My other current focus is exercise; a daily dose of the famed '30 Day Shred' video by Jillian Michaels. To be honest, I'm not making the best out of it since I'm not pairing it with appropriate diet - I generally don't eat too badly, but I'm at my mum's house at the moment and a cupboard full of snacks you didn't have to pay for is a seductive mistress indeed. However, I am rather enjoying the primitive pleasure of strength training. It's not exactly hardcore, but no matter how piddling the little purple weight is there's a lot of satisfaction in lifting it. And putting it back down. And lifting it again. And knowing that if you just keep doing that, over and over again, you will somehow magically get stronger. Then you can lift a slightly bigger purple thing!
This new fascination with meatheadery has caused me to get perhaps unduly excited about Pain and Gain, featuring real-life Mr. Potato Head Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson:
I have no idea what this film is about, but I know I need to see it immediately, hopefully in a cinema which will permit me to take my weights in with me.
I have watched this trailer many times and am none the wiser. Granted, I have only just started getting into working out, so maybe there's some sort of bodybuilding shibboleth I'm missing out on which would make the plot seem more straightforward to me. But here's what I can glean from it:
- At the beginning of the film, Mark Wahlberg is hit by a car, as karmic punishment for lifting too much, or possibly not lifting enough.
- This has a profound effect on his life and the things he feels confident in doing, such as doing sit-ups on roofs and running from SWAT teams that appear for no reason.
- All of this is a true story.
- Salad is for poor people and this makes Mark Wahlberg and the guy from Monk angry, which is a shame because if they find their nearest Pret a Manger they'll find out it's just not true.
- The Rock is going to change both of their lives, which we know because his entrance is accompanied by a homoerotically throbbing bass in the soundtrack.
- Mark Wahlberg looks fat when he's underwater. This is possibly yet another factor which is contributing to his anger, and hopefully something that The Rock will know how to solve for him.
- The way to get over being angry about salad and looking fat when underwater is to beat people up and take their money, but only if you put on a morph suit first. The victims will not mind this because Mark Wahlberg will give them a 'protein shake', which I presume is slang for a sexual act.
- A shirtless man taunts a woman on a lawn and someone drives a speedboat.
- The crew finish their last mission by walking slowly away from an explosion, and get over the inevitable hearing damage it has caused them by going camping together.
Is this what life has in store for me if I continue to train? I do hope so.
