Practicalmadness

I can no longer sit back and allow David infiltration, David indoctrination, David subversion and the international David conspiracy to sap and impurify all our precious bodily fluids continue eating ice cream without going to the gym.

So today I announce the commencement of a Global War on David, an expansive program of posturing, subterfuge, chicanery and (if necessary) aggressive action to reduce my “David footprint” by, say, 60-90 pounds in the next however-long.

The first stage of this program, the so-called Salad Initiative, has been a mixed success: I am eating and enjoying more salads, vegetables, whole-grain breads and cereals and pure, clear water. However, I am also enjoying hot dogs topped with foie gras, Stephen Colbert-branded ice cream and calorie-riffic fast food breakfasts.

The next step in the Global War on David (GWOD) is a two-part plan to narrow what our policy experts are referring to as the “skinniness gap” between ourselves and the David aggressors.

Step one is an escalation of the Salad Initiative: our defense contractors supermarket shoppers have acquired a small store of weapons-grade plutonium single-serving pouches of bite-size raw carrots, and some recent bad experiences with Caesar dressing have forced me to direct our scientists to begin developing “Balsamic vinegar spritzer” technology. This would be a spritzer bottle filled, yes, with balsamic vinegar. Yes, citizens — we have weaponized condiments.

The second phase involves a strategic alliance with a local health club (or gym, if you prefer) both to work out various aggressions and to begin converting some of our strategic fat reserves into usable whoop-ass energy to be canned for later use.

We are considering two such partners:

• The massive, colorful, IKEA-furnished Crunch Gym location over on Sheffield is massive, colorful, well equipped and only(!) a mile and a half from my house. They come highly recommended on Yelp, though I suspect these positive reviews are from people who also liked Legally Blonde. While their facilities are indeed very large and come complete with — I kid you not — a giant twirly three-story fun slide, Crunch (which shares a parent company with their much less hip and more evil competitor, Bally’s Total Fitness) has appeared in Consumerist’s “Most Onerous Long-Term Agreements” section more times than I’d like.

• The Cheetah Gym down the street, on the other hand, got mixed reviews, with some people citing snotty service, a cramped space and a $1 towel fee as reasons to stay away.

  So I might bump my elbow into four other people while using their one and only rowing machine. On the other hand, they’re four blocks from my house.

  I might forget to bring a dollar and have to walk home all sweaty and nasty. On the other hand, they’re four blocks from my house.

  I might feel judged as I walk into the door, and their lack of real membership cards (they put a sticker on your driver’s license) might remind me of being back in art school. On the other hand, they’re four blocks from my house, in a city prone to being absolutely fucking frozen two months of the year.

So like most other things, the gym decision will come down to price, amenities and my general mood. As someone who puts a premium on customer service and surface swankiness, Crunch would seem to have the edge with me.

Longtime readers with savant-like memories may recall that I’ve tried this whole gym thing before, and obviously it didn’t take. But there are a few differences that might help tip the scales (or eventually not, if we’re following the pun) in my favor this time. I joined a gym in Alabama four years ago because my mother was pressuring me to lose weight so I could attract a girlfriend she didn’t hate. (In so many words.) Now I’m joining a gym so I can beat stuff up when I’m frustrated (professionally, creatively or sexually) now that I no longer take frustration for granted, and also so I can lose weight so I can look better in those Threadless t-shirts I like so well.

To recap:

• Four years ago: Unfortunate meddling by a parent who was unable to accept your awesome narrator for the nefarious genius that he is, combined with the sweltering Alabama hot, combined with the fact that gyms in Birmingham tend to be glorified basements that play nothing on the TVs but Fox News, and nothing on the sound system but “Eye of the Tiger” on loop. And at that time iPods were still $400, and not having $400 I had to either learn to love Survivor or start hating liberals.

• Today: Boredom, aggression, vanity, four months’ worth of New Yorkers to catch up on and an iPod/iPhone strapped to my arm. Take that, body fat.

Hello, my name is David and I’m addicted to Apple products

The other big thing going on today is an Apple event, which that company has flat-out said would not focus on either iPhones or iPods (leaving Macs and Apple TVs…so in other words, the Mac). This has not stopped certain morons from speculating that today’s product announcements might include a new, lower-cost iPhone or a new touchscreen iPod.

Both of which, by the way, I’m convinced are coming at some point. Just not today.

So let’s talk to Practicalmadness’s Mac rumors correspondent — the Magic 8 Ball, filling in for the Ouija Board — to find out what’s coming down the pipeline in a few short hours:

• New iMacs: Most likely. I’d be more surprised if Apple didn’t announce new iMacs today. (Of course, I said that about them announcing iLife/iWork ‘07 eight months ago and was totally wrong.) They’ll be faster, cheaper and (maybe) will look different from their predecessors. I do rather doubt that they’ll have an aluminum enclosure, though, since Apple markets the iMac to families with kids and to schools, where the white polycarbonate casing tends to be a feature, not a bug.

• New Mac minis: Outlook good. No, I don’t think Apple is going to kill the Mac mini. It fills a small, unglamorous but important niche in the Mac product line, serving as a simple commodity PC/server for folks who (say) already have a display they like, or who just need something bare-bones for e-mail. It’s also the spiritual successor to the Power Mac Cube, which Steve Jobs pushed aggressively until it became obvious that the product was an underpowered failure. The Mini, while not a world-beater, is certainly not a failure on that scale, and I think if anything Jobs would be pushing for smaller, more powerful Minis rather than killing them off entirely.

  In short, I just don’t see them killing it. But the current Mac mini models are still rocking last year’s Core Duo processors and 802.11g Wi-Fi, so if they’re not gonna kill it they’re going to need to roll out a Core 2 Duo version with up-to-date wireless and stuff if it’s going to stay relevant.

  Besides: a Core 2 Duo Mac mini with gigabit Ethernet, by the by, would make an excellent little workgroup server.

• New iLife or iWork: Reply hazy, try again. I’m skeptical about Apple announcing a new release of their flagship software product(s) at a relatively low-key media event. iLife has been announced at MacWorld every year because it’s (in a way) the single most visible point of difference between Macs and other PCs — the big 40-minute iLife demos are Apple’s annual reminder that while Windows PCs can do a bunch of stuff, only Macs come with a whole digital media studio for free.

  Also, if they’re not going to wait until the next Macworld show in January, wouldn’t it make more sense to debut iLife alongside Leopard in October? Maybe even to offer some kind of Leopard/iLife bundle for customers wanting to upgrade all their software in one fell swoop?

  It’s possible Apple’s going to show off iLife today, but announce it for an October release alongside Leopard, now that their longstanding aversion to pre-announcing stuff has been broken (c.f. iPhone). But if they’ve got new iMacs and a cool new operating system on the way, with at least one iPod/iPhone announcement likely before the end of the year, why muddy the message with an iLife release?

• New and improved .Mac: He beat me, but I still love him. Seriously. How many times has the Mac blogosphere gone apeshit over the possibility that .Mac would either stop sucking or just altogether stop, only to find it still trucking along as always?

  I could see Apple upgrading everyone’s storage and making some infrastructure improvements. But I don’t see them killing .Mac, nor do I see them handing it off to an actual web company like Google or Yahoo. And I certainly don’t see any of that happening at today’s Apple Event. I would love to be wrong, but I’m doubtful that .Mac is ever going to improve enough to satisfy its many critics.

  .Mac sucks. They could make it free, or they could make it not suck, but they’ve had years to do one or the other and yet it continues, like a vermin that refuses to eat its poisoned food pellet.

• New iPods: Bitch, what I just say? See above note — this is a Mac event.

• New iPhones, new iPhone software, an iPhone SDK or a new line of iPhone-branded jams and jellies: See above.