Courtesy, as it often is, of the Brits and a formerly pay TV channel going free and rounding up Celebrities to make them do absurd things:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaQ1s7hlXjQ&hl=en]

What’s the opposite of pointless?

a. Pointy
b. Pointful
c. Pointed
d. [other]

Any of the Medill grads out there have a real answer to this question? Anyone else have a funnier answer than any of the above?

Lap-swimming 750 meters: 16 minutes.

Recumbent-biking 20 kilometers: 51 minutes.

Ellipticaling 5 kilometers: 35 minutes.

Completing a sprint triathlon (aka half an Olympic triathlon) at the gym: Priceless. Well, except the price I will pay in pain later today and tomorrow. That should be fun.

Now I have to see if I can actually bring those times down to something moderately respectable.

Posting’s going to be pretty light this week, as I’m trying to keep up the exercise even as we ramp up towards the first day of shooting on the pilot Friday.

At this point, I’m spending maybe half an hour each day at home that is not a) doing physical therapy or b) getting ready for work or c) sleeping.

So y’all may just have to entertain yourselves for a while.

People are dicks when they commit two key, related fouls in the lap pool at the gym:

1. Taking up over 2/3 of the very large lane, leaving me a sliver in which to swim. For the most part, I was okay, but this dick was…

2. Still managing to flail so wildly as to lock arms with me abruptly as he passed me going the opposite direction, leaving a huge bruise on my bicep and wrenching my back-shoulder muscle. He also smacked into me another time, but that was more annoying than all-day painful.

The fact that he did this on a day when I was going to be schlepping coolers and cases of water and mountains of paper around all day made it all the more delightful.

Congratulations, sir of the complete lack of attention and/or boundaries. You’re officially a dick.

And you owe me a bottle of Advil.

I’m going to start pointing them to this Dave Barry column, in which he recounts his experiences being an extra in a Jennifer Aniston-Owen Wilson comedy:

As an extra, you do a lot of standing around. First you stand around waiting for the set to be prepared. Then you stand around on the set while they rehearse the scene. Then you stand around being the background while they shoot the scene. Then you stand around waiting while they look at the scene to see if anything went wrong, which something always does. Then you stand around while they shoot the scene again. It goes on for hours and hours, the standing. But it’s worth it, because the money is huge.

I am, of course, kidding. For a day’s work — and it can be a long day’s work — they pay you $100, or what one of the extras, Joyce Newman of Miami, described as “one-third of a good pair of shoes.’

This, really, sums up what a lot of working in the entertainment industry (especially on set) is like: Run around like a fucking crazy person for a little while, then wait while other people run around like fucking crazy people. Repeat, repeat, and then repeat again.

It’s a sexy business, I tell you.

I have been playing the guitar for almost 17 years. I’m not a shredder, but I’m a pretty decent player.

I just got booed offstage on the easy level of Guitar Hero.

This is going to be the biggest time sink I have ever invested in.

Now begins a new feature here on Goat World, called People Are Dicks, in which I will be chronicling the ways both large and small in which people are dicks on an ongoing basis.

Today: People are dicks because they blow up something in the communal microwave, then let the shrapnel from this explosion burn onto the sides of the microwave, and then leave it overnight for someone else to clean up. Namely, me.

Congratulations, sir or madam of the exploding food. You’re officially a dick.

Having an hour and a half round trip commute, I’m trying to shave precious minutes off my various morning duties so that I can get a little more sleep.

In this spirit, I started swimming again. I can burn about the same number of calories swimming in 40 minutes as I can in about 1hr 20 when I’m on the elliptical/lifting.

I used to swim a lot. My junior year of high school, when I was in probably the best shape of my life (not to say it was particularly good, but that weight is what I’m shooting for with all this exercise), I swam a kilometer every morning before school.

I swim too fast to make that worthwhile as a weight loss program, so I go about 2/3 farther, and swim a mile, which is taking me about 37-38 minutes. There are a few things I’d forgotten, good and bad, about swimming for exercise:

• It really dries out your skin. And working in a place where you’re already ridiculously dry, this can be pretty annoying.
• You’re not covered in sweat after a good workout. I forgot how nice that is.
• Dirty old men hitting on women 40-50 years their junior at the pool. Yeah…good times. One guy in particular I’m about ready to tell to fuck off, except I think he’d like it too much.
• It uses really different muscles. In the shoulders especially. Even after a couple weeks, they’re still REALLY sore.
• People who don’t understand that when you split a lane, you have to pick a side. Otherwise you’re just going to wind up bonking into each other.
• How good it feels to break through the wall when you’re swimming. When you think you have nothing left, it feels a lot better when you’re swimming to find your reserves when it does when you’re on the elliptical. Maybe because there’s more of an illusion of movement.
• The delightful detritus at the bottom of lap pools. Lots of band-aids and sand at my gym. Yum!

Anyway, I’m at least now getting about half an hour more sleep during the week, and feeling pretty good about still getting a good amount of exercise despite it not taking as long.

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