Wow… she really is a doorknob. I mean really, how hard is it to name a single publication?

A couple of weeks ago, my colleagues and I noticed an ad (pictured at right) in the Washington Blade, our local gay rag, for a local gym. The ad claims the gym can transform your body in 12 weeks through personal training.

Naturally, there’s nothing wrong with making that claim. Certainly one could make changes with an exercise regime that is regularly kept.

But it’s the photos in this ad that make me sit up and take notice. There is a drastic difference in appearance between the before and after models. In fact, I don’t believe they’re the same person. (Look at the facial structures and the hair lines.)

On top of that, going from having the body at left to having the body at right in 12 weeks seems a bit unrealistic to me. In 12 months would be more likely, assuming that healthy weight loss means taking off 1-2 pounds per week. That would be 12-24 pounds in a 12-week period, which would be a noticeable difference for the left side model, but he wouldn’t come close to the right side model.

Last year, I lost about 30 pounds thanks in part to personal training, dietary changes and so on. That took a period of six months, and I still don’t have abs like the guy on the right. (I of course still have more weight to lose, and for anyone else trying to achieve a weight loss goal, YMMV.)

This ad is setting people up for failure, discouragement, or at the very least to make them spend more on fitness training than they can afford. It ain’t cheap, lemme tell ya!

September 10, 2008: Matt Damon likens the Republican vice-presidential candidacy of Gov. Sarah Palin to “a really bad Disney movie.”

September 25, 2008: CollegeHumor.com comes up with a theoretical trailer for that movie.

(CH video via Count Four)

Early Saturday morning, I received an unusual phone call. It was from EarthLink, my ISP at home, calling to collect payment on my September DSL bill. My payment was two days late, which is atypical for me.

The move was highly unusual on their part. To my knowledge, not once in my nearly 7-year history with them have they ever called for this reason, not even when my payment was more than two days late.

That said, I really should have chewed out “Brian,” the EarthLink representative with an obvious foreign accent, who called at such an ungodly hour on a Saturday morning. My payments to them are almost always on time, despite the decline in service they provided in the last couple of years.

I’m thinking it may be time to move on to a new ISP, but with Verizon DSL and Comcast as the other major players in my neighborhood, I’m not holding out much hope for better service.

EarthLink got their payment, but not over the phone. Considering how odd it was to get a phone call from them, I opted to do it online.

I think this is happening to me too.

Maybe.

While on my break this afternoon, I checked my email via my phone and saw a breaking news alert. I half-jokingly said aloud, “Breaking news? Uh oh, who died?” Then when I opened the email, it told me that actor Paul Newman passed away. And then I felt sorta bad.

I couldn’t tell you the last movie I saw with him in it. I’m not sure I ever saw a movie with him in it, so I really have no opinion on his talent. I have tasted his lemonade, though; I found it refreshing.

Rent ended its 12 year run on Broadway on September 7. If you wanted to catch the final Broadway performance, this weekend is your chance to see it at your local movie theatre. The filmed final performance will play tomorrow and Sunday nights. (It’s four-showing run began Wednesday.) Here in D.C. proper, shows are at the Regal Gallery Place and the Loews Georgetown theatres at 7:00 p.m.

As a warm-up, I offer a music video from the 2005 film version — Rosario Dawson as Mimi with “Out Tonight,” one of my favorite numbers from the movie.

Google co-founder Sergey Brin on Proposition 8, an initiative in California that seeks to overturn a ruling that legalized same-sex marriage in the state:

… [It] is the chilling and discriminatory effect of the proposition on many of our employees that brings Google to publicly oppose Proposition 8. While we respect the strongly-held beliefs that people have on both sides of this argument, we see this fundamentally as an issue of equality. We hope that California voters will vote no on Proposition 8 — we should not eliminate anyone’s fundamental rights, whatever their sexuality, to marry the person they love.

As a gay geek, this warms the cockles of my heart. Way to not be evil!

(via JMG)

Grapefeed Archive: Google Shows its Pride (June 18, 2008)

Today’s New York Times features an Op-Art piece starring Waldorf and Statler, our favorite Muppet curmudgeons, heckling the debate. One of the four panels from the piece is below.

I kinda want to run out to buy a copy of the Times just so I can have the page framed for posterity. But then it’s not like I’m gonna get around to hanging it up somewhere.

The Magazine Publishers of America named the finalists for this year’s magazine cover of the year. The bulk of the entries seem to skew heavily to New York City-based publications. The winners will be announced October 6.

My favorite cover of those nominated is pictured in the thumbnail at right. (via Towleroad)

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