Week 10: Rope a Dope

This week we added another new thing to our repertoire of pain called rope waves. It seems so simple. All you do shake a rope up and down for 30 seconds. Vigorously. And therein lies the rub. You see, I also learned a valuable life lesson this week: anything you can do, if you do it vigorously, it sucks.

The virtue of laziness is that you never do anything so vigorously as to make it suck, and thus lazy people enjoy life more. The harder you try, the more it hurts. So the secret to happiness is nonstop alternating binges of sleeping and eating.

On the plus side, I think I'm down to a 98.4% chance of dying of a heart attack each time we go to the gym. On the downside, there are certain gym activities I'm starting to sort- of like. Not only does that mean that the terrorists are winning and I'm becoming "one of them," but it also means if Jessica finds out what they are she'll make them more difficult. So I must endeavor to keep this information secure at all times.

And tthere have been Prids around twice in the last two weeks, which means dancing, but also beer and french fries. Ahh, life's balancing acts.

Week 9: No Clever Title

After 9 weeks of working out I finally have crossed the threshold and am now at a mere 98.5% chance of dying from a heart attack. I think that means Jessica was taking it easy on us today.

Earlier in the week we learned a new torment that I like to call "being kicked in the nuts." For some inexplicable reason, other people call them Inchworms, and they are almost as bad as Burpies (which suck so royally that I'll never actually do one without someone there yelling at me to do so). Essentially all my muscles were in pain after doing them. Even the ones that weren't involved had sympathetic pains.

Now I am just plain tired. I need a nap.

Best Band Ever?: Front 242

I love too many bands to have a single favorite, but if I had to go through the process of picking a favorite, Front 242 would definitely make the shortlist. They are incredibly underappreciated considering the immense impact they had on subsequent generations of electronic music. For me, their digital artwork is also emblematic of an era, one which really resonates with me emotionally and aesthetically. They're another band that I became immediately and permanently obsessed with when I first heard them, back in my early teens.

"Front By Front" is one of the perfect 80s albums -- essentially flawless, and emblematic of its era. Every song is haunting yet full of rhythmic energy, a sound I closely associate with that Late Cold War era feeling of resignation to a bleak future combined with a pent-up desire to do something about it being funneled into creatvity, movement, and desire.


"Don't Crash" off the excellent "Politics of Pressure" EP is one of my absolute favorite songs, and fills me with nostalgia every time I hear it (it always has, even when I first heard it -- it's just got that nostalgia inducing sound for me, similar to Pink Floyd's "Remember A Day" or Project Pitchfork's "I Live Your Dream"). If you asked me for one song that summed up the feeling of the 1980s completely, "Don't Crash" would certainly be a contender. ("Work 242" is also especially good for getting into a dreamy mood.)


Front242 sounds like Cyberpunk reads (as do Clock DVA, Borghesia, and several other 242 peers). It's music to write software by, and the perfect soundtrack to dystopian dreams in which you're a dark, Deckardian hero fighting through driving rain, human foibles, and the misery of a dying world to try to find a better way. It's the sonic equivalent of a targeting HUD on a black helicopter stalking its prey in the night -- rendered 8bit. Mirrorshades and goggles, armored leather outfits, headsets with dangling wires... this is the proper attire to capture the feeling of Front 242 in an outfit.


Yet Front242 is not soulless machine music. It is cold and bleak, yet at the same time full of energy and desire. Later Front242 is even more layered, creating a fuller sound that is in some ways richer than their earlier work (and in some ways, not as exciting in its stripped-down clarity and evocatively bleak atmosphere).

That new direction took me a bit of getting used to when "05:22:09:12 Off" and "06:21:03:11 Up Evil" came out, mainly because of the band's lineup change and unfortunate embrace of the Techno aesthetic in their live shows, but these (and the later "Pulse") are absolutely a continuation of the Front242 sound and unequivocably are true Front242 albums -- all but one of which is excellent (the one is the unlistenably bad remix album "Mut@ge Mix@ge"). I now listen to those newer albums almost as much as the older ones.


Machine music has taken many different directions over the years, but the Front242 sound will always be among the most compelling. If you have never heard Front242, consider it your duty to "Catch The Men" and rectify this aesthetic deficiency immediately.

Best Band Ever?: Big Black

Time to blog again at least a wee bit about things other than working out and filmmaking.

So I'm starting a new thread for myself called "Best Band Ever?" in which I'll blog a bit about what certain bands mean to me. I don't really like writing reviews, so it'll just be thoughts about why I think a certain band is great.



Big Black only existed for five years, and they wrote and released only about 70 unique tracks in that time, but their impact on music history is immense. They are one of those bands that are utterly revered by musicians and music critics, even if they never achieved massive success with the general public. This popularity among musicians means their influence on later music is quite extensive. And frontman Steve Albini went on to produce tracks for just about every hip-yet-still-musically-interesting band ever.

The first time I ever heard Big Black I was about 12 years old, and the track was Steelworker. It was slow and sparse, yet still heavy. Simple, yet compelling. And vicious. It told a story. A simple one. But not a pretty one. Big Black's lyrics read like Noir poetry. Drawn from newspaper headlines and the band's own school of hard knocks experiences, their tracks chronicle the dark corners of American society, and pull no punches. They seemed to be angry about everything my teenage self was angry about, and their intense statement of this fact resonated deeply.

The music doesn't pull punches either. Big Black's music is heavy and loud, with a simple, driving rhythm and a layer of chaos on top. Big Black sounds like a cross between a bar fight and a cheap hotel room with a bare light dangling from a swinging cord. To this day, they are one of my absolute favorite bands.

Big Black decided to break up at their height of their popularity and musical development, so that they could go out on a high. I suppose this worked, because none of the successor bands (Arsenal, Rapeman, or Shellac), as good as they are, ever came close to the sheer awesomeness of Big Black. But I still wonder what amazingness might have been on offer had they kept going as a coherent unit. I played the LP of Big Black's final album, Songs About Fucking, over and over again so many times that I physically wore out the record and had to replace it.


Big Black are also responsible for one of the rare records I want most: the original Bulldozer EP with the acid-etched steel jacket and (paper) poster. That sounds amazing. I wish more recordings came in such insane packaging.

There are many awesome punk/postpunk/whatever bands in the world, but few compare to Big Black. Reunions often lead to new material that's far inferior to the older work, but if there's one band that really ought to at least give it a go -- it's Big Black.

Week 8: Ministry of Silly Walks

Eight weeks of torment, and I'm down to a 99.5% chance of fatal heart attack every time I step inside the Ice Chamber (a wedding this past weekend, starting with hot dogs at AT&T park, followed by a lovely wedding, which was followed by a late night of partying on a party bus, and then a bacon burger all conspired to set me back into the mid 99.xx% range -- stupid me, I could have been down to like a 98.97% chance of heart attack otherwise).

Today we did a workout which included a routine I now refer to as the Ministry of Silly Walks: skips, grapevines, butt kicks, and some generic hopping side to side thing. Apparently I look so utterly ridiculous and cartoonish doing butt kicks that I caused Anu and Jessica to burt out into nearly uncontrollable laughter. Ahhh... being laughted at in the gym. Now that brings back memories.

It turns out that the interval between being six and being thirty-six proves that skipping and hopping are just like riding a bicycle: you never forget how, but if you don't do it for thirty years, you'll still totally suck at it "remembering how" notwithstanding. It starts off as a near-convincing simulation of fun, and then about two skips or so into it you realize "this is f**king difficult." Yet, it seems so easy for children -- which is just one of many reasons why children piss me off.

Fatness -- Let's Do Some Math

Why are Americans a bunch of fatasses? Let's do some math.

Take a typical fast food meal:

Big Mac: 540 calories
Large Fries: 500 calories
Medium Coke Classic: 240 calories
---------------------------------------------
Total = 1260 calories

The canonical 2000 calorie diet is only a rough estimate, one that is within about 10% accuracy for a male of my age and height, but may be very wrong for other people. In fact, all caloric intake estimates are imperfect, but you need to take into account factors like age, weight, gender, and rough activity level as this about.com calculator does. (And remember, that calculator is showing what you need to maintain your current levels, not slim down.) My wife, for example, should be eating about 400 fewer calories per day than me.

If we don't even account for the problems of empty calories (low nutrition, highly processed food that may impede metabolic reactions needed to properly consume the calories), water retention from high sodium foods, the fact that carbohydrates are burned easily and therefore preempt your body's need to draw from fat reserves, and other more subtle barriers to weight loss (and, more importantly, cardiovascular health and athletic muscle toning), we can see the roots of the problem from straight-up calorie math.

1260 calories is more than half the RDA for someone like me (a 200lb, 6 foot, 35 year old male). If all three meals Americans are eating each day are around the 1000 calorie mark, we're talking approx. 3000 calories or about 750-1000 extra calories a day for someone like myself. (And if you're doing the two Big Mac thing, and adding a 250 calorie baked apple pie, that's another 750 calories in one meal.)

I've been watching the readouts on the machines as I've been hitting the gym, and by way of example someone my size, weight, and age doing a moderate (level 5) cardio routine on the StairMaster is burning about 10cal/minute.

750 excess calories / 10cal/minute = 75 minutes

So, if I'm averaging 3000 calories a day, and my break-even estimate is 2250 calories, I'm at least 750 calories over break-even -- which means an hour and fifteen minutes of uninterrupted StairMaster workout just to break even. Most people who say that they are "relatively active" and are referring to less than an hour of cumulative strenuous walking, stair climbing, and similar activity during the day are fooling themselves. "But I walk a lot" perhaps applies to active people in New York City who may average two hours of fast walking per day or San Franciscans who pound the hills at reasonbly high speeds an hour a day (but even that's still going to be break even at best if it's not coupled with caloric moderation), but not really to anyone who just happens to have to walk during the day because their refrigerator isn't sitting right beside their TV.

The reason so many people are heavy is quite clear: easy access to high calorie foods, combined with the prevalence of sedentary post-industrial workplaces, make for people who eating far more calories than they'll reasonably burn in a day. This seems like common sense, but as the saying goes: sometimes common sense ain't so common.

Week 7: Cognitive Dissonance

I wound up going to the gym 3 mornings this week. What this bit of overkill made me come to fully realize is that I keep going back for some inexplicable reason.

Seven weeks of working out is like being put in Guantanamo, being released, and then willingly reincarcerating yourself -- six times. And paying for it.

That's the really odd thing to me. I'm paying a not insubstantial amount of money in order to go to gym class. I spent a nontrivial amount of time in high school coming up with clever ways to avoid gym class, and now, like a schmuck, I'm paying someone so I can relive the experience.

Sure, Jessica is much nicer than any of the gym coaches I had in school. And unlike most of them she's an actual athlete, as opposed to one of those "do as I claim that I did back in the mesozoic era, not as I do" kinds of coaches. But I'm still paying someone to help me relive one of the most miserable aspects of my teenage years. While I'm at it, I might as well ask her to tell me that she wouldn't date me if I was the last guy on earth, and to ridicule me in front of everyone -- to complete the teen experience trifecta.

Week 7b/6a: Sit and Spin, Mofo

Since my gym blog post last week was for half a week, today was either the end of last week or the beginning of this week. Either way, I have to post twice this week. Not because anyone else cares, but because when you start working out it becomes an all-consuming obsession. The reason for this is obvious: flight or fight. Working out is like being perpetually chased by a hungry tiger, and if you get distracted and think about anything else, even for a moment -- instant death.

So speaking of instant death, the Spinner / Spinning bike is a fascinating invention. It is specifically designed to simulate climbing a preposterously steep hill in the name of fitness.

Ever since the Trojan inventor Equus of Dardanus developed the horse, riding a bicycle uphill has been the exclusive domain of children (who are too naive to know any better), the desperately poor for whom a bicycle is the only alternative to walking (who have no choice), and fanatical cyclists (who are too naive to know any better). Anyone with the means to procure a horse, or one of those fancy "horseless horses" that have become all the rage since Baron Ferdinand von Kombustin-Enjin invented the Internal Combustion Engine, would scoff at the very idea of something so archaic and ridiculous as uphill bicycling.

I guess the inventors of the Spinner bike are SCA types who enjoy reenacting prehistoric times when people didn't have horses and had to ride their heavy iron bicycles uphill into battle, panting like a dehydrated dog as they sweated away their precious bodily fluids (tm) and stabbed eachother with lances. Some people have strange hobbies.