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I am back on myfitnesspal and trying to shift a couple of kilos in the last few days of the year in preparation for my New Year weigh-in. Last December I told you of my plan to lose 25kg and reach my BMI correct weight (in order to show the medical establishment how bad I would look). I had started 2014 at 95.4kg (down a little already from the 97kg I weighed at the doctors) and in August was down to an amazing 79.7kg, but since my holiday in September I’ve been up at around 84kg, sometimes lower, sometimes a bit higher. After Christmas I was over 85. I would be happy to end the year at around 83kg, which is still possible, but want to push back onwards with this and turn it into a two year mission.
I asked you to guess the weight I would be on 1st January 2015 and there will be a prize for the closest.
These are the people who are probably still with a chance of winning:
Ed Wall 87kg
Steve Bradburn 86kg
Steve 85kg
Joshua Gaskell 84.5kg
Russell Cook 84.2kg
Isabel Queralt 84kg
D Collyer 82kg
Andrew Cooke 82kg
This morning I was 84.6kg so it’s looking good for Joshua. However, I have lost a kilo in the last two days, so with three days to go there is still hope for Isabel, D and Andrew. I doubt that I will splurge out and go upwards, but you never know. Thanks to those of you who had enough faith in me to think that I might really get to the low 70s. And fuck you to all those of you who thought I would be heavier than the 95Kg I started the year at. Personally my realistic target after a good year would have been 87kg, so I am pretty pleased that to be in the low 80s, though obviously slightly annoyed that the good work of the first eight months was slightly undone in the autumn. Who will win the unspecified prize? Keep tuning in to find out.
Tonight we went to see Tim Burton’s Big Eyes at the Westfield Vue. It was on in Screen 15 which I had not been aware of before, which stands alone behind the pick n mix stand in the foyer and is essentially a large cupboard. It felt a bit like being in a secret Harry Potter cinema (one like the Kings Cross platform, Harry Potter films would never play in this room ironically) that you had to enter by running at a wall and hoping for the best. We were in quarantine for daring to want to see something vaguely artistic. Were they putting us here because they didn’t want us to infect the other customers or because they feared we would be seduced by explosions and chases and they’d have to shut down their lucrative tiny art house screen. I am not being snobby here, because the reason I was surprised this screen existed is because up until now I have only seen blockbusters at this cinema. I just enjoyed the way we had been turned into an island in the cinema or maybe an underground movement. It’s not like Tim Burton is that obscure. But on Monday night after Christmas only about twenty people wanted to see this film.
The film was fascinating and the story is an incredible one of a husband, who can’t paint at all it seems, claiming to be responsible for his wife’s popular “big-eye” paintings. She happily/grudgingly paints more of them for him, convinced by the charming psychopath that this way they will sell more. He is indeed a master of self-publicity and is arguably responsible for the art works gaining such popularity (or maybe any popularity), but of course, they are not his artworks. The fact that the paintings are kitsch and scorned by art critics adds a new layer to this story. In the end they are fighting over who is the true artist, but are either of them really? In this case it’s pretty cut and dried that the wife is the one who has created these pictures, but it also speaks of the ownership of any artistic endeavour. A creative person has many influences and often a person with a better understanding of how to promote themselves (or just good luck) will receive the credit for work that is at least partly created by someone else.
And it’s as much about the sexism of the past (not that things are so much more different now) and being trapped in an horrific marriage with someone who is crazy (in this case I think both people in the marriage might have been rather crazy, but the husband is abusive and domineering, outwardly comedic, but quietly terrifying). My favourite bit was when the husband left without legal representation in court decides to act for himself (with the confidence of a man who has got away with being regarded as a painter for decades, even though he can’t paint) and when he calls himself to the stand ends up having a theatrical conversation with himself, moving around the courtroom to take on the “different” roles. Imagine being married to a man who could so something as insane as that.
I did try to persuade my wife that it would be better for her booksales if she was to say that I was the author, but she wasn’t buying it. Thinking about it asking her that directly after this film was probably an error of timing.
