I took this walk last night because the gym was closed for repairs — a pipe burst or a pipe broke or something.

I was reading through my Google Reader this morning and have discovered a delicious and useful list of things I need to return to in my journey back to optimal health and fitness — becoming sexy Chris again — from Kari Henley‘s Top 10 Tips From A Personal Trainer on The Huffington Post:

1. Your mental image of yourself defines what you will work toward. What is your reason for getting out to exercise in the first place? Is it so your clothes fit better, or to be able to ski this winter without dying on the slopes? Developing a strong mental image that is specific and positive will help motivate and guide your decisions.
2. Nobody eats enough good food. This one is huge, as most of us are on a perpetual diet, and pride ourselves by not eating, or skimping along with a minimal meal in order to splurge later. Wrong! “By 1pm, you should have already eaten breakfast, a snack, lunch, and be getting ready for another small snack,” said O’Hara. “You need to take a counter intuitive approach to your diet and until you start eating, the diet cycle can trap you.”
3. Your body adapts to everything. This applies to your diet and exercise, or lack of it. If you start walking a route in your neighborhood and think you can just do that forever- wrong! Ever noticed you start on new cardio equipment at the gym and it is hard to get through 20 minutes, but after a month you are hardly out of breath? That means it is time to mix it up and do something new. Try rowing, or stairs.
4. The word “Carbs” is a misnomer for dieting. If you are taking all carbs out of your diet, you are depriving yourself of one of the four necessary nutrients for your body, as well as vital B complex vitamins and critical fiber. Complex carbs contain valuable nutrients responsible for energy production. Cut out the simple processed carbs like cookies or crackers, and replace with plenty of whole grains, oatmeal, or brown rice.
5. Memories dictate bad habits. Ever wonder why you buy the same things over and over again at the store? Do you buy chocolate Oreos because your mother did? “Time to change up the menu,” says O’Hara. “Replace those frozen waffles with homemade with fresh blueberries, or forget the top ramen and make a quick soup that is simple and delicious.”
6. Face up to your personal statistics. This one really woke me up. Rather than just knowing your weight on a scale or your size of clothes, do you know your body fat percentage, your basic heart rate or the number of maintenance calories you should be eating for your age? “For less than $100, you can hire a personal trainer one time, to help you assess exactly what you need to know,” said O’Hara. Or, for absolutely free, O’Hara steers clients to the website: sparkpeople.com to get all your info and ideas on exercises to do. Check it out and get informed!
7. All or nothing exercise gets you nowhere, (or hurt). Lots of people are like me; the pants just get WAY to tight, so we all fired up about working out again, go out and buy new sneakers, and start running everyday like we are old pros. Then after a week, shin splints kick in, and then we quit. Others may hear about a new type of exercise, and try it without building up first, and get injured. O’Hara encourages starting with a solid, organized plan that can keep your progressing and organize a workout schedule you can use for the rest of your life.
8. We are not supposed to get weak and incapacitated as we get older. It is not true that we should stop being physically active as we age, but continue with cardio, resistance training and core building for a lifetime. Tennis, swimming, golf, yoga and power walking can be done forever.
9. It’s all about PUSHUPS baby! Come on, be honest, how many “proper” pushups can you do? “If you can’t do a push up properly, it means you lack core strength,” explains O’Hara, “and that is the most important area to maintain for posture, back support, and ongoing health.” For the ultimate challenge (and one that I am going to start myself) check out the One Hundred Pushups website for a full six week program to help you reach the seemingly impossible goal of being able to do 100 consecutive pushups. Wow!
10. There is a fountain of youth! “Strength in life is the fountain of youth,” said O’Hara, “strength in keeping the muscles strong and building them, strength in what you choose to eat, strength in your character – it is the absolute secret to a long life.”

Othersource in Poland partnered with McKinney ad agency to build a Flash 3D engine with artificial intelligence for the McKinney website that’s launching this week.

Compared to other sites in the Semantics category, this one has an unusual level of interactivity. Users can ask the site questions, via the keyboard, using everyday language and expressions, and the proprietary “conversation engine” will decipher them and then fetch relevant results.

This means the user becomes liberated from the navigation. You no longer need background information to search the site – you just ask it a question.

Also, the site is completely index-able, bookmark-able, etc… from every page – even the video thumbnails have a unique URL. And every single page is a printable PDF, laid out for A4 or newsletter.I also found a nice blog post about it over at AdLab, Agency Site With a Chat Bot:

McKinney has built a Pandorabot-based chat bot (aka “conversation engine”) into its brand new site with a somewhat trippy interface. See if you can catch answers that were pre-scripted to make the machine sound particularly intelligent as opposed to the generic chat bot cop-outs like “Say what?” or “Come again”. – thank you, Michelle

Here’s the proper press release from McKinney.com:

McKinney.com – A Website You Can Talk To

Warsaw, Poland (February 10th, 2009) — Warsaw-based interactive agency Othersource announced today the launch of McKinney.com, a groundbreaking website created in partnership with the awardwinning advertising agency, in Durham, N.C.

Conversations with a website
Using cutting edge technologies, the new McKinney.com is reinventing the conversation had between the ad agency and its audience. Compared to other sites in the Semantics category, the site possesses an unusual level of interactivity. Visitors are able to ask the site questions, via the keyboard, using everyday language and expressions, and the proprietary “conversation engine” will decipher them and then fetch relevant results.

The functionality is groundbreaking. The back-end employs a 3D Flash engine with artificial intelligence, and the interface design is cutting-edge, making it one of the most experiential and unconstrained agency sites on the Web.

Unique tech mix
Othersource worked with linguists who understood, on a high-level, the structure of language. They also enlisted programmers familiar with semantics to help develop the sophisticated algorithm. “Creating the conversation engine’s ‘brain’ was quite labor intensive,” said Othersource Managing Partner Thomas Krotkiewski. “We enlisted two linguists (one a PhD from the University of Oxford), to analyze questions provided by McKinney, and to supply us with all possible ways the questions could be posed. If this search method fails, a backup proprietary tag search function will launch and search matching content. And finally, if the answer is still thought to be inadequate, the question is forwarded to McKinney for human processing. To be sure the conversation engine learns from its mistakes, there is a conversation history log on the proprietary Content Management System. This level of integration between conversation engine and website is completely unique,”

“We were looking for a production partner who would not only bring our vision to life, but enhance it,” added Keith Ciampa, who served as McKinney’s interactive creative director on the project. “Most true innovation happens on the fringes of the industry, by people who are passionate about what they do and willing to take risks. When we explained our vision for a conversational site, based on a completely open architecture, which could grow and become smarter the more it was used, Othersource knew we were asking for something that had never been done, and they couldn’t have been more excited to help us figure it out.”

Conversation-driven search
A proprietary tag search was built into the back end of the new site so search results can be presented dynamically, and not just direct visitors to a static page. For example, a visitor can ask a question like, “show me TV campaigns for client X from November last year” and an animated 3D tunnel will appear, with search results as moving thumbnail images, that the visitor can fly through. “As far as we can tell, this functionality is unique,” said Krotkiewski.

Like gas molecules
The site has an advanced 3D graphical interface. “The key to the 3D interface is the ‘cloud view,’ which shows a cloud of graphical thumbnails, moving like molecules in a gas, bouncing randomly off each other while also reacting to mouse input. The cloud can be filtered by the visitor to only show thumbnails representing certain types of content,” said Martin Ignaczak, Account Director at Othersource.

Flash without drawbacks
The site has overcome the limitations of Flash: “The site is fully searchable by Google, each page can bookmarked and linked to, and each view can be downloaded as a printable PDF,” continued Ignaczak. Working in the virtual

New technologies were key to organizing the project. Othersource used video-conferencing, VoIP, instant messaging, e-mails, and other electronic means of communication to coordinate the work with McKinney. “We only met face-to-face after the launch, which proves we are able to run even very complex projects completely in the virtual,” added Krotkiewski.

“We are honored by McKinney’s decision to partner with Othersource for the production — we were competing with some quite well-known US interactive agencies in the pitch. Being chosen in spite of being based overseas is quite a feat. We hope this project is the beginning of a long relationship with McKinney. We also expect it will generate more opportunities for us in the US overall,” said Krotkiewski.

“Partnering with Othersource on this project was both a rewarding and challenging experience,” said McKinney Interactive Technology Director Trevor O’Brien. “The biggest hurdle was taking existing technologies and customizing them to work together in ways they were not initially intended to. Othersource helped deliver a site that is an experiential and innovative place to interact online. It’s exciting to see what two like-minded teams can create together.”

About Othersource
Othersource provides interactive services from strategy to production to companies around the world. In 2008, the agency participated in projects for companies such as MetLife, The National Constitution Center in Boston, Accenture Poland, Puma, Imation Europe and others, in Poland, Sweden, Holland, the UK and the USA. The majority of its clients are Advertising and Interactive agencies that need support in creating campaign strategies, creative concepts and interactive production for their clients. About McKinney McKinney is an independent advertising agency that’s focused on reinventing the conversation between people and brands. Our goal is to lead the convergence of offline and online (today, 35% of our revenue is interactive and 88% of our frontline staff is actively engaged in the digital space), to identify relevant applications for new technologies and to deliver game-changing ideas that deliver extraordinary results for our clients, their customers and our people.

Founded in 1969, the Durham, NC-based agency’s clients include Coldwell Banker, Gold’s Gym, Major League Gaming, The NASDAQ Stock Market, Partnership for a Drug-Free America, ProShares, Qwest Communications, Sherwin-Williams, Travelocity, Virgin Mobile USA, Virgin Atlantic Airways, and Brown- Forman Corporation brands Bonterra, Chambord, Sonoma-Cutrer, Southern Comfort and Tuaca.

Most recently, Virgin Atlantic Airways and McKinney took top honors at the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s MIXX Awards that celebrate the “mixx” of creativity and effectiveness in digital marketing. Virgin Atlantic’s experiential launch, “Love from Above,” won a Gold MIXX in the Mobile Platforms category for the company’s first-ever WAP site.

For more information, visit our website at www.mckinney.com or the McKinney Newsroom by contacting Janet Northen at janet.northen@mckinney.com.

Additional information:
Thomas Krotkiewski
Managing Partner
Othersource
+48-601-145398
thomas@othersource.com
Timezone: GMT+1
Janet Northen
Partner & EVP, Director of Agency Communications

Janet Northen
Partner & EVP, Director of Agency Communications
McKinney
+1 919.313.4062
janet.northen@mckinney.com

According to an online quiz on Details, “Are Your That Guy,” I am totally that guy: a total douchebag, apparently.

1 You initiate fist bumps.
Yes
No

Someone told me that high-fives are passe so I have replaced them with bumps and regular, manly, handshakes.

2 You order foreign dishes in an accent.
Yes
No

I ask for foreign dishes, yes, properly. If the dish is French then I order it in French and if it is Mexican, I pronounce it in Spanish. And in Germany, I sort of need to order it in German. If you do it right, you don’t really draw much attention to yourself.

3 You shave your head at the first sign of balding.
Yes
No

I would totally either shave my head or crop it close if I started balding.

4 You use any word Stephen Colbert invented.
Yes
No

I use as many words as I can remember if they were coined by Stephen Colbert.

5 You have an elaborate bedtime ritual on planes—with neck pillow, sleep mask, and noise-canceling headphones.
Yes
No

People with sleeping rituals of any kind need to lose their guy card immediately.

6 You have a downloaded ring tone.
Yes
No

I am quite amused with classic, normal, default ringtones; however, I really enjoyed sporting the “bring out your dead” skit from Monty Python.

7 You wave someone along even though they have the right of way.
Yes
No

I think I have forgotten who actually does have right-of-way at 4-way intersections, so if I feel like I arrived a millisecond later than another, I will wave and wave.

8 You say the name of the town where your Ivy League alma mater is located instead of the name of the school.
Yes
No

If I had actually gone to an Ivy League school, I would totally say New Haven or Boston or wherever.

9 You own a Manchester United jersey.
Yes
No

No, I am afraid not. I almost bought a Norwich Canaries jersey but decided not to.

10 You quote Borat, Zoolander, or Anchorman, or reference “TPS reports” and “pieces of flair.”
Yes
No

I don’t have the best memory for these things but I made a Zoolander reference just the other day — a Blue Steel reference.

11 You put your BlackBerry on the table when you sit down at a restaurant.
Yes
No

Yes.  In fact, all of my friends deBerry and dePhone the moment we sit down for food — not to show off but because I always have too much shit in my pockets.

12 You talk baby talk to your girlfriend on your office phone.
Yes
No

I don’t have a girlfriend presently but all indicators point to “yes.”

13 You offer to buy a cigarette from people outside bars.
Yes
No

No, I have too much of a problem with entitlement — I would never offer to buy.

14 You order “off-menu.”
Yes
No

Food isn’t really my bag and restaurant-going isn’t my bag, and I am pretty much omnivorous, so, like a diesel, I can run on anything.

15 You own a reptile.
Yes
No

Spike, God rest your little soul

16 You say “My bad.”
Yes
No

I hate that I say this. My bad.

17 You describe your relationship status by saying “It’s complicated.”
Yes
No

With me, it always is.

18 You say “We’re pregnant.”
Yes
No

I would love to say this — I will totally be that guy, if that guy says, “we’re pregnant.”

19 You have destination-related car stickers like MV, NTK, PVT, HMP, or NPT.
Yes
No

I might actually get myself a vanity plate. I never have, yet, but I aspire to.

20 You make a show out of tasting wine.
Yes
No

I tried to make a point of being fussy over coffee and cheese, but what’s the use.

21 You preface statements with “spoiler alert.”
Yes
No

I am Mr. Online and have been beaten down by spoiling, so I have learned my lesson.

22 You don’t wash last night’s admission stamp off your hand.
Yes
No

I am not likely to scrub off the thing.  Does that mean I am preserve it or am I just dirty?

23 You use abbreviations like TBD, ASAP, and BFD in conversation and sign off e-mails with “thx” or “cheers.”
Yes
No

I have been signing emails with “Cheers, Chris” forever.

24 You wear flip-flops, Croakies, Crocs, or board shorts in the city.
Yes
No

My only excuse here is that I grew up in Hawaii and I never used to wear flip-flops (rubber slippers) in the city until it because ubiquitous.

25 You have a nighttime wardrobe that includes a going-out shirt, concert merchandise, or limited-edition sneakers you bought in Tokyo.
Yes
No

I pretty much wear a uniform, no matter what the situation. I have “dressed up” and “dressed down” and “dressed up with jacked.”

26 You say “I need my Starbucks.”
Yes
No

It might sound a little prissy until I tell you that most of the coffee you drink, especially from Dunkin’ Donuts, is really a lot lot worse than Starbucks. You may think Starbuck’s coffee is “burnt” but the truth is, you just have poor taste in coffee. You’re decidedly “truck stop” class.

27 You refer to the woman you’re casually hooking up with as a “friend with benefits.”
Yes
No

28 You pretend not to know who Spencer Pratt is.
Yes
No

I actually don’t know who Spencer Pratt. How do I answer? Yes or no?

29 You offer advice to women on their “form” at the gym.
Yes
No

30 You call friends and colleagues by their last names.
Yes
No

I call David Gelles “Gelles” — but one is enough. I should start colling Andrew Curry, “Curry,” but I don’t.

31 You refer to a date/girlfriend’s having done some “print work.”
Yes
No

I am not much of a modelizer.

32 You describe anything good as “sick.”
Yes
No

I have referred to things as “sweet,” — where does that fall?

33 You refer to your wife as “the ol’ ball and chain” and say “I’ll take the request to management.”
Yes
No

I might never refer to my wife as my wife.  She is “Stephanie” or “Michelle.”

34 You refer to a trip to the gym as a “legs day.”
Yes
No

35 You go to a show to see the opening band.
Yes
No

If I like the opening band, I go to a show for the opening band.

36 You think Hayden Panettiere is hot.
Yes
No

As a huge Heroes fan, who in the hell wouldn’t think that  Hayden Panettiere is hot?

37 You put your kid in a Che Guevara T-shirt.
Yes
No

I love Che.

38 You include the names of your kids and pets in your home outgoing message.
Yes
No

I would, the moment I can find a woman who might be willing to breed with me.

39 You refer to money as “Benjamins,” “dead presidents,” “ducats,” or “coin.”
Yes
No

I like to be as colloquial as possible when it comes to coin.

40 You bitch about your contractor at parties.
Yes
No

I totally bitch about my contractors, who are actually employees!  Not a lot of bitch about these days — they’re a well-oiled machine, yo.

41 You talk about a record “dropping.”
Yes
No

I am actually old enough to remember when you would stack records on a record player and they would drop down, get played, and then another would drop, and it would be played, too.  The “record” version of a multi-CD player.

42 You half-tuck your shirt.
Yes
No

I think the half-tucked shirts look cool but I am not cool enough to pull it off.

43 You have a goatee.
Yes
No

I am either clean-shaven or I have a beard — sometimes, just scruff.  Never a goatee. Back in the day, though, my girlfriend Michelle demanded her beoyfriends have goatees (what’s up with that) and I complied.

44 You refer to anything as “small-batch” or “artisanal.”
Yes
No

Like I mentioned before, I was well into cheeses and into hams and into other foodie things and I was very much into getting as many whole milk cheeses as possible. And, when you want to get whole milk goat cheese of and elite quality, you need to go “artisanal.”

45 You refer to any last-stop bar as “the 19th hole.”
Yes
No

I refer to as many things as possible as “the 19th hole.”

46 You’re a Caucasian with a tattoo in Asian lettering.
Yes
No

Tatoos appal me.

47 You Evite.
Yes
No

I have Evited people for years and year by now. I love it.

48 You own a wine Rabbit.
Yes
No

I am a huge fan of the very basic “Waiter’s Friend” or the Laguiole knife/wine opener.

49 You proselytize about carbon footprints.
Yes
No

I am very anti-climate change hypocrisy.

50 You name your kid after a character in To Kill a Mockingbird.
Yes
No

My son or daughter will surely be named after some character or actor. I am a huge film-lover and also have a degree in American Literature with a minor in creative writing. It is bound to happen.

51 You use the phrase flyover states.
Yes
No

52 You use the word bicoastal.
Yes
No

Yes, but when I use the term bicoastal, I mean American and Europe; Washington, DC, and Berlin, Germany.  Bicontinental, I guess.

53 You pretend to like country music.
Yes
No

I actually do love country music, especially bluegrass.

54 You wear DJ headphones.
Yes
No

Nope. Just simple buds.

55 You use a Bluetooth headset.
Yes
No

I drive in Washington, DC, and do most of my conference calls enroute. I own two bluetooth headsets: a Motorola and a Jawbone.

56 You call muscle groups by shortened versions of their technical names, like “lats,” “traps,” and “pecs.”
Yes
No

I used to be a wrestler and also a college rower, so you sort of just do call them traps, quads, lats, pec, etc.

I didn’t get to the gym tonight. I went last night. Instead of resting, I felt like a lump so at around 11:30pm I put on my running togs, pulled on a watch cap, stuck my MiniDisc player into one sock, my keys in another, stuck them onto my ands, and hit the road.

My feet were cold the entire time. I should have worn socks. If any of you have advice on how to dress for deep Winter jogging, I would appreciate it.

I ran from 14th & A Street, SE along Mass Ave until Stanton Park, then down Maryland to 2nd. Left at 2nd, town to Penn Ave, then veered left at North Carolina and to home, if you know how far that is.

The only reason I know the temperature is that there is a Citibank at 6th and Pennsylvania. 12am and 24F.

When I got home, my face was burnt from the cold. Luckily, no frostbite.

Posted Dec 03, 2002 – 09:57 PM

After a smashing time in London. Well, a bleeding bloody humid smashingly hot brilliant time in London, I was off to Oxford University.

I am here for Renaissance Weekend, which is terribly dead sexy.

And I am being put up in Pembroke College‘s student housing. If you enter the main door to the College, walk into the courtyard, then turn right, go through to the other courtyard, then walk around to the right, you will reach a final door before the soda machine. That is stairway 10. I am in there. Then after pressing the little double-secret security dongle into its wee little receptor, one may enter.

Climb the stairs up up up until room 11, and that’s me. I have a wee little student cell, a shower, a WC, and lots of closet space. And a brilliant view of the surrounding areas.

There seems to me to be fewer spires here than I might have imagined. Am I thinking about Yale or am I remembering Cambridge?

Yesterday, I offended the lovely Miss Annabelle Lambert of C-People as I was more interested in the Honda African Twin and the other Dual-Purpose enduro motorcycles than I was the Tower of London and other acid rain-addled hostorical pieces.

She was lovely, though, and indulgent. She took the piss out of me something awful, which means she quite likes me friendwise. So, that’s a brilliant thing.

Earlier that day, I was able to pop up in enough time to get to the gym with Audrey. She is mad mad mad, but in a brilliant way. She might have started a fire in that gym. Yes, she is very sexy and delicious to look at — true; but what I mean is that she was spazzing on the elliptical machine. Very literally, her feet were moving fast enough that they spun around like a cartoon Wyle E. Coyote, her legs merely blurry circles.

She was also quite funny because she was dancing around passionately, her arms pumping, her hands gesticulating, and her body glistening with all the labor. She could have powered Vegas that morning. I teased her mercilessly.

Unconsciously, I took to the Erg. I pulled pretty hard and was able to do the 2000m in 00:08:07.2. Mind you, it was 7am. Funnily, the erg is the only thing besides running that they boys are willing to do for cardio. When I mounted the elliptical next to Audrey so as to tease her, I looked over and all the ergs were being used. Mind you, there was only one boy who had any form. Maybe not all Brits row.

Obviously not, with that form!

I spent the rest of that day trying not to fall over dead from the heat. There are zero A/Cs apparently in the UK. And besides, everybody has such a stiff upper-lip that I was the only Londoner with bad enough form so as to sweat profusely. I burned through t-shirts. When the weather is like this, I always recommend buying GAP stock as I will be purchasing an average of 2,000 t-shirts-a-day, so as to replace my poor dead soldiers.

Oxford is fly. More stories to come.

Posted Jul 31, 2002 – 04:09 AM

Before coming to NLADA I received a Jury summons in the mail. Not being worldly enough to know that there was such a massive difference between petit jury and grand jury, I really didn’t make much of it. It would be a couple days at most, and I am sure I would be passed over. I was, after all, working for an association known for its position helping poor folks find good legal assistance. What prosecutor would want to put up with such a loose cannon?

The answer to that is the Grand Jury system of Washington, D.C., which doesn’t care much about who or what you are in the world, just that you are eligible. Unlike most juries, the Grand Jury is an investigative group, voting not on sentencing or penalties, but the legitimacy of a case to proceed from the US Attorney’s Office to the Court and Jury.

And since there are four Grand Juries convened at overlapping start- and end-dates, each with twenty-three Jurors, only 16 of whom are needed to form a quorum allowing a vote, the system can afford to be draconian. By draconian, I mean to say that no matter how much I hinted as to my compassion and passion for the equal service under the law for the poor and indigent, it was all for naught; in fact, I could have well twitched wildly and hinted that I was receiving messaged from Betelgeuse and it would have really mattered little. Since there are so many, attrition and poor voting have been assumed and I was sadly too square to really subvert such a stalwart system.

It took three weeks for my fellow Jurors and I to realize that our job as Grand Jurists was not to do what the Prosecuting Attorneys told us to do. From the beginning of our five-week commitment, we were told that the Assistant United States Attorneys were our legal counsel and there to help us decide the fate of upwards of 125 lives: would the case be indicted and end up in court or would the case be thrown out. We were never advised that the personal lives of anyone we indicted would never be the same again; we were never warned that these private investigations would in fact become public record if we made a choice to pursue the case in the courts. We were constantly being reinforced that it was in fact about the victims and about the case; we were insured that our decisions were a formality and were an indictment in fact made against an innocent man, the court would be able to discern the truth and justice would be upheld. The innocent would go free and the guilty would pay their price to society. All we had to do was decide that there was a possibility that there might have been a viable crime committed and that was good enough because it was not our job to deal with sentencing or particulars.

I indicted a majority of the cases we investigated during the first few weeks. It took two weeks for us to become conversant in the acronyms and lingo of criminal law. For example, ADW/WA is short of Assault with a Dangerous Weapon While Armed and PWID-PCP is short for Possession With Intent to Distribute PCP. During the last couple weeks I became better at recognizing the different moods of the AUSAs.

They were all rock stars, each with his or her own stage presence. One female attorney showboated and I referred to her as a pit bull. She seemed indefatigable as he worked the system hard, making sure her cases received priority attention; she was a real rock star, but one Jurist made the observation that she seemed to be putting is on: she was neither our ally nor our counsel, she was a state employee trying to move cases through the system past nameless, faceless Grand Juries, none of which really knew what was going on. It seemed to me that over time, the system has really come to forget about the true nature of what the Grand Jury is there for. Funnily enough, I was told by the Liaison to the Grand Jurists that the Attorneys preferred the mature Grand Juries much more than the greenhorns. That sounded plausible to me since there would be less frustrating hand-holding and remediation. It seemed true enough until I saw how we voted over time. As the end of our duty approached, we challenged the AUSAs over details, the detectives over their credibility, the witnesses over their consistency, and oftentimes kept the interrogations focused and on-track.

My Grand Jury was a fast track Grand Jury. We were given priority to homicide, sexual abuse, childhood sexual abuse, and domestic cases. By the end of the five weeks, my fellow Jurists and I were rubbed raw. We watched as other Grand Juries planned parties for the last days, a two hour lunch. We were so burdened by the proceedings that we rejected the party and used our time to get the hell out of 555 4th Street, NW, and into small groups and away to lunch. Even our Secretary, who worked in a methadone clinic, started to burn out. I asked the court reporter how he was able to release the emotions of listening to so many worse-case-scenarios; firstly, he said he ran ran ran, secondly, he said that the rotation for most of the court reporters and attorney’s was pretty short. Even so, there were lifers. So I started going to the gym for a couple hours every night.

I wanted to explode; I wanted my innocence back! The streets were darker, the news stories less gray scale and more black and white, and my sweet liberal nature was starting to calcify, chip and crack. I am not na’ve and have been a backpacker and photographer through many of the world’s cities; even so, I felt a lot less safe in my own DC than I had felt before. Now, it is less severe since I have been sharing my feelings, fears, and some of my venting with friends and family. I am one of the lucky ones. What happens to the witnesses after their usefulness is expired’ What happens to them in their community, in their family, and in their home’ What services, support, and trust can one find after taking upon one’s shoulders Herculean task of standing up to your abuser or the abuser of someone in your community; what support for the witness who comes to the courthouse to defend the reputation of an accused when he knows that there is little chance of it mattering. I can see now why so many communities have become insular: it doesn’t seem like the system is there to prevent crime or to protect them, it merely serves to clean up many of the messes that the system enabled in the first place. A lot of amputations happen, it seems to me, that were unnecessary were the limbs better cared for.

Although some of the Attorneys have excellent bedside manner with the witnesses, nobody thought to make sure there were boxes of Kleenex beside the witness stands. As Sergeant-at-Arms, I rushed downstairs to the convenience store before the first week and bought a large box that lasted the entire five-weeks.

Even though I am not at liberty to discuss any of what transpired in the secret investigative hearings, I will say that despite what Hollywood feeds us, one punch or one bullet or one beating usually doesn’t kill a man. The human body is amazingly ‘ if not too ‘ resilient. Some of the physical, mental, and sexual abuse was so massively destructive that I almost wished some of these victims would have at least blacked out or passed on; but no, there I was in a room with someone who had in them something unexplainable. Some sort of vacancy; some sort of resignation that did not take the body but removed some sort of essential flame from the eyes.

When all was said and done, I recognized the Grand Jury system as something amazing and awful to experience on one level; on another level, it is too secret, it is too powerful, and it is essentially a bureaucratic system that has fallen into a rut. There was no reason why our Grand Jury had to field all of the violent cases and there was no reason why we couldn’t have spent a full day with a third party educator who might have been a better job at priming us than the attorneys who’s job it was to make a case against the accused. It was always US vs. Accused; their prime agenda never veered: get violent criminals off the street. At what cost? Justice?

Posted Jul 22, 2002 – 10:43 AM

I have been thinking about my top ten new years resolutions and quickly wrote them up.

Here they are: 1) run my loop every day 2) visit my gym every day* 3) twice-daily push-ups and sit ups 4) prepare and cook small portions at home 5) eat more fresh fruit and vegetables 6) eat less processed, prepared, and junk food 7) get out of Dodge (Washington) and travel more 8) learn, implement, and follow the GTD system 9) quiet Mind and meditate and review day upon waking and before sleeping 10) spend more time broadening and deepening relationships.

*Does not require working out, just going to the gym.

From a lovely and helpful reader of this blog, Bree, in the comments section of Who Knows Nicole Richie’s Diet Regimen, “OK here it is all those looking for Nicole’s Diet, I havent tried it yet but Im definitly going to!!! hope this helps….” Thanks Bree!

Nicole appears to be shrinking before our eyes. The 23-year-old has hit the gym with a vengeance (2+ hours a day) and now weighs an astonishing 91 stone.

The Diet
Breakfast: 2 Egg Whites; 1 Scoop of Protein Powder mixed with Water.
Lunch: 4oz. Chicken, Mixed Greens, 1c. Orange Juice
Dinner: 4oz. Fish, Steamed Veggies
Dessert: Fruit

The Workout
1 Hour Weight training
90 Minutes of High Impact Cardio
…….although they say……..
Her recent transformation is a prime example of how drastically a balanced diet and increased physical activity can change a person’s appearance. Nicole exercises four times a week and does something different during each session. Besides integral training (cardio and weight work combined) the newly svelte starlet likes to use the indo board for balance and leg work. Furthermore, according to her trainer Adam Estner, “Richie now eats more food than before, but she eats the right kind.???

“How is it that there are single girls everywhere and single guys nowhere?” one DC girl asked another. The second girl responded, “I think it is more that most guys are always ‘dating’ someone…but also somehow single too.”
Men in DC generally have a discrete lover tucked away somewhere. I call this woman number one wife. The term comes from polygamy where there are many wives but only one favored wife. It explains why DC men are so cavalier. In a way, we are already married. We cannot be crushed if a first date doesn’t work out. There is nothing to lose.

Until that magic moment when the DC man walks into a room and falls for the one, number one wife isn’t going anywhere. The DC man can easily make happy hour, hit the gym, hang out with the boys, go on a date, and then – smoky and a little drunk – go over to number one wife, have sex, and then fall asleep under the covers. Warm, comfortable, and snuggly together – totally at ease and fully accepting.

If number one wife doesn’t become wife number one, then she is often the second wife because this relationship was always based on mutual acceptance, making it durable. Love is messy. The relationship with number one wife readily survived all the common things that absolutely derail marriages.

When dating the DC man you can be sure he is dating – and sleeping with – other people even if you are already intimate. There is probably a number one wife in the picture.

Rest assured, number one wife knows all about you.

I was surprised that my high school, Saint Louis School is blurred out on Google Maps. You can only see the football field, field house, gym, and ellipse.

Image by tom.arthur via Flickr

I have been going to the WSC – Capitol Hill since 1997; although I have become more furious about it in the last year. The following article is brilliant and starts with, Working out is painful and boring. So why bother? I really love the Economist.

AT AN hour when he would usually prefer to be asleep, your correspondent drags himself into an LA Fitness gym in north London. In the changing room, he finds a reassuringly fat man forlornly weighing himself; but the other early birds wrestling with the weights machines look dauntingly fit and expert. Nursing a mild hangover and grave doubts about his vocation, he prepares to meet his nemesis.

His nemesis is an affable personal trainer, who is initiating him into the cult of the gym. Questioned about his exercise regime, your correspondent mumbles something about playing soccer from time to time. The instructor is not impressed, and introduces him to a series of contraptions that look like instruments of torture. The new boy and the step-trainer do not see eye to eye. After much sweating and huffing, the instructor estimates that it will take six months for the novice to get into shape, if he eats healthily and sticks to mineral water. The pupil makes his excuses and leaves just before the “fat burner” class begins; the trainer amicably promises to take the relieved smile off his face if he shows it in the gym again.

This humiliating ordeal is of course familiar to millions. It will soon be familiar to many more: the busiest time for gym recruitment is just after Christmas, when seasonal gluttony and optimistic new-year resolutions impel the slothful to take drastic action. The other bumper recruitment times tend to be just before the summer holidays (for which people want to look nice) and just after them (when they realise that, alas, they didn’t).

The fit and the saved

The modern gym craze grew out of the aerobics fad of the 1970s and 1980s. In Britain, the industry really took off in the 1990s, when private companies entered a market that had previously been dominated by local councils. Membership of private British gyms, and their revenues, more than doubled between 1996 and 2001, according to the International Health, Racquet & Sportsclub Association (IHRSA). The leading gym franchises have rapidly become fixtures in high streets and shopping arcades. The LA Fitness chain, for instance, one of the country’s most successful, was founded in 1996 and will, according to Fred Turok, its chief executive, have 73 outlets by July 2003; the (relatively modest) average monthly fees are currently £38 ($58). Likewise, gym revenue in Germany has almost quadrupled in a decade.

But the beefiest market by far is in America. There are three times as many health clubs in America as there were 20 years ago; around 13% of Americans were members at the last count, and many more attend casually. Companies hoping that the odd work-out will improve their employees’ productivity and perhaps contain their health-insurance bills, along with growing numbers of older recruits, have helped to sustain the boom. All this represents quite a big change in how people in rich countries—particularly the young and affluent—spend their time and money.

To anthropologists of the future, however, the gym boom may look as much like a sinister cult as a commercial triumph. Gym-going, after all, has all the basic lineaments of a religion. Its adherents are motivated by feelings of guilt, and the urge to atone for fleshly sins. Many visit their places of worship with a fanatical regularity: a third of LA Fitness members, for instance, go virtually every day. Once there, believers are led by sacerdotal instructors, who either goad them into mass ecstasy during aerobics classes, or preside over the confessional tête-à-tête of personal training. Each devotee has his own rituals, though most rely on the principles of self-mortification and delayed gratification. The extremist cult of body-building, whose Mecca is Gold’s Gym in Venice, California, has become a mass movement.

After escaping from a brush with the horizontal leg press, the question that troubles this slobbish journalist is: why? What inspires the armies of devout body-worshippers? What is the point?

Today’s young professionals are not the first people in history to devote so much time and cash to the cultivation of their bodies. The word “gymnasium” comes from the Greek word gumnos, meaning “naked”, which is how many ancient Greeks practised wrestling, boxing and running in their gymnasia (or palestra). Gymnasia were part of Plato’s ideal city; the Romans inherited this corporeal preoccupation from the Greeks. Ancient gyms shared some features with their modern equivalents: for instance, well-heeled exercisers could engage the services of the classical version of personal trainers. There was a fair bit of ogling. But one essential difference was that one of the purposes of gym-attendance was to prepare young men for war; it was essential for the warrior classes in martial societies such as ancient Sparta.

Conventional religiosity motivated a 19th-century form of body-worship. Christianity had traditionally regarded the body as something of an embarrassment; but with the Victorian rise of “muscular Christianity”, looking after the body became a way of worshipping the creator. Christian gentlemen were obliged to attend to their muscles as well as to their minds. Exercise was also embraced to quell the unruliness of poor, urban youths, who were shepherded into boxing clubs. And it answered worries about the sturdiness of the national gene pool, which was required to generate enough able-bodied young men to govern an empire. So the cult of the body spilled out of public schools and into the slums (and across the Atlantic to America).

Unfortunately, these precedents offer little insight into the motives of today’s mostly civilian, often godless gym-goers. But there is one concomitant phenomenon that might supply an obvious explanation for the rise of the fitness religion: fat. The exercise boom has coincided with an epidemic bulge in waistlines in many rich countries: an astonishing number of Europeans and Americans are either over-weight or obese. So perhaps gym-attendance can be explained as a logical consequence of gluttony—a prophylactic or remedy for fatness in particular, and a sensible way to stay healthy in general?

One problem with this neat explanation, as a visit to almost any gym will reveal, is that most gym-goers are already depressingly svelte. According to Mintel International, a British market-research firm, more people visit gyms to tone up than to lose weight. As one personal trainer confides, fat people are generally too self-conscious to subject themselves to comparison with the flabless forms of most gym users (though some clubs are attempting to entice the shy with euphemistically named “beginners’ sessions”). Society, it seems, is becoming polarised between the fat and the fit.

Moreover, if better health is what the running-machine acolytes are looking for, the gym is not always the place to find it. Cardio-vascular exercise has undeniable benefits. (The calculation made by one waggish sceptic—that the amount of time exercise adds to a life is approximately equal to the amount of time spent exercising, yielding a net gain of zero—is no doubt unreliable.) Working out can, says Jeremy Shearman, a specialist in exercise psychology at Britain’s University of Essex, have wider benefits, including increased productivity. However, gyms are quite often bad for their devotees’ health. That is partly because, as in any gold rush, some unscrupulous entrepreneurs have cut corners on staffing, and regulations have evolved belatedly. So, in Britain, there is no industry-standard qualification for fitness instructors, who often boast only one of many more or less bogus diplomas, or none at all. Some inflict cruel and unusual punishments on their flocks. Even adherents of sedate sub-cults such as yoga are liable to have their limbs damagingly contorted by maverick instructors.

Jonathan Betser, an osteopath in Harley Street, London, says he spends much of his time treating back problems and neck strains incurred by gym-users who have been badly advised or are over-ambitious—compensating for their sedentary jobs with lunatic and damaging work-outs. Others concentrate too much on improving one particularly beloved muscle and end up with dangerously imbalanced bodies. The peak time for such self-inflicted injuries, Mr Betser says, is (be warned) during the penitential January rush.

The sweat and the stupor

Whatever they do to the body, gyms are certainly numbingly bad for your mind. This is not simply the partisan judgment of a self-vindicating slob. The biggest problem the fitness industry faces is retaining club members, who, when their original zeal wears off, get bored with all the lonely and repetitious rituals. To combat the threat of boredom, gyms have installed distracting televisions and (in the posher ones) Internet connections to entertain the Sisyphean toilers on bikes and rowing machines. Most chains have devised zany-sounding exercise classes to bedazzle flagging members. LA Fitness, like most others, offers a range of unpronounceable varieties of yoga: Astanga, Iyenga, Sivananda, and so on.

At the plusher end of the market, the techniques deployed against boredom are much more elaborate. After a generous recovery time—and a more substantial lunch than was technically advisable—this correspondent subjects himself to one such elaboration at the Third Space, a swanky gym in Soho. With membership costing around £1,000 a year, the Third Space is not quite London’s priciest outfit, but is probably its most chic. He heads for the club’s full-sized boxing ring for an hour’s instruction with Martin, a charismatic and patient professional light welterweight. Martin assures him that learning to box is a good way to get fit (the possibility of concussion notwithstanding), and one which is surprisingly popular with women. Martin doesn’t seem to mind—or perhaps he doesn’t notice—when his pupil breaks a promise to go easy on him, accidentally biffing him on the chin. Martin graciously allows that your correspondent could indeed be a contender, though suggests he comes down a few weight divisions before turning professional.

The boxing ring, which hosts regular “fight-club” nights for emasculated city and media types, is—says Ollie Vigors, a co-founder of the Third Space—one of the ways in which the gym tries to differentiate itself, and keep its visitors entertained. Mr Vigors includes bowling alleys and bars, as well as other gyms, among his competitors. Other features designed to give the Third Space the edge include an altitude-controlled running chamber; a reduced-chlorine swimming pool in which members can learn to scuba dive; a climbing wall; and the opportunity to be serenaded by DJs or (on Sunday mornings) a gospel choir while you work out. There is also on-site alternative therapy, including “neuro-linguistic programming” and other offerings from the outer reaches of medicine and the English language.

Research suggests that twenty-somethings are more dissatisfied with their bodies than anybody else, although they tend to be in the best condition

Many American gyms, especially those in New York, have devised even more unlikely and exotic novelties to dispel the danger of somnolence. In New York’s gyms, experimental exercisers can work-out by pretending to be fire fighters; participate in a “striptease aerobics” class (not an activity likely to appeal to beginners); or engage in the oxymoronic “bootcamp yoga”. Rick Caro, who founded the IHRSA and now runs Management Vision Inc, a specialist American consultancy, says that as the fitness business becomes more competitive—and with mini-gyms opening in, among other places, airports and shopping malls—more and more facilities are carving out specialist niches for themselves. Mr Caro believes that group workouts are one of the best ways to counteract boredom (partly because wavering participants can see that some other people are in a worse shape than they are).

So what, this sweating scribbler continues to ask himself, are the compensations of a pastime whose physical benefits are variable, and which is so dull that all manner of improbable hybrids and gimmicks have to be invented to keep people at it? Why do hordes of already-fit people devote so much of their time to such a boring and self-punitive pursuit? Most other forms of entertainment that have evolved with mass affluence—such as, say, the rise of foreign holidays—are more obviously enjoyable. Indeed, one standard critique of Anglo-American capitalism argues that, at a certain point, the puritanism that originally sustained it evaporated, to be replaced by a callow and self-indulgent hedonism; whereupon pleasure replaced graft as capitalism’s ultimate good. What explains this masochistic anomaly?

Help thou my unbelief

Perhaps the answer lies in the access gyms offer to gaggles of lithe and scantily clad (if not entirely gumnos) strangers. Many gyms are indeed designed with plenty of glass and mirrors to facilitate mutual admiration. As Tris Reid-Smith—editor of the Pink Paper, a gay British weekly—says, there are some gyms that attract large numbers of “muscle Marys” or “gym bunnies”, as stereotypically muscle-bound gay men are known among their peers.

In some of these, gratification is not always exactly delayed. But the etiquette in most gyms, and the strict concentration on personal salvation that prevails, precludes much in the way of flirtation. Most of the admiration is of the narcissistic variety (it is the men, fitness instructors report, who are especially besotted by the mirrors).

Changes in the structure of relationships outside the gym may be part of the explanation: the increased likelihood of divorce and separation may have persuaded attached people, unconsciously or otherwise, that they ought to stay in shape, just in case. Along with the growing demand for male-grooming products, gym attendance among men may also reflect the growing power of women in the singles market: more and more men are now afflicted by the same sort of bodily anxieties that women have endured for decades. (A contrary explanation is that the emasculation wrought by women’s gains at work and home has driven some men to fall back on muscular notions of masculinity.) Perhaps, for both sexes, muscles have come to signify prosperity, just as a suntan used to be the mark of an agricultural labourer but now denotes wealth.

Explanations based on the potential rewards of swelling biceps and flat tummies assume that, at some level, gym-going is motivated by the rational pursuit of happiness. According to a more pessimistic view, going to the gym is not pleasurable (however indirectly) but pathological. Oliver James, a clinical psychologist, thinks that the fitness cult is part of a wider pattern of self-flagellation, induced by the drawing of comparisons with inappropriate role models. More and more people feel inadequate, he believes, because the standards by which they judge themselves are the visions of perfection purveyed by seemingly benign television programmes such as “Friends”. Meanwhile, too many people fail to derive any solace from comparisons that are flattering to themselves, such as with the fat man in the changing room.

The result is an “horrendous perfectionism” which, Mr James believes, prevents people from enjoying the fruits of their affluence. Few will take this “horrendous perfectionism” to the same extreme as did Yukio Mishima, a celebrated Japanese novelist who, after building a splendidly buff torso from years of pumping iron, committed hara-kiri rather than grow old and ugly. But still, Mr James speculates that for every person who goes to the gym for a legitimate health reason, many more are engaging in low-grade attacks on their bodies, which, in most cases, are already absolutely fine. An extreme form of this can be found among bodybuilders, some of whom suffer from a pathological belief that they are puny. According to researchers in Melbourne, “muscle dysmorphia” (or “bigorexia”), as the delusion is known, often leads sufferers to exercise obsessively and gobble steroids.

There is some evidence to support the view that working out, and other forms of body-anxiety, may be sicknesses of affluence—driven by unreasonable and unachievable expectations about where the rowing machine can take you. One personal trainer confides that, whenever a client successfully hardens or tightens one targeted part of the body, he or she invariably moves on to the improvement of another part. Research suggests that twenty-somethings are more dissatisfied with their bodies than anybody else, when, in fact, they tend to be in the best condition. Anxieties about body-shape, epidemiologists in Canada have found, are most prevalent in affluent areas. On this analysis, going to the gym will only make things worse, condemning users to an endless and destructive cycle of perfectionism.

A slightly less depressing possibility is that the appeal of the gym cult lies in the structure of religion itself. Perhaps hedonism is losing its lustre, and rich westerners once again crave the shape and strictures, however masochistic, that orthodox religion once supplied. Like Christian salvation, the holy grails of gym-goers may be distant and unattainable, and the paths towards them painful, but the rules and routines that their pursuit involves seem to provide comfort to a new and growing breed of secular puritans.

In the end, gym-attendance, like most popular religions, probably has something to do with fear of death and the quest for immortality—as if a well-toned body could somehow stave off the day of judgment. Which, unfortunately, is just another way in which it is liable to lead to disappointment. Gyms may not actually be bad for most people who go to them; but, as a wise man once inquired about hard work, why take the risk?

Article

 

Since the rentals of the fine singles down at the Thompson’s boat center is discontinued for the season, I am now spending a heck of a lot of time at the WSC.

I spend 5k meters on the Erg, then some time on the elliptical machine. Then to the weights. Hooyah!

I have been running from my pad to the gym these days. Running is something I have not done in over ten years so I am very happy to be returning into the world of health and strength.

I do lat pull-downs, extreme chest flies, prayer bench bicep curls, crooked barbell curls, tricep pull-downs, military press, assisted pull ups, shrugs, etc. Plus lots of stretching and some ab work (never enough, eh?)

Mostly Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, the nights Wendy is busy figure skating.

Here’s a classic, a post by Nicole Wilson from her blog:

This weekend Heather and I worked out at her gym in Annapolis. I was a member of the WSC for more than a year and I noted some differences between the two locations.

There were more machines at Heather’s gym, more free weights, more large televisions everywhere, more sweat, and more fit women (although the men were far more plentiful, just like in DC). But the most startling difference, and something that I had never encountered, was the presence of straight men at the Annapolis gym.

It seems that only gay men take their looks seriously in DC, and lots of dumpy women have gym memberships because they’re not worried about being judged by the hot guy who’s checking out the other hot guy’s abs. But in Annapolis, women slyly glanced at bulging biceps and chatted loudly with Heather about which studs had fantastic physiques and to what degree they did or did not look like psychos. Girls were in better shape and put more than 20 pounds on the leg press and men raised eyebrows to each other over the view of a bent over ass. Had I known about this straight guy workout phenomenon I may even have tried to muster up something less utilitarian than my running shorts and T.

Heather was a butterfly, pausing more than pressing. The gym was transformed from a place to go sweat and stretch and leave to an all out happy hour (sans alcohol) with a few tricep dips for appearances sake.

But all this time at the gym, no matter how diluted the workouts, seems to be paying off big time from what I’ve witnessed around town. Maybe it’s inspirational? Maybe it’s the same reason the gay men in DC are so fit? The presence of attractive people creates a cycle whereby more attractive people gather? All I know is that I had a pretty good workout, and I spent my time waiting for Heather to finish up watching the calves of a good looking bald guy with a cd player hung around his neck run a few miles on an inclined treadmill. Not a bad way to pass two hours at a gym.