Business Flannel

I’m working my way through The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington, a book I’ve never read before by an author I’ve never really considered. This quote, about a bygone era “fondly recalled,” struck me. Page one, paragraph 2.

David Simon is, uh, not impressed by Mitt Romney’s thoughts on the 47 percent.

A few weeks ago I saw the new Batman movie (“Batman 3: The Re-Batmanning”) and the single moment that has stuck with me longer than any (SPOILER) other is the one where (SPOILER) Bruce Wayne is stuck in the giant ditch prison and, in order to build himself up from a great escape, he has to do a lot of sit-ups, every day, while invigorating music plays in the background.

Now, let’s ignore for a second that Bruce Wayne was in a prison where anyone who can do enough sit-ups can legally, with the consent of all involved, escape and run free, without any repercussions or jail guards or police dogs following after him — that’s just the kind of prison that superhero villains run, apparently, and that’s exactly why we can’t have a Mitt Romney presidency (too many criminals with washboard abs escaping without repercussions).

Returning to the Re-Batmanning, I just want to briefly take to the Internet and comment that I cannot think of a single more consistently inspirational scene in any movie than one in which a movie star does really intense sit-ups in an effort to better himself. Is there anything more inspirational than watching a movie character doing, like, really hard sit-ups, and grunting on the way up, and grimacing on the way down, and he’s all sweaty and shit, and god his obliques are just getting a total pounding and you’re just sitting in your chair cheering him on while he does situps? It’s so inspirational, it’s like watching the Kony video without knowing that afterward the video’s maker got drunk and masturbated in a parking lot at like 11 AM: just pure, solid inspiration, like rubbing an inspirational deodorant stick on your armpits and feeling that inspirational tingle stream through your biceps.

Christian Bale doing sit-ups in Batman 3 was so inspiring that it inspired me to do sit-ups in my own home, in an effort to better myself. (Well, in an effort to make my stomach less fat, which I suppose is a publicly accepted way to “better oneself.” I’m not quitting my job to re-devote my life to philanthropic pursuits or to start work at a charity or anything, LOL: Not that kind of bettering myself. Though is Kony 2012 hiring? I hear they throw crazy parties).

Anyway, after watching Christian Bale grunt and grimace and do sit-ups, I made a pledge to do 100 sit-ups per night myself, because the action is just so damn inspirational. Every night for the past week I’ve put on inspirational music —usually just “Call Me Maybe” and “I Get Wet” playing at the same time, on a loop, at top volume, with some sick WinAmp visualizations on the computer — laid down in my bedroom, and done 100 really, really hard sit-ups. I pretend I’m Bruce Wayne, training to escape from a prison that really doesn’t care if I get away as long as I have a flat, ripped stomach.

I’m thinking about setting up a webcam, so that I can inspire you to do sit-ups, too. As we’ve established, watching someone do really, really hard sit-ups is super inspirational, and I think that’s true even if the person you are watching is me, in my dimly-lit apartment, wearing nothing but a bathing suit and a wifebeater. Now that the Olympics are over, there’s a chance that me-doing-situps is the third most interesting sport going right now, right after baseball and that thing Red Bull does with the homemade plans that fall into the river and people almost drown.

So, whoever you are, I encourage you to do sit-ups, just like Christian Bale/Bruce Wayne, while playing your favorite inspirational music. If you’re looking for inspiration, there are moving scenes of flabby dudes doing situps in easily-torrentable movies everywhere; you can find these sit-up scenes in movies like Rocky, Batman 3, Girl, Interrupted, My Dinner with Andre, Radio, and, of course, the forthcoming Great Gatsby adaptation by Baz Luhrrman. (Pretty much everyone is constantly doing situps in every scene, as they do in the novel).

If you don’t know how to torrent movies, or the directions to Blockbuster, you can just go to your local gym, find a stranger doing sit-ups, and stand over them and appreciate how inspiring they are.

“Yeah, you do those sit-ups. Ugh, I bet it burns, huh? But it’s going to be worth it. Keep going, lady.”

You can say this out loud or think it to yourself; chances are you’ll be arrested eventually anyway, for the staring. But don’t worry: Everyone knows that if you want to break out of prison, all you have to do is SITUPS, and after getting locked up for watching someone do just that, you’ll be well-inspired and ready to bust out of that popsicle stand. Don’t worry, the guards won’t care if you get away: They’ve been watching you do sit-ups, and they’ll be too inspired to chase after you.

I just realized that both of Apple’s new commercials — the ones with Zooey Deschanel and Samuel L. Jackson talking to Siri — prominently feature mentions of soup. Zooey orders tomato soup from a local restaurant, and Samuel L. is making gazpacho for a majority of his ad. Why is this? Do celebrities really like soup? Or is Apple saying that if you like soup, and you’re in the market for a smartphone, you can’t afford not to get the iPhone 4S?

Is the Samsung Galaxy Note an inferior device for soup-lovers? What about Windows Phone? Also, am I safe going with a different smartphone if I’m into soups, but not so much into tomato-based soups? Like, if I love chicken noodle and matzoh ball, but am turned off by gazpacho and straight tomato, should I just buy a flip phone?

Would I even need a telephone at all?

Looking back on it, not one single reviewer for the iPhone 4S even touched on Siri’s abilities to assist you in getting soup. Is that a failure of the media, or the Apple PR department? Could Apple have made it more obvious that Siri is a tool primarily for soup-lovers and nobody else? What other soups can Siri help me obtain?

I have an iPhone 4S, so I asked Siri what her favorite kind of soup was. Instead of returning a definitive answer, Siri cryptically responded, “Turn around.” There, standing right behind me, was Emeril Lagasse, holding a huge pot full of Bean & Vegetable Minestrone.

“Does THIS answer your question?” someone said. I couldn’t tell if it was Emeril, or Siri, or me. We all ate soup, the three of us, forever. The new Siri commercials had worked, all right.

I know you’re all just dying to know how my quest is going — you know, the one to go the entire week spending $4 or less on food. I am happy to report that, three days into the challenge, I still have yet to spend a penny on food, and I did so without smuggling any apples out of the store in a rigged-up adult diaper the last time I went to Costco.

Not one. Single. Diaper apple.

Actually, it’s been somewhat of a breeze so far, thanks to a few lucky coincidences. First, on Tuesday, I had a lunch with a “PR firm,” where I was allowed to eat for free in return for listening to a three hour pitch about a cloud data storage company whose name I can’t remember and a cant-miss vacation rental property in Boulder. Totally worth it: I got a free lamb burger with fries out of the deal, AND I got to miss three hours of work in the middle of the day! I should invest my life-savings in timeshares every Tuesday!

Wake up, Son, it’s Timeshare Tuesday! (Ill-fated sequel to There Will Be Blood).

Tuesday, for dinner, I had some leftovers from the previous week — a few strips of roast beef and two rather large potato pancakes — and though I went to bed with my tummy rumbling, I also went to bed with FOUR AMERICAN DOLLARS in my wallet. Do you know how many gumballs four dollars buys? I’m going to, this Friday night.

My guess: 800 gumballs.

Today (Wednesday), I also spent zero dollars on food. For breakfast I had an energy bar from home, and snagged a bag of chips and another energy bar from work for lunch. After a quick workout, I came home and ate what I would call a vat of spaghetti with pasta sauce. Zero dollars spent is zero dollars earned, right?

(Well, I guess earning zero dollars isn’t exactly a positive outcome. Maybe we could change it to, like, “Zero dollars spent is you will be really happy and have more money.” Yeah, much better).

So, two days left in the quest. I’m feeling good about my goal: Now that I’ve eaten all my leftovers, I’m ready to move on to Phase 2 of my plan, which is ~~stealing all of my roommate’s groceries and blaming it on a pack of stray dogs that jumped in through the window and got into the refrigerator and then ran away, barking viciously at me~~ eating a bunch of the groceries I bought months ago and never got around to cooking.

Seriously, I have about 8 pounds of uncooked Japanese soup noodles. So, if you want Japanese soup tomorrow night, you know where to find me:

In the vacant lot behind my apartment, chasing after stray dogs, screaming something about energy bars.

This morning, I woke up at around 8:15 with $4 in my wallet. When I leave work at around 6:30 PM on Friday, I hope to have those same four dollar bills. That’s right: My goal this week is to not spend any money whatsoever.

“But why, Jason?” I can hear you squeal. “Why are you trying to go a week living on four dollars? Are you writing for Reader’s Digest now? Is this how we are going to stop Joseph Kony? Have you awoken from uneasy dreams to find yourself transformed into an ill-conceived Nick Kristof column?”

No, no, and no. The fact is, I had a rather, er, expensive weekend. I spent far too much of my money: It doesn’t really rather why I spent it — just imagine I went parachuting or something, and that I looked really cool doing it, and that I have a really sweet mohawk.

So, whatever I did this weekend, I was left with $4 in my wallet, and a rather intimidating list of credit card expenditures awaiting me when I awoke Sunday ~~morning~~ afternoon.

And thus I swore on the eternal heart of Neal Boortz: I will make it through the week without spending a single one of these dollar dollar bills, ya’ll. As my friend Scotty “Too Hotty” Lichtenstein used to say at Hebrew School, “Pop your colla’ for a dolla, holla!”

Would I could pop my collar for one dollar, Scotty. Would I could.

So, the first day of not spending any money is over, and it was a success. For breakfast, work serves bagels from about 10AM to 10:30AM — I showed up just at 10:35 to nab one of the last ones. For lunch, I had a Cliff Bar and a banana (both also available at the office for FREE, ya’ll), and for dinner, I had some leftover fried chicken.

Now I’m in bed, and I’m so excited that I didn’t waste any money on food today that I just might end up spending some cash tomorrow on urine cleaner for my sheets*.

*Because I’m going to pee myself.

Make sure you keep checking this spot all week to see how I brag ceaselessly about all of the glorious money I’m saving by not going out to lunch or dinner. And then on Friday, you can catch me at the 40/40 Club, lighting all of the money in my bank account on fire, laughing maniacally into the night, my stomach filled with Cliff Bars, bananas, and old-school asphalt PRIDE, ya’ll.

Together, we can do this. We can stop ~~Joseph Kony~~ make my week without spending any money on food a reality. Let’s all pitch in by leaving good vibes in the comments section, sending me supportive text messages, and buying me raw steaks to be delivered through the U.S. Mail System (save money by sending them in plastic bags reinforced with duct tape on the bottom so that the juices don’t leak out).

And now, I must go to sleep. I’ve got sheets to urinate upon.