Thelma and I were to go to a friend’s wedding in Spain–Menorca by way of Barcelona–but the night before departing Thelma realized her passport wasn’t in its usual place. We were in the process of moving, so while both our apartment and a storage unit were scoured, the passport was gone, and our Sunday flight meant even the Atlanta Passport agency wouldn’t be able to help. We cancelled the trip and mourned the loss of our only chance to go abroad this year. Then we drove to Savannah and eloped.

So, the list. As always, smaller places are excluded save for those in which I spent a longer amount of time. Bold type indicates a new-to-me place.

• Washington, D.C. (I live here now!)
• Atlanta, Georgia (I used to live here and still visit often because my wife lives there!)
• Savannah, Georgia (the Menorca of the American Southeast!)
  
• Colorado Springs, Colorado (friends!)
  
• Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (friends!)
• Santa Fe, New Mexico (a wedding, i.e. friends!)
• Daytona Beach, Florida (family!)
• Mobile, Alabama (family!)
• Greenville / Simpsonville, South Carolina (family!)
• Charlotte, North Carolina (family!)

Despite what I see once again as meager list, I’m sure I’ve taken more flights this year than any other. This is thanks to moving house. A month after getting married, you see, I left my wife in Atlanta and moved to DC for a new job: I’m now the creative projects director at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center.

n.b. Every couple should start marriage by dividing up their earthly goods, physically separating, and seeing each other one weekend a month.

The voucher for the cancelled ticket to Spain does offer the promise of a well-traveled 2015.  Friends beckon from faraway places, and thanks to cheap gas, that voucher will stretch much further than Spain. The choices are tantalizing: South Africa? Turkey? England? Thailand? Iceland? Hollywoodland? Neither Thelma nor I have ever been to South America.

The choices reveal a hard truth: a decision to go one place is a decision against any other. And as least year proved, where you don’t go can matter a lot.

I’ve written something for Medium Called “How to Find the Right Apple (When Life Doesn’t Give a Fig).” Click below to read it. You might laugh.

How to Find the Right Apple

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The best book you can read challenging the received wisdom that obesity is problem of overeating and inactivity.

In Taubes’ view, obesity is caused exclusively by the proportion of calories we consume. Contrary to most diet and nutrition advice of the last half of the 20th century, Taubes argues calories from fat and protein are good, but the calories from carbohydrates are responsible for America’s ample stores of body fat and its attendant health problems. Exercise, whatever its broader benefit, is irrelevant for weight loss since it stokes the appetite.

This argument is slowing finding cachet, thanks to sugar (or really high fructose corn syrup) becoming the current obesity bugbear. Every food commercial now casts protein as the star. The fear of fat is also receding, though I still often can’t find full-fat yogurt in the grocery store amongst all the low-fat added-sugar varieties.

Pity me as I wander the dairy aisle, hoping Taubes views to catch on sooner rather than later.

View all my reviews

@Jeff_Holmes @RickandMorty do you have photos of the other episode descriptions? I couldn't find them on directv. They're all strange

— Justin Roiland (@JustinRoiland) March 23, 2014

*During my year in Rwanda I camped at Akagera National Park several times; there’s some wildlife to be seen but not the kind or amount usually associated with a true safari.

We were also lucky. Each of our drives presented animals aplenty, and of the vaunted big five game, we missed only the rhinoceros. We even witnessed a kill–in this case a cheetah taking down a hapless antelope–a jewel missing in most safari-goer’s crowns.

Below is a video (Vimeo or YouTube, pick your platform) I made of the trip. The video combines footage I shot with my D7000 as well as my iPhone 5, which served quite well an ersatz GoPro (The high frame rate capabilities of the 5s would’ve been awesome for this.). Considering it’s verboten to leave the vehicle in the park, I was pleased with the variety of shots I got.  Take a look.

SPECIAL BLOG BONUS: At bottom check out a slideshow of the best stills.

Throughout production, this project evolved from a general Atlanta audience promo to more of a mission video aimed at donors and those already familiar with the organization. Consequently the script went through several drafts, as we tried to find the right balance between being substantive without making the piece too dry. One compromise along these lines was putting some of the denser factoids into on screen text rather than in the protagonist’s mouth.

The one-day shoot was done guerrilla style, with the small crew getting from location to location on bikes. The main camera was usually shooting from the back of a pedicab and I shot handheld and mounted GoPro footage from my own bike with the help of the iPhone app. We shot two versions of many scenes, one by the script and one with more conversational lines that the other producer and came up with on the spot. Many of these alternate takes made the finished version (the coffee line at 1:25 is example where I managed to weasel some humor in).

During editing I organized the Premiere Pro project, selected music, and helped the editors find good shots from the shoot.

Project roles: writer, associate producer, media manager, B-cam (GoPro) operator, assistant editor.

As always, smaller places are excluded save for those in which I spent a longer amount of time. Asterisks indicate a city of residency, while bold type indicates a new-to-me place.

I’m now on my third passport, and as I look at my worn and now riddled second I wonder whether the new one will be reached for as often. Each passport is a decennial marker,  a measure with which one can determine a certain kind of progress and momentum. Here on the first day of the new year, my thoughts venture ten times further than they’re supposed to.

I stuck it with it, and in the past year-and-a-half I’ve gone through the prescribed program three times (though I stretched it out to 120 days per), and am now mixing and matching workouts as I please. I’ve watched these videos for hundreds of hours and have often find myself admiring the production choices as I huff and puff through a workout. Reviews of X2 understandably focus on the fitness, but the fitness would be lost without a solid production behind it. Thus, my P90X2 production appreciation.

•  Set Design

The P90X2 set is probably intended to look like part of a warehouse gym, but the lighting, colors, and size make it feel as much like a space in someone’s urban loft. It’s a comfortable place you don’t mind hanging out in for an hour every day. I don’t know about you, but it feels odd for an exercise video to be set on a white-hot beach if I’m working out in my pre-dawn apartment bedroom.

• Staging

The small set is possible thanks to a wise decision to limit the cast for each workout to three people plus Tony, who introduces you to your workout partners during the warmup. Many videos instead have a phalanx of faceless extras, which means your only personal connection is through the instructor. While Tony’s great, it’s nice to see him bounce off other people, who are often his real-life friends (Shawna, who appears in X2 Yoga, also happens to be his girlfriend and every P90Xer knows sister Kit.) Though not everyone lets their light shine (I’m looking at you, Dan from “Balance + Power”), each cast member is allowed to have a personality.

The four-person cast also allows for a savvy setup that gives the viewer multiple simultaneous angles of each move. In addition, one person in each workout is the “modifier,” which means they do variations of each move that are easier or don’t require special equipment. In the first few viewings especially this setup keeps frustration lower since you’re more easily able to see what’s going on.

• Hosting/Instruction

The X stands for “eXtreme,” but Tony Horton mostly motivates through humor rather than fear. Though he will snap into drill instructor mode when necessary, he’s mostly content to josh, joke, and sing. Occasionally he lets his vanity peek through as he flexes, or out-competes one of the others, but hey, he’s 52 (YEEHAW!).

Beyond personality and motivation, Tony provides good instruction. Each move generally involves multiple parts in order to fulfill the vaunted muscle confusion stratagem, and Tony ably takes you through the how and why of it all. That said, Tony often exhorts you to use the pause button because it usually takes a couple times through to get a handle on things. Because you can pause and rewind, X2 does not pander to beginners in terms of pace, which you hate at first but appreciate as you progress.

• Camerawork and Editing

P90X2 is filmed and edited much like a live sporting event. I’m good at seeing editing seams and X2 doesn’t have many. My guess is they record each workout twice, but I’ve never noticed intercutting, only some compression.  This staid editing almost extends to a fault, however, as the camera can feel unresponsive to Tony’s occasional special requests (“Come on in, Carter!”).  Dialogue is left alone, even when cutting a line would have made things clearer, like when Tony misstates the length of a break. Overwhelmingly each workout feels live and left alone, which both comforts and challenges you that no one on-camera is getting a post-production boost in performance.

Tony is also not afraid to break the fourth wall, and draws attention to the fact that you are a viewer looking at a screen and not some ripped voyeur stumbling into an enhanced reality fitness class. He often refers to the cameras, and talks about ‘cueing’ a move, getting ‘deeper in the set’ or repositioning himself for the jib. Occasionally someone will stumble, but it’s all taken in stride: during the “Chest + Back + Balance” workout one of the guys is having trouble doing pushups on the stability ball because of sweaty hands. Tony grabs him a towel and declares, “So this is a real thing, we’re not gonna cut just because his hands are slippery.” A lesser program would smooth out these rough edges, but the result would be a less approachable feel.

Also see: You’re holding up America, Wayne!

• Music

X2’s music is the average rock song from 1992 with a whiff of the blues (here’s a taste). Electric guitar and snare aplenty. While the music is instantly forgettable, it does help in a couple ways. The percussion helps maintain the pace of the workout, and the music is often used as an audio cue for starting moves. That’s a nice touch since you spend a lot of time looking at the thread of your carpet rather than the screen.

• Graphics
  

In X2 the two key graphical elements are the “Tools” title card and what I’ll call the progress bar. The Tools title card lists all the equipment you’ll need and is the first thing you see when starting a workout. While I like the list on a conceptual level, in practice the preview montage (essentially a ten-second-long commercial version of what you’re about to do), which immediately follows it is more helpful to remind me of what I’ll need.

The progress bar, on the other hand, is graphical gold. Though perhaps leaning too much on the skeuomorphism of the Monday Night Football variety, the progress bar is essential for keeping you on track. At a glance you’ll see the name of the current move, the number of reps or time until the move is completed, and the master clock which counts down, second by agonizing second, to the end. Many a time I would’ve washed out of a workout early had that clock not been there.

• Format

What happens when you don’t foam roll or do enough inch worms? Why you get the Achilles heel of P90X2, of course: DVDs–are you kidding me? Encrypted, so the average person can’t create soft copies? No bueno, Beachbody, particularly for a program that spends a lot of time talking about how easy X2 is to do on the road.

I’m hopeful the upcoming P90X3 has a digital download option, for it is sorely needed and makes business sense. For the love of fitness, Beachbody, do not force people to flip through a DVD wallet to find their workout. And for the love of business, Beachbody, offer a digital download (preferably DRM-free). You can even charge the same price as long as you waive the ridiculous $20 shipping charge (And why wouldn’t you?). You can offer compressed versions suitable for tablets and smart phones for an additional charge, or even charge for access to secure streaming versions which would display always-current ads before each workout. The possibilities are as exciting as they are commonsensical.