Basic Elements

In light of Garfield Minus Garfield, (where if you photoshop out Garfield from the strips, it appears that Jon Arbuckle is slowly sliding into the depths of mental illness), I thought it might be interesting to think about what really makes a strip. The answer is surprising.

If someone weren't familiar with comic strips, and you wanted to plainly describe what some of the major ones were about, how would you do it? What are the basic elements of these strips? Well, it appears to be various forms of mental illness.

1. Obese feline
2. Bear with binge eating disorder and a young boy with beastophilia
3. Schizophrenic boy and tiger hallucination
4. Manic-depressive boy and dog with delusions of grandeur
5. Bulimic woman with general anxiety disorder
6. Suicidal cubicle worker and megalomaniac dog

Ready?

1. Garfield
2. Winnie the Pooh
3. Calvin and Hobbes
4. Peanuts
5. Cathy
6. Dilbert

Also just as funny, Realfield.

Captions, please.

Eric 5.

In honor of Eric's pending nuptials, here are 5 things about him that you may not know (and he may not want you to know).

1. Eric is an Eagle Scout. Ok, you probably know this.

2. Eric used to RAGE when he got mad.

3. After meeting Carol, Eric commenced his pursuit of Carol by asking for the names of her many, many siblings. Someone remind me how many there are, how many are in the US, and how many don't live in Cupertino?

4. Eric and I once simultaneously pooped, while only inches away on an outdoors "double toilet." Additionally, post infancy, Eric is among the top 3 people that I have slept within 2 feet of.

5. Eric's house was the gathering point for annual sleepovers of the core group of guys that lived in 7 springs (me, David, Victor, James, Henry, Eric). It would usually be some combination of Eric's nachos, fighting video games, A Bug's Life, pranking James because he always fell asleep first, and donuts in the morning.

And a bonus 6. For those in the know... "SOMEBODY GET ME A SOBE BOTTLE!"

Anyway, congratulations buddy.

That's what the Bachelorette is about??

Yes, I watch the Bachelorette. I'm not really sure what about it appeals to me so much, but theories include the Bachelorette being really hot.

Anyway, this season the Bachelorette takes her suitors all over the world. There are dates in Istanbul, Iceland, Tahiti and New York. Based on that, I feel like I can already say that her relationship from this show won't last. It's pretty easy to generalize from this: every wonder why reality show couples don't last?

Answer: Because how can someone really get to know someone else on a perpetual vacation, where the hardest thing to deal with together is not having enough lobster at dinner? From a simple psychological standpoint, it's just conditioning someone to associate the feelings of excitement and arousal that you get from crazy activities and locations to the other person. Without the psychological analysis, it's the ability to use distractions and diversions to disguise a lack of chemistry, connection and conversation. I'd bet that there's some correlation between fantastical, outrageous and ultimately "cool" dates and the lower the chance of that couple staying together. In short, it's fabricated chemistry.

The notion of fabricated chemistry being bad is a little bit counterintuitive for males, though. That's because males usually try to use fabricated chemistry to our advantage - it's the reason we try to plan exciting and unique dates. Admittedly, most of the time our objective is to fabricate chemistry rather than find a genuine connection. So it's hard to fault the reality show folks when we do this to a smaller scale all the time in real life.

It's a funny thought that our failure and lack of money to plan such amazing Bachelorette-esque dates might actually be a key to successful dating and chemistry. If all guys could plan the dates they really want to plan, it would likely be for the worse.

Hey Bachelorette 2011, you want to really find your match? Try these dates: dish washing, living for 3 days on a tiny budget, and catering to people acting as bitchy in-laws.

I Remember Phil Collins! For now.

It's astounding the number of hits, no less songs, that some artists have. Take Phil Collins for example. It's easy to list off at least 2-3 hits of his, courtesy of Disney's Tarzan. Taking a little more time to think, here's what I've come up with:

Take Me Home
Can't Stop Loving You
Sussudio
Another Day in Paradise
Easy Lover
You'll Be in My Heart
One More Night
Against All Odds
True Colors

Wikipedia tells me that I've missed quite a few, as well.

In his day, it seems like Phil Collins was basically king of the 1980's (with Bryan Adams and Richard Marx as his princes, and Rick Astley at this point as the court jester). Hell, he probably had more well-known songs than Michael Jackson at that point.

But he's clearly not held in the same regard as MJ. So that begs the question: if not the volume of well-known songs, what exactly does it take for an artist to have that special staying power to last through the years?

I don't know. Maybe the "timelessness" or a song, how adaptable the song is over time, and whether it was innovative or not?

Movies.

Every time I have a break, either from school or work, one of my favorite past-times is watching movies. I don't mean watching movies as in going to the theaters on a Friday night - more like sprawling out in front of a screen for hours at a time, indiscriminately binging on any movie I can get my hands on.

1. Obtain movies in one of two ways. First, by bulk downloading them from torrents. Or second, because I'm in Cupertino right now, go to the library and rent a few every day.

2. Watch the first 15ish minutes at normal speed. Then, the movie is subject to a three-level categorization: if it sucks too much, eject and next. If it sucks but has potential to at least be entertaining (stupid comedies, most romantic comedies, most action films), then I'll watch it as fast as I can while still understanding the dialogue, usually around 1.50x speed. If there are subtitles, then I can go up to 2.0x speed without losing anything. If I'm going to waste time, then at least I'm going to minimize it. Finally, if it is a normal, good movie, then I'll watch it at normal speed.

3. Repeat 2-4 times a day.

After cycling through so many plotlines and twists consecutively, it's pretty easy to start to see patterns that all movies use in one form or another. Usually, it's some variation of what I call the "3/5 twist." Things will be going well for the first 3/5 of a movie, and there doesn't appear to be much left to resolve the movie conflict. But then, the second conflict of the movie is introduced, and is usually only tangentially related to the original conflict. Thankfully, it can be neatly resolved in the remaining 2/5 of the movie. Romantic movie example: Guy gets girl. Damning information about guy comes out, causes conflict, then guy wins girl over in the end. Action example: Team kills tons of putties. Apparent unexpected hitch occurs in plan. Team must use cunning to overcome hitch, often sacrificing someone, to achieve end goal.

On an unrelated note, I decided to make a list of movies that most people seem to like, but I just can't get behind for one reason or another.

All Michael Cera movies after Superbad - Let me first say that I really like Michael Cera, but I just don't think he's a great actor. I met him at a screening for Superbad, and guess what, he's really just that awkward of a person in real life. I think the reason he shone in Arrested Development was because he wasn't a central, central character. With him being a leading man, it just kind of gets stale - especially because he is himself in every movie, and every movie is so similar (Enter Michael Cera as awkward teen, play indie music, enter quirky cute girl that inexplicably has interest in Michael Cera, play indie music, they awkwardly converse, indie music, etc.).

The Blind Side - Hilarious. Oh, it wasn't a comedy. Perhaps the movie said it better than I can: "You are changing that boy's life." "No, he's changing my life."

Garden State - I don't know. Personally, I find it difficult to care about characters that are completely off the wall. Though if I'm Zach Braff, I pat myself on the back for being able to cast and makeout with Natalie Portman.

The Fountain - Wait... what? Superficially, okay, fine, immortality demands a price. But what is gained by mixing three semi-related storylines that require a number of leaps to connect?

Coyote Ugly - True, maybe most people didn't really enjoy this movie. But this movie holds a special place in movie-hell for me because it was a chick flick disguised as a sexy movie with tons of half naked girl action. That's just cruel.

There Will be Blood - I woke up just in time for the milkshake line, thank god.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind - It's been a while since I've seen this, so I'm just going to say that I didn't like it very much.

Up - I think if you ask anyone what the best part of the movie was, they'll invariably say that it was the beginning with Carl and Ellie. I may have shed a few tears for Ellie. But thinking back, nothing else stands out about the movie except for some of the dogs' dialogue.

Wall-e - I get it. Humans are on a slippery slope to oblivion and we're taking our planet with us. Spare me the too-obvious, smarmy social commentary and put some dialogue into that first 40 minutes so I don't drift off.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon - Not that this movie was bad, it just wasn't great. Here's what it really is: it's a modernly-packaged emulation of a style of movie and special effects that have been produced in Hong Kong since the 1970's. It wasn't revolutionary in the slightest, but I'll admit, for those that have never seen that style,was probably fairly awesome. As it turns out, there's a similar backlash among Indians from Slumdog Millionaire. It's the same type of movie, theme and music that have been in Bollywood for years, but are just now presented for western consumption.

Fitness #6

How Intense is Your Workout?

Surprisingly, being in a gym 6-7 days a week doesn’t inspire one to workout more. If anything, you want to keep your workouts as quick as possible so you don’t hav

e to spend any more time there than necessary. However, I think this is a good policy that more people should adhere to. There’s something to be said for the intensity of a workout.

Sunday: Chest/triceps workout

-Incline Bench – 4 sets of 8 @ 215 lbs, drop set

s at 185 and 135
-Dumbbell Chest Fly – 4 sets of 8 @ 40 lbs
-Straight-Arm pullover – 2 sets of 8 @ 80 lbs, 2 sets @ 85 lbs
-Weighted Dips – 4 sets of 8 w/ 100 lbs
-Chest Fly Machine – 3 sets of 10
In and out in 45 minutes.

Now this is intense

Obviously the intensity above is something you have to work up to, but it goes back to my sand dune analogy. Doing all of the above in 1.5 hours instead of 45 minutes is just scratching a layer off of the dune, while really pushing and overloading your muscles really blitzes it. Muscles (and just about all other facets of fitness – cardio capacity, aerobic endurance, etc) grow in accordance with the overload principle (very basically, the body adapts to the stresses you place upon it; the more you put on it, the proportionally greater adaption), so it just makes sense to crank up the intensity of a workout. The ways to do it? More weight, less rest time between sets and more sets/exercises. Right now, I’m choosing to focus on having less time between sets and I’ve seen noticeable strength gains. As always, different things work for different people, but one of these intensity tactics could help you break through your plateaus.

Powerlifters and olympic lifters abstain.