Exercising Idle Hands

Yea, I know I'll be missed

It was with great trepidation and sorrow that I left the City of Chicago. With outstretched arms I accepted the Windy City as my spiritual home back in August, and since then the experience has been incredibly rewarding. My contractual obligation in the city required a lot of my time and as a result my writing was very inconsistent. I do not regret the things I have accomplished in the Second City; now a few weeks free from my obligation, I graduated from my position with a new sense of purpose and self.

Unfortunately the "city of the big shoulders" has also left me broke, unemployed and living at home again. I suppose there are worse things in this economy and after a few days of sulking I am grateful for what I currently have. Grateful however does not mean idle so I have dedicated every day I'm back in Michigan as a day of self-improvement. No longer will I sit inert as the world passes me by, frustrating myself without action. I won't be

I  will be accepted dammit!

Charlie Chaplin, the inept outsider but Buster Keaton, the inept outsider looking for a way in.

I have been taking a lot of drastic steps towards self-improvement but the one that most concerns this blog is my new exercise regiment. To lose the weight I need to look presentable, I will be walking on a treadmill. A simple exercise that requires little (other than a treadmill) but can do a lot. The speed and slope of the treadmill will be up to my discretion but the time allotted to my workout will depend solely on the movies I watch. Out of the movies I own, I will be choosing my favorites, one hundred of which I will watch while I run. This is my way of motivating myself while putting a little funk on the arduous proceedings.



Or maybe it will kill me...

There may be a lot of you that will question this method. Won't I plateau? aren't movies between 80 minutes to 120 minutes average? What about weight training? To those criticisms I say...nothing. This is not traditional training. I'm not running a marathon here, just trying to do slightly more work than nothing at all. If I loose 40 pounds, great! If I don't well at least after 100 days I have created a habit that can be a building block towards a more conventional workout. At the very least I'm making up for all the exercise I'm missing after leaving Chicago. Relying on public transportation and street walking (not to mention the daily grind on my job) guaranteed at least a mile of pacing a day. Walking on a treadmill for 90 minutes at 3 MPH surely won't kill me.

Additionally this little experiment will get me to re-watch all my favorites and examine them through new perspiration tinged eyes. Let's face it, its easy to write about something that is objectively horrid like Twilight (2008), but its another thing entirely to critique, argue, and champion a work of art that
can be near perfect at least in the eyes of one writer. Plus working thirteen hour days in the Windy City has changed my perspective on a lot of things. Perhaps after watching my all time favorites, I'll figure there are a few bad apples in the basket.

Look forward to the new reviews of old classics, not-so-old classics and even a few controversial choices. I am already a week into this experiment so there's a little backlog. Expect a few new reviews soon. In the meantime I will close this entry with this poem about the streets I have made home for the last year:

CHICAGO

     HOG Butcher for the World,
     Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
     Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler;
     Stormy, husky, brawling,
     City of the Big Shoulders:
They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I
     have seen your painted women under the gas lamps
     luring the farm boys.
And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it
     is true I have seen the gunman kill and go free to
     kill again.
And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: On the
     faces of women and children I have seen the marks
     of wanton hunger.
And having answered so I turn once more to those who
     sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer
     and say to them:
Come and show me another city with lifted head singing
     so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.
Flinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job on
     job, here is a tall bold slugger set vivid against the
     little soft cities;

Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action, cunning
     as a savage pitted against the wilderness,
          Bareheaded,
          Shoveling,
          Wrecking,
          Planning,
          Building, breaking, rebuilding,
Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with
     white teeth,
Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young
     man laughs,
Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has
     never lost a battle,
Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse.
     and under his ribs the heart of the people,
               Laughing!
Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of
     Youth, half-naked, sweating, proud to be Hog
     Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with
     Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation.

-Carl Sandburg