(Man, this blog is like, 95 percent bitching. Hee. Sorry. I swear to God, I don't walk around in a constant state of grumpiness all the time.)
So this morning I got up as usual, and went out to the bus at the usual time. Guess who was there? My sister. This is unusual because my sister (who lives with me, if I hadn't mentioned that) has a half-hour ride to her work from Harvard, and therefore leaves a half hour earlier than I do. She was still at the bus stop. So were about 15 other people. My sister said that a total of four full buses had gone by without stopping while she'd been standing there, and that there had been a period of about 30 minutes during which zero buses went by (they're supposed to come about every five minutes at that time of day). Luckily, the fifth time was the charm (only the second one for me), and we got on a (very full) bus. I got to work close to on time, but she was something like 45 minutes late. She called the T to register a complaint (she's great like that -- I just complain on my blog), saying she'd been waiting 5o minutes for a bus (T lady: "Fifteen?" My sister "Five-zero." T lady: "FIFTY!?" My sister: "Yes."). She was told that there had been a breakdown and that this had contributed to the delay. So, OK, but it's still pretty irritating because it isn't as if this is an isolated incident: like, a delicate peony can fall in the path of an MBTA bus and it will screw up the schedule for the rest of rush hour. Know what causes slowdowns, without fail? Snow. It doesn't have to be a blizzard or anything -- just a moderate gentle snowfall generally sends the T into havoc. It's New England, BTW -- it snows a lot here. You know what else almost always causes at least a bit of a slowdown? Rain. YES, RAIN. RAIN FALLING FROM THE SKY MAKES THE BUSES SLOWER. Siiiiiiiigh.
So, anyway. Annoying, but whatever. This evening I get to the T station and there are like, fifty bazillion people waiting for the bus. This is also a common sight. I sigh and lean against the wall and take out my New Yorker. Several other buses go by, including at least two 78s. Again, I'm used to it -- it's annoying, but I pay $20 a month to commute (thank you, Harvard, for the generous subsidy) and it is what it is. It's the bus.
BUT THEN. While I'm standing there, my foot hurting, holding my bag and my gym bag and my coat and my scarf, constantly pulling my magazine closer to me so people can get by, the PA comes on. If this were a normal city, you might think that we'd hear someone announce that there had been a bus delay, or that the bus was coming, or that they were sorry for the inconvenience but to hang in there, or whatever. No. Know what it is? It's the voice of Dan Grabauskas, general manager, and it's their new thing where they tell everybody that if they're smoking on the T, it's not only breaking the law, but it's rude to their fellow passengers.
Five minutes later, when I'm still waiting and the crowd has gotten even bigger, the PA comes on again. This time it's Dan Grabauskas explaining the T's terrorism prevention policy, which can be summed up by their catchphrase: "See Something, Say Something." In other words, their terrorism prevention policy is basically: If you see a terrorist, tell somebody. In other other words, their terrorist prevention policy is to do nothing and to tell the passengers to keep an eye out for terrorists.
Guys, it's about tone. Tone-deafness, to be precise. Yes, it's annoying when people smoke in the T, theoretically at least, since I don't think I've actually ever experienced this. Yes, it's certainly great for people to be alert for suspicious activities, and it's nice to be reassured that if we see something suspicious and tell a bus driver we won't be screamed at and/or ignored, even though this is probably not true. I certainly agree that riders and baby strollers need to share space on the bus, and I don't in principle object to a reminder of this.
But it's when someone you know waited 50 minutes for a bus this morning, and now you're standing waiting in a huge crowd, and you know you're going to have to shove your way awkwardly to the front with all your crap when it gets to your stop, because the way the Harvard tunnel is built people can't enter by the driver's-side door, so they have to pay when they get off, so they can't exit the rear door when going outbound (despite the frequent PA announcements reminding people to exit via the rear door) (and the way the drivers deal with this, BTW, is by just ignoring people who yell "rear door" in increasingly frantic voices and waiting for passengers to take pity on the person and explain that they have to pay on the way out -- and also by yelling "SIR! YOU GOTTA PAY!" or "HEY! YOU GONNA PAY?" in a sarcastic voice at anyone who tries to go out the front door without paying, since it's a completely counterintuitive rule that's not stated anywhere that I'm aware of) -- and a reassuring voice of authority comes on, but instead of providing any kind of customer service or saying anything to mitigate your frustration, THEY TELL YOU TO NOT TO BE SUCH AN ASSHOLE BY SMOKING, WHICH YOU ARE NOT DOING, AND NEITHER IS ANYONE ELSE. Then they tell that you'd better look out for terrorists, and if you don't stay vigilant and the bus gets blown up, it's your fault for being unobservant. I MEAN, COME ON. Just come on.
You know why everybody hates the T? It's not because of rude passengers or smokers or people not giving up their seats for pregnant people or people crowding by the door (which does happen and is, undeniably, annoying). It's because the T is always late, because the bus drivers are surly about 80 percent of the time, and because nobody at the T gives a shit. They will never admit any fault; if people complain they just complain back about how they have no money (which is true). It recently came out that they had literally NOT BEEN RUNNING BUSES at certain times, to save money. Like, a bus would be scheduled, and they would just not run it. Without telling anybody.
On the Fourth of July, we went to Kendall, about two miles away from Harvard Square, to see the fireworks -- about 500,000 people descend on Boston for this event -- walked back to Harvard Square, and waited about 40 minutes for a bus that finally showed up and opened its doors IN THE WRONG SPOT, so the people who had been waiting at the front of the line (for the longest amount of time -- that would be yours truly, who had just missed the previous one) were not able to get on, because the back of the crowd was closer to the doors and got on first. Did they add extra buses for this once-a-year event that was guaranteed to generate many times the amount of normal traffic after it ended? No, no they did not -- in fact, they SUBTRACTED buses, because on holidays they run on a Sunday schedule. So another bus was not scheduled for another 30 minutes. (I lost it at this point and made us go upstairs and take a cab. So it came to pass that, because I had been standing up for three hours, then walking for two miles, then standing up waiting for the bus for another 40 minutes, and I was not going to stand there for another however long, and I sure as hell was not going to walk home, I paid $14 to go the two miles from Harvard to my house. And it was worth it.)
It's this kind of stuff that makes everyone hate the T. They have zero, ZERO concept of public relations, and when everyone's pissed off and grumpy, coming on and saying "HEY GUYS, QUIT BEING SUCH ASSHOLES, YOU'RE MAKING THE RIDE UNPLEASANT!!" is not the way to defuse things.
I wasn't even mad about the late bus tonight until Grabauskas started with the goddamn "if you smoke, you are BREAKING THE LAW" lecturing. T, if you can't say anything useful, then just please shut the hell up.
This isn't even mentioning the time I was on the 66 and it caught fire. Sigh.
Monday, October 27, 2008
Shape of the Moon
I like to joke that my Netflix queue is dominated by three categories: Foreign, Documentary, and Foreign Documentary. (Though lately it's Foreign, Documentary, Foreign Documentary, and Law and Order: SVU. Man, I love that stupid, stupid show.) This weekend I was blessed with the elusive Foreign Documentary. I watched Shape of the Moon, a documentary about a family living in Indonesia. And...it kind of sucked.
(Keep in mind, by the way, that I have not been to film school and am not qualified to analyze a film in any kind of legitimate way. These are just my impressions, and my context is other movies I've watched and that's about it. So I don't know what I'm talking about, is what I'm saying. This movie was apparently at Sundance and won festival awards and stuff, so, make of that what you will.)
Thinking a movie like this sucks doesn't happen to me very often. Immerse me in any kind of world I'm not familiar with and I'm usually happy. This is why I like documentaries (immerse me in the world of inner-city high-school basketball, or the world of corrupt high finance, or the world of trying to make a movie of Don Quixote), and foreign films (immerse me in a story that takes place in rural China, or Iran, or among Inuits in Nunavut), and John McPhee articles (barges, coal trains, chalk caves).
Foreign documentary features two of these things: a group of people engaged in activities I'm not familiar with, set in a place I'm not familiar with. Usually this is a prescription for a movie that stays with me for a long time. Children Underground was indelible and horrible, Promises was heartbreaking, Born into Brothels was fascinating (and very reminiscent of Salaam Bombay! -- not actually a documentary, but filmed on location in Bombay slums with Bombay street kids as the actors and shot by a director, Mira Nair, who up until that point was mainly a documentary filmmaker -- watch that movie if you liked Born into Brothels, and watch the extras too, because the story of filming the movie is half the movie as far as I'm concerned). (And I just realized all those movies focused in kids, so...huh.) So I was pretty psyched to settle down with this one.
And about 20 minutes in I realized I was...bored. And I realized why, more or less. This movie is basically unadorned video of a family in Indonesia hanging around and going about their business, interspersed with artsy-ish camera angles. There's no narration, and no talking heads, and no explanatory material of any kind. There are subtitles, and apart from that you might well be watching someone's home videos.
And not much...happens. I am normally the LAST person to complain about movie in which nothing happens. See Totoro. And I get annoyed on reality shows when they whip up some "drama" that gets in the way of actually watching them design an outfit or *cough* model or whatever they're doing on whatever stupid reality show I'm watching. I'm always psyched when the "villain" finally gets voted off because maybe we can have some damn peace and quiet around here without all the shenanigans -- and then I'm always surprised and annoyed when another "villain" emerges. I hate shenanigans, I hate action, I like talking and slowness and meandering-ness and ponderous shots of a leaf floating on a lake or something.
But, seriously, nothing happens in this movie. Well, stuff happens, but not very much of it, and although I'm sure it's meaningful to the people experiencing it it's not framed in a very meaningful way. There's the grandmother, who is raising her young granddaughter, and she has two sons (the granddaughter's mother died -- it's not mentioned when or how), and they live in Jakarta. The family is Christian, which is sort of meant to be the thrust of the movie because the majority of people around them are Muslim. So you see the grandmother praying with her granddaughter, and one of the sons complaining about having to confess his sins to his elders, which is...apparently a Muslim thing. The grandmother is thinking about moving back to her native village. She bought a couch with money borrowed from a money-lending woman, who hits her up for payments while creepily smiling and eventually repossesses the couch. There is a fire at one point in the village, and everybody helps to put it out. About midway through the movie, one of the sons is revealed to have a Muslim girlfriend, whom he wants to marry, so he converts to Islam and marries her (and then we never see her again -- which is OK because we'd only briefly seen her once before). At the end they go visit the grandmother's native village and she decides to stay and she does. The granddaughter is sad. The end.
It's not only that nothing happens. I could be very happy watching a movie about the quiet dramas of people's lives. But...this movie is structured so weirdly. I think it's trying to be avant-garde, halfheartedly and intermittently, but it doesn't go anywhere. The opening shot is of a small bright shape turning around and getting closer and closer. When it gets close enough we see that it's the opening of a railroad tunnel, and we're in a train coming out of the tunnel. Except, the tunnel could not have been spinning around really, unless the train is a roller coaster, which it isn't, so having it spin and then resolve into a train tunnel just seems...pointlessly artsy. There are a lot of KA-RAAAAZY shots, like under a drum (that I think at one point is juxtaposed with the railroad tunnel), and then out from inside the drum and slowly up the drummer's body to his face. But like...an Indonesian guy is banging a drum, and some Dutch guy with a camera is crawling under there, filming inside the drum, and then pulling out and moving the camera to the guy's tummy for like five minutes, and then up to his face, and the guy never looks at the camera or stops what he's doing. This is (a) not that visually exciting (it looks like...a camera inside a drum), (b) kind of needy as far as lingering on everything forever and being like "LOOK AT MY COOL SHOT WITH THE DRUM AND LOOK AT THIS DUDE'S TUMMY, IT IS LIKE SO BIG AND STUFF AND IT TOTALLY MOVES IN RHYTHM TO THE DRUM-BEATING, OH INDONESIA AND YOUR CULTURE, YOU ARE JUST SO EXOTIC," and (c) clearly staged, because this unsullied innocent Indonesian guy WOULD be looking at the camera if he hadn't been specifically told not to, especially when it's INSIDE HIS DRUM and then in his face. So it's very self-conscious.
And there is a LOT of that in this movie, and it gets tiring. There's one shot of old women chewing leaves that goes on forever. There's a CRAZY bit where a guy is walking along a railroad bridge -- which is shown from far-off shots and is GORGEOUS with scenery and immenseness and all that -- and it looks like the camera guy must be hanging off the edge to get the shot. It's terrifying because the guy is just walking barefoot on the very edge of this bridge with a big shirt flopping around and the wind blowing and I'm scared of heights so I could barely watch it (and I've seen Stand By Me so I know what happens when you walk on a railroad bridge). And they kept intercutting it with shots of a train coming. Suspense building! And then they abandon that. Same track? Same day? No idea. Not that I was all "YEAH, THIS DUDE IS TOTALLY GONNA GET HIT BY A TRAIN, WOOOO," but it just -- ends, and doesn't seem to relate to anything else in the movie.
And my least favorite thing of this sort was: There's a fire, as I mentioned, and one of the sons is in with the rest of the neighborhood trying to put it out. It's hard to tell what the result is because I don't know what the building looked like before the fire, and they don't really show how it looks after, and they don't show the end of the fire being put out or if it just burned itself out or what, and they don't explain what the building is or how the fire started or anything else because THEY DON'T EXPLAIN ANYTHING IN THIS MOVIE. So later in the movie, the son is sleeping on a mattress on the floor, and the camera guy must be literally climbing on his mattress to get the camera to spin around him (again making me suspicious that it was staged because he doesn't wake up), and THEY FADE INTO A FLASHBACK OF THE FIRE. As if he's dreaming about the fire. COME ON, PEOPLE. It's like this movie vacillates between verité and gritty realism (so gritty and real that they don't feel it necessary to provide any context), and some kind of America's Next Top Model-esque cutesy story-editing.
And even without the flashback, the camera at awkward angles all around the guy's mattress is like the drum and (to a lesser extent) the bridge, because -- all I can think is "How are they getting this shot?", but not in an admiring way so much as a "What in the hell are they doing with the camera, and why are they bothering?" way. It must have been hard to get that shot, but -- who cares? I guess? Because it's kind of pointless. All I can see is the strain and effort of it. Some guy with a camera is climbing all over this guy's mattress and...that's about it. Whaddya want, a medal? (heh)
Despite the camera gymnastics, visually this movie is (to my untrained eyes) nothing special either. A lot of it is on video and it just looks like...video. The rural scenes are sort of flat, and the urban scenes are just...video-y, and though there are dutiful shots of rooftops and of cats walking down the street (one cat had poop hanging off its fur, which was one of the more indelible images of the movie for me, partly because my cat and I recently went through a situation to which I was able to relate this shot, ahem), you don't get a SENSE of Jakarta, or of the inside of the house, or anything. I got more of a sense of Delhi in Monsoon Wedding, and that took place mainly at an upper-middle-class family's home and barely showed the rest of Delhi. There's stuff on the walls, there's food being prepared, and it's hard to really get a sense of any of it. This is an exotic location, and it's interesting to watch for that reason. But the movie basically says "We're filming in Jakarta" and doesn't go beyond that.
I get that this movie didn't want to be a traditional documentary. But I feel like documentaries are structured the way they are for a reason, and if you're going to eschew conventions you're going to have to make up for them in other ways. Errol Morris doesn't do voiceover narration (at least in the Fred Leuchter documentary he didn't), and I found that a little hard to get used to, but he does COPIOUS talking heads -- in fact, his documentaries basically ARE talking heads plus archival footage and photos. So the filmmaker is not literally explaining what's going on, but he's showing you and allowing his subjects to explain.
This movie had no talking heads and no narration, and is full of things I didn't understand but would like to have understood. What are the leaves the women were chewing? Why do they do it? Where does Tari go to school -- is it a Christian school? Is there one nearby? Does she go to a Muslim school? How does everyone feel about that? How do they treat her? After the fire the mosque PA system broadcasts a request that the neighborhood women cook for the people displaced by the fire (how many people, for how long, displaced where -- no clue), and it shows the family cooking -- are they cooking for the fire victims as the mosque asked, even though they're Christian? Do they resent that the mosque is the one to do social organizing like that? When the village moves the house of the grandmother's family to a new foundation, why do they do that? They move it quite a distance -- what for? Was the location change for a reason? How do they make the new foundation? Does it cost money? How many people live in the house? What are their names? What relation are they to Rumidja (the grandmother)? Later Rumidja and her friend look for work in the fields and can't find any. What will they do if they can't find work? Will they not be able to eat? What are the socioeconomic reasons behind their not being able to find work? Is it because they're old? What does the family do for money in Jakarta, for that matter? Nobody is shown working.
And there's the whole matter of the son converting to Islam, which leads to one of the most bizarre scenes in the movie. He's buddying around with somebody (after converting), who asks if he's been circumcised. He says yes, and offers to prove it, and shows part of a penis-looking thing sticking out of his pants, which then turns out to be a fake penis. Or like a couple inches of one. They laugh and toss it around. What. The. Hell? Why do they have a fake circumcised penis? Is it really a root vegetable or something? Is the circumcision issue so important that these things are around to fake out the imams? You don't see it very clearly, and I can't tell what it's made of or what in the fuck is going on, in general. Is circumcision, in fact, a thing you do if you're Muslim? I didn't even know that, and maybe I'm ignorant but...I'm really not, and I don't think knowing Muslims are circumcised is something you can necessarily assume of your audience. Basically, YOU NEVER KNOW WHAT IS GOING ON IN THIS MOVIE. You get surface glimpses of it, but you never know what the subjects are thinking, because nobody ever asks them; they don't often change facial expression, which may be because cameras are on them all the time; and you don't have any kind of context for any of it because the movie doesn't give you any.
I find a certain kind of fun in trying to decipher clues and put things together and develop a picture of what's going on. I don't mind when a movie doesn't explain stuff to me right away. But this movie...never does. It felt unfinished, unedited even. I didn't get a good sense of the people, who remained remote and inaccessible throughout. I didn't get a good sense of either of the primary locations. I didn't get a good sense of the country or the culture -- I got snippets, with the Muslim/Christian thing, but snippets is all it was. I left this movie unsatisfied and feeling almost rejected, as if the movie and its subjects were impatient with me and didn't really want me around anyway.
I wonder on reflection if the point of the movie was that, in a living situation like the kind they had, there is no time for reflection or deeper meaning or anything other than matter-of-fact getting on with things -- the people go about their lives and take things at surface value and don't have the luxury of digging deeper. There's a fire, there's no work in the fields, your kid converts to Islam, you buy a couch and then lose it again, the call to prayer goes off seventy bazillion times, there are trains and people getting on them and walking on railroad bridges near them, and you just go on living your life day in and day out, and it can be a grind, but it's your life. So, what's up, Western viewers, what you see is what you get and we're not going to sit down and spell it out for you -- it's our life and it is what it is. But if that was what they were going for, it seems a long way to slog through a not particularly illuminating movie to get to that revelation.
Next up I had The Bear, which is...about a bear, but I didn't feel like it so I moved up My Neighbors The Yamadas, which is made by Isao Takahata, a pal and colleague of Miyazaki's. He also made Grave of the Fireflies, which was unbelievably depressing, but this one is a comedy and I've been wanting to see it for a while and, frankly, I need something to clear the palate.
(Keep in mind, by the way, that I have not been to film school and am not qualified to analyze a film in any kind of legitimate way. These are just my impressions, and my context is other movies I've watched and that's about it. So I don't know what I'm talking about, is what I'm saying. This movie was apparently at Sundance and won festival awards and stuff, so, make of that what you will.)
Thinking a movie like this sucks doesn't happen to me very often. Immerse me in any kind of world I'm not familiar with and I'm usually happy. This is why I like documentaries (immerse me in the world of inner-city high-school basketball, or the world of corrupt high finance, or the world of trying to make a movie of Don Quixote), and foreign films (immerse me in a story that takes place in rural China, or Iran, or among Inuits in Nunavut), and John McPhee articles (barges, coal trains, chalk caves).
Foreign documentary features two of these things: a group of people engaged in activities I'm not familiar with, set in a place I'm not familiar with. Usually this is a prescription for a movie that stays with me for a long time. Children Underground was indelible and horrible, Promises was heartbreaking, Born into Brothels was fascinating (and very reminiscent of Salaam Bombay! -- not actually a documentary, but filmed on location in Bombay slums with Bombay street kids as the actors and shot by a director, Mira Nair, who up until that point was mainly a documentary filmmaker -- watch that movie if you liked Born into Brothels, and watch the extras too, because the story of filming the movie is half the movie as far as I'm concerned). (And I just realized all those movies focused in kids, so...huh.) So I was pretty psyched to settle down with this one.
And about 20 minutes in I realized I was...bored. And I realized why, more or less. This movie is basically unadorned video of a family in Indonesia hanging around and going about their business, interspersed with artsy-ish camera angles. There's no narration, and no talking heads, and no explanatory material of any kind. There are subtitles, and apart from that you might well be watching someone's home videos.
And not much...happens. I am normally the LAST person to complain about movie in which nothing happens. See Totoro. And I get annoyed on reality shows when they whip up some "drama" that gets in the way of actually watching them design an outfit or *cough* model or whatever they're doing on whatever stupid reality show I'm watching. I'm always psyched when the "villain" finally gets voted off because maybe we can have some damn peace and quiet around here without all the shenanigans -- and then I'm always surprised and annoyed when another "villain" emerges. I hate shenanigans, I hate action, I like talking and slowness and meandering-ness and ponderous shots of a leaf floating on a lake or something.
But, seriously, nothing happens in this movie. Well, stuff happens, but not very much of it, and although I'm sure it's meaningful to the people experiencing it it's not framed in a very meaningful way. There's the grandmother, who is raising her young granddaughter, and she has two sons (the granddaughter's mother died -- it's not mentioned when or how), and they live in Jakarta. The family is Christian, which is sort of meant to be the thrust of the movie because the majority of people around them are Muslim. So you see the grandmother praying with her granddaughter, and one of the sons complaining about having to confess his sins to his elders, which is...apparently a Muslim thing. The grandmother is thinking about moving back to her native village. She bought a couch with money borrowed from a money-lending woman, who hits her up for payments while creepily smiling and eventually repossesses the couch. There is a fire at one point in the village, and everybody helps to put it out. About midway through the movie, one of the sons is revealed to have a Muslim girlfriend, whom he wants to marry, so he converts to Islam and marries her (and then we never see her again -- which is OK because we'd only briefly seen her once before). At the end they go visit the grandmother's native village and she decides to stay and she does. The granddaughter is sad. The end.
It's not only that nothing happens. I could be very happy watching a movie about the quiet dramas of people's lives. But...this movie is structured so weirdly. I think it's trying to be avant-garde, halfheartedly and intermittently, but it doesn't go anywhere. The opening shot is of a small bright shape turning around and getting closer and closer. When it gets close enough we see that it's the opening of a railroad tunnel, and we're in a train coming out of the tunnel. Except, the tunnel could not have been spinning around really, unless the train is a roller coaster, which it isn't, so having it spin and then resolve into a train tunnel just seems...pointlessly artsy. There are a lot of KA-RAAAAZY shots, like under a drum (that I think at one point is juxtaposed with the railroad tunnel), and then out from inside the drum and slowly up the drummer's body to his face. But like...an Indonesian guy is banging a drum, and some Dutch guy with a camera is crawling under there, filming inside the drum, and then pulling out and moving the camera to the guy's tummy for like five minutes, and then up to his face, and the guy never looks at the camera or stops what he's doing. This is (a) not that visually exciting (it looks like...a camera inside a drum), (b) kind of needy as far as lingering on everything forever and being like "LOOK AT MY COOL SHOT WITH THE DRUM AND LOOK AT THIS DUDE'S TUMMY, IT IS LIKE SO BIG AND STUFF AND IT TOTALLY MOVES IN RHYTHM TO THE DRUM-BEATING, OH INDONESIA AND YOUR CULTURE, YOU ARE JUST SO EXOTIC," and (c) clearly staged, because this unsullied innocent Indonesian guy WOULD be looking at the camera if he hadn't been specifically told not to, especially when it's INSIDE HIS DRUM and then in his face. So it's very self-conscious.
And there is a LOT of that in this movie, and it gets tiring. There's one shot of old women chewing leaves that goes on forever. There's a CRAZY bit where a guy is walking along a railroad bridge -- which is shown from far-off shots and is GORGEOUS with scenery and immenseness and all that -- and it looks like the camera guy must be hanging off the edge to get the shot. It's terrifying because the guy is just walking barefoot on the very edge of this bridge with a big shirt flopping around and the wind blowing and I'm scared of heights so I could barely watch it (and I've seen Stand By Me so I know what happens when you walk on a railroad bridge). And they kept intercutting it with shots of a train coming. Suspense building! And then they abandon that. Same track? Same day? No idea. Not that I was all "YEAH, THIS DUDE IS TOTALLY GONNA GET HIT BY A TRAIN, WOOOO," but it just -- ends, and doesn't seem to relate to anything else in the movie.
And my least favorite thing of this sort was: There's a fire, as I mentioned, and one of the sons is in with the rest of the neighborhood trying to put it out. It's hard to tell what the result is because I don't know what the building looked like before the fire, and they don't really show how it looks after, and they don't show the end of the fire being put out or if it just burned itself out or what, and they don't explain what the building is or how the fire started or anything else because THEY DON'T EXPLAIN ANYTHING IN THIS MOVIE. So later in the movie, the son is sleeping on a mattress on the floor, and the camera guy must be literally climbing on his mattress to get the camera to spin around him (again making me suspicious that it was staged because he doesn't wake up), and THEY FADE INTO A FLASHBACK OF THE FIRE. As if he's dreaming about the fire. COME ON, PEOPLE. It's like this movie vacillates between verité and gritty realism (so gritty and real that they don't feel it necessary to provide any context), and some kind of America's Next Top Model-esque cutesy story-editing.
And even without the flashback, the camera at awkward angles all around the guy's mattress is like the drum and (to a lesser extent) the bridge, because -- all I can think is "How are they getting this shot?", but not in an admiring way so much as a "What in the hell are they doing with the camera, and why are they bothering?" way. It must have been hard to get that shot, but -- who cares? I guess? Because it's kind of pointless. All I can see is the strain and effort of it. Some guy with a camera is climbing all over this guy's mattress and...that's about it. Whaddya want, a medal? (heh)
Despite the camera gymnastics, visually this movie is (to my untrained eyes) nothing special either. A lot of it is on video and it just looks like...video. The rural scenes are sort of flat, and the urban scenes are just...video-y, and though there are dutiful shots of rooftops and of cats walking down the street (one cat had poop hanging off its fur, which was one of the more indelible images of the movie for me, partly because my cat and I recently went through a situation to which I was able to relate this shot, ahem), you don't get a SENSE of Jakarta, or of the inside of the house, or anything. I got more of a sense of Delhi in Monsoon Wedding, and that took place mainly at an upper-middle-class family's home and barely showed the rest of Delhi. There's stuff on the walls, there's food being prepared, and it's hard to really get a sense of any of it. This is an exotic location, and it's interesting to watch for that reason. But the movie basically says "We're filming in Jakarta" and doesn't go beyond that.
I get that this movie didn't want to be a traditional documentary. But I feel like documentaries are structured the way they are for a reason, and if you're going to eschew conventions you're going to have to make up for them in other ways. Errol Morris doesn't do voiceover narration (at least in the Fred Leuchter documentary he didn't), and I found that a little hard to get used to, but he does COPIOUS talking heads -- in fact, his documentaries basically ARE talking heads plus archival footage and photos. So the filmmaker is not literally explaining what's going on, but he's showing you and allowing his subjects to explain.
This movie had no talking heads and no narration, and is full of things I didn't understand but would like to have understood. What are the leaves the women were chewing? Why do they do it? Where does Tari go to school -- is it a Christian school? Is there one nearby? Does she go to a Muslim school? How does everyone feel about that? How do they treat her? After the fire the mosque PA system broadcasts a request that the neighborhood women cook for the people displaced by the fire (how many people, for how long, displaced where -- no clue), and it shows the family cooking -- are they cooking for the fire victims as the mosque asked, even though they're Christian? Do they resent that the mosque is the one to do social organizing like that? When the village moves the house of the grandmother's family to a new foundation, why do they do that? They move it quite a distance -- what for? Was the location change for a reason? How do they make the new foundation? Does it cost money? How many people live in the house? What are their names? What relation are they to Rumidja (the grandmother)? Later Rumidja and her friend look for work in the fields and can't find any. What will they do if they can't find work? Will they not be able to eat? What are the socioeconomic reasons behind their not being able to find work? Is it because they're old? What does the family do for money in Jakarta, for that matter? Nobody is shown working.
And there's the whole matter of the son converting to Islam, which leads to one of the most bizarre scenes in the movie. He's buddying around with somebody (after converting), who asks if he's been circumcised. He says yes, and offers to prove it, and shows part of a penis-looking thing sticking out of his pants, which then turns out to be a fake penis. Or like a couple inches of one. They laugh and toss it around. What. The. Hell? Why do they have a fake circumcised penis? Is it really a root vegetable or something? Is the circumcision issue so important that these things are around to fake out the imams? You don't see it very clearly, and I can't tell what it's made of or what in the fuck is going on, in general. Is circumcision, in fact, a thing you do if you're Muslim? I didn't even know that, and maybe I'm ignorant but...I'm really not, and I don't think knowing Muslims are circumcised is something you can necessarily assume of your audience. Basically, YOU NEVER KNOW WHAT IS GOING ON IN THIS MOVIE. You get surface glimpses of it, but you never know what the subjects are thinking, because nobody ever asks them; they don't often change facial expression, which may be because cameras are on them all the time; and you don't have any kind of context for any of it because the movie doesn't give you any.
I find a certain kind of fun in trying to decipher clues and put things together and develop a picture of what's going on. I don't mind when a movie doesn't explain stuff to me right away. But this movie...never does. It felt unfinished, unedited even. I didn't get a good sense of the people, who remained remote and inaccessible throughout. I didn't get a good sense of either of the primary locations. I didn't get a good sense of the country or the culture -- I got snippets, with the Muslim/Christian thing, but snippets is all it was. I left this movie unsatisfied and feeling almost rejected, as if the movie and its subjects were impatient with me and didn't really want me around anyway.
I wonder on reflection if the point of the movie was that, in a living situation like the kind they had, there is no time for reflection or deeper meaning or anything other than matter-of-fact getting on with things -- the people go about their lives and take things at surface value and don't have the luxury of digging deeper. There's a fire, there's no work in the fields, your kid converts to Islam, you buy a couch and then lose it again, the call to prayer goes off seventy bazillion times, there are trains and people getting on them and walking on railroad bridges near them, and you just go on living your life day in and day out, and it can be a grind, but it's your life. So, what's up, Western viewers, what you see is what you get and we're not going to sit down and spell it out for you -- it's our life and it is what it is. But if that was what they were going for, it seems a long way to slog through a not particularly illuminating movie to get to that revelation.
Next up I had The Bear, which is...about a bear, but I didn't feel like it so I moved up My Neighbors The Yamadas, which is made by Isao Takahata, a pal and colleague of Miyazaki's. He also made Grave of the Fireflies, which was unbelievably depressing, but this one is a comedy and I've been wanting to see it for a while and, frankly, I need something to clear the palate.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Three things I did yesterday
1. AL GORE!
I love him. Sitting in the cold for an hour and a half was COMPLETELY worth it. Al, I -- no, there is too much. When I think about the world and how it might look if certain historical events had had a different outcome -- well, I don't like to think about it. So Al Gore makes me feel sad and helpless. But mostly I love him. Also, my dad went to high school with him, so if I chanced to meet him I was totally going to throw that out there. (My dad was a year or two older than he was though.) And there WAS a possibility I might run into him, since the office down the hall from ours receives many fancy dignitary types and it was not at all out of the question that Al Gore might be wandering down there at some point (though it is pretty much out of the question that I'd be allowed to be wandering down there at the same time, what with security and with Al Gore not randomly being left alone to hang out in the hallway and stuff -- but I can dream, OK?). But it was not to be. But he makes a great speech. Also: soup, apple crisp, and enviro-swag!
2. Cinderella!
I have not been to the ballet in a while. I've actually seen Cinderella once before, when I was quite little, and my (middle) sister was even littler (my other sister didn't exist). I remember being very bored, and I think my sister was even more bored. Heh. But last night I really enjoyed it, perhaps because I'm approximately 27 years older than I was the last time I saw it. We had FRIGGING KICKASS seats -- row D. The last time I was in row D at the Wang Center was when we saw Annie when I was eight. My mom had to go to the box office at Sears (unless I'm remembering this wrong, but my memory is that it was inside Sears) and talk to the ticket person for like half an hour (again, it seemed that way to me at least) and I think there was somehow wondrously a cancellation and we got amazing seats in Row D. I still remember exactly where I was sitting and exactly the view, and how we were almost condemned to Row V. It was a miracle. I was fully obsessed with Annie at the time and I wasn't disappointed.
Our seats for Cinderella were rather easy to get and freakishly cheap, which is probably because nobody wants to go to the ballet. Sad.
Oh, another thing -- there were some little kids there (at least one in a floor-length fancy Cinderella dress), and: THE WANG NOW PROVIDES BOOSTER SEATS. Do you KNOW how I would have KILLED for a booster seat each and every time I was at the Wang as a kid? (I'm starting to make myself sound like Eloise -- I went to quite a few theatrical productions growing up, because I was lucky enough that my dad is into that sort of thing and wanted to share it with us, but it's not like I was going every week or something. I guess we maybe went once or twice a year on average. And it was pretty much always the Wang, unless it was the Shubert. Or the Colonial, once or twice.) (It's called the Citi Performing Arts Center now, and I guess the theater itself is the Wang Theatre. What the hell ever.)
Anyway. I was a tiny child, I'm still a rather tiny adult, and I spent many cumulative hours trying to see around grownups and their stupid tall heads while at the Wang (which is also notorious for having basically no seats with decent views, largely because it was originally built as a movie theater). Sitting on my leg, sitting on my coat, sitting on my leg and my coat. Why didn't I have a booster seat? Kids today have it so easy. Damn you, universe!
At least I could see for Annie. That was the important one. Though still not perfectly, because, as I mentioned, the Wang is really a terrible theater.
3. Cold. Sooooo cooooooold.
I did a lot of sitting outside, as I mentioned, and a lot of walking downtown, and a lot of waiting for the bus. I know this is not strictly a thing I did yesterday, but it dominated my thoughts quite a bit. Brrrr. And it's not even that cold -- I think it got down to like 45 yesterday. My blood hasn't thickened up yet. That's what I like to tell myself. Boo, winter.
So, anyway. That was my Wednesday.
I love him. Sitting in the cold for an hour and a half was COMPLETELY worth it. Al, I -- no, there is too much. When I think about the world and how it might look if certain historical events had had a different outcome -- well, I don't like to think about it. So Al Gore makes me feel sad and helpless. But mostly I love him. Also, my dad went to high school with him, so if I chanced to meet him I was totally going to throw that out there. (My dad was a year or two older than he was though.) And there WAS a possibility I might run into him, since the office down the hall from ours receives many fancy dignitary types and it was not at all out of the question that Al Gore might be wandering down there at some point (though it is pretty much out of the question that I'd be allowed to be wandering down there at the same time, what with security and with Al Gore not randomly being left alone to hang out in the hallway and stuff -- but I can dream, OK?). But it was not to be. But he makes a great speech. Also: soup, apple crisp, and enviro-swag!
2. Cinderella!
I have not been to the ballet in a while. I've actually seen Cinderella once before, when I was quite little, and my (middle) sister was even littler (my other sister didn't exist). I remember being very bored, and I think my sister was even more bored. Heh. But last night I really enjoyed it, perhaps because I'm approximately 27 years older than I was the last time I saw it. We had FRIGGING KICKASS seats -- row D. The last time I was in row D at the Wang Center was when we saw Annie when I was eight. My mom had to go to the box office at Sears (unless I'm remembering this wrong, but my memory is that it was inside Sears) and talk to the ticket person for like half an hour (again, it seemed that way to me at least) and I think there was somehow wondrously a cancellation and we got amazing seats in Row D. I still remember exactly where I was sitting and exactly the view, and how we were almost condemned to Row V. It was a miracle. I was fully obsessed with Annie at the time and I wasn't disappointed.
Our seats for Cinderella were rather easy to get and freakishly cheap, which is probably because nobody wants to go to the ballet. Sad.
Oh, another thing -- there were some little kids there (at least one in a floor-length fancy Cinderella dress), and: THE WANG NOW PROVIDES BOOSTER SEATS. Do you KNOW how I would have KILLED for a booster seat each and every time I was at the Wang as a kid? (I'm starting to make myself sound like Eloise -- I went to quite a few theatrical productions growing up, because I was lucky enough that my dad is into that sort of thing and wanted to share it with us, but it's not like I was going every week or something. I guess we maybe went once or twice a year on average. And it was pretty much always the Wang, unless it was the Shubert. Or the Colonial, once or twice.) (It's called the Citi Performing Arts Center now, and I guess the theater itself is the Wang Theatre. What the hell ever.)
Anyway. I was a tiny child, I'm still a rather tiny adult, and I spent many cumulative hours trying to see around grownups and their stupid tall heads while at the Wang (which is also notorious for having basically no seats with decent views, largely because it was originally built as a movie theater). Sitting on my leg, sitting on my coat, sitting on my leg and my coat. Why didn't I have a booster seat? Kids today have it so easy. Damn you, universe!
At least I could see for Annie. That was the important one. Though still not perfectly, because, as I mentioned, the Wang is really a terrible theater.
3. Cold. Sooooo cooooooold.
I did a lot of sitting outside, as I mentioned, and a lot of walking downtown, and a lot of waiting for the bus. I know this is not strictly a thing I did yesterday, but it dominated my thoughts quite a bit. Brrrr. And it's not even that cold -- I think it got down to like 45 yesterday. My blood hasn't thickened up yet. That's what I like to tell myself. Boo, winter.
So, anyway. That was my Wednesday.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Gym update
So after that incredibly long, complainy post and some grumpiness, I decided to try something different at the gym. The answer? Uphill walking. I would be lying if I said I didn't partly get this idea from Bob on The Biggest Loser. Yes, The Biggest Loser. Listen, Jillian is awesome, OK? And it's very satisfying to watch everybody get healthier. Even though it's one of the stupidest reality shows ever made with its insistence on being TWO HOURS LONG, EVERY WEEK and its habit of building up suspense for like 30 seconds before every commercial break and then repeating all that suspense after every commercial break. THANK GOD FOR DVR, is all I have to say. And it's full of hilarious product placement. Which I actually enjoy, especially if they make Jillian do it, because she so clearly detests it. The funniest thing of the season last year was when some of the Losers got back to the house and there was a basket of popcorn (some conspicuously branded popcorn, I'm sure, but I don't remember what brand it was -- HA ha), and a "note" from "Jillian" that said "Dear losers, enjoy this delicious Pop Secret [or whatever] popcorn. It only has 100 calories!!!1! It will make you healthy. Love, your qualified, smart trainer, Jillian Michaels." And you just KNOW that she refused to do it on camera and so they faked up this note from her and she was watching it at home and was like "AW FOR FUCK'S SAKE." Heeee. Extra Sugar Free Fruit Sensations Gum, anyone? No? Subway then, perhaps? How about some Brita?
Uh, anyway. Some lady on The Biggest Loser was having problems with her knees or something, and in one of the few actually useful pieces of information ever presented on this show, Bob The Trainer Who Is Not Jillian suggested that if she did uphill walking instead of running it would also burn a lot of calories. So I was like, "Hmm." And my workout-buddy pal at work found me this. Which, to sum up, is: Increase the incline by 2 every 2 minutes, until you get to 15 -- go at 15 for one minute -- and then decrease it by 2 every 2 minutes.
So I did that. And, did I get a workout? YES, I WOULD SAY SO. I was really panting up there in the 12s and 14s. And sweating buckets. And bending over like a caveman, but form will come later, people. And according to the treadmill, I burned about 100 calories MORE than I was doing with my (sad) running intervals. And yet, though I was breathing heavily, I never got that feeling of being OUT of breath like I do when running. And therefore I don't dread it, because that's what I don't like about running -- being out of breath.
I should do the running too, because it's good for me (the parts of me that are not my knees, at least). But in the meantime, I'm actually kind of ENJOYING the hill climbing. Because, as I said, I can walk forever. I actually went to the gym on Friday -- because I was looking forward to doing the hills again. And I haven't gone on a Friday, or gone to the gym three times in one week, in a while.
I have a lot of room for growth with this routine, because I can walk faster at the higher inclines, plus I could spend less time on the lower ones and get to the higher ones faster and do them for longer. (I already skip the FIVE MINUTES of walking at 2.0 and .5 incline -- PLEASE. /Steve Martin voice)
So things are looking up at the gym. And it's all thanks to Extra Sugar Free Fruit Sensations Gum! Now in Island Cooler!
Uh, anyway. Some lady on The Biggest Loser was having problems with her knees or something, and in one of the few actually useful pieces of information ever presented on this show, Bob The Trainer Who Is Not Jillian suggested that if she did uphill walking instead of running it would also burn a lot of calories. So I was like, "Hmm." And my workout-buddy pal at work found me this. Which, to sum up, is: Increase the incline by 2 every 2 minutes, until you get to 15 -- go at 15 for one minute -- and then decrease it by 2 every 2 minutes.
So I did that. And, did I get a workout? YES, I WOULD SAY SO. I was really panting up there in the 12s and 14s. And sweating buckets. And bending over like a caveman, but form will come later, people. And according to the treadmill, I burned about 100 calories MORE than I was doing with my (sad) running intervals. And yet, though I was breathing heavily, I never got that feeling of being OUT of breath like I do when running. And therefore I don't dread it, because that's what I don't like about running -- being out of breath.
I should do the running too, because it's good for me (the parts of me that are not my knees, at least). But in the meantime, I'm actually kind of ENJOYING the hill climbing. Because, as I said, I can walk forever. I actually went to the gym on Friday -- because I was looking forward to doing the hills again. And I haven't gone on a Friday, or gone to the gym three times in one week, in a while.
I have a lot of room for growth with this routine, because I can walk faster at the higher inclines, plus I could spend less time on the lower ones and get to the higher ones faster and do them for longer. (I already skip the FIVE MINUTES of walking at 2.0 and .5 incline -- PLEASE. /Steve Martin voice)
So things are looking up at the gym. And it's all thanks to Extra Sugar Free Fruit Sensations Gum! Now in Island Cooler!
Monday, October 6, 2008
Stupid gym
So I go to the gym. I try to go three days a week but really I only go two days a week.
Luckily for me, Harvard lets us have super duper cheap gym access. This is the only reason I gave the gym a shot. I think I pay $20 a year or something -- so it basically seemed like a waste of money NOT to go to the gym. I go to the Law School gym, which is the awesome one, with TVs on the machines and a cleaner locker room and hordes of law students instead of hordes of undergrads.
At the gym I do weights first -- I like the machines, because I don't know what I'm doing and so I get on the machine and do whatever you're supposed to do on that machine for 12 to 15 reps at the heaviest weight I can do and then get off. A couple of them -- abs, inner/outer thigh thing, behind-the-leg lying-on-your-stomach-and-kicking thing -- I do twice. Other ones I do include a bunch of arm ones, the leg press, and the one where you sit on a stool and twist around (I hate that one). I do recall what many of them are called -- shoulder press, camber curl, triceps extension -- but damned if I can remember which machine is called which. I have it all written down. Also, who cares.
After weights I do the treadmill. I did the elliptical for a while, but it gave me gigantic muscley thighs. This is not something I'm looking to achieve particularly. One thing I am looking to achieve is better endurance. I basically pant for like five minutes if I have to run after the bus, and that ain't good. I can walk forever, but running I'm not good at. I figured that being able to run for longer than 30 seconds without feeling like I'm going to die is probably a good thing. So I decided to go for the treadmill.
After getting past the initial roadblocks (one, having confidence that I would not fall off the treadmill; two, getting used to feeling completely seasick and almost falling over after getting off the treadmill), I'm on a slow but steady path of improvement. At first, I just walked. I walked fast, but I walked. Then I started running a little bit. And I do mean a little bit. First I was running for a total of six minutes -- two minutes at a time. At a speed of around 4.7, whatever that means -- 4.7 mph? I have no idea. The machine says 4.7. (It's all relative -- I'm not trying to get somewhere in a particular amount of time, so I don't care how fast I'm going except in relation to how fast I was going last time.) Yes, that is very very slow, but keep in mind that I have short legs.
Then over the summer I ran a bit with my sister -- who, with an injured knee that made her have to do basically nothing, was slow enough to slum it with me if I really pushed myself -- and she pointed out that I didn't have to run FAST (again -- for me), that I could basically go at a crawl and still be going up and down and still get the cardio going but be able to keep it up for longer. So I did that while we were on vacation, and one time I ran (or "ran") for 17 minutes and was pretty proud of myself. I decided that I could run for a lot longer on the treadmill if I did it a little slower. So when I got back I slowed down and lengthened the times I was running -- I was doing 12 minutes for a while (three sets of four minutes, with walking in between) and now I'm doing a total of 14 minutes, five and then five and then four. (I skipped 13. Yes, it IS a superstitious thing, thanks very much.) And I've gotten faster -- speedwise, I'm about up to where I was when I was doing six minutes. I start at 4.8 and usually go down a little during each five minutes -- the slowest I went today was 4.4.
What do I want out of this? Well, mostly I'm doing it because it's good for me. I used to get more exercise in my daily life -- when I was in college I schlepped around all over the place, and for two years I lived in an apartment where I had a half-mile-plus walk to the bus every morning (and the same walk back, of course). It was actually when I moved that I thought, now that I get zero exercise it's time to actually make an effort. So I want to be able to say "yes" when my doctor asks if I exercise regularly. I want to get my heart rate going and all that. I want to improve my endurance, as I mentioned. I want to have some muscle definition -- I don't want to be Madonna or anything, but I'd like to not be flabby. (My doctor actually complimented me on my strong stomach muscles. While I was getting a pelvic. Awkward! But nice to hear.) So I'm doing all this -- strength training is giving me some muscles, and the treadmill is upping my heart rate and all that. I am getting better at endurance, clearly -- I wouldn't have been able to run for a straight five minutes a few months ago. But there's one thing that's not going as planned.
I was always one of those kids who could eat whatever they wanted and not gain weight. I weighed 95 pounds (I'm 5'0") from about age 13 through college. Then, after college, the ol' post-college metabolism slowdown kicked in. I very quickly went up to 105 and stayed there, pretty much, for the next few years. I didn't give blood on Sept. 11 because you have to weigh more than 110 to give blood.
These days that would not be a problem. I weighed myself at the gym when I first started and I was 114. So, you know, that's still not overweight. I have no need to be super skinny. I wouldn't mind losing ten pounds, because I feel like a fireplug sometimes with the being short and all, but weight loss wasn't why I started the gym. And I don't eat that well -- I try to eat vegetables and all that, and not eat complete crap, and I don't do stuff like eat a bag of doughnuts or four Whoppers or whatever, and I don't drink soda at all, but I could eat a lot better. Mostly I eat processed crap because I can't cook, and I eat a lot of white flour (and I DETEST brown rice with every fiber of my being, because IT IS NOT RICE, it's something else that tastes completely different, and if I have to not eat rice I DON'T WANT TO GO ON). And I snack and I eat bagels and all that. If I were serious about losing weight I'd have to start addressing all that stuff in a serious way, and not just eating half the box of macaroni and cheese instead of the entire box, which was my solution back when I started gaining weight after college. (Oh, entire box of macaroni and cheese, YOU ARE SO WONDERFUL AND DELICIOUS.)
Here's the problem. In the 15 months or so that I've been going to the gym, I have not lost any weight. I went from basically no physical activity to doing the weights and the elliptical (first) and the treadmill (now). I have, as I said, gotten better on the treadmill. True, when I ditched the elliptical for the treadmill I was, according to the treadmill calorie counter (which I'm not convinced is a hundred percent accurate), burning fewer calories, probably because I wasn't running. I'm still burning fewer calories than I was on the elliptical, but I'm getting back up there. And I'm certainly getting more exercise than I WAS.
And I know, muscle weighs more than fat, and all that. I'm not fatter than I was -- I think I fit most of my clothes less flabbily than I used to. But I'm not only not losing weight, I KEEP GAINING WEIGHT. I was 116 for a long time (I don't have a scale at home but I weigh myself at the gym once a week or so). Lately it's been creeping up to 118. Then I weighed myself today and it was more like 120. I HAVE NEVER WEIGHED 120 IN MY ENTIRE LIFE. Unless I was holding my cat. It's...dismaying, to say the least. Again, it's not that I think I'm fat -- but I'm doing all this exercise, and I feel that, at SOME point, I should be done with the gaining-muscle stage and start the CALORIE-BURNING stage. And have muscles AND lose weight. Or at least STAY AT THE SAME WEIGHT. It can't be that I'm going to get musclier and musclier (that is so not a word) and keep on gaining weight forever. One reason I quit the elliptical was that I wanted the rest of my legs to get some exercise and not just my thighs -- and I wanted to work more on endurance, and I couldn't get out of breath on the elliptical before my legs were hurting to the point that I didn't want to go any harder. I did play with the settings, quite a bit, but the elliptical wasn't doing what I wanted it to. So I've actually lost some muscle in my legs since I switched to the treadmill, though maybe I've gained some in my calves. I don't know! Apparently I need to pinch and measure every part of myself to be able to determine whether I'm wasting my time or not.
Again, I know that if I want to lose weight, I'm making a poor effort, and that I COULD take steps to cause that to happen. It's not that I feel I can't lose weight. It's that I used to not exercise at all, and now I've been going to the gym twice or three times a week for over a year, while making half-assed attempts to eat more healthily (read: not eating any worse than I was, at the very least), and I have gained six pounds.
I know my metabolism will keep slowing down as I get older, but it seems a little mean that it would happen just when I was finally trying to be healthier.
In conclusion: Stupid gym. Also, anyone who says running makes you feel good is full of shit. It makes me feel good that I did it and that I'm not a lazy slug, but that's about it. Runner's high? Haven't seen it. Endorphins? When I get to go home and I don't have to go to the gym for another couple of days, yes. During the running? No. I also recently realized that I like having a slow, wall-of-sound-y song playing while I run, preferably with no beat, because it better enables me to space out and get through it by hypnotizing myself into a coma. If I have a fast, get-psyched song playing it usually just annoys me and stresses me out. I like having that while I'm WALKING -- I will get excited to go faster if I have a song that I like with a faster beat -- but while I'm running I just want to drool on myself (not literally) and not notice that I'm out of breath (I really, really hate being out of breath) and wake up when the five minutes are over.
In conclusion again: I am a natural couch potato. Gillian Anderson was once on Letterman and had recently quit smoking and was waxing nostalgic about her smoking days. "I was GREAT at it," she said mournfully (this is from memory and therefore paraphrased). "I was a GREAT smoker." I don't smoke, but I am a great lounger. Man, I can sit still for hours and not do anything but read, watch TV and noodle around on the computer. I am so fucking great at that. This moving fast thing, not so much. It's good for me and I'll do it, but it's never going to be fun for me (again, I quite like walking -- but anything beyond that). Maybe I need to pick a new form of exercise, but I don't know what that would be and while I'm figuring it out I'll probably gain another six pounds. Sigh.
Luckily for me, Harvard lets us have super duper cheap gym access. This is the only reason I gave the gym a shot. I think I pay $20 a year or something -- so it basically seemed like a waste of money NOT to go to the gym. I go to the Law School gym, which is the awesome one, with TVs on the machines and a cleaner locker room and hordes of law students instead of hordes of undergrads.
At the gym I do weights first -- I like the machines, because I don't know what I'm doing and so I get on the machine and do whatever you're supposed to do on that machine for 12 to 15 reps at the heaviest weight I can do and then get off. A couple of them -- abs, inner/outer thigh thing, behind-the-leg lying-on-your-stomach-and-kicking thing -- I do twice. Other ones I do include a bunch of arm ones, the leg press, and the one where you sit on a stool and twist around (I hate that one). I do recall what many of them are called -- shoulder press, camber curl, triceps extension -- but damned if I can remember which machine is called which. I have it all written down. Also, who cares.
After weights I do the treadmill. I did the elliptical for a while, but it gave me gigantic muscley thighs. This is not something I'm looking to achieve particularly. One thing I am looking to achieve is better endurance. I basically pant for like five minutes if I have to run after the bus, and that ain't good. I can walk forever, but running I'm not good at. I figured that being able to run for longer than 30 seconds without feeling like I'm going to die is probably a good thing. So I decided to go for the treadmill.
After getting past the initial roadblocks (one, having confidence that I would not fall off the treadmill; two, getting used to feeling completely seasick and almost falling over after getting off the treadmill), I'm on a slow but steady path of improvement. At first, I just walked. I walked fast, but I walked. Then I started running a little bit. And I do mean a little bit. First I was running for a total of six minutes -- two minutes at a time. At a speed of around 4.7, whatever that means -- 4.7 mph? I have no idea. The machine says 4.7. (It's all relative -- I'm not trying to get somewhere in a particular amount of time, so I don't care how fast I'm going except in relation to how fast I was going last time.) Yes, that is very very slow, but keep in mind that I have short legs.
Then over the summer I ran a bit with my sister -- who, with an injured knee that made her have to do basically nothing, was slow enough to slum it with me if I really pushed myself -- and she pointed out that I didn't have to run FAST (again -- for me), that I could basically go at a crawl and still be going up and down and still get the cardio going but be able to keep it up for longer. So I did that while we were on vacation, and one time I ran (or "ran") for 17 minutes and was pretty proud of myself. I decided that I could run for a lot longer on the treadmill if I did it a little slower. So when I got back I slowed down and lengthened the times I was running -- I was doing 12 minutes for a while (three sets of four minutes, with walking in between) and now I'm doing a total of 14 minutes, five and then five and then four. (I skipped 13. Yes, it IS a superstitious thing, thanks very much.) And I've gotten faster -- speedwise, I'm about up to where I was when I was doing six minutes. I start at 4.8 and usually go down a little during each five minutes -- the slowest I went today was 4.4.
What do I want out of this? Well, mostly I'm doing it because it's good for me. I used to get more exercise in my daily life -- when I was in college I schlepped around all over the place, and for two years I lived in an apartment where I had a half-mile-plus walk to the bus every morning (and the same walk back, of course). It was actually when I moved that I thought, now that I get zero exercise it's time to actually make an effort. So I want to be able to say "yes" when my doctor asks if I exercise regularly. I want to get my heart rate going and all that. I want to improve my endurance, as I mentioned. I want to have some muscle definition -- I don't want to be Madonna or anything, but I'd like to not be flabby. (My doctor actually complimented me on my strong stomach muscles. While I was getting a pelvic. Awkward! But nice to hear.) So I'm doing all this -- strength training is giving me some muscles, and the treadmill is upping my heart rate and all that. I am getting better at endurance, clearly -- I wouldn't have been able to run for a straight five minutes a few months ago. But there's one thing that's not going as planned.
I was always one of those kids who could eat whatever they wanted and not gain weight. I weighed 95 pounds (I'm 5'0") from about age 13 through college. Then, after college, the ol' post-college metabolism slowdown kicked in. I very quickly went up to 105 and stayed there, pretty much, for the next few years. I didn't give blood on Sept. 11 because you have to weigh more than 110 to give blood.
These days that would not be a problem. I weighed myself at the gym when I first started and I was 114. So, you know, that's still not overweight. I have no need to be super skinny. I wouldn't mind losing ten pounds, because I feel like a fireplug sometimes with the being short and all, but weight loss wasn't why I started the gym. And I don't eat that well -- I try to eat vegetables and all that, and not eat complete crap, and I don't do stuff like eat a bag of doughnuts or four Whoppers or whatever, and I don't drink soda at all, but I could eat a lot better. Mostly I eat processed crap because I can't cook, and I eat a lot of white flour (and I DETEST brown rice with every fiber of my being, because IT IS NOT RICE, it's something else that tastes completely different, and if I have to not eat rice I DON'T WANT TO GO ON). And I snack and I eat bagels and all that. If I were serious about losing weight I'd have to start addressing all that stuff in a serious way, and not just eating half the box of macaroni and cheese instead of the entire box, which was my solution back when I started gaining weight after college. (Oh, entire box of macaroni and cheese, YOU ARE SO WONDERFUL AND DELICIOUS.)
Here's the problem. In the 15 months or so that I've been going to the gym, I have not lost any weight. I went from basically no physical activity to doing the weights and the elliptical (first) and the treadmill (now). I have, as I said, gotten better on the treadmill. True, when I ditched the elliptical for the treadmill I was, according to the treadmill calorie counter (which I'm not convinced is a hundred percent accurate), burning fewer calories, probably because I wasn't running. I'm still burning fewer calories than I was on the elliptical, but I'm getting back up there. And I'm certainly getting more exercise than I WAS.
And I know, muscle weighs more than fat, and all that. I'm not fatter than I was -- I think I fit most of my clothes less flabbily than I used to. But I'm not only not losing weight, I KEEP GAINING WEIGHT. I was 116 for a long time (I don't have a scale at home but I weigh myself at the gym once a week or so). Lately it's been creeping up to 118. Then I weighed myself today and it was more like 120. I HAVE NEVER WEIGHED 120 IN MY ENTIRE LIFE. Unless I was holding my cat. It's...dismaying, to say the least. Again, it's not that I think I'm fat -- but I'm doing all this exercise, and I feel that, at SOME point, I should be done with the gaining-muscle stage and start the CALORIE-BURNING stage. And have muscles AND lose weight. Or at least STAY AT THE SAME WEIGHT. It can't be that I'm going to get musclier and musclier (that is so not a word) and keep on gaining weight forever. One reason I quit the elliptical was that I wanted the rest of my legs to get some exercise and not just my thighs -- and I wanted to work more on endurance, and I couldn't get out of breath on the elliptical before my legs were hurting to the point that I didn't want to go any harder. I did play with the settings, quite a bit, but the elliptical wasn't doing what I wanted it to. So I've actually lost some muscle in my legs since I switched to the treadmill, though maybe I've gained some in my calves. I don't know! Apparently I need to pinch and measure every part of myself to be able to determine whether I'm wasting my time or not.
Again, I know that if I want to lose weight, I'm making a poor effort, and that I COULD take steps to cause that to happen. It's not that I feel I can't lose weight. It's that I used to not exercise at all, and now I've been going to the gym twice or three times a week for over a year, while making half-assed attempts to eat more healthily (read: not eating any worse than I was, at the very least), and I have gained six pounds.
I know my metabolism will keep slowing down as I get older, but it seems a little mean that it would happen just when I was finally trying to be healthier.
In conclusion: Stupid gym. Also, anyone who says running makes you feel good is full of shit. It makes me feel good that I did it and that I'm not a lazy slug, but that's about it. Runner's high? Haven't seen it. Endorphins? When I get to go home and I don't have to go to the gym for another couple of days, yes. During the running? No. I also recently realized that I like having a slow, wall-of-sound-y song playing while I run, preferably with no beat, because it better enables me to space out and get through it by hypnotizing myself into a coma. If I have a fast, get-psyched song playing it usually just annoys me and stresses me out. I like having that while I'm WALKING -- I will get excited to go faster if I have a song that I like with a faster beat -- but while I'm running I just want to drool on myself (not literally) and not notice that I'm out of breath (I really, really hate being out of breath) and wake up when the five minutes are over.
In conclusion again: I am a natural couch potato. Gillian Anderson was once on Letterman and had recently quit smoking and was waxing nostalgic about her smoking days. "I was GREAT at it," she said mournfully (this is from memory and therefore paraphrased). "I was a GREAT smoker." I don't smoke, but I am a great lounger. Man, I can sit still for hours and not do anything but read, watch TV and noodle around on the computer. I am so fucking great at that. This moving fast thing, not so much. It's good for me and I'll do it, but it's never going to be fun for me (again, I quite like walking -- but anything beyond that). Maybe I need to pick a new form of exercise, but I don't know what that would be and while I'm figuring it out I'll probably gain another six pounds. Sigh.
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Infinity?
Really?
Then again, I guess "always" does more or less mean "infinity." So...good job, marketing? I guess.
Then again, I guess "always" does more or less mean "infinity." So...good job, marketing? I guess.
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