Kirstie Alley and the Big Life

I stumbled upon yet another reality show the other night. It was called, "Kirstie Alley's Big Life."

All I could say was, "Wow..."

I remember Kirstie Alley from Star Trek II and Cheers. Other than that...not much. I've seen her on the cover of the occasional tabloid with headlines discussing how she gained weight and lost weight and gained more, as well as a headline declaring that she had been dropped from Jenny Craig as a spokesperson (they wouldn't come out and say it's because she regained weight).

I remember hearing the news in passing and scanning headlines on tabloids, but I didn't pay attention to it. Most of that gossip just sort of floats around out there like turds on sewage wastewater, waiting to be processed by a bored public that tries to feel more connected to those they admire by reading about the flaws in those making a metric crap-ton more than we do. So I wasn't prepared to see just how Kirstie Alley has changed since her days on Cheers.

Just...wow.

And the series didn't leave a good impression.

I must have seen an early series episode; she decided to test her new weight-loss program on her "handyman" and enlisted him to work with her. It kind of reminded me of the handyman on "Murphy Brown." He always seemed to be paid to just hang around more than actually do anything, and I guess it's a double-paying job when you're hanging around in front of reality show cameras.

My first thought; how can you shill your own weight-loss program when you're really not looking like you could be a successful poster child for your program? She's overweight. She puts it out there (c'mon...it's called "Big Life," and I believe she had a show called "Fat Actress" before that).

Second, the show had her deciding to get more exercise. Exercise will help her lose weight. They had an entire episode dedicated to interviewing personal trainers to come in and help her and her handyman lose weight.

Ugh. I so hate that.

I've railed against it before. Exercise is good for you, but it will not be your magic key to losing weight. Yes, you may lose a few pounds. But I'm willing to bet that much of that is because exercise fills time you otherwise would use eating.

When I'm on the treadmill, it takes an hour to burn 500 calories at an easy pace. An hour. A plain cheeseburger from McDonald's takes five minutes to eat (or less) and is 300 calories. Yeah, five minutes to take in 300 calories takes at least half an hour to forty minutes to burn off.

So if your lifestyle has you eating two thousand calories a day more than your body needs, can you fill in four or five hours a day with exercise to get your caloric intake to a manageable level?

I'll say this again; exercise will let you eat what you want as an obese person to achieve a skinny body if you become a professional trainer. You'll spend eight hours a day sweating calories from your pores. You'll have a huge calorie deficit. Most of us have jobs that don't involve wearing sweats for the majority of the day, however.

Second thing I'll say again; the "easiest" way to lose weight is to change your food lifestyle. That cheeseburger from McDonald's isn't really all that bad compared to most fast food fare; the average McMeal of a Big Mac, large fries and large Coke comes to 1,350 calories. That's over half the calories the average person should be eating in the course of the entire day compressed into one meal. And I don't think it's all that unusual for someone to have a meal like this.

Exercise isn't bad and I'm not advocating not exercising. Exercise makes you stronger and healthier in a number of ways. I'm simply saying that exercise isn't a magic bullet for losing weight, and unless you do a LOT of it, it won't make a huge difference in your weight loss routine. Want a big difference? Don't eat so much. Not eating that 540 calorie Big Mac will save you over an hour on the treadmill.

Forget how this relates to Kirstie Alley? Her show, or the episode I watched, seemed entirely endorsing the idea that if you have a personal trainer (because every fat person can afford one of those, along with your own personal home gym) you would lose weight. She mentioned the idea that she needs to change her lifestyle, but in the same session of marathon Big Life episodes she called her handyman one night to ask if he'd like to come over to eat something.

Um...

Now she has released her Certified Organic Weight Loss Program  (no I don't care enough to put in the actual name because it's yet another program dedicated to miraculous weight loss if you follow the magic "system"). Does it work? I don't know, but it seems clear that her show is less about the life of an actress who is no longer in the headlines for her roles and instead is on the tabloids because of her size and is instead a show cashing in on the public's fascination with reality shows to help promote her program. Good marketing, I suppose. But I think it's bad that it's promoting yet another "system" to an American public that desperately wants to believe all ills have a simple, singular magic bullet cure.

It's reported that she's lost 20 pounds since January (and now it's March) on her own diet program. That's great for her. The key is finding out if her system continues to have positive effects after five and ten years...

Office Open Except For Lunch

This is appearing in the feed many days after the fact, so while it just recently happened to me it actually occurred weeks ago.

I needed to get my bloodwork done as part of my post-operative followup. That day things were already running late; my wife's parents were leaving to drive many hours home but apparently arranged to meet for breakfast after my 9:30 appointment. The doctor's office must have been running behind. I didn't get in until close to 10:00. After talking with the doctor I had lab paperwork in hand but because of the time I said to go to Panera to meet with her parents for breakfast first then we would go back for bloodwork.

Upon returning to the office I found a sign in sheet at the lab with a note telling people that the registration desk was closed for lunch from 12:00 to 1:00; I got there right at noon. I entered my name on the sheet and waited.

Over the span of twenty minutes I saw several people, some I could tell were employees, leave the lab area. Leave. Not come back. Only a few minutes after I arrived someone shut the lab door as they left and I, the only one in the reception room, just got a sheepish grin as she left.

No one coming to even check the sheet...doors closed...I was there alone. After twenty minutes I had the distinct impression that it wasn't just the registration desk that was closed for lunch. At the tail end of that twenty minutes about four or five people in civilian clothes came in through reception and proceed through an "authorized personnel only" door, ignoring me.

I ended up just saying to Hell with it and leaving.

I had taken time off from work to get this stuff done today. I did not relish the idea of stewing for an hour to pay someone to jab me with a needle when I still had half a dozen things to get done.

This isn't the first time I've run into the "closed for lunch" thing, not just here but with other businesses. I can understand if this is some small operation...but when it's a place with several qualified employees available, why can't the employer stagger break and lunchtimes a little? This isn't a pharmacy where the law requires a licensed pharmacist on duty and many pharmacies have one working for the day and several assistants in the shop.

What about people trying to get stuff done over a lunch break? It's horrible to not have time off to do things. I normally can't get things done because offices and stores close just as I get out of work. I would have been three kinds of pissed to have gone over my "lunch time" to do this just to find everyone "out" and realized I had just wasted my time.

Maybe the lab was just slow and there was one guy drawing blood from someone. I don't know. If there was it would have been nice within twenty minutes to have had some sign of life in there. I was the only name on the list that no one had come out to check. The normally open lab door was shut. The room was empty except for me. Not a sign of another soul.

That's not entirely true. At another window on the other end of the room there was some young guy sitting behind the desk of the physical therapy reception window in the corner of the office (not directly behind the window where people would come up to get information or check in, I saw him because I was at an angle to the window) with his face buried in some book or paper while eating a sandwich. He wasn't offering any attention; I toyed with the idea of asking him the lab was just plain shut down, but he was clearly engrossed in his sandwich.

I had grown so pissed at that point that it was better if I didn't have any bloodwork done just then. My patience was just too short by then. It would have been nice to even just have a simple sign saying that there was someone who would be out soon.

All I would ask is for some consideration for people who don't have a very flexible schedule. You never know how much you can help...or ruin...someone's day, and I was definitely fuming for the next couple hours about this.

A Business that Just Won't Go Away

I've griped before about our local Burger King. My son had decided he'd like a cheeseburger from there recently; my wife had also picked up something from McDonald's not more than a day before that; I noticed something about the way they conduct business a little differently.

There's the obvious; BK usually got our orders wrong. I'm wary of them because once I would order something simple, they'd get it right, and just as I got confidence in them they'd end up screwing up the order again.

But I noticed something else. The people seemed different; they carried themselves differently, had a different attitude. One that seemed to say, "I can't wait to go home."

There seemed to be more tattoos at the BK. Does that sound biased? I think it sounds biased. But I thought it was unusual that proportionately there were more people with tattoos working at the BK than at the local McD's...I'm simply stating an observation.

The voicebox where you can place an order starts greeting us with a cheerful, pleasant woman's voice...then abruptly turned into a man's voice asking for the order. Huh? My wife said that it's an automatic pre-recorded voice, one that's supposed to greet you right away then the employees are supposed to stop whatever they're doing and take your order.

"You mean, they're supposed to be distracted while trying to fill an order, and probably increase the chances they're going to screw up my order rather than have a car wait an extra fifteen seconds?"

"Yup."

Then they take some extra seconds at the drive through asking if I'm paying cash or credit. Why do you need to ask me that there? I just want to place my order and pull up to pay.

These in my opinion are bad practices for business. They have a sloppy track record for getting my order accurately filled, they have an image of employees that look like they're about as happy to be there as they would be at the proctologist's office (Hey, the McD's employees aren't exactly skipping around behind the counter, but at least they usually don't let on that they hate the customer...), and they annoy me with cheap gimmicks to make me think service is better than it really is while at the same time it's probably increasing the odds they're screwing up my order again.

Barring something else coming up of great significance, this will probably be the last time I rant on about this, so for those few people reading this blog that may be a source of relief. I know it is for me to get this off my chest. Drives me nuts that businesses run in such a sloppy manner manage to apparently still turn a profit...makes me wonder what's wrong with people. I know I avoid this business when I have a choice.

On Verbal Tics

Ever encounter just "one of those things" that once you're aware of it, you can't help but notice it and be perpetually bugged by whatever it is you're now aware of? For example, I have a theater minor from my college days and so I notice certain mistakes whenever I go to a play performed by small theater groups or school ensembles. Things the audience may not see I always end up picking out and being irritated at them for it.

One performance-related peeve is when people use the verbal tic "um" to fill dead air in a speech or conversation. If I had to grade a person giving a speech I'd fail them for doing this. Drives me insane. I'd rather listen to nothing than an "um". I've even deleted podcasts because the guests would keep using "um" every three words. I simply...can't...stop...hearing...it.

Well now there's a new one that seems to be growing in popularity. The "Or whatever".

"He said he'd like to go to the mall or whatever."

"We can take him to the playground and then pick up some dinner or whatever."

...or whatever or whatever or whatever NO NOT OR WHATEVER. Are you stoned?

For the love of $DEITY stop saying "or whatever."

You want me to decide or whatever? You really have absolutely no opinion or preference? Fine. I'll decide. Starting with leaving you behind. Obviously you have no preference since, as you said, "...whatever."

Stop being so sloppy with speech! I hear it on TV, I hear it from some podcasters, I hear it from friends and relatives and family. And now that I noticed it I can't NOT NOTICE it.

I want to dash my brains on rocks after the umpteenth time hearing that verbal crutch. If you don't have any opinions or preferences, don't say a @#$ thing. If you have a suggestion, say it. Break the habit of filling space or backpeddling with sloppy regurgitation of a stock phrase!

Whatever you do don't use "um" and "or whatever" when I'm in a bad mood and have tools in my hands. You may not like the reaction.

...deep breath...deep breath...