THOSE of you who know me might want to sit down before reading the next sentence.
I have a personal trainer.
I’ll give you 10 minutes to compose yourselves and/or realise that the first sign of the apocalypse is upon us.
I’ve basically done all I can to lose weight by myself. It’s been hovering around the 204 pound mark for about three weeks now so I’ve obviously plateaued out at that level. I have about 35 to go til I hit my target but I realised that sticking to the diet and walking on the treadmill either won’t do it or will take about six years at this rate. So I decided to look for a gym and see what I could find. After checking a few out and dismissing them due to distance or cost ($75 sign-up fee? piss off!) I settled on 6 Degree Fitness as it’s reasonably priced and only a couple of miles from Mut Towers.
So I called and was put onto a trainer called Justin. I explained what I wanted — basically, to get rid of my boobs and belly and actually develop some upper body strength — and he told me that there were only two things I could do: walk faster for longer, or do something called “core training”. No, I have (or had) no idea what that is. So I agreed to go along on Tuesday morning to see what he could do. I think I can safely say I’m the first person to pull up in the gym’s car park with a cigarette in my gob.
I explained to him what I’ve been doing over the past 13 months and how I managed to lose 52 pounds in that time, but now I’ve hit 204 and can’t seem to shift any more. Justin explained that my body’s got used to and adapted to walking, so even though it’s good for me and will burn calories it’ll take a lot longer to hit my goal of 170. He asked about my diet — basically cereal, sandwiches, fruit, yoghurt, no sugar/processed crap — and told me to give up the bread. Instead I’m eating veggie omelettes for brekkies and huge salads for lunch and dinner. I’m sticking with fruit and yoghurt as I need something sweet.
After the chat we got started with something called “the plank”, which is where you hold yourself up on your forearms. I can’t remember what time I managed but it was much longer than the five seconds I thought I’d last. After that it was pushups. Pushups? Do you know the last time I did pushups? Neither do I. But I did some — I think 20 or so? — and then we moved on to squats, squats with weights, lifting weights, pulling weights and a whole host of other exercises that after an hour made me feel like I’d spent a night with a couple of 19-year-old nymphomaniacs, the only difference being that I was still alive.
I mean, I couldn’t move. I could barely walk. I never realised there are muscles at the front of my thighs but came to know them intimately every time I tried to sit down, stand up, walk, or pretty much make any movement whatsoever. My shoulders were on the verge of filing for divorce, my shirt, underwear and shorts were soaked with sweat and my chest and stomach ached because apparently there are, in fact, muscles under my flab and they’d just had to come back to work after a 30-year tea break. I drove the first half-mile home in first gear as I could not lift my leg to operate the Mini’s clutch. When I got home I had to call my supervisor and ask if I could work from home as a) I couldn’t see me being able to drive to Costa Mesa and b) I really didn’t want to fall asleep in the office. He was OK with it so at least I could take a nap during my lunch break.
Wednesday morning found me in Ralph’s at 8am buying stuff to make omelettes and salads. Let me repeat that: I WAS IN A SUPERMARKET AT EIGHT IN THE MORNING BUYING STUFF TO MAKE OMELETTES AND SALADS. I bought a ton of food — $75 worth — and I’ve been eating an avocado and mushroom omelette for brekkies and huge salads the rest of the day since.
And is all this worth it? When Justin weighed me on Tuesday I was 204.8 pounds. According to the scales in the bedroom, this morning I’m 200 pounds. I texted Justin to ask if this could possibly be right and he thinks it is. Bloody hell.
THE movie starts. Atonal music plays as the title fades in and the credits appear on the screen. It’s set in space, it’s gritty and realistic with world-weary characters and dirty, run-down environments. No, it’s not Alien; it’s Outland, the 1981 “remake” of High Noon.
Outland is yet another film I saw on BBC 2 back in the 80s and loved. I’d never heard of it but gave it a shot anyway and it’s pretty good. Whether it could be called a sci-fi classic is another thing — it’s certainly no 2001 or, well, Alien — but it’s worth a watch.
Set on a titanium mine on Jupiter’s moon Io, Outland has Sean Connery’s marshal, William O’Niel, going up against drug dealers. The workers are being given some new narcotic that’s designed to make them work harder and faster. The only problem is, after a couple of months it leads to psychotic and unstable users who start doing strange things, such as taking an unpressurised elevator and bursting open in the vacuum:
This was one of the bits of the film that stuck out to a lot of people; it could be said that’s it’s Outland’s version of the chestburster scene from Alien. Another worker freaks out because he’s sure his spacesuit is full of spiders so unplugs his air supply to let them out. A few seconds later his head bursts inside his helmet:
Oooo, yucky. I have to admit younger me loved these scenes but unfortunately that isn’t what happens if you’re exposed to the vacuum of space. Bugger.
Anyway, Connery soon susses out that not only is use of the drug rampant among the workers, it’s also known about and condoned by the mine’s management. They’re happy to see the miners turn into hamburger as the increased productivity is boosting profits.
As O’Niel, Connery is alone in trying to find the truth. He plays the perfect good guy, who’s incorruptible and dedicated to finding the truth. Dragging another sci-fi franchise into this post, he’s a bit like Judge Dredd in his upholding of the law. The mine’s management know this and, after a couple of failed attempts at bumping him off, send for two hitmen to take him out. The rest of the movie is O’Niel planning his moves against the assassins, complete with shots of a timer counting down the hours til the shuttle carrying the killers arrives. Both go out in explosive style — one after shooting through a glass window, for Christ’s sake — before one of O’Niel’s deputies has a go, leading to a zero-gravity punch-up and another exploding corpse. Once he’s dealt with them, O’Niel makes his way to the station’s bar, orders a drink and punches the mine manager in the face. Great stuff.
Speaking of Alien, it’s obvious that this film got is aesthetic straight from the Nostromo. Everything’s grey and grimy and well used and looks exactly what you’d expect a futuristic mine to look like — a knackered industrial setting that’s never seen a cleaning service. Even the clothing, the spacesuits and the colour palette could be straight out of Alien, and some film nuts have even posited that the movies take place at the same time and in the same universe. The sets are great and totally believable as a workplace, the acting’s solid, the writing’s good and Connery is excellent as the isolated marshal. It’s surprising that Outland either wasn’t a hit on its release or a cult favourite these days. Here’s the whole movie, conveniently uploaded to YouTube:
NO! NONONONO! I spotted this little booboo in the garden this morning. My expert knowledge of kittens — coming mainly from looking after a very small Fezzy by holding him over the sink only for him to piss all over my T-shirt — makes me think that he’s about five weeks old. His mum legged it as soon as I stepped out of the back door but tiny here hung around until I was about five feet away, when he got scared and legged it behind the telephone pole in the corner of the garden.
I don’t want another episode of kitten mania, especially after suffering through a total of 18 of the little sods over the past two years. But I did feel sorry for him, especially after his mum cleared off. So being the kind-hearted soul I am, I loaded a paper plate with some baby food (Emric eats it as it’s the only food he doesn’t bring up all over the bed/floor/dryer/clean laundry) and approached him.
And how did he thank me for my kindness? By growling, hissing and swiping at me before running under the barbecue. The little bastard. I pulled the cover off and discovered three black widow spiders, so at that point I decided to retreat to the safety of the kitchen and leave the little sod to the mercy of the wilderness that is the back garden.
It was only after looking at the pic on the PC that I realised he looks just like Boots, one of Sponja’s kittens from the Great Litter of Summer 2011. And he’s got the same temperament, ie nasty. I had another look for him but he was gone; where to I don’t know as I doubt he could climb the six-foot garden fence. Unless of course he’s bitten by one of the black widows and mutates into some kind of kitten/spider hybrid, which let’s face it is just fucking stupid but will still give me nightmares tonight. How strong are these tablets again?
THE movie starts. Atonal music plays as the title fades in and the credits appear on the screen. It’s set in space, it’s gritty and realistic with world-weary characters and dirty, run-down environments. No, it’s not Alien; it’s Outland, the 1981 “remake” of High Noon.
