I just started reading about Hillary Clinton supporters charging heavy sexism in the media during her campaign.  I clicked the link thinking, "she was the front-runner, it was her race to lose, and she's battle-tested and strong - that's not sexism".  But towards the bottom of the first page, there are some serious brow-raising quotes from some distinguished (and some not) mass media heads.  Had comments been made about Obama that reflected race - "he's nothing but a black [anything]", for example - the country would have exploded.  So yes, there seemed/seems to be a double standard about gender, still.

Anysnizzle, it's been quite a while since I've been able to sit down and type up an opus that didn't involve fire.  It's partly been due to the fact that I've been working out (sort of) regularly, which is good.  It's also due in part to other non-active time consumers: World of Warcraft re-addiction, pleasantly slogging through The Wire, prank calling orphanages, etc.  So all in all it's a net loss, but the gym is directly lowering my Summer Sweat Levels, which is big win for me and anyone within arm-flailing-whiny-yelping-hissy-fit distance.

In fact, I've committed to some summer dietary changes.  Other than ingredient-based cut-backs, such as focusing on organics or cutting out anything made with baby seal, I've never really "dieted" before.  It's strange and unusual, and my alcoholism hates me for it.  Because: no beer for the summer.  So far, so good.  It's given me a chance to rediscover my passion for The Other White Booze, lady gin.  Other commitments include:

• No Mexican food
• No Mexican human trafficking
• Little to no bread
• No gorging meals (yes, this is a problem for me)
• No more steroids, HGH, or "enhancement" pills
• Lots more water during the day
  
• Lots less brandy during the day / morning
  

Amber has her own list, which is much more extensive.  Not because she's trying to lose more weight, but because she has much more of this thing I keep reading about called "willpower".  She's also planning on starting a temporary blog with photos of her in her bathing suit - seriously - which we've started snapping for since the beginning of the week.  The idea is public exposure leading to pressured reinforcement, which has helped a lot of people in the same situation.  So when the time is right, I will post the link here, and you, my dear followers, will click it, follow her progress, and vocally support and - if needed, chide - her.  The power of my literally tens of readers will whip her into shape in no time.

Anyfrazzle, let's work backwards.  Three weeks ago, one of my cousins from the UK, Megan - aka CuzMeg - came to stay with us.  In Britain and/or most of Europe, kids with crazy ideals about "seeing the world" and "experiencing culture" commonly book this magical one-way around-the-world flight.  The more you spend, the longer your trip is, the more destinations you can select, and the better the peanuts are on each flight.  Something like that.  Two years ago, one of our other cousins from the UK, Faye - aka SayHeyFaye - did the same thing, except she did the trip with a friend, whereas loony CuzMeg did her trip completely alone.  Though to her credit, by the time her trip was wrapping up here in NYC, she had spent the roughly 3 1/2 months making roughly 2,500 friends along the way, so she was never really alone.

The funny thing was a couple of weeks before she was scheduled to come, she changed the dates and came a week earlier.  Which actually worked out perfectly for me, because the original week - which I'll get to in a minute - was booked enough.  But it wasn't until she landed and we were talking in the airport that I found out it was all a secret to surprise her mum (my Aunt Sue) and a friend of hers who had a birthday at that time.  I came very close to screwing it up - in fact, I did in a way, because her brother, Sean, aka Buddy, saw a poorly worded Twitter update of mine that gave it away - but word didn't get back to Aunt Sue or the friend, which was all that really mattered.  I hope...  Sorry again, Meg!

So Meg came, conquered NYC, and left the following week.  We had a great time with her, and she attested, under oath, she had a great time in NYC.  The following week, Ma Dukes decided it was time to ditch her rusty old hip with a fancy new NASA-researched Super Hip (TM).  This coincided with my last week at my previous job, so it was a bit hectic.  Thankfully, between supportive upper management and a stellar co-producer, I was able to take what time I needed to duck out.  That, and I was of little use, as I was clearly drunk by noon every day of the last two weeks and began setting small objects on fire.  So it was really in everyone's best interest that I be there less.

And finally, last week, I started my new job.  A while back, I met up with the team for a couple of nights for after-hours work-related stuff, so I had already met everyone and shmoozed.  But now it's finally go-time, and I'm really excited.  Everyone is rad, and the work we do is really interesting.  It's very, very different from my previous six years of experience, moving from website production (in broad terms) to digital strategy.  There's obvious title-related transferability, since a large portion of every job I've had is project management (again, in broad terms).  But where nuanced knowledge was once focused on technical and logistical capabilities, I'm now focused on deployment best practices, marketing-/advertising-like strategies, and trends.  It's the same carnival tent but a completely different booth with a completely different game.

That's the latest, other than sweating this injury Wang sustained rounding third.  (Damn you, National League!  He's our ace, and you made him run like a common utility infielder!)


Reviews
Books
The Invisibles, Vol. 1-1
Eric: "Excellent and bizarre, well worth reading."

Snuff
Eric: "...the surprises are tame, the situations are boring, and the ending is silly."

Television
Battlestar Galactica, Season 4.0
Eric: "Filler, plain and simple."
Amber: "Ooh, I like Starbucks' hair!"

The Wire, Season 1

So the garbage fire from Tuesday night has ignited (yessssssss!!) a bit of discussion in the neighborhood.  Primo Brooklyn Heights blog Brooklyn Heights Blog cites metro papyrus source Brooklyn Daily Eagle (do not pardon their website appearance; it's 2008, that's just inexcusable), who asks the bold question, "Was the fire arson?".  Seeing how damp piles of garbage tend not to spontaneously combust, 123 Awesome Street is firmly in the "it was arson" camp.  And unless we're living next to a mysterious political target, we're hoping this was just random and will never experience anything like it ever again.  Having said that, today we will be picking up a new fire extinguisher, checking our smoke detector batteries, and sleeping under two heavy fire-proof blankets all summer.

So long time no blog, yeah yeah.  Cousin Meg was in town for a week and couldn't blog about it because it was a surprise return home early for her and I (almost) ruined the surprise by commenting online, Blondie and I are committing to summer dietary changes, Mom had successful hip surgery yesterday, I start new job on Monday, IRA mutual fund is doing well, just bought a giraffe, organizing full risk assessment reports for Operation Jupiter's feasibility with the Farmer's Almanac barometric predications for summer 2008.

But, most recently and self-centered: We almost died last night!!!  (Technically, that's not true, but how else would you explain my dreams of being engulfed in flames?)

At about midnight, we were in bed, Amber passing out slowly, and my starting Palahniuk's new novel.  We heard some kids in the street, which is kind of a rarity in this neighborhood, especially that late on a week night, and not during summer.  They were talking loudly, and I think we murmured outloud, something along the lines of "dang kids", as we are technically Old People.

A couple minutes after - and I don't remember which happened first - heard a bang, and we smelled smoke.  Our neighbors will occasionally sit on the front porch to smoke, and when we have our windows open at night, the smell wafts in.  We attributed the light odor to this.  But the bang was an off sound, and it was followed by louder sounds from the Dang Kids, so I turned off the lights to better see out the window into the streets - we thought they might have been smashing in car windows - and that's when I saw, next door, a 25-foot inferno of flaming garbage!!!

By "25-foot" I mean 5-foot, but it was pretty scary:

(The picture was taken, obviously, a little later, when the fire department first arrived.  I earned my stripes taking this picture: one of the larger, scarier volunteers yelled at me.)

In an effort to sustain narrative continuity, and cross-fade topics (soap operas do it all the time)...

We never found Amber's glasses.  They might very well be here somewhere and could turn up this weekend while we ransack our apartment, preparing and cleansing for our guest (more on this in a bit).  But our efforts have so far been fruitless, and according to the Red Cross, if you don't find missing glasses within 24 hours, statistically you have only a 5% chance of recovery, which decreases every day thereafter.  So we've called off the Coast Guard, FEMA, and all the local volunteers, thanked them for their efforts, and are just hoping we don't get billed by the State of New York.

As reported on this very blog, I have a new job.  Or rather, I'm starting a new job in two weeks (I gave a 5-week notice).  I've been going through what I call a Thirdlife Crisis.  It's not a Midlife Crisis, and it's certainly not a Quarterlife Crisis because that doesn't exist.  (Kids coming out of college, who haven't yet fully experienced the real world in any way, are not able to have crises.  Gossip Girl-like dramatic meltdowns, yes.  But not crises.)

For a while now I've been going through work-related stuff: reconsidering my job, questioning the field I'm in, wondering what I feel I should be doing, etc.  I've been working in the loose definition of the "online / interactive" industry for six years, with pretty much the same job responsibilities, varying depending on which specific company I was working for: a jack-of-all-trades (bad) programmer / (moderate) designer / (decent) project manager of mainly e-commerce sites at The Cyrus Company, a (dedicated) PM of rich media projects at Domani Studios, and an interactive producer at Big Spaceship.  All very different jobs at very different companies, and definitely room to grow, both within each shop in the industry as a whole.

After a lot of contemplation, I realized the nagging feeling wasn't with any small things - in a lot of ways, I love my job at Big Spaceship - but with one big thing, and that was my working in production.  I love digital, I love online, and I love the work that gets produced, but my working in the production process wasn't jiving for me.  The more I thought about this and the more I understood it to be true, there was a) relief that I found the cause of my mental problem (one of many) and could now work on fixing it; and b) dread because I didn't know what to do next.

This whole process spanned from roughly Q4 '07 to Q2 '08, so it took a lot of time (and gin) to figure it all out for myself.  I began looking for jobs online, but the situation is tricky.  'The industry' tends to comprise of mainly interactive agencies, like Big Spaceship, and jobs for these agencies tend to be served on industry-specific job sites, like Krop.  If you're looking to be an interactive designer, like Li'l Miss Amberino, you'd go there and search, and 90% of the results would be for Big Spaceship, WDDG, Your Majesty, or even Ogilvy or McCann.  (The other 10% are either misguided posts, or for non-interactive companies looking for interactive talent, like Puma or Random House.)  I tried Krop repeatedly, but between the industry being small and spread out globally - when you need to narrow down, even to NYC, it's that much less of a pool - new viable job posts were few and far between.  I also frequently checked out LinkedIn, which has a much broader posting pool, but that then made it much more scattershot.  I did consider becoming a CPA, animal trainer, and astronaut, based on some results that popped up, but ultimately decided those were slightly too zany.  (Though I'm still considering the opening for Penn Station janitorial.  Great dental.)

And then, one sunny morn, I was picking through Krop again, and found a posting for a producer at a place I had never heard of, with a job description that was very vague.  Intrigued, and secretly hoping it was a thinly-veiled position at the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense, I applied, interviewed, and after a few weeks, locked down an offer.  So I am / will be a Producer (still) at Undercurrent, a bad-ass company, co-led by cewebrity, Josh Spear.  In their words:

Undercurrent is a social interactive think tank. We help brands and agencies understand and engage with a new generation of consumers that were born digital.

I've been to the office, hung out with the team, and talked lots of shop, and I am extremely excited about the opportunity to work there.  Right now, I am ecstatic in two equal parts: to begin as a part of the Undercurrent team, and to move away from production.  So this Thirdlife Crisis is not an entirely new career, it's just a career shift.  If 'the industry' is defined not as interactive (which usually assumes online components), but a level higher - digital - (which also includes non-digital elements), then that's closer to where this job would be marked.  And if we also include coconuts, neutrinos, and The Dirty Dozen, then it would make as much sense as this attempt of industry explanations.  So just forget, and know that starting June 9th, it's the dawning of the Age of Aqu-Aries-us.

Reviews
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
Amber: "Hey, Harrison Ford is still hot!"
Eric: "Hey, Karen Allen is still hot!"

Monday was flat out bizarre for 123 Awesome Street.  Here's a quick run-down of the strange events, in the order in which they baffled our minds:

• 4:00am: Amber wakes up in the middle of the night, checks her phone for the time, and confirms the little bell icon is present, indicating that the alarm is on and set to 6am.
• 7:00am: Amber wakes up on her own, to no alarm.
• 7:10am: Amber realizes her glasses are missing; proceeds to use back-up glasses.
• 7:20am: When she gets to the subway, Amber and a crowd of people can't figure out why they're locked out of the subway, when it's supposed to be opened up at 6am.
• 5:00pm: Eric's coworkers begin mumbling lyrics to "How Bizarre", by OMC; a bizarre song in it's own right.
  
• 5:03pm: "How Bizarre" is played on the office jukebox.
  
• 5:20pm: "How Bizarre" is played again, marking 12 years between having heard the song so quickly in succession.
  
• 7:25pm: Eric gets home to find Amber already home, and with enough time for her to have done dishes, emptied the garbage, and prepare dinner. (This never happens.) *
• 7:30-10:30pm: The hunt for the missing glasses ends in failure.
• 10:35pm: Eric notices a missing screw from the curtain rod in the bedroom, which makes no sense as to why or how it could have been removed.
• 10:37pm: Eric and Amber conclude the aliens must be - or were - present and hiding, and have concocted this series of bizarre events to somehow further their goal of global domination and/or minor annoyances.
  

* Please note: This is not sexism.  This is the truth, to which Amber will attest.  At 123 Awesome Street, it is official policy that despite each of our lazinesses, chores are expected equally of one another, and Amber delights in cooking.  It is woman's choice that defines feminism, and all inhabitants of 123 Awesome Street agree to this belief.  It is also official 123 Awesome Street policy to burn bras.

So if today you read in the papers how a woman in NYC spontaneously combusted, or how a man was killed by a falling anvil with the word "ACME" printed on the sign, please point the investigating detectives - or Mulder and Scully - to this blog post.

There was a news item last week - again - about violence in video games, and to what extent they affect people; namely children, usually the ones with parents who coddle them to the point of having replaced their child-sized nerves and spines with jelly, which forever taints their ability to venture out confidently on their own, defend themselves in fights, and generally respond to anything in life without involving lawyers.  Those parents.  The angry, torch wielding, get-on-cable-news-and-scream-off-point mob parents.  When Grand Theft Auto IV came out last month, the mob was up in arms again.

I understand where the ire comes from.  I don't agree that the games are "targeted" at their kids (anyone who feels threatened by just about anything makes the argument that they're being "targeted", when in fact they're just being "affected").  And while I understand they can't protect their kids every minute of every day, I do think that in the United States of America, a game ratings board is as far as anyone should be going to regulate a consumer product that you have to go above and beyond with which to actually, fully engage, and with which there should be no confusion as to what contents lie within.  (News flash: video game companies aren't trying to trick anyone with fake packaging or misleading advertising.)

I get where the anger and frustration comes from.  I also get human nature.  When a kid shoots up a bunch of people at school, or a sniper runs loose, it's easy to believe that some "glorification" of similar violence in a video game directly led to these crimes.  That without violent video games, these people would never have pulled any triggers - at least, not outside of a sanctioned military invasion off of domestic soil, or lacking a blue uniform holding a badge.  But the same illogical argument applies to such irrational causality as racism.  If a black man went to jail for a mugging, then all black men must be robbers - or at least, justifies the possibility that all black men can be robbers - and thus, fear is justified.  (Forget the fact that if you're able to extrapolate and project based on demographics, then Timothy McVeigh warrants everyone's fear of either white men, southerners, or Americans in general.  Actually, that last one might be right...)

So: if (violent games exist) & (violence happens) -> then (violent games [create] violence). Those who believe this to be true logic are the ones collectively holding the pen to place the period at the end.

But, hark; an eraser approaches!  According to this recent study out of Harvard (rich white men!), violent video games have no affect on kids' acting out in real life.  From the article:

have concluded that there's no data to support the notion that violent video games cause the kids who play them to act out violence in real life, contrary to the vast majority of media outlets that would have the public thinking otherwise.

(You can read all about the study and the findings on the researchers' site, "Grand Theft Childhood?".)

It's not the end-all and be-all of the discussion.  You can't fan the passionate flames of those involved in the debate.  Or at least, that's what the covers of pulp romance paperbacks at the supermarket checkout line say.  But when I go to the bank today and turn in three months of loose change for bills, walk over to the video game store, and pick up a copy of GTA IV, I'll be comforted by the knowledge that playing will have no impact on my urges to steal a car, pick up a grenade launcher, and lob explosives onto busy public streets in a drive-by.  No impact whatsoever.

Also, I got a new job.

Reviews
Television
Little People, Big World, Season 3
Amber: "So much drama."
Eric: "Do want farm in Oregon. Want!"

Movies
Hard Eight
Amber: "Why don't you wear slick suits all the time and act all cool like Sydney?"
Eric: "Because Sydney takes money from Nevada, and I give money to Nevada."

Signs
Eric: "This movie is not nearly as scary watching it in the living room as it was in Poduck Nowhere, Minnesota theater where I first saw it."
Amber: "ALIENSS!!11!!!!1!"

Seriously, you guys.  ("Honestlyyyy...")  There isn't much to report from 123 Awesome Street.  There are a few bits and pieces, but little worth reporting in verbose long-form format.  Blondie's been busy, I've been busy, and as much as we wanted to spend this weekend doing as little as possible, Amber had to spend Sunday in the office and we're both still looking at some crazy weeks ahead.

Probably the only recent real news is that Amber was sort of promoted.  (I'm downplaying this a little because she's not entirely sure what it is.)  She made Partner at Ogilvy.  Were Ogilvy a law firm, I believe they would be finalizing the reaction of her surname in a large, metallic, serifed sign for the firm's front office, printing new business cards, and restructuring her contract with Satan.  (Lawyer jokes: never out of style.)  But because Ogilvy is a gigantic multinational advertising corporation with (presumably) hundreds - or at least dozens - of "Partners", the payoff is slightly less, though by no means insignificant.  Two weeks more annual vacation, free gym membership, and - in Amber's words - free medical coverage by "some special doctor", which I just assume is a guy in an alley way with no medical training, giving out free "examinations", a misspelling 'Ogilvy' badge, and wearing no pants.

Which reminds me: 10-year high school reunion next month!

So a big kudos to Amberino for sticking out a whole mess of bull-donkey over the last few months.  The vacation addition is huge for her personally, but most importantly, their validation and recognition of the stellar work she's been putting out for them.  The girl does, in fact, go.

While Amber has been putting in late nights and occasional weekend days, I've been hitting up the gym - less often than I'd like, but more often than ... never, I suppose.  It's extra sweet when the Yankees are playing a 7pm game; if I'm home on time and the missus is still out, I can be flop-sweating on the treadmill by about the third inning.  The downside is my using the Yankees as an excuse for my not going to the gym.  Rained out game on Sunday = Indiana Jones on the couch.  But results are starting to show, so charge the iPod and turn up that Scorpions: it's go time!

There.  Despite myself, I did find something to rant on about.  After I'm done tinkering with site features, I'll begin structuring my essay on why music today is nothing but noise and how what kids today need is a good, unforgiving military draft.

If you haven't already discovered "Garfield Minus Garfield", now is the time.  From the site:

Who would have guessed that when you remove Garfield from the Garfield comic strips, the result is an even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life? Friends, meet Jon Arbuckle. Let's laugh and learn with him on a journey deep into the tortured mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against loneliness in a quiet American suburb.

My favorite so far:

Who would have thought Jim Davis' comic would so closely map to my daily inner monologues, once you take the orange cat out?

If you haven't already heard, I'm being charged on three counts of blog neglect.  As if we didn't have enough going on, now I have court dates and a new probation officer to deal with.

So there's been a ton going on in the past two weeks.  Not a bunch of little events, but a handful of major ... things ... the biggest one being a week-long, mid-week-to-mid-week trip to Arizona and Las Vegas.  The goals behind the trip were to visit Amber's family, get me out to Tucson for the first time, and to lose gallons of money in casinos before flying back.  We went 3-for-3 on the goals, and 0-for-a few hundred dollars in the casinos.  I did, however, leave Arizona with a bitching pair of prescription sunglasses, thanks to the generosity of the staff at Advanced Vision Care.  It saved my hide under the glaring sun of Tucson, and will further protect my peepers in the coming pollution-filled summer haze of New York City.  (They have special "crack-fume and landfill emission UV protection".)

We also have a few other loose threads to discuss, but until my lawyers give me the green light, they're staying under wraps.  One thing I can mention, which should have been mentioned a while back, are the two minor site enhancements.  The first is music player integration.  I got the idea of including this back in March when we made a road trip up to Ithaca.  In the car, I identified three songs that appropriately described the trip and wanted to somehow include them in the next blog post.  Background MIDI music on a webpage is always a bad idea, but there's no law against non-commercial, self-enabled theme music.  (Or maybe there is.  This is why I keep a team of lawyers on retainer.)  It would've been great to use Muxtape for something like this instead, but I prefer full in-site integration.  Anyways, here's the player in action:



The second new feature is called Action Streams; it's in action on the right side.  It's a consolidation and automation of updates of all of Paper Skies' presences on the web.  So instead of a big block of Flickr thumbnails and a block for our Xbox 360 tag, and a block for Twitter updates, etc., they're all streamlined into one cohesive string of updates.  As of this post, it's being used predominantly for Flickr and Twitter updates, as those are the most common, but the Big Picture goal is to integrate more services, and as main content, so anyone using RSS will get all of the updates streamed in.  Web 2.0 = pretty neat.

Reviews
Books
World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War
Eric: "...overall an interesting and occasionally stirring read."

I, Lucifer
Eric: "For fans of "what if?..." conceits, this one pays off.  It's also pretty dirty (on account of being Lucifer and all)."

New Moon
Amber: "Another masterpiece.  I just wish I had read them in order."

Movies
Forgetting Sarah Marshall
Amber: "This movie is stupid.  This movie isn't funny."
Eric: "Then why do you keep laughing so hard?"

Baby Mama
Amber: "Babies!  And Amy Poehler!  And babies!"
Eric: "If we could guarantee a baby like Tina Fey or Amy Peohler, then sure, we can have kids.  Otherwise, no dice."

Television
Frisky Dingo, Season 1
Amber: "I love you, Xander Crews!"
Eric: "I love you, Killface!"

This was supposed to be a happy post.  After almost two full weeks of no updates, I found myself walking home from the gym (more on this later), in an after-wotkout glow, on the most beautiful day of the year, ready to blog again.  Thoughts of hope and rejuvenated faith in humanity rushed through my exhausted mind and body as I passed by happy children, fluffy dogs, and waves of our neighborhood's supermodel-like populace.  "It's a great day to be alive," I thought.  "Maybe I was wrong about the world after all..."  And as I turned the corner and approached our apartment, it dawned on me: someone stole my bike.

I don't know exactly when it was stolen.  I hadn't ridden it since Tuesday, though I know it was there until at least Wednesday.  Like an idiot, I kept it locked to the large guardrail-like rail-thing that's mounted on the property line, about 6 feet from our bedroom window.  So technically the bike was locked to the property, even though it rested on the sidewalk.  I'll call the local precinct later today to see if maybe it wasn't stolen, but rather just impounded for joyrides.  Of course now I'm kicking myself for being lazy and not dragging it inside the apartment whenever I wasn't using it.  But it was a Herculean feat to manage it through our front doors to get it in or out; it's not like a massive hangar door welcomed it in every time I got home.

What kills me the most, what brings actual pain to the situation, is that I've had my bike for something like 13 years.  I bought this bike in the heyday of my youth.  For those too old to remember what it was like being young and trapped, this bike was the equivalent of a first car, before getting the first car.  I rode that bad boy 5 miles each way to get to my friends' places, with periodic stops halfway for tune-ups and accessories.  It gave me freedom long before Buttbox ever did, and I put way more use and abuse in that bike than I did with any car.  (That's actually not true, I'm a terrible car owner.)

So now it's gone, and I'm both sad and really pissed off.  It's one thing for someone to take a wallet because hey, it's cash-money.  But I've never really had someone steal something from me, especially not something I held relatively dear.  I never should have brought that bike into this hellhole of a city.  This is why I can't have nice things.

Who do I blame, other than the scum-sucking assbag that physically thefted it?  2008, the year of the rat.  Let's take a quick look at everything it's taken from me so far:

• Biscuit
• My bike
• All of my disposable income
• About 11 Sunday newspapers
  
• Any semblance of a fit body
• My previously-stellar credit
• 2007
• My eBay account
• My dignity, faith in humanity, and innocence
  

With any luck, I'll also get assaulted, stabbed, swindled, and hexed before New Year's Eve.  And in the meantime, I'm assembling a fortress around our existing apartment infrastructure, constructing armor for Amber, myself, and Baker, and whittling makeshift medieval weaponry, all out of duct tape, cooking utensils, and Amber's collection of shoes and fine European handbags (there's enough supply until the apocalypse).

Bike-related depression aside, I have been pumped about joining a gym.  It's long overdue, and though I'm extremely reluctant to add any new recurring monthly charges to my already-taxed credit card, I'm happy to make this exception.  It's not that expensive, the gym is only 2 blocks away, and it has a great equipment-to-person ratio.  The treadmills even have individual televisions mounted on them, so if I time it correctly, I can watch the Yankees get shutout throughout the regular season.

Here's the gym plan:

• Go at least 3 times a week for at least an hour per session
  
• Overall goal is weight loss, so focus more on cardio and less on strength
• Spend at least 30 minutes on the treadmill each session, in either 10- or 15-minute spurts at beginning, end, and/or middle of session, and always keeping fast pace
  
• Work up ability to run without cramping, vomiting, or dying by starting with 1-minute intervals every 5 minutes, and working up slowly with 30-second add-ons over time
• Focus toning on flabby upper body and thunder-thighs
• Ogle every woman in spandex
  

Day 1 was a complete success!

Reviews
Frantic
Amber: "Is this movie trying to be cute intentionally?  Or is it just bad?"
Eric: "Either the majority of the movies in the 1980's were complete coke-fueled hazes that should never have been greenlit, or Roman Polanski is just a bad director.  I'm not really sure which, but either way, this movie is dumb."