Middle-Age Alien Capoeria Hamsters

Rish and I have made no secret of our dislike for Michael Bay. Why do we dislike him so much? Well, despite the fact that his movies are shot in that asinine style where you can't tell what is going on and who punched who, he also is the frontrunner in that group of people in Hollywood that has no respect for the things we love.

We've railed about The Transformers movies again and again on the show. Neither of us watched past the first movie in the trilogy. Why? Mostly because those aren't The Transformers. They're some new fantasy that Michael Bay came up with. They're only Transformers in name. The rest is all his bullsh*t.


Now, Michael Bay is making a new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles live action movie, and, surprise surprise, he's showing the same respect for that source material too.

TMNT are okay, but I really don't give a crap about them. I was too old when they hit it big, so they don't mean a lot to me. I do, however, know several guys who are a little younger than me who love the Turtles the way I loved the Transformers, and I feel for them and the disrespect they'll be shown.

One guy I work with tells me that the Turtles are now supposed to be pan-dimensional aliens. Could be a cool idea, I suppose, but it's not TMNT, so why not just make your own damn story and quite ruining things other folks hold dear to their hearts.

I've already seen comments like: "It's just the Ninja Turtles, who cares?"

Well, I don't, I guess. But I know dozens of people who do, and I feel for them. Please, if any normals are reading this. Don't go see it. Let's stop rewarding Michael Bay for trashing things we love.

I know I'll not be seeing it. I probably wouldn't have anyway, but Michael Bay's name on it just made it certain.

Speilberg? Really?

I don't what he's doing here, but Steven Spielberg was eating at the Texas Roadhouse down by the Walmart the other day. My wife was out with her friends having a girl's night out, and there he was, sitting in the table just across from them.


If you doubt that it's him, well one of the waiters got his autograph and showed it off to them.


She sends me a text: Steven Speilburg is sitting the booth across from me. No joke

I got that text as I was doing the grocery shopping. It seemed a little ironic, if that's the proper usage of the word, which I'm sure it's not. She doesn't care enough about Steven Speilberg to even know how to spell his name correctly, yet she's the one sitting across from him at the restaurant, and I'm doing the grocery shopping.

I called Rish, and told him about it, and asked him what Speilberg was working on these days. He said he's doing the Abraham Lincoln biopic, so it can't be anything to do with that, hell our state wasn't anything more than a nearly unsettled territory back when Lincoln was president. There's no reason imaginable that they'd be filming for that here.

Maybe he just came for some spring skiing.

No matter what, it's a bit of a bummer that it was girls only night with my wife and her friends. I'd have really liked to have been there.

Fitness Challenge Update #2

So, it's Monday again. This week was very up and down for me. Each morning I'd weigh myself, and be alternately pleased and enraged.

Tuesday, my weight was 268.

Wednesday, it was 267.

Thursday, it was 268 again.

Friday, it was 266. Oh, Thursday must have been some sort of abberation.

Saturday, it was 268...again!

Sunday I ate really poorly, scrounging chocolate chips out of the pantry, desperate for something sweet, and Monday morning when I weighed in for the week?

264.

I don't understand. It was a successful week, but a really frustrating one.

I also wound up working out by myself all half of the week too. My crossfit trainer was sick, and my normal workout partner didn't show up. Counting this morning, it's been three days in a row. Despite that, I showed up every time, and worked hard. And I guess it paid off.

Oh, I'm also now in first place in the contest at work. I pulled just ahead of the person who had me beat the first three weeks. I wonder if I can keep that up. I'll do my best anyway.

Fitness Challenge Update #1

Okay, so it's been two weeks now on this fitness challenge. This week didn't go quite as well as last time, but I still managed to lose two pounds. I'm at 269 right now, and still going.

I've upped my commitment to workout, attending my crossfit class four days a week for two weeks in a row now. That's even better than I did all the way back in August when I was in much better shape than I am now.

I think I still need to up my workouts though. I was planning, before this all began, to run several days a week and to do yoga as well. Reality has kept me from fulfilling that plan, but I might still be able to if I upped my dedication. We'll have to see.

Fitness Challenge

In August, I gave a crap. I took care of myself, and ate in a healthy manner, but I ate that way because of a challenge put on me by my crossfit trainer. It paid off, and by the end of the month, I was in perhaps the best shape I'd been in since perhaps the birth of my first child.

I didn't have the right state of mind though. I was just waiting for the challenge to end so that I could get back to my old ways. And get back to them I did. I ate like a fat disgusting pig for months and months after that. By the start of March, I was in the worst shape I'd been in since I first started trying to take care of myself back in 2010. Almost back to step one really, and I was very disgusted with myself.

However, another challenge had come along. One of my co-workers organized a company biggest loser contest. I thought it was just what I needed to get back on the horse. So, I signed myself up. A few of the things that drew me to this contest were its length and the healthy competition I could have with co-workers that I see each day. The contest will last a whole three months this time, so it will be easy to create new habits rather than just outlasting my cravings. And trash talking with my co-workers about who is going to win could really help keep me motivated to succeed.

Whether I win or lose the contest doesn't matter a whole lot to me. I'd like to, because the winner gets $210, but what really matters to me is changing my lifestyle from fat disgusting pig to fit not-so-disgusting thin person.

The contest started March 5th, and so far I'm doing well. I weighed in at 282 lbs. to begin with, and I've already managed to trim down to 271 lbs. in the first week, and it was accomplished by way of mere healthy eating and exercise. I've upped my commitment at crossfit, and have stuck with my eating regiment. I'm pretty proud of myself so far. We'll see how it goes as the weeks stretch on and on though.

I'll report each week on my progress, and won't complain if you leave comments to encourage me. So far, I believe I'm in second place in the contest, losing something like 4% of my weight in that first week. But this race is a marathon, not a sprint.

Just How Alone Is This Ranger?

Rish sent me the link to this picture from Disney's new movie project The Lone Ranger. It's one of those pictures that they release early on in production to drum up more interest from the geeks (such as Rish and I) out there to see if they can get some free publicity.

Rish and I have talked about this movie on TGMG a few times, how overinflated the budget is, how a cowboy movie is destined to fail with a budget that big, and general moaning about the use of unnecessary CGI in films these days.

There could be more problems for this film than we thought though. I showed this picture to a guy I work with. He's a cowboy through and through. He was raised on a dairy farm. In high school, his idea of cool music was Gene Autry, Patsy Cline, Roy Rogers, and Hank Williams (and no, he's not 65 years old, he's my age). He looked at the picture of the most iconic cowboy ever and said, "Is that Zorro?"

Looks like The Lone Ranger doesn't have the image recognition that he used to. Another hurdle for the folks at Disney to leap. Good luck guys.

Fat Vampire

This guy I work with has an iPad, and he got an app for it that allows him to paint over the top of any photo he takes. So, he started taking pictures of everyone at work, and turning them into drawings. Then, to amuse himself, he started doing drawings of everyone as vampires instead of just normal reproductions.

So, here's his drawing of me.


The scariest part to me is not so much the vampire part as just how freaking fat I've gotten over the last six months. Yikes! You don't notice it as much until someone starts drawing dark lines in for each one of your chins.

More on that in a later post. See ya!