Author: latepaul

Categories
movie TV

Buffy vs Edward

I don’t usually do this – partly because, like fan-fic, there are so many of these ‘mash-up’ videos that are mediocre at best – they’re fine but they’re not really my thing.

What sets this apart is that a) it’s really well done and b) it has a valid point to make. Actually more a). I’m slightly uneasy about jumping on-board a critique of Twilight when I’m not familiar with it – either in literary or movie form – but from what is said in the associated article, it does seem like it doesn’t compare too well with Buffy in the gender politics stakes.

Anyway, here it is:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZwM3GvaTRM]

Categories
lesamy

Lesamy Week 48 – That’s *Lost* Actually Lady!

Remember how excited I used to get when someone at work noticed a change in my weight? Well it happened again a few days ago. A lady who, frankly, has always been a bit odd with me, told me that “I’d put on a couple of pounds” She went on to express disappointment because apparently I’m her inspiration and thus I’m letting her down. She probably sees this as good natured banter and so would I if I knew her better and actually er, liked her. But obviously I’m too polite to say what I actually feel.

The other reason is that’s she’s right. Sort of…

What she’s probably noticed is that between my absolute lowest and my recent biggest (a couple of weeks ago) there’s about a stone’s difference. Something about which I already feel bad and which I’ve already started to turn around. But it’s been tough to get back to dieting consistently. I do ok during the week it’s the weekends I find tough. In particular I start to fancy alcohol and if I give in I end up both eating and drinking more than I should. Last weekend for example I pretty much just binged, but because I’d had a good week before that I managed to still lose weight. This weekend just gone I did better, though I still ate more. I had tried to control it allowing myself the old idea of a treat day of 2300 calories. But 2300 became 2500 and one treat day became two. Still if I did better this weekend than last then next ought to be pretty much on track again. (The weekend after that I’ve got a family party but oh well we’ll cross that bridge…)

So I wasn’t expecting too much from today’s weighing but got a nice surprise:

Weekly loss: 0.8kg (1.8lb)
Total loss: 36.8kg (81.1lb or 5st 11lb)
To target: 12kg (26.6lb or 1st 12lb)
Current weight: 107.3kg (236lb or 16st 12lb)

Equivalent to: 27-April (16 weeks ago)

Which is nice because I lost more than the almost-nothing I’d expected, because I’m back below 17st again, because ~2lb a week is a good rate (as we know) and because weird work-lady got it wrong. I actually lost a couple of pounds.

So there!


Categories
lesamy

Lesamy Weeks 45-47 – 15 is the new 12

Lesamy Week 45

Weekly loss: 1.2kg (2.6lb)
Total loss: 36.8kg (81.1lb or 5st 11lb)
To target: 12kg (26.6lb or 4st 12b)
Current weight: 107.3kg (236lb or 16st 12lb)

Lesamy Week 46

Weekly loss: -2.4kg (-5.3lb)
Total loss: 34.4kg (75.8lb or 5st 5lb)
To target: 14.4kg (31.8lb or 2st 3lb)
Current weight: 109.7kg (241lb or 17st 3lb)

Lesamy Week 47

Weekly loss: 1.6kg (3.5lb)
Total loss: 36kg (79.4lb or 5st 9lb)
To target: 12.8kg (28.3lb or 2st)
Current weight: 108.1kg (238lb or 17st)

Equivalent to: 20-April (20 weeks ago)


First, apologies for the lazy, cliched, ‘X is the new Y’ format but I haven’t got the time or inspiration to come up with a better title.

Second, I won’t dwell on the numbers above – a good week, a week’s holiday where I overdid and a week where I pulled it back a little. I’m happy to be going in the right direction, a little less happy to be going up and down so much…

Anyway, since promising myself a ‘pause’ at week 52 hasn’t really worked, I’ve decided to change my target – my current target – to 15 stone instead of 12. I should be able to hit this by Chrismas or just after. If I then try to ‘maintain’ for a while and I settle somewhere between 15 and 16 then I won’t be desperately unhappy.

12 stone would still be a nice long term target – like over the next year or even two.

I really must get back to updating this every week too.


Categories
movie

Buffy Movie Again (Again)

There’s a blog post here with an analysis of the original Buffy movie. Worth a read, it’s a fairly in-depth look comparing the script with the movie with the TV show. No real surprises though I’m glad to see they like Swanson.

My own review of the Buffy movie is here.

Categories
movie

Please Don’t Die Rob Reiner

Like a lot of people I was saddened by the untimely death of John Hughes. I am the right age to have seen his films when they came out – though many I actually caught later. But when I saw online the way people were talking about him, how important some of the films were and how they captured a certain part of their youth I started thinking about other directors that make me feel that way. In particular I started thinking about who I would’ve thought of my favourite director a decade or so ago.

It’s tempting to say someone like Ridley Scott. He directed Alien and Bladerunner – the later being my ‘official’ favourite movie for years (until I finally realised that whilst good it wasn’t that good, it was just one of the first I’d seen that created a new world so effectively and completely). He also directed some other good movies like Someone to Watch Over Me or Thelma and Louise. I don’t really go for his big epics but I enjoyed Gladiator and at the other end of the scale, Matchstick Men is a lesser known one of his well worth checking out.

Woody Allen might be another choice. Sleeper is one of my favourite comedies of all time. Until a few years ago I would always catch his new movies and always find something to enjoy. But there became something of the stamp collector about watching his movies. I was more interested in being a completist than the films per se.

But there’s one director whose body of work seems to contain more of my favourite movies than any other and it’s a name that always slightly surprises me because I don’t tend to think of him as a great director. Of course it’s Rob Reiner – otherwise that’d be a rubbish title (maybe it is anyway).

Reiner has three films that would make my top 10, probably top 5, including my real absolute favourite. Those are

  • When Harry Met Sally – still the benchmark by which I measure romcoms, because it’s genuinely funny and romantic at the same time.
  • This is Spinal Tap – the DVD cover says “possibly the funniest film of all time” – hard to argue with that.
  • The Princess Bride – this is my number one film. Why? Well it really does have it all – it’s funny, romantic, action-adventure, childlike without being childish, endlessly quotable – so of course in answer to why I should have just said: “Are you kidding:? Fencing, fighting, torture, revenge, giants, monsters, chases, escapes, true love, miracles…“

But those are just the top three. When I look over the list that comes up when I IMDB him there are several more that are real gems that are important to me personally or just really great movies – The Sure Thing, Stand By Me, Misery, A Few Good Men, The American President.

I can’t say he’s done much recently that I’ve really cared for Alex and Emma, and Rumour Has It were amiable but forgettable – but anyone who’s made those eight films I mention above, heck the man who made Princess Bride alone, doesn’t have anything left to prove in my book.

Categories
25 books reading reviews

25 Books, book 6, The Great Gatsby

I’ve owed you this review for a while. I finished this about… (checks) …over a month ago.

Before I get into the review proper, a few sentences about book choice. Part of the reason for “25 books” was to encourage me not only to read more but to read more widely. However what this initially seemed to mean was ploughing through long books I didn’t particularly enjoy. So I decided to add in a few books that were a) shorter (so I could catch up) and b) classics – which would hopefully mean they were enjoyable. The Great Gatsby was the first of these, look for Catcher in the Rye sometime before the end of the year (if I ever get that far).

Well this sort of worked. Certainly it’s a short book. Did I enjoy it? It was ok. Someone on Goodreads called it “The eh Gatsby” and I know what they mean. As a story it was ok. Some of the prose stood out as well put together. I think I can see why it’s hailed as the great American novel because I can see parallels between Gatsby as a character and the US as a country. However my literary appreciation skills are limited and so a book really has to get me with story and or characters. This didn’t, well not much. There’s a fairly interesting soap opera plot about affairs of rich people and the poor people who get caught up in the cross-fire. There’s some intrigue about who Gatsby is as a person and the truth when it comes turns out to be less than inspiring – which I think is the point. He also turns out to be less than sympathetic – well to me, to the narrator he apparently was. So I found that a little odd.

Put it this way, I’m glad I’ve read it because it’s a classic but I don’t think I’d go back to it in a hurry.

6/10 – a little so what? but at least it’s short.

Categories
lesamy

Lesamy Weeks 43 & 44 – Forest Gump Style

Lesamy Week 43

Weekly loss: -2kg (-4.4lb)
Total loss: 37.3kg (82.2lb or 5st 12lb)
To target: 30.6kg (67.5lb or 4st 11lb)
Current weight: 106.8kg (235lb or 16st 11lb)

Lesamy Week 44

Weekly loss: -1.7kg (-3.7lb)
Total loss: 35.6kg (78.5lb or 5st 8lb)
To target: 32.3kg (71.2lb or 5st 1lb)
Current weight: 108.5kg (239lb or 17st 1lb)

So clearly two not very good weeks.

And, in the words of the man in the title, that’s all I have to say about that.


Categories
reviews

Battlestar Galactica

I’ve just watched the finale of Battlestar Galactica, and whilst I’m probably not up to a proper review I did want to say something about it.

Earlier in the year I bought a box set with the mini-series and seasons 1-3 in and worked my way through it in a matter of weeks. I then started on season 4 – courtesy of my internet friends – but had had the final 3 or 4 episodes sitting on my harddrive for the last few months. I think part of me didn’t want to watch the end, and part of me had run out of patience with the increasingly convoluted plot and depressing storylines of season 4.

Anyway yesterday I finished all but the finale and today I watched that.

What a let-down. Not because I expected cast-iron consistency or wanted all those outstanding questions answered (“because of God’s plan” seemed to be the one-size-fits-all one anyway) but because I wanted something a bit more uplifting. Everyone seems to end up either dead or alone, or at the very least facing a life of hard work as a subsistence farmer with only their SO as company.

I’ll admit it’s been a tough weekend personally so I may be projecting my need for a happy ending but I found that, at best, a little flat.

One of my favourite Joss Whedon quotes comes from a commentary track where he’s discussing the liberties they took with consistency and reality etc and he says

“Some shows, X-Files for example, very much into the realism, the science behind whatever the horror is, explaining it, really justifying it in the world. We are so much more about the emotion resulting from
this. Not why there might actually be vampires, but how you might actually feel in high school if you had to fight them.”

BSG at its best let you experience what it would feel like to be a small band of refugees on the run from an enemy trying to wipe you out. All the technical stuff it always felt like it was grounded in how people relate to modern-day technology. So it felt real.

This ending didn’t feel real. Because I think that whilst there would be some spreading out if 38,000 people had a whole planet to share, I think there would be large groups wanting to stay close.

And despite the beauty of the African plains or whereever they were supposed to be, I reckon they’d never be so foolish as to throw away all their existing technology. “Never underestimate the desire for a clean slate,” says Adama. “Never underestimate a writer’s willingness to override the logical for the poetic, ” say I.

Still the series as a whole was excellent.

Categories
lesamy

Lesamy Week 42 – A Pause

I’ve been thinking about this for a while. Even before the recent “plateau-ing” of my weight-loss (which is really an indication of my ambivalence about going further). As the reality of “loose skin” becomes more and more apparent – i.e. visible – I get more and more nervous about ending up with lots of it. The answer I think is to slow down, to give my body time to adjust to being 85lbs lighter than it was. Give the skin time to firm up and shrink back.

So I’ve being toying with the idea of a “pause” – stopping losing weight but maintaining what I’ve got for a while, probably several months. I was going to post a long discussion of the pros and cons but then I weighed myself and discovered that I’ve put weight on again, due probably to a fairly calorie-full weekend, itself due to mixed feelings over the whole loose skin issue.

So I’ve decided to do it. Or to plan to do it. And here’s the plan.

It’s week 42 and I weigh 16st 7lb. In 10 weeks it’ll be 1 year since I started and I should be under 16st by then. That seems to me a good point to start maintaining at. From then on I’ll aim to keep my weight under 16st but not really reduce it. How long? Well at least until Christmas and after that maybe a bit longer too.

In case anyone thinks this is the easy way out “pausing” is not giving up. Not when the whole point is to try to firm up what’s there. I’ll need to keep the exercise going – especially the sit-ups and so on – and I’ll need to still be watching what I eat. I’ll be allowed a little more but I won’t just be able to not care at all what and how much I eat. And I’ll need to do all that without the satisfaction of seeing those numbers steadily fall. I’ll also have to cope with people thinking I’ve quit when they won’t know the real reason.

But I think I can do that. I want to do that. As this weekend has reminded me I actually don’t really enjoy eating loads and loads any more, I get full and feel uncomfortable. And I’d much rather be a fit, but “fat” guy than a “slim” one covering up folds and folds of loose skin.

Weekly loss: -0.5kg (-1.1lb)
Total loss: 39.3kg (86.6lb or 6st 2lb)
To target: 28.6kg (63lb or 4st 7lb)
Current weight: 104.8kg (231lb or 16st 7lb)


Categories
reviews

Lesamy Week 41 – The Week After Effect

This week I think I’m suffering from what I’m calling “the week after effect”. I’ve noticed in the last few months that often now my body reacts to what I do about a week later. So last week’s dramatic loss came on the heels of a weekend away and associated calories (although I was a lot less binge-y than I could have been).

This week – where I have had a week sticking to the diet – I lost less than a pound.

I think this effect is partly because I tend to have my freebies etc at weekends and since my weighing day is Monday it often hasn’t had time to ‘settle’ as it were. Also I think, in terms of loss not showing up as quickly, there’s an issue to do with how frequently I visit the loo. Without going into TMI it’s less often when I’m sticking to the diet and so it can seem like I’m putting on weight because I haven’t yet… well you get the idea (and if not I really don’t intend to spell it out).

So given that I’ve had a good week I fully expect to reap the benefit next week.

Weekly loss: 0.3kg (0.7lb)
Total loss: 39.8kg (87.7lb or 6st 4lb)
To target: 28.1kg (61.9lb or 4st 5lb)
Current weight: 104.3kg (229lb or 16st 5lb)