Toren Atkinson’s Absolute Blog

As soon as I walked in the door of Jeremy’s housewarming I was doomed. Dolmathes, olives, houmous, dark chocolate, homemade peanut butter cookies with peanut reese’s pieces, cheese w/ rosemary crackers, and introducing the Parthenon’s “God’s Dip” – essentially a Greek salad in a dip. So today I blew the diet, willingly and openly. But even though I went well outside the restrictions I’ve set for myself, I didn’t eat nearly as much as I would have if I weren’t on this diet. Still, I feel I’ve revisited the place where I am at my weakest and simultaneously my most comfortable. The place where I am the most satisfied for a short time and then I am the least satisfied immediately afterwards.
Hello, place.

It’s funny-peculiar how on one level I want to be in that place so bad, but on another level it makes me sick to think of it. In that moment when I’ve come home from Safeway with a bag of peanut M&Ms, double chocolate cookies, corn chips and 7 layer dip and lemon houmous, and maybe a tub of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, that’s an exciting, heavenly, fulfilling moment. And then when the bags are empty and I’m full to the point of feeling queasy, I am in the moment of regret, shame, and reprobation. And every moment of the day when my mind is not occupied with work or similarly engaged, loading up on the sweets and treats IS ALL I WANT. I mean how do you manage that, really? I know that my current starvation diet isn’t really addressing the problem – more like it’s addressing the fallout to the problem – but I honestly don’t know how to fight it.

Is part of the solution to stop buying my own food? Should I shell out for someone to prepare all of my meals? Is there going to be a time when I don’t crave nachos with guacamole and kalamata olives, or butter chicken, or a DQ Blizzard? Because I’m pretty sure that the only reason I’m able to stay on this diet is because I know that said treats are in my future, and the sooner I lose these last 6 lbs the sooner I can put these delicious treats in my mouth and unintentionally begin putting the weight back on.

Paul and Jeremy and I were talking about exercise tonight. A variety of sources say that biking is good for you but helps not at all in losing weight. Is it true? If so, where’s the justice? Jeremy works out at a gym and as I mentioned I cannot stomach that (bit of a pun there). Paul champions the miracle of Chuck Norris’ Total Gym, which I’m considering. You can get them on Craigslist for $150-200 so I figure I could try it out and if it didn’t work out, sell it on Craigslist for $150-200. Kind of like a free trial with hassle. I could also get an exercise ball and try to conquer my lack of motivation. Alternately: sports sports sports sports. Indoor soccer in 2008? I did enjoy the summer of tennis. Problem is finding the right groove in terms of people, scheduling and location.

Moving on….

I had to walk down to Safeway today to get groceries. Walk! Can you believe it? Too treacherous for bike riding, especially since I almost got murdered yesterday going down a hill and trying to break as a car came towards me. Don’t tell Mom her favourite son almost DIED. Speaking of treacherous, I had to buy my chicken at Safeway, which normally I wouldn’t do, but I just didn’t have time to go to the butcher. I think I’m going to try my orange juice/pumpkin pie spice/butternut squash recipe tonight. And I’m going to put it on HIGH. OVERNIGHT. I hope I don’t burn the house down.

Because I couldn’t ride my bike I thought wouldn’t it be a good idea to go around the neighborhood and offer to shovel people’s walkways for free? That would be good exercise, and it would be serving my bourgeoisie community. Unfortunately them comic book pages ain’t gonna ink themselfs, so my muscles will atrophy as my inking skills grow (in theory).

Day 21: ice cream 125 granoli 130 banana 200 granoli 110 apple 100 granoli 110 vegetables 125 chicken 200 = 1100 calories

Day 22: ice cream 140 granoli 110 apple 100 banana 200 granoli 110 chicken 250 ice cream 25 granoli 220 = 1155

Day 23: ice cream 25 granoli 220 orange 100 ice cream 25 + FAILURE

Merry Christmas ladies!

1928 THE GREAT DEPRESSION The beginning of the Great Depression in the United States is associated with the stock market crash on October 29, 1929, known as Black Tuesday. This was obviously a desperate time, when the everyman felt powerless, and the escapist heroes of the era would reflect that, and how.

1929 POPEYE first appeared in the daily King Features comic strip Thimble Theatre on January 17. Popeye is depicted as having superhuman strength, though the nature of his strength changes depending on which medium he is represented in. Originally, the comic-strip Popeye revealed that he had gained his strength by rubbing the head of the rare Whiffle Hen. He later said he was strong because he ate spinach.

1929 TINTIN IN THE LAND OF THE SOVIETS was published for the first time in the children’s supplement to the Belgian newspaper Le Vingtième Siècle and appeared in album form in 1930. The story is a political satire, expressing the creator’s (Hergé) distrust of the Soviet Union and poking fun at its claim to have a thriving economy.

1930 GLADIATOR is an American science fiction novel written by Philip Wylie. In it, a scientist creates a super-serum to improve mankind, granting the proportionate strength of an ant and the leaping ability of the grasshopper. He injects his pregnant wife with the serum and his son, Hugo Danner, is born with superhuman strength, speed, and bulletproof skin. Hugo spends much of the novel hiding his powers, rarely getting a chance to openly use them. The precursor and inspiration for Superman.

1931 DICK TRACY, the hard-hitting, fast-shooting, and brilliant police detective was created by cartoonist Chester Gould, and distributed by the Chicago Tribune Syndicate. Gould introduced a raw violence to comic strips, reflecting the violence of 1930s Chicago, and also did his best to keep up with the latest in crime fighting techniques. Tracy uses forensic science, advanced gadgetry and plain hard thinking to track down and catch the often grotesquely ugly villain, who are arguably the strongest appeal. It has been suggested that this comic strip was the first example of the police procedural mystery story. Tracy’s world is decidedly black and white where the bad guys are sometimes so evil that their very flesh is deformed to announce their sins to the world.

1931 THE SHADOW was a ruthless anti-hero in the noir vein, a man clad in black, working at night, who used a ‘fight fire with fire’ philosophy in fighting crime — burglarizing in the name of justice, and terrifying criminals into vulnerability before he gunned them down. The Shadow’s creation was practically an accident. In 1930, “The Shadow” was the name given to the narrator of the Detective Stories radio show whose plots were drawn from the pulp magazine of the same name. The magazine (not a comic book) was published by Street and Smith, and the company aimed the radio program at boosting the magazine’s circulation. However, listeners found the announcer more compelling than the stories and began asking newsstands for copies of The Shadow Magazine, which did not exist. Responding appropriately to the unexpected demand, S&S commissioned Walter B. Gibson to begin writing stories of The Shadow. Gibson wrote a reported 282 out of 325 Shadow books over twenty years: a novel-length story twice a month (1st and 15th).

1933 Another pulp magazine hero, DOC SAVAGE (aka Clark Savage, Jr) was a physician, scientist, adventurer, inventor and musician. A team of scientists assembled by his father trained his mind and body to near-superhuman abilities almost from birth, giving him great strength and endurance, a photographic memory, mastery of the martial arts, and vast knowledge of the sciences. He “rights wrongs and punishes evildoers.” The novel writer, Lester Dent, described the hero as a mix of Sherlock Holmes’ deductive abilities, Tarzan’s outstanding physical abilities, Craig Kennedy’s scientific education, and Abraham Lincoln’s goodness.

1934 FLASH GORDON is the hero of a science fiction comic strip originally drawn by Alex Raymond, created to compete with the already established Buck Rogers strip.

1936 THE PHANTOM series began with a daily newspaper strip. While the Phantom is not the first fictional costumed crimefighter, he is the first to wear the skintight costume that has become a hallmark of comic-book superheroes, and the first to wear a mask with no visible pupils, another superhero standard. Inspired by the creator’s lifelong fascination with such myths and legends as El Cid and King Arthur, as well as Zorro, Tarzan, and The Jungle Book’s Mowgli, Lee Falk originally envisioned the Phantom’s alias as rich playboy Jimmy Wells, fighting crime by night as the mysterious Phantom, but partway through his first story, “The Singh Brotherhood”, he moved the Phantom to the jungle.

1937 DC Comics was founded as National Allied Publications in 1934 by Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson. The initials “DC” were originally an abbreviation for the company’s popular title Detective Comics, and later became the official name.

1937 PRINCE VALIANT comic strip began in full color tabloid sections. I include it here only to show how advanced comic book art had already come by this time.