awful lot worse.

lots of ghosts
lots of ghosts

7/10 – Mildly enjoyable

Categories
25 books reading reviews

25 Books, book 2: I am Legend

I had a dilemma as whether to include this book or not in my 25 Books list. You see I didn’t actually read this, I listened to an audio book version of it. An abridged version as broadcast on Radio 7. However since I’m lagging seriously on my books (I should be onto book 5 or 6 by now) I’m allowing it. After all it is a book and I spent the time to “read” (i.e. listen to it). But I’m adding a rule that I can have a couple of audio books.

By the way on that whole “I’m way behind” thing look for an upcoming blog post, hopefully later today.

Anyway to this book.

I first became aware of “I am Legend” in the credits to the 1971 movie “The Omega Man”. The movie, based fairly loosely on the book, is about a man living alone in a world devastated by a world-wide plague that killed 95% of the population and left the remaining few as pale-skinned… well what they are is an interesting point but let’s just say they can only come out at night and they’re no longer quite human, and definitely not friendly.

Anyhow I enjoyed the film – though it was a bit dated – and always intended one day to go back to the book. I intended this even more after the recent Will Smith remake of the film – which I’ve not yet seen. And now I finally have read/listened to the book.

I enjoyed it but it wasn’t the big step up from the movie that I thought it might be. It was better in some ways but less satisfying in others.

This kind of story – last man left alive – has always appealed to me, both as a reader and a writer. In fact I did, during Eurofiction, write a story that was compared by the judges to I am Legend. It was one of my two highest scoring stories but not one I was particularly proud of. I think the appeal – which is obviously not unique to me – is that one can easily imagine oneself as alone in the world. Being alone aside from hostile not-quite-human creatures can easily become a metaphor for “No-one really gets me, I feel as if I’m all alone”.

The book was written in 1954 and it betrays its era in a couple of ways, notably its handling of sex. It’s actually quite coy on details to a modern eye/ear whilst maintaining a tone that suggests it knows it’s being shocking – which I guess it would have been. At times it felt like what I imagine an old-fashioned bodice-ripper would be like – lots of “heat rising in his loins” and so on. There’s a discussion of Neville’s frustrated desires, but absolutely no mention, nor even implication, of masturbation as a release.

One thing it does, which I imagine was fairly new in 1954 but has become almost a cliche since, is to give us a “scientific” explanation of a classic mythical monster. And this is where it diverges from the movie (ok, more properly the movie diverges from the book) because it explicitly calls the plague victims “vampires” whereas in the movie they’re not – at least I don’t recall any fangs or bloodsucking. I actually quite enjoy this trope and Matheson does it well, though it has been done better since.

The story is fairly slow-moving. There are some fast paced moments of fleeing from or fighting his vampire foes, but there are also long passages, discussions of how he survives, of his scientific theorising, in which not a lot happens. I actually didn’t mind but I can imagine some readers being impatient.

The ending is another area where the book differs from the 1971 movie (and the 2007 one is different again I believe). I actually think the movie ending is the better one – but I won’t spoil either.

6/10 – enjoyable but a bit dated and not quite a classic.

Categories
writing

Once Again, Only GOOD this Time

One Competition Finishes…

So SlingInk’s Eurofiction is over. Actually for me it’s been over for more than a week but I finally got the final scores. For those that don’t know Eurofiction is SlingInk’s annual short story competition. 10 rounds over 20 weeks with the scoring following a ‘Eurovision’ model (top story gets 12, next two get 10, next two 9 and so on).

My goals for Eurofiction were simple:

  1. Finish it i.e. hand in a story for each round (I only managed two rounds of the Whitaker 2008)
  2. Write a new story each round

Well I finished and did complete each round. I wrote 9 new stories and only re-worked an old for one round because of a last minute work thing that meant I didn’t have as much time as I’d hoped. Once I realised what the scoring system was and that there were 32 entrants I added an extra goal:

  1. score in each round

I did score in each round though by round 6 all that required was that I kept entering due to the number of people no longer submitting. I didn’t win a round but I scored 10 twice. My lowest score was 2 (in round 2).

Lessons Learnt

What did I learn from SlingInk?

  1. That I am capable of not only finishing stories but doing so regularly
  2. That deadlines are great – they motivate you to finish stuff
  3. that deadlines are evil – they stress you out and cause you to hand in any old crap
  4. that what I like and what scores highly aren’t necessarily the same thing. My favourite stories of mine scored 2 and 6. My least favourite scored 10.

So Let’s Do It Again

In about 30 minutes[1] Whittaker 2009 starts and I’m entered. This is the short story competition of The Write Idea forum. I entered last year but dropped out due to lack of persistence. However buoyed by my success – in terms of finishing – in Eurofiction I’m going into this quietly excited. Plus I like the fact that I’ll be back on the deadline treadmill again. Like as in also hate it that is.

Whittaker’s similar to Eurofiction but there are a few differences:

  • Only 9 rounds
  • There’s a 2500 word limit – Eurofiction has no limit and in 2 of my entries I went over 2500.
  • The scoring is based on a 100-point system with so many for character, plot etc. I prefer this as I can see where I’m doing well. (though Eurofiction did have very helpful constructive feedback)
  • The scoring is based on the story itself not relative to the others. In theory all entrants could score exactly the same.
  • The prompts in Whittaker tend to be a bit more cryptic – but they are there more for inspiration than anything.

New Competition, New Goals

My goals for Whittaker 2009 look a lot like my ones for Eurofiction:

  1. Finish – enter each round
  2. Write new stories for each round
  3. Make the quality higher – write stuff you’re actually proud of.
  4. Win a round

Those last two are obviously linked. The incentive to win is that the winners get published in an anthology and whilst its the kind of thing largely bought by the writers and their friends and family, last year’s was really well put together.

But aside from winning I really want to make this about writing better. The great thing about the deadlines was it made me finish stuff on a schedule. The bad thing was that by the end of the competition I’d get to a deadline and all I cared about was having something to hand in. If this is to be about learning to write then I want these stories to be better.

How To Write Good

How am I going to achieve that? Simple really. My new rule is that I won’t allow myself to hand in a first draft. I sort of had this last time but in the end I was polishing the first draft, mainly for typos and spelling and calling it a second draft and entering that. This time I really won’t hand in draft one because the rule is I have to write draft two from scratch.

I did this with a couple of my first stories. I wrote an entire first draft then started again with a blank document. It works because you already know something about how the story should go. Any good bits, any really nice bits of writing, snappy dialogue or effective description you’ll remember anyway. Plus it allows you to just write without worrying about where it’s going because you already sort of know. Not that I’ll not re-configure the plot if that seems like a good idea.

I’m going to try to make “first week = first draft” my motto too – but I know the power/curse of deadlines – everything gets done, but it gets done last minute. We’ll see.

[1]or probably already has by the time I finished writing and formatting this post.[2]

[2]yep it has!

Categories
lesamy

Lesamy Week 24 – No Tipping Point

You know I’ve been doing this for quite a long time now – more than 20 weeks in fact – so you think I’d be used to it by now. The ups and downs, the uneven nature of the loss, how hard it can be, not physically but psychologically.

But I guess I’m not.

It’s been another tough week. I’ve struggled with motivation and wanted to give up. I keep coming back to that Fat Aceeptance thing and wondering why I’m doing this. If it was for general fitness then I’ve achieved that. All that’s really left is that I must simply want to look better. That I believe being 12 stone will make me better in some ways that being 18.

So why do I keep going? Well for one I realised that if I was to do the HAES thing properly then it’d look a lot like what I’m doing already. In terms of the things that are most effort – having to think about what I’m eating, and making time to take exercise – they’d still apply even if I’d be letting myself eat more and being all self-accepting. So what “giving up” would really be like, real giving up, would not be HAES, it would be back to slob-dom and ever-increasing weight and unfitness. As long as I’m not damaging my health – and I really believe I’m not – then why not try to keep going?

That was one thing. The other was the idea, oft-repeated but never really tried by me, that things that are worthwhile take effort. Well guess what this is the effort. What did you think “not being easy” would feel like?

And then there’s always plain old stubbornness.

So, I grit my teeth and I make myself doing situps when all I want to do is stay in bed. I push myself to go for a walk when I know it doesn’t really add much to the weight-loss. I stick to my calorie limit when I really really fancy a whole bar of chocolate. Or some wine. And I make it through another week knowing that it’s just one week amongst many many to come – cos we’re motorway driving, but I’m really tired and want to just get there…

Anyway.

I guess I always thought there’d be a ‘tipping poing’. A point where it really was ‘all downhill from here’. Where the fact that I weighed less would mean that I was pushing, pulling, lifting, dragging less weight around and so the exercise thing would be easier which would mean I could do more, which would accelerate the weight-loss…

But there’s no tipping point. I may have lost nearly 5 stone but I still have this huge belly that makes my morning pushups a struggle. I still have far too much wobbly bits to think about running rather than walking just yet. And I still look like a fat bloke.

And that’s really the issue. It’s not even that I care how I look, not really. It’s that I’ve done this huge thing. I’ve worked hard at something, consistently over months, exhibited a level of discipline and self-control I didn’t know I was capable of and if I stopped now no-one – no-one I hadn’t actually told – would know. I’d get no credit for it. That’s what I want. It’s not how I’d look, it’s that it’d be obvious I’d done something impressive.

Yes I am that shallow.

Weekly loss: 1.4kg (3.1lb)
Total loss: 31.7kg (69.9lb or 4st 13lb)
Current weight: 112.4kg (247lb or 17st 9lb)