Did you know that the formula for calculating Weight Watchers “Points” is actually protected by patent? On one hand that means that WW has a habit of litigating against folks who write Points calculators… but on the other, it means that the formula is publicly available on the patent documents and you can write your own. Which I am doing now.

Oh my God. And I thought having a leech on my foot was bad!

How excitement! A customer just called to ask whether it was going to be difficult to get into the shop today, as apparently there’s a movie – Superman! – filming down York Street. I had no idea! I’m going to sneak down at lunch and see if I can get a photo.

Update: Here they are! The two crappiest photos ever. (I only had my mobile and I didn’t want to risk getting too close for fear that I’d get, like, busted or something. I don’t know. I was paranoid.) They’d set up a big crane at Wynyard Station, not far from Krispy Kreme. It was holding a big roof-like structure over the area by the bus stops beside the Menzies Hotel. There were hundreds of people milling around, sitting on the grass and standing at the fences watching. This first shot is from up top in the little park-like area, looking down towards where all the lights were. At one point I heard a voice over a loudspeaker call “Action!” and then I caught a glimpse of a crowd of people start walking around that street. And then “Cut.” Hollywood in action is pretty boring, to tell you the truth. The second shot is down on Wynyard Street looking at the big crane thing. I didn’t see anybody that looked very important, though there were two swanky big motorhomes parked down one of the side streets.

Stupid anecdote: I was sorta disappointed not to see Lois Lane because I read in a magazine yesterday that she was going to be played by Mischa Barton from The O.C., and I had a crazy vision that maybe she’d be wearing yet another big ugly hat and I could yell something amusing at her. But then I got home and looked it up and it turns out that it isn’t her, it’s Kate Bosworth. Damn. That’s what I get for gleaning celebrity information from nine-month-old magazines at the doctor’s office.

Note to self: Next time you go to the States, remember that Hertz gives a car rental discount to ND alumni…

My sister will love this one: FreeKaraoke.com. They’re karaoke MIDI files! How delightfully low-fi. On my machine they play in Quicktime and the words light up as the song plays. How neat (and by neat, I mean sorta lame too) is that? We may need to have a karaoke MIDI party, methinks. The Snook also reports that there are other sites offering these around the internets too.

The Snook makes a grab for my tummy…
Me: Hey, don’t grab my schub! I’ve got a total muffin top today.
Him: “Muffin top”?
Me: Muffin top.
Him: Well, everybody loves muffins.

(Link courtesy of the non-muffin-top-sporting Andrew.)

Since Kevin asked, I just checked out the new Charlie the Chocolate Factory TV spot. Hmm. Okay, first the positives: They put back the squirrels! I’m really, really happy about that. I always thought the “geese-laying-golden-eggs” was stupid. And though the boat looked weird to me at first, the shot of it from above with all the Oompa-Loompas at the oars really reminded me of the original Joseph Schindelman illlustration. The bad: As Kevin said, Johnny Depp really does seem to be trying to channel a 13-year-old boy here. I don’t think that’s a good thing. We already had Gene Wilder as the literary-quote-spouting Wonka, and now we’ve got Depp as the let’s-boogie Wonka… neither of which seem very faithful to the book. I’m withholding final judgement til I can see the whole film together.

I finally managed to watch Michael Stipe’s interview on Enough Rope with Andrew Denton from Monday. He was surprisingly personable! The only bit I didn’t like was Denton’s introduction, where he went on and on about how REM didn’t seem like the stereotypical rock gods, like with the groupies and the doing drugs, and that it was so refreshing that they didn’t have any embarrassing scandals… to which everyone watching mentally thought in unison: “Except for that time Peter Buck went psycho on a flight to England.” But anyhoo, my personal highlights:

• Denton asked about the blue stripe, to which Stipe replied, “I don’t think when people go to a concert they want to see the same person they could see walking down the street. It’s just theatrics.” I was totally expecting him to say something much more vague and cosmic and stupid.
• Michael is really sentimental and spends every Christmas with his family. That just seemed like such a nice, normal thing. What a good Southern boy!
• When discussing the way the media can totally misrepresent things you do/say, Stipe mentioned that he was reading an Aussie tabloid story on “Celeb Fatties” on the plane. (Must’ve been NW, as that’s currently on the cover.) He said that of all the people shown, only one was actually fat and the rest were just caught at a bad angle. The fat one was Courtney Love, who he says has put on some pounds since she’s gotten clean and sober. He said she’s doing well and he seemed really happy for her. Denton asked what she’d think about being included in the “Celeb Fatties.” Stipe laughed. “Oh, she’d love it!”
• Denton mentioned that last year REM did the “Vote for Change” tour with several other bands. “What were you hoping to accomplish?” Stipe hesitated for a second, as if pondering the ridiculousness of such an obvious question. “We wanted George Bush the f**k out of the White House, and to vote John Kerry in.” Everyone applauded.
• At one point, Denton mentioned that the band’s been dedicating “Strange Currencies” to Michael Hutchence in all the Australian shows, and then he brought up River Phoenix and Kurt Cobain. He was trying to ask Michael why they all seemed to burn out under the weight of fame, but why hadn’t he? Michael basically said he’d never really thought about that and that it was hard for him to talk about. And then thankfully Denton changed the subject, because it seemed to really depress Michael.
• Apparently Stipe collects random crap like matchbooks and sugar packets and he’s always threatening to put a big scrapbook together. So at the end of the interview, Denton offered him a choice between a few different “Australian” items to remember us by: a cricketer’s cup (as in, the thing that protects his crotch), a crushed VB can, and an actual living funnelweb spider in a plastic terrarium. Michael seemed a bit freaked out by the spider at first, but eventually decided to be brave and pick up the box. “So is this one deadly poisonous?” Yep. “If I opened the lid, it would actually kill me dead?” Yep. “I bet some insurance guy is having a heart attack right about now.” He went with a matchbook.

Note: I totally paraphrased Michael’s statements because I’m too lazy to transcribe from the video.

I don’t want to be all “100% DietBlog!”, but this is a useful list of WW points values for generic foods. The author’s got a couple other lists for restaurants too.

So, I went to my first Weight Watchers meeting tonight. Needless to say, I was a little apprehensive. I kept wondering when we were going to drink the Magic Kool-Aid. The room was full of boxes of WW-branded products and books and videos, but thankfully they didn’t seem to really “push” any of that too hard. I filled out my forms and paid my joining fee, and then I got to step on the dreaded scales. Ouch. I’ve officially got – and I’m just gonna say this – twenty kilos to lose. (I’m not gonna do the conversion for you Americans. My embarrassment does have its limits.) What really pisses me off is that a year ago I was within seven kilos of my goal, and now I’ve got to do it all over again… and this time make it stick. Anyway, back to the meeting. A lot of folks just seemed to check-in, get weighed, and bolt, but a half dozen of us stuck around for the meeting proper. Our leader is an older lady named Emily who was really, really encouraging. She even showed us her “before” photo! And get this – I wasn’t even the chubbiest girl there. (I know it’s shallow, but that was a total relief.) We talked about what our goals are and what sort of concrete changes we can make to achieve them. A couple of the attendees were “lifetime members,” i.e. people who’d achieved their goal weights and were maintaining it. (I felt much more charitable to them after that revelation, as I’d been sitting there wondering why all the skinny beeyotches had come to torment me.) It sounds cheesy, but they really were inspiring and they had some good tips about how to get started. Emily even handed out a couple gold star stickers to people with really good suggestions. I really wanted to think it was lame, but deep, deep down in my heart of hearts, I admit that I desperately want a gold star sticker of my very own. So lame or not, the encouragement is working! Afterwards I headed to the store to stock up on supplies. The hardest part right now is re-hardwiring my brain for shopping. Most of the things we were used to buying on Atkins are now verboten, and lots of stuff that was previously off limits – Potatoes! Honest to Christ, potatoes! – are back on the list. I mostly feel bad because we’re going to be cutting out a lot of the things that the Snook really enjoys: fat meat, fat milk, fat cheese. We’ve arrived at a compromise though, where he can have whatever he wants for lunch as long as he does the low-fat dinner with me. Tonight I made us some pizzas on Lebanese bread (from the Week 1 guidebook). Pretty good! I added up my daily points and I was just under my daily quota. It’ll be even better this week once I implement my first concrete lifestyle change: walking to work every day. Wish me luck!