Good Enough

Do exercise you like to do, do it often and if possible, do it with friends, like these chaps at a Washington, D.C. YMCA, circa 1920. 

“I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggone it, people like me.”
— Daily Affirmations With Stuart Smalley

A key consideration when exercising is to ask yourself why you are doing it in the first place. Do I do it to look good or feel good? Do I do it so that people like me? Hell no, I do it so I like me. I really don’t worry anymore if other people like me but I do worry about me liking me. I’m my own worst critic after all. Years ago I realized no matter how fit I got I would never have that cut physique so in fashion amongst the Hollywood elite or gym bros. I used to think “I just want to look good naked.” But I also realized how rarely anyone sees me naked. Nowadays I’ll settle to look good fully clothed, but maybe I should just buy clothes that fit.

My true reasons to exercise may be hidden in my lizard brain, and vanity is part of it. Mostly though it’s to stave off the side effects of aging. The worst side effect of aging is of course, dying. Less final side effects include heart disease, stroke, diabetes, dementia, immobility and looking terrible in a snug t-shirt (again, a reminder to buy clothing that fit).

Recently, after a bout of inactivity, due in part to travel and laziness, my back seized up. Having back pain, if you are unfamiliar, can be debilitating. You can’t move freely (or at all) and the pain can cause numbness in your limbs if a nerve is pinched or constricted. It can lead to numerous headaches and other aches (hips, knees etc) and most annoyingly, grouchiness and despising people who just flaunt their ability to walk on a balance beam or even down the sidewalk. I can’t recommend any quick fixes to back pain (osteopaths, chiropractors, massage etc.) but I do know a slow and gradual fix. Apply heat, apply cold, massage, stretch and strengthen, which I’ve done solidly for a couple of weeks and I’m finally recovering, by which I mean I can stand up without looking like I’m trying to pass as an 80-year-old.

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Seen in July

Just two nice kids but only one is a horse, in My Lady Jane

Sometimes I realize that I subscribe to too many services, but occasionally there is a month when I actually do use every one of those services, which is sad when you find that there is no one service that gives you what you want. I can only hope you don't have this problem.

My Lady Jane
Prime
Sometimes history sucks, especially for women in the 16th century. Lady Jane Grey should never have died. It just wasn't fair. She was executed for high treason at the age of 17 for accepting the crown she never wanted. Yet what if it didn't have to be that way? What if magic existed and you could use great pop and rock music in a show set 500 years ago? Also, this fictional period comedy is a lot of fun and you should watch it.



Michael Fassbender in The Killer

The Killer
Netflix
David Fincher explores a weirdly common theme here. An assassin (Michael Fassbender) slips up, which brings consequences to his home life, and initiates a revenge plot similar to John Wick et al. My only criticism of this plot is that the killer is introduced as precise, patient and calculating, yet makes a dumb mistake, and then launches into a well-planned and executed escape route. When he realizes that someone has come and invaded his super secret hideaway (apparently not so super secret), he puts in motion a series of acts of revenge to ensure it doesn't happen again. If he was as clever as we're told, how did it happen in the first place? Never mind the details of the minimal plot. It is as Hitchcock said a "MacGuffin", a detail necessary for the story to move forward but irrelevant to the story. For some, they may find the patient pace of this stylish film too slow, but for me, it reinforced exactly what our protagonist tells us at the beginning, "If you are unable to endure boredom, this work is not for you.", likewise, this may not be the film for you. In the end, this film owes more to Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Samouraï and Jim Jarmusch's Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai than to John Wick or A History of Violence (though it does share that the story originated as a comic book). Also notable is the use of the music of The Smiths as the primary music of the film (I'm assuming Fincher is a Smiths fan).



The charming Time Bandits

Time Bandits
Criterion Channel
Best described by a reviewer, as having a "creaky charm". It's now a series on Apple TV+, this 1981 film from Michael Palin and Terry Gilliam is one of my favourites though rewatching it was hard to say why. Funny lines? Yes. Funny performances? Definitely. Yet, maybe it is the "creaky charm" of the simple effects and uneven story plus the appearances of Sean Connery and Ralph Richardson as the besuited "Supreme Being" that stick in my memory.
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