Thursday, February 26, 2009

an evening at crunch fitness, or the marina pick up scene

This morning I was conversing with Slanted Mirror, and I told her that if my life was a blog, it would be very boring. I would write about eating, sleeping, and perhaps TV or an issue of the New Yorker. For me, an exciting evening is a brand new issue of the New Yorker or the Economist.

Oh to have a life like Slanted Mirror. For those of you who don't know what a Slanted Mirror is, it is one of those Skinny mirrors that they put against the wall at Banana Republic or BCBG to sell more clothes. I often try things on at one of these stores and think it looks great. Then I return home and get ready to go out wearing something that makes me look like a fatty. I wish the world was a Slanted mirror!

True to form, this evening I decided to go to yoga at Crunch fitness. Crunch fitness is where everyone in the Marina and Russian Hill go to work out. No one really comes here to work out, they come here to work It. It is impossible to come here without getting picked up. Every man I know has slept with a trainer, an aerobics instructor, or a 49ers girl from Crunch. Ladies, if you are looking to get laid, become a trainer at Crunch fitness. You will get back on that saddle in no time!

Many of the characters on Slanted Mirrors are also regulars at Crunch. When they are not picking up women at BJ's they are picking up women at Crunch Fitness. Old BJ, whom I call John Senior, plays ping pong here. Whore face, whom I call Whore, plays everything, or everyone, else. A forty six year old I dated, whom I call Old Man, banged a twenty two year old trainer from Crunch. I would try to pick up dudes here but I realize I have slept with them all already. Um, what?

On a side note, Whore, is my ex bf! Whore is thirty eight, but I like to call him forty. I met him when I was twenty five. On my twenty ninth bday, instead of a three carat round brilliant, he handed me the apartment listings and told me to move out because I was too old for him. I like to tell people that I wasted my youth on him. Actually this story is not true, but it is funnier than the real one. Now Whore and I are great friends and we hang out at BJs often, that is unless Whore is hanging out with other chicks. Whore wants to move into the upstairs room at BJs, where Slanted sneaked up to last night. Slanted also wants to move there so perhaps they can split the rent.

Onto Crunch.
I wore a pink bra and bright red bootay pants. I am usually the rare woman who wears not cute clothes to the yoga. I always look around at the cute gals in their Lululemon pants that make their asses look hot. I do not go to yoga because I like yoga, I go because Madonna goes. Madonna is my idol and I want to be just like her. She is fifty, hot, and dating a twenty year old. I want to date a twenty year old.

I also go to the gym because Whore often calls me Muffin Top, that is another word for fat girl. In order to maintain my Skinny mirror figure I have to work out. In truth I am naturally skinny, but I also like to eat. I eat more than most men, which is probably why I have a muffin top. Every restaurant owner in the city knows my name. My world is like Cheers.

I often go out to eat, find I have no cash, and have to call the owner to come pay for me. Believe me this is no joke. Ask me about an evening at Perbacco where the Fine Dining Fairy swooped down and paid for me, one of my girls, and her boyfriend and then disappeared into thin air.

Food tangent.
My new current favorite restaurant is Okoze sushi which is a block away. The chef owner is a sweetheart and invited me to the fish market at 6 am one day. Nooo I did not sleep with him, he is just a nice guy. I met him at the restaurant at 6 am.

Here is a pic of some of the fish you will eat there. I am a very visually minded person so any blog of mine must include photos.




Back to our story.
I hate working out indoors, so I like it when yoga class is short. Crunch recently answered my prayers by shortening their yoga classes, but Crazy Enthusiastic Guruman likes to keep his classes long. Two hours of yoga will distract you so I had a lot of time to think and people watch.

Crunch is not a normal gym. It is more like an exhibitionist gym. The aerobics classes are on a giant floor where everyone can watch you while they lift and the showers are also see through so you can see people's silhouettes while they shower. This is how you can tell that those Lululemon pants are really doing their job.

Yoga here is more like a club. There are strobe lights and thumping DJ music is playing. Today I met a guy who looked like he was twelve and was wearing a pink shirt that said Virgin and had a heart on it. 'Is that your status message?' I asked him. 'We need to change that.' Then I realized his shirt actually said Virginia and I turned pink. Ok, this story is not true either but I did see the guy with this shirt.

After unsuccessfully picking no one up at Crunch, I decided to return home for some pizza. I love pizza! If you do not like pizza you are no friend of mine. The guys at Za know me and they let me make pizza for customers. My friend sent me two frozen Chicago deep dish pizzas for my bday that came in a mini refridgerator. I wanted to share them with a friend, but no one wanted any and I could not wait to eat them. I also opened a very expensive bottle of ZD Reserve Chardonnay from 1999. The reason I am drinking expensive wine is because I cannot afford cheap wine so I am tapping my collection from the days when bonuses were two hundred percent and my 401k was worth more than 401 dollars. Oh the irony of the recession.

Slanted Mirror told me that she once dated a man who did not drink. I could never do that because I like wine too much. My number one requirement for a boyfriend is that he is an alcoholic, which is why Whore and I get along so well. As they say in France, why drink water when you can drink wine?

As I was eating my pizza, a friend sent me the following email.

Friend:
apple you drunkie.
do you remember forcing me to go to the single stall bathroom with you???

Apple:
no i do not recall but i often make women go to the bathroom with me!

Friend:
I heard you were randomly kissing lots of girls.

Apple:
I like to kiss girls. Perhaps I am a lesbian.

It is not uncommon for an Apple to share a stall with a woman. Although it has been a while since I have kissed a girl. My friend Loreli met a girl in a bathroom and that girl went on to become my old roommate.

So Slanted Mirror. That is my evening. Very boring. Gym and then pizza and a glass of wine.

Today the New Yorker also arrived so it is pretty much a great day in the life of an Apple.

Saturday, February 14, 2009

hearts to you

Happy vday fatties! Where are you eating this lovely day. In homage to the beautiful cynic I would like to share some favorite meals from war correspondent, Farnaz Fassihi, who shares her most romantic meals worldwide in the WSJ.

Photo Wall Street Journal

Friday, February 6, 2009

reality vs. fantasy in the wrestler

I sat cringing in my seat, recoiling in amazement at the gritty camera work highlighting the violent wrestling ring fights. While difficult to watch, the Wrestler is a beautiful, elegant, metaphor for life, with a perfect story line that is simple and touching, a nice change from the overworked affectation of present day film.

There are two types of wrestling we can think of, the 'real' variety, and the WWF genre, which is staged. The Wrestler focuses on the dramatic wrestling that we assume is akin to acting. The first scene opens with a match where the wrestlers are discussing which moves they will employ, much like an impromptu stage play.

The fight scenes are graphic, but much like a train wreck, keep you captivated and glued to the scene, unable to avert your eyes or think of anything else. Soon after, in a gritty match that tests the limits of our capacity for witnessing violence, the main character, Randy 'the Ram' Raminski, suffers a heart attack that restricts him from further wrestling, a scene that conflates reality with fantasy, where we see that staged wrestling, however fictitious, requires true sacrifice, true pain, and real physical exertion. However, unlike other sports, there is nothing glamorous about the extent of suffering here, it is gritty exertion in the name of performance, a paeon to the audience. The director moves from first to third person fluidly, highlighting a heart attack scene where we are privy to the reverb of the main character's hearing aid.

Note, I am impressed by the successful blending of the third and the first person. Initially, I was turned off by the gimmicky handheld camera action, but the technique is effective, as we are able to witness life from Randy's perspective while simultaneously reflecting as a viewer. This is probably the most successful use of this technique that I have seen in a film.

After a painful fight sequence, where Randy is injured, we learn that he is no longer healthy enough to perform. He must now take on the real world, a place where he has been unsuccessful, without love from a woman or an abandoned daughter who wants nothing to do with him, but later forgives him in a touching montage. We see Randy potentially grasping at a real life. He retires from his wrestling career.

Cinematic metaphor is employed here almost to a cliche. Randy, who's most poignant line in the film is 'I'm nothing but a broken down piece of meat,' moves from a career as a performer, to literally working at a deli counter in a grocery store. It is painful to watch Randy struggle to keep his stage name while slogging through the humdrum of working at the deli counter, often throwing in a bit of performance out of habit.

The voyeur theme is pervasive here, as we witness not only the metaphor of the wrestler, but a strip club. There is a nice juxtaposition of the viewer and performer. Randy the performer is also a customer at a local strip bar where he attempts to forge a relationship with an employee, Cassidy, who's career is also diminishing with age. The two parallel lives of Pam, stage name Cassidy, and Randy, real name Robin, is heartbreaking. Pam cannot bring herself to love Randy in real life, potentially merging two ineluctable worlds of customer and person, fantasy and reality, while Randy attempts to establish a real life for himself, making amends with his daughter, curing loneliness, finding love.

At one point we witness a fight from Randy's perspective as a viewer, when he comes to watch a match. Rather than a closeup of the ring, the director pans the audience and Randy's distance from the ring is poignant.

We see a few beautiful scenes where Pam and Randy connect, eternally similar, both aging performers with children. Pam's motherhood is an underlying theme here, as she has a chance to do right by her nine year old son, where Randy has failed with his adult daughter. There is chemistry between Pam and Randy, and a beautiful interweaving of two lives. At one point, Pam compares Randy's hair to that in the film the Passion of the Christ. Again, metaphor between reality and fantasy. She does not evoke the actual Christ figure, but the film depicting him.

Pam eventually tells Randy that she cannot be more than a performer to him, leading to a painful scene where he attempts to hold onto his old identity as a wrestler, and ultimately disappoints his daughter, always a 'fuck up' in real life. After missing a dinner with his daughter, she tells him to never speak to her again.

Randy tries to hold onto his stage name in life, while remaining embarrassed to be recognized as a washed up wrestler. His pivotal downfall occurs when a customer at the grocery store tries to place him, and recalls his career as a wrestler, calling out his name, Randy the Ram. Randy, unable to survive in the real world, returns to wrestling, despite the potential medical repercussions.

Here we witness a wrenching scene where Randy meets an old rival in a rematch follow up from twenty years ago, while Pam realizing she must save Randy, leaves her own performance to go after him and bring him back to reality. She gets to him shortly before he is about to go on stage, saying 'I'm here. I'm really here,' but it is too late for Randy. He is resigned to his world, saying that the audience is his only family.

The director leads us through a painful scene where Randy stages, what appears to the viewer, a successful fight, but in first person, we see Randy dying, again hearing the reverb of his hearing aid, the director's symbolism. We see his 'opponent' staging his own defeat while Randy suffers, barely able to stay on his feet, finally positioning himself for the Ram Jam, his signature move that will ultimately cause his death. The audience is cheering for Ram Jam. Randy obliges while we see him looking into the light, Christlike, and the camera fades to black.