Toys in the Attic

So, I guess I’m not dead, after all.

Okay, so I’ve been busy. To the point, my wife and I decided to do something radical, in comparison to our normal lives, and participate in the P90X program. You can click the link and get the offiicial lowdown – unless you’ve seen the infomercials, where you already know – but in a nutshell it’s “workout ’til you puke, cardio ’til you can’t, eat like a bodybuilder” for three months. Well, we began our journey back on April 7 & concluded it on July 4 and I can easily say that it’s one of the most exciting and best things we’ve ever done together. Here’s the breakdown:

Biggest obstacles? First, tendonitis. I decided to begin the program weeks earlier when I thought I’d strained a muscle but was later diagnosed with a case of tendonitis in my left forearm, rendering me basically incapable of doing anything until it healed. All told, I had a month of inactivity. Add in that I was throwing down about 4,500 calories per day & yours truly packed on, to steal from Zep, a whole lotta fat.

Second, getting my wife on board. She hates exercise. Just like God blessed me with height – in this world just as it’s good to be an attractive female, likewise it’s lucky to have above-average height as a male….and it’s all pure dumb luck – my wife was blessed with incredible genetics when it came to her physique. Up until her 30s, when we had kids, she could model bikinis. How good, guys? Here are the wedding dress stats: 5′5″, 118 pounds, 37-25-35. After the kids, she did the ‘let her self go’ thing and followed Sam Kinison’s five-to-seven pounds a year theory. And, baby, it added up. Yeah, she joined the gym with me, but she went through the motions. So, getting her to agree not only to a specified routine, but one of the more difficult ones, was a hurdle that I was lucky to cross. But, she did it and the results were fantastic and I can’t wait to go forward with her in tow.

Third & last, another round of tendonitis. This time, in my right hand (yeah, yeah, ha-ha), a little more than half-way through the program. I visited the obligatory specialists who assured me that there was no structural damage & since there was no way I was going to stop something after going this far, I adapted & endured. Basically, I traded pull-ups for pull-downs with the assistance of an apparatus that fit around my wrist that allowed me to transfer the pressure from my hand to my forearm. It’s two and a half months later and the tendonitis still hasn’t subsided, but it most certainly did hamper my weight training, yeah.

Tallies: Weight went from 247 to 222.5 pounds.

Waist: lost 5 1/8 inches. Not a typo.

Hips: lost 2 1/8 inches.

In 89 days.

In the end, this is what I did while I was away from this site; I busted my rear getting these results (click for larger images, if you’re so inclined):

What do I do from here? Well, I took two weeks to rest & attempt to heal my hand. The recovery is slow and it’s nowhere near being healed, but…again, it is what it is. I’ve rested long enough and I’m already tired of eating pizzas, burritos and ice-cream (already seeing a gain in the waist size), although I’m still not tired of tasting the beer, truth be told. A new routine of heavy-lifting is underway and I’m pleased to announce that beginning next week my faithful bride will be joining me in the gym for workouts – a first for us. I’m actually looking forward to having her join me, to be honest. I’m Monk-like in how anal I am about my workouts; printed-out spreadsheet in hand, compiled on a three-hole binder along with past workouts for comparison, each set having planned reps & weights, Ipod blasting away so that no-one will talk to me & interrupt my workout, each set’s rest planned to the second & the entire day’s trip allocated to the minute so that I can ascertain ‘growth’ or ‘plateau’ in how that workout will look in comparison to what was planned. Yes, I’m that anal. No, I didn’t exaggerate. Everything is planned so that 100% of my energy is focused on lifting X pounds for Y reps & Z seconds of rest & worrying about what I need to lift three sets from now is akin to an NBA player thinking about low-post defense while he’s shooting free-throws. As Ah-nold once told a partner who was pondering if the second set they were working on was so intense that he’d be maxed out for the final set, “there is no ‘next set’, only the one you’re lifting”. Well, I can’t wait for my wife to join me in “this set”. The forced-reps will be a plus, too!

Next January, another round of P90X is already planned. As the videos say, Bring it.

John Hawkins compiles a list of fascinating quotes. Of course, people of different stripes will agree/disagree, but if you want to know the basis for conventional conservative thought and aren’t in the mood to read some early Reagan speeches (that’s the best place to go, by the way) then click the link for a quick overview.

This trick is somewhat small in scale, but you can sometimes make your loved ones look at you with a befuddled stare when you present your version of “The Cary Elwes Factor” while watching your favorite show/flick. What is this, you may ask? Well, here’s the story (and it’s 100% true and all MINE):

It takes place sometime 1998 as my wife & I plus another couple are enjoying the latest Morgan Freeman/Ashley Judd movie “Kiss the Girls” on the VCR. Yes, back in the days when VHS was still the standard. The movie, and if you haven’t seen it by now I’m not going to feel bad about giving you the spoiler, is, well as the outline states: “A detective is searching for a deadly collector. His only hope is the woman who got away”, or, in short, a whodunnit thriller. While filled with edge-of-your-seat scenes that make you wonder if Ashley Judd’s character will be killed at any moment, it’s really a mystery movie that has the audience trying to guess who the real killer is throughout as small clues are presented, albeit never a definitive one. The official running time of the movie is 111 minutes and I’m going to estimate on the exact figures, here, but somewhere around the hour-and-a-half mark, while my wife & our dinner guests are busy shouting out their guesses as to the real killer, I hit the pause button on the remote and scream out my guess: Cary Elwes.

The unison answer: “Cary Elwes? Which one is that?”

Me: “The cop that’s assisting the cop helping Morgan Freeman. You know, the dude from Robin Hood: Men in Tights, and the Princess Bride”.

Them: “Why do you say he’s the killer? He’s hardly been in the movie at all.”

Me: “Precisely. I remember him being third in the credits, yet to this point he’s had, what, 10, 12 lines? They didn’t pay Cary Elwes the money it takes for 3rd billing to play this small a role in a movie that is 80% complete. He HAS to be the dominant character the rest of the way in order to justify third billing, plus he’s Cary freaking Elwes…not a huge star, but not a B-grade actor, either. He’s not going to take a cop-buddy role with so few lines until this point unless there was some hitch later on that’ll be beneficial to his career. My guess is that the hitch will be him actually playing the role of crazed serial killer and it’s based on the fact that he’s too big a name in the movie biz to only have so few lines and a role this small”.

A few minutes later, we find out that Cary Elwes was indeed the killer and he dominated the screen at the end of the flick, justifying his third-billing standing.

Through the years, the Cary Elwes Factor has reared its head on constant occasions and with almost every instance, it proves correct. Watching an episode of CSI where the killer is unknown? And suddenly Ned Beatty shows up at the 44 minute point as the family dentist? Bam, Cary Elwes Factor. Ned Beatty in a tv show that has 16 minutes left equals Ned Beatty being the central character to the episode. See a character from the now cancelled Deadwood who is a suspect on the CBS show “Numb3rs? Heck, it can be two separate episodes and it still doesn’t matter because a full-cast member of an HBO award winning series isn’t going to be just another face in the crowd on a Friday night crime-drama, especially when the stars of Deadwood were still enjoying the show’s shelf life at the time of the airing.

Yeah, it can sometimes take the fun out of whodunnits or suspense features. Case in point, the last movie I saw, Gone Baby Gone (SPOILER ALERT). It’s just under two hours long & you as a viewer are trying to figure out what happened, right along with the protagonists of the case and everyone else watching. Well, everyone except those of you who recalled that Morgan Freeman is in the cast & realize that you’re 80% through the flick and he’s barely been on screen and has supposedly been cast aside as “retired” in the movie. Ahem, this is Morgan Freeman. So, yeah, it took a bit away from the movie when I knew that Morgan Freeman was going to end up being the money-shot-revelation long before it actually happened. Then again, for all it’s faults, the Cary Elwes Factor can also make your friends wonder “how did you know that?” because, let’s face it, how many people out there would’ve guessed Morgan Freeman being the true kidnapper halfway through that movie? Honestly, I knew it at about the halfway point because….well, the Cary Elwes Factor.

(End Spoiler Alert)

So, the next time you see Tim Curry show up on CSI:Miami or the guy who played the Soup Nazi is a suspect on Law & Order or James Woods/Shark is wondering whether or not to prosecute Alex P. Keaton’s dad, keep in mind that the Cary Elwes Factor hardly ever fails: they did it.

Here’s a quick video of my son playing basketball. In a nutshell, it illustrates his condition:

At least I know why I hit a plateau, despite doing “the right things”. I shoulda known when my last few workouts showed that I was getting weaker and each session was less intense (yes, I keep logs of all my workouts….I’m one of them) but I wrote it off to the decrease in caloric intake – which I didn’t think was that much of a decrease – only to be proven wrong.

What happened?

I was sick. Very sick. Despite a very recent recovery from bronchitis, I was stricken with yet another round of bronchitis (this one much, much worse) along with this season’s edition of the flu. Wham! Talk about getting hit over the head with the proverbial brick, when those things combine it means one thing only: enough strength to turn over in the bed and maybe – maybe – make it to the bathroom when the time comes.

Lesson learned: take all those antibiotics when they give them to you, not just enough plus a few days when you’re ‘well’. Today was my first day back at work in almost a week and I ran out of breath twice while talking. Yes, talking was too much. So, until next week I’m not even thinking about diets or fitness or lifting. Gotta put first things first, which now consists of pills and cough meds. And for those who haven’t been sick in years & who are wondering: no, they haven’t made cough medicine taste like something besides caster oil, yet. The flavored stuff is the kiddie cough syrup, not the ‘good stuff’ laced with codeine.

- No comments on this one because, well, it’d make me feel like I was almost begging for sympathy….well, I’m not. I’m on the mend. It’s just that there won’t be a fitness update for a while because I have ‘getting completely well’ as a higher priority at the moment.

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New site alert: Jay Caruso (one of the first people I read on the internet who had this thing called a ‘blog’. The other being the Hammer, Henry Hanks) is now on the 2nd amendment beat. Check him out here.