On Saturday Mike and I had an awesome Halloween party with finger foods, candy and lots and lots of drinks.  So instead of trying to fight the feeling .. I decided to go with the flow and eat anything I wanted.  This is best known as a “cheat day”.  Some people find a cheat day is a great motivational tool that gives dieters something to look forward to but I am steadfast in my belief that a cheat day is a HUGE MISTAKE.  

While I didn’t go completely crazy, I did kick the night of with pigs in a blanket (of course!) and from the second that pig hit my mouth it was all down hill from there.  I spent the rest of the night burping up sausage-y acid that burned my throat and tasted terrible.  I thought to myself ‘THIS IS POISON!  THIS IS WHAT I HAVE BEEN INGESTING HAND OVER FIST FOR THE LAST 29 YEARS?!’.  For a moment I actually felt really  bad about the abuse I have been putting my body through with the foods that I used to eat.  My poor body that has been so good to me.  My poor body that keeps working every single day and never lets me down (except for a little gallbladder issue in 2010… but no body is perfect).

Finger foods were once a delightful treat but now they are my sworn enemy.  I am back to eating clean and it feels SO much better.  No more heart burn, no more upset stomach… AND I am looking better BONUS!

The biography of Steve Jobs came out today, written by a guy named Walter Isaacson, who interviewed the man behind all the cool Apple products about 40 times for the book. One of the big bombshells contained in the pages is the fact that Jobs hated the Android phone, and actually called it “grand theft” of his iPhone. He said that “I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple’s $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong. I’m going to destroy Andoid because it’s a stolen product. I’m willing to go to thermonuclear war on this. They are scared to death because they know they are guilty.” Wow! The “they” that he is referring to, of course, is Google, the makers of Android phones. He later called Android products “$h!t.” What must have made this battle even more personal for Jobs is that he mentored the 2 guys who founded Google, and even later let Google’s CEO on Apple’s board of directors. Very interesting. I wonder if Google will suffer any sort of backlash due to this?

Mariah Carey and Nick Cannon went on ABC’s 20/20 to debut their twins. Here is a video:

Listen to the Wake Up Call talk about Mariah and Nick:

Mariah Carey & Nick Cannon

Yesterday was a great day!  I am finally making progress that can be measured. 

When I started this journey I sorta thought I was going to transform into a fit and fabulous glamazon over night…  In a shock to no one, that has not been the case.   I have been stepping on the scale for a few weeks now and showing very little change.  According to my scale I have gone down two pounds… TWO POUNDS?!  I have been working out like crazy, cut back on my drinking and eating clean and I have only lost TWO POUNDS?!  As you can imagine this was aggravating and above all else making me feel like all my hard work was for nothing.   I can live with an extra two pounds on me if I get to go back to drinking wine every night.

Well, my wonderful trainer Alisa (who will be known as “Amazing A” from this point forward) did my measurements and THANK YOU JESUS my body is changing despite what the scale says.  I am losing inches, losing fat and gaining muscle.  YAHOO!

I have committed to only drinking Fridays and Sarurdays  (which I have done very successfully for about two weeks)  but I had wine last night AND tonight ugh! 

Now, I know life is going to happened and life has happened two nights in a row  (dinner with Gavin’s family last night and my mommas bday tonight)  but I am still kinda disappointed in myself.  I am going to spend about 10 more minutes feeling bad about myself then I am going to pull myself together, drink some water… and  get over it.

Ps,  I burned just over a thousand calories today (if my heart rate monitor is correct…I have my doubts).

Pps, I didn’t eat the cake!!!

The first big change I am making is eating clean. What is eating clean you say?!  Great question.  I TRY to eat foods that haven’t been processed to the point that they are more chemical than actual food.  This isn’t as hard as it seems I promise. I live by the rule, if I don’t know where it came from (i.e. ground, tree bush, animal etc) I don’t eat it.  Not a hard rule to follow but does require more preperation than I am used to.

Here is where this is getting tricky for me… My family has no interest in eating clean which means I have to make two seperate meals every night and its a pain in the ass.  BUT I keep telling myself  ‘it’s not their fault I got fat’… So if they don’t want to eat my delicious ground turkey, black bean and cucumber salad then FINE!

My newest clean treat is sweat peppers stuffed with turkey

Today I have decided to publicize my new passion… fitness.   Why today? No idea.  It just felt right to start sharing.  My goal for this blog is to journal this journey for myself and for anyone else who is ready to make big changes in their lives, body and health.  This blog will not be perfect!  It will have misspellings, grammatical errors and rambling.  What can I say… that’s part of my charm!

I should start by saying I am no health nut.  I love fast food, I love booze and until recently, I wouldn’t even think of running unless someone was chasing me… and even then they would have to have a weapon of some sort to inspire me to really try.  I allowed my self to get to 210lb and that’s when I knew… somethings gotta give.

At this very moment I am 169lbs.  Clearly I have been working on this weight loss thing for awhile but I have never really been truly serious or inspired… until now!

Let the games begin!

Horror icon, John Carpenter, brought us The Thing in 1982.  It was one of the first horror movies I watched as a kid where I had my mind blown over what could be done with special FX makeup!  It was absolutely amazing to watch a man’s head fall off his shoulders, sprout spider legs and eyes and then crawl away.  If you never saw the original and that sentence makes you think the exact opposite of “amazing,” then this prequel to the 29-year-old original will do nothing for you because what made the original so amazing was the prequel’s undoing. 

I love prequels.  I think it’s really fun to watch what happened before the movie you already love.  In the original they talk about the camp that discovers the alien that can shape-shift into any other living thing but you never see it.  That camp is what this film is all about but it’s the exact same story.  There is almost no difference between the two, even in the choice of casting Joel Edgerton (Warrior, Animal Kingdom) as the hero because when dude sports a beard he looks EXACTLY like Kurt Russell, who was the hero in the original.  I did like that the true star of the film was a woman, who was played by the gorgeous Mary Elizabeth Winstead (Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, Death Proof).  It makes me think of Ripley in the Alien franchise although she’s far from the tough-as-nails that Sigourney Weaver trademarked! 

I love the aspect of how isolating this film is.  It takes place in Antarctica which is so cold and lonely that it might as well be space.  Not only that, but I love the spookiness of untrust, where the killer could be lurking inside the skin of any one of the main characters.  It makes it a very unique horror film that also comes with the joy of seeing great monster makeup and FX.  Sadly, I saw ALL of that in the original and this one doesn’t break any new ground. 

It’s almost like new director Matthijs van Heijningen Jr. (no, my cat didn’t walk across my keyboard…that’s his name) assumed that no one saw the first one and could get away with just remaking it.  I’m not against remakes either.  If they’re done well, I think they can potentially be better than the original.  But I think prequels are way better and I especially don’t appreciate it when prequels don’t want to call themselves remakes, which is exactly what The Thing did. 

Is it scary?  Not really.  Is it cool?  At times.  They disapointed me at times by using CGI to create some of the monster FX the original accomplished with old school make-up AND still looked faker than it did in 1982, but I give the studio credit in simply trying to make a monster movie again; something that sadly seems to have vanished from the lanscape.  But in a movie about a killer alien that can carbon copy itself into anything, I wish The Thing didn’t carbon copy itself into the 1982 original.
The Thing  (Rated R)
Gavin Grade: C+

If you were to ask most comedians who their favorite comedians are, I would guess that Steve Martin would show up in the Top 10 for most of them.  There’s no argument over his influence and skills.  But for some reason, he chooses horrible movies to do…at least in the last couple decades.  It doesn’t make sense why the man that brought us The Jerk, The Three Amigos, Planes, Trains & Automobiles and Parenthood has also brough us Cheaper By the Dozen 1 and 2, Bringing Down the House, and The Pink Panther remakes.  Now he has The Big Year.  So which pile will this be thrown on?  Can it be on both? 

The Big Year has a great premise: it’s a pseudo true story about a real event called The Big Year which is competitive bird watching.  Yeah.  Competitive.  Besides Martin, it also stars Owen Wilson and Jack Black…two actors that were also really funny once upon a time and have perhaps run their course. 

A film in the vein of Christopher Guest’s classic Best in Show would have been amazing!  A comedy lampooning the existence and the people that participate in a bird watching competition sounds awesome!  Quickly it becomes apparent that that is not the direction they took.  I probably should have seen that coming since it was directed by David Frankel, who did Marley & Me and The Devil Wears Prada.  He’s very good at giving us comedies  that teeter back and forth between very funny and emotionally appealing.  The Big Year tries as hard as it can to be more like those films but sadly never does. 

See, when you enter into a Big Year, you are away from your family, your job, your life for a whole year.  You miss out on an awful lot and the movie partially focuses on that.  It also focuses on the beauty of nature and the birds themselves.  If you’re saying so far all that doesn’t sound very funny…you’re right.  The movie isn’t very funny; but that doesn’t mean it’s not good.  But it doesn’t do a quality job at pulling you in any particular direction or making you feel a certain way.  It just kind of exists.  The characters don’t make you feel for them completely or even pick a favorite in the contest.  There are moments of great filmmaking but not enough to love the movie.

The good news is that none of these usually annoying comedic actors are annoying in the film.  They don’t branch out into new territory or take any risks with character choices but you get what you’d expect minus some fark and dick jokes from Jack Black.  In fact, he gives one of the better performances in the movie since the relationship with his dad, played by Brian Dennehy (Romeo + Juliet) is some of the near tear-jerking you expierence in the film.  But overall to use the word “big” in the title of this film is false advertising.
The Big Year  (Rated PG)
Gavin Grade: C

There are few actors out there that I will gladly sit and watch with a smile on my face regardless of how bad the movie is.  George Clooney is one of them.  Sure I’m a little gay for the guy, but how can you not be?  This new movie of his is not only starring him as a politician in the fight for the nomination but it was directed by him too.  The last time he did both it was for Michael Clayton and it got him an Oscar nomination for Directing and a win for Acting.  Sadly, this time around, it won’t produce such accolades.

Despite the fact that The Ides of March has one of the most impressive casts this year and it does nothing for the film.  It not only has Clooney but Ryan Gosling, Phillip Seymore Hoffman, Paul Giamatti, Marisa Tomei and Evan Rachel Wood (The Wrestler).  With that kind of pedigree, you’d think there’d be thespiatic explosions all over the screen.  There isn’t.

That’s not to say that the acting isn’t well done though.  Everyone is natural and subtle but the script prevents them from displaying too much more than the cold Washington Insiders they are…that is except for Gosling.  Once again, Ryan Gosling does a great job at showing us a very layered character.  He’s the cool and collected head of the political campaign that’s put in two situations that lend itself to his undoing.  One involves a tug-of-war between Hoffman and Giamatti and the other is cleaning up after Clooney.  It’s fun and unfortunate to watch Reynold’s character become undone, but it’s not enough to really get full entertainment out of it.

The film moves at a deliberatly slow pace.  It’s not heart-pounding or edge-of-your-seat.  It plays out more realistic than most political thrillers do.  I appreciate that.  But when it comes to how I want my movies, realism is appreciated but not throughly loved.  I would have enjoyed a few more twists and turns and a little more passion from the players would have pumped more life into the film.  But it’s still very dark, sinister and paints an ugly portrait of American politics…and that I like.
The Ides of March  (Rated R)
Gavin Grade: B-