Poor little rich girl .... Julianne Moore (b. 1960) as ageing rocker ... marriage on the rocks (pun?) ... ugly biz ... what is Maisie, five or six? ... is the little girl autistic? something weird about her face/expression ... British art dealing Dad with asshole-ish long hair ... beautiful blonde nanny, "Margo," Irish? Scottish? ... custody battle ... "temper, temper" ... little girl is going to grow up to be a junkie, no doubt ... uh, oh nanny takes father's side and becomes Dad's lover / wife ... will fast forward from minute 30 ... some other guy on the scene now, solid chin, fairy-boy hair ... "new stepfather" ... this is the genuine guy ("Lincoln"), unlike lying manipulative Dad, she needs in her life .... he's a bartender? ... Irish nanny turned wife breaking down ... all these screwed up adults and Maisie a witness to them all ... hang on, the help is going to hook up ... poor nanny and bartender as Maisie's good responsible parents? ... asshole rich celebrity parents versus a nice Scottish lass and a blonde bartender boy, seems a bit predictable ... oh yeah, genuine board game fun with the adoptive family ... not going with you, Manipulative Mom, despite the monster miniature stuffed pony. Bye bye bad celebrity Mom. Cue the heartstring piano! Blueberry pancakes with those wholesome adoptive parents. The End. Under 100 mins but still had to fast forward through most of it. Red rating.
30 Day Challenge -- Day Fourteen
(All 30 day challenge posts in reverse chronological order)
Wife informed me at 6:30 AM that she had fired half the staff ... I was left to clean up the bodies, pay people off etc. Insanely stressful, would have normally sent me into a dark hole, but I managed things rather well I thought, given the carnage.
07:42 4K row
88.2 22.5
Lots of Fritos to deal with shock of an empty house.
13:21 BM
18:40 Kung Pao chicken from Meizhou Dongpo for dinner
$50 Pizza+ (not for me)
Day was a complete bust, a real disaster ... on the food discipline front I did ok (not great though) and the key was not cracking out the bottle or smoking cigars, which I would normally do.
30 Day Challenge -- Day Thirteen
(All 30 day challenge posts in reverse chronological order)
Inscrutable notes:
08:40 BM
87.8 24.0
$138 Jenny Lou's cred
12:21 Ten jiaozi for lunch, giant bowl iceberg lettuce with French dressing
$802.56 Carrefour cred
15:17 4K row
16:46 4K row (to make up for Friday)
17:07 100g beef tenderloin, giant bowl iceberg lettuce with French dressing
$15 Jinsong grocery, tea for foot massage and crisps for masseur
T back at XDF on Saturday nights
18:32 end of foot massage, watched half of Frances Ha during
20:08 end of body massage
$100 massage
Notes becoming super spotty here in the second weekend ... not maniacally recording all actions with a timestamp. That shows I'm slipping, but have not yet plunged back into total depravity.
30 Day Challenge -- Day Twelve
(All 30 day challenge posts in reverse chronological order)
Incrutable notes:
88.2 24.5
07:15 BM
07:20 mush (fresh squeezed soy milk, blueberries, sunflower seeds, walnuts, almonds, cashews, apple, pear, banana)
$16 McD sausage egg McMuffin and coffee
Finished Drug War -- overly violent and lame.
Goldin Financial may want to talk with me next week but blessedly free for now.
Dreaded work: Cosmo (Century City) wants to talk this afternoon, good thing I didn't go to the gym on time and miss the notice.
11:20 E3 to gym
11:26 apple
12:27 apple
13:00 finished cardio ... usual routine.
steam but no sauna
They changed the soap delivery system in the showers much to my annoyance, can't get good volume out of bottles unless you unscrew em and dump contents out which is of course what I will do.
13:27 84.2 gym scale
Subway has closed down ... refurb or gone? Did a roaring biz, I thought.
13:30 apple
14:00 No protein for lunch in honor of Chrissie Hynde ... 300?g steamed veggies, two boiled eggs, tea
Dreaded work, talked with Cosmo, wasn't too bad 38 minutes, Mr. Lo, though not Won Hung Lo.
Listened to some comedy (Pandora) ... bless the office WiFi and unmonitored bandwidth ... didn't know John Pinette died earlier this year ... always liked his stuff.
Submitted insurance claims
Serious thoughts of drinking about a dozen pints of beer after work but will restrain self ... mood is not good ... this is where the month of disciple gets really hard.
17:35 E3 to home
$138 Kerchin beef jerky
No notes after that ... just remember I had no booze or smokes on Friday night and that was key.
Movies Watched -- The Spectacular Now
Coming of age / teenage love story for Millennials ... features a boy (b. 1987) who looks like a less Jewish version of Mark Zuckerberg ... he carries a flask and is always half in the bag which is refreshing to see ... kid can keep up a steady stream of patter / bullshit which shows that he's a child of an alcoholic ... his Bad Dad is the impossibly handsome Kyle Chandler from Early Edition, which explains why he has a beautiful sister ... nobody sounds like they're from Georgia ... his boss at the tie store is Better Call Saul ... story wasn't very strong, sorta lame, I wasn't super thrilled with it. Under 100 minutes so I was able to watch it to the end, no fast forwarding. Yellow rating.
Movies Watched -- Before Midnight
Made it twenty minutes in and even that was a stretch ... two people framed in the shot, talking, for nearly two hours. Guy is Ethan Hawke (b. 1970) who looks like junkie (except for the Hollywood teeth) and the girl was that French actress, Julie Delpy (b. 1969) seen her in something else, I forget what. Anyway, they talk. And talk and talk and talk and talk and talk. And it's not interesting talk. It's dull middle class white people talk. No man with balls between his legs has sat through this entire thing, I can guarantee that. Red rating.
Movies Watched -- Enough Said
I guess this is targeted at late Boomers / early Xers ... people who have kids of college age ... Gandolfini and Dreyfus both born in 1961, so they're both early Xers. They will always be Tony Soprano (even with beard) and Elaine Bennis to me, whatever roles they play. Catherine Keener was born in 1959 (late Boomer) and is once again playing an aged California hippie chick. Annoying "emotional cue" acoustic guitar or piano at all the bits where you're supposed to tear up. Was this Gandolfini's last movie? Sad, that. Audi and Prius product placement ... Le Creuset cookware and a Mexican maid (though not hot like Richard Dreyfuss's) at the shrink friend's house ... brand name schools (Parsons, Sarah Lawrence) featured ... I guess its deep message was you have to compromise to be happy, yeah, very deep ... wasn't thrilled with it. Gets points for being under 100 minutes though.
Movies Watched -- Frances Ha
This was like a 90-minute episode of "Girls" in black and white with a prettier and spacier Gen Y girl lead. Mickey Sumner (b. 1984) is Sting's daughter, the ultimate rich kid playing a middle class Boho girl who went to Vassar and then floundered for the next five years (nice to see shots of the campus). Like "Girls" it had some funny bits and cute bits but was ultimately unsatisfying. Might be of interest to white upper middle class Gen Ys and Millennials. (Wondering: would a guy like "Patches," who buys distressed ball caps and works at Goldman, marry a homely Jewish girl like Gerwig. Of course not.) Big points for being under 100 minutes.
Movies Watched -- Jagten (The Hunt)
Rex and I agree that the movie didn't work because there's no way the people would have turned on Mads that quickly ... the whole "children never lie" angle was just silly on its face ... lots of tension well done though, innocent soccer ball to the head, etc. If they had made the pedophile a recent arrival in the town, a single guy, etc. then it would have worked. 111 minutes long so about 11 minutes too long.
30 Day Challenge -- Day Eleven
(All 30 day challenge posts in reverse chronological order)
Inscrutable notes:
07:00 4K row
88.2 24.5
07:20 mush (fresh squeezed soy milk, blueberries, sunflower seeds, walnuts, almonds, cashews, apple, pear, banana)
07:31 scooter in motion
07:46 arrive FCD
$8.50 McD small coffee (just had a few sips of the drug, not a mainliner)
08:11 BM
Teekanne tea
$220 cash in pocket
Kitty Kat talking with Bossini, bless her. Another colleague I'll miss when I go, one of the few.
11:12 E3 to gym
12:59 cardio and weights a bit jumbled as there's more traffic than usual, wimpy 120 max multiple benches
13:01 apple
13:33 done with everything
no steam, no sauna as paranoid Livia out to get me after yesterday's absence
13:49 gym scale 84.5 (is it still consistently inconsistent?)
14:00 100 g beef tenderloin (in honor of Chrissie Hynde who was on HardTalk today), 175 g steamed veggies, one boiled egg, bottle of tea
Filled out forms for ~$9000 in health insurance reimbursement to second insurer which means at least $90,000 covered by first insurer (pays to be insured)
17:08 heading home
$50 China Unicom (new phone number for Thomas ... I asked if they can trace these $1 SIM cards back to me and they said no, there's no link between passport number and record in system, which I thought was odd)
18:09 80g beef tenderloin, 175g steamed veggies, one boiled egg, bottle of tea, dried mango, some pork ribs in soup, 56g Tostitos with guacamole (one avocado) and salsa, half a daban bingpi, several large slices watermelon
Large handful of almonds and maacadamia nuts before bed
Wacthed first hour of Drug War, kind of lame.
T claims to have hurt achilles tendon getting off bus, will take to doctor on weekend.
Feeling like I'm beginning to slip here, no progress obvious, coming towards weekend of week two, this is where it gets really tough.