"'Bat Out of Hell' was rejected by dozens of record companies before the album was finally released by Cleveland International, a small label.... It received tepid, even hostile reviews at first."

"But through relentless touring and a 1978 appearance on NBC’s 'Saturday Night Live,' Meat Loaf found an audience, making 'Bat Out of Hell' an enormous, if unexpected hit.... Its signature tune, 'Paradise by the Dashboard Light'... was an ornate melodrama about a teenage make-out session... more than eight minutes long and [it] even contained a long segment narrated by Hall of Fame baseball player and broadcaster Phil Rizzuto, describing a batter rounding the bases and sliding into home. (Rizzuto said he didn’t realize his description was meant to be an elaborate sexual metaphor.) His musical secret, Meat Loaf said, was that he approached every song like an actor preparing for a role. 'I can’t sing unless there’s a character... Because I don’t sing. It’s almost like being schizophrenic — I don’t sing, the character sings.' Early in his career, the long-haired, 300-pound Meat Loaf was openly mocked by critics — and even by [his collaborator Jim] Steinman, who once called him 'a grotesque, bloated creature, who stalked the stage like an animal but acted as if he were a prince.'"

From WaPo's very lengthy obituary, "Meat Loaf, whose operatic rock anthems made him an unlikely pop star, dies at 74."

This wasn't my kind of music, but I can admire his work from afar. People loved him in "The Rocky Horror Show,” and he had a very interesting role in "Fight Club." 

 

And he's got a great Donald Trump connection — "Meat Loaf, should I run for President?" 

 

Later, "You look in my eyes: I am the last person in the fucking world you EVER want to fuck with":

"To start, some people were given milkshakes, and everyone was asked to taste and rate cookies, cakes or nuts. After filling up on a milkshake..."

"... most of the testers ate less. But the dieters in the group did the opposite. If they had the shake first, they actually ate more during the taste test. It appeared that because they had 'blown' their diet anyway, they decided they might as well just eat more food.... The researchers called this cycle of dieting, breaking the diet and then overeating the 'what-the-hell' effect." 

From "Try Intuitive Eating to Break the Diet Cycle/Today’s Eat Well Challenge will help you avoid the 'what-the-hell' effect and tune into your body instead" (NYT). 

"Intuitive Eating" is reverse-engineered from the "what-the-hell effect." Step 1 is to convince yourself that this isn't a diet and you are completely disconnected from the "diet culture." Step 2 is to observe your patterns of hunger attentively. Step 3 is to very attentively observe your relationship to all the various foods. How do you really feel? 

I'm putting all this in my own words, so let me add, in my own words, that this sounds soooo boring. I look ahead to see how many more steps, and there are 10! 

Let me try to compress the next 7 steps into as few words as possible — damn the steps format: Eat mindfully. Be kind to yourself. Enjoy life in your body.

"I’m just like, ‘Wow, really? That’s where people’s heads are at, that the most important thing is being thin or young?'"

Said the actress Melanie Lynskey, describing her response when some unnamed production person asked her, "What do you plan to do? I’m sure the producers will get you a trainer. They’d love to help you with this."

She's quoted in "‘Yellowjackets’ Star Melanie Lynskey Was Body-Shamed on Set – And Her Co-Stars Weren’t Having It" (Yahoo News).

She says:  "It was really important to me for [the character she plays] to not ever comment on my body, to not have me putting a dress on and being like, 'I wish I looked a bit better.' I did find it important that this character is just comfortable and sexual and not thinking or talking about it, because I want women to be able to to watch it and be like, 'Wow, she looks like me and nobody’s saying she’s the fat one.' That representation is important."

Apparently, the actor who plays her boyfriend on the show is considered better looking than she is, and some people might say — or worry about other people saying — why is he with her? By the way Melanie Lynskey is in the movie "Don't Look Up," playing the role of the wife of the character played by Leonardo DiCaprio. She was the most believable character in the movie, really seeming like an actual person. In that movie, some characters were cartoons and some were naturalistic. 

That can be a problem. Some movies and TV shows have idealized faces, beyond the realm of ordinary people. Other shows look more real. It might be a problem to mix these 2 concepts, but it might work to deliberately pair a beautiful man with an ordinary looking woman, and not just because it's so often been a beautiful woman with an ordinary man and some payback is in order. It can work because the women in the audience want to identify with the female character and enjoy a romantic fantasy. 

Do you believe Mike Pompeo lost 90 pounds in 6 months by working out in his home gym for half an hour a day and eating healthy foods?

I know I silently called bullshit when I read about it, so I laughed when I saw the editors of the Kansas City Star openly call bullshit:

We asked weight loss experts, and people who have lost large amounts of weight themselves, whether it’s possible to lose 90 pounds in six months simply by eating better and hitting a humble home gym for half an hour five or six times a week. Their response? Absolutely not, almost certainly not, and hahaha. ... 

“He would have to be on a massive starvation diet,” [said Micah LaCerte, a top personal trainer] probably taking in no carbs at all. And even then, “no way with only a half-hour workout. Ninety in six is unbelievable, especially for his age, unless he’s working out for hours every day. The numbers just don’t add up. Dude, just be honest. Mike, come on, man.”... 

While it may be theoretically possible, “it’s just not likely” without surgery, drugs or other extreme measures, says Al Rose, a longtime New York bodybuilder, trainer and coach... "His face is sunken and his skin doesn’t look good. He’s gone from one extreme to the other..." Rose said....

Jabbing with a sharp object — tolerated and not tolerated.

This is not about hyperdermic needles. Not another post about vaccines. This is about 2 movies I encountered last night, and the sharp objects involved — a surgical scalpel and a harpoon.

I began watching the 1950 movie — written and directed by Joseph Mankiewicz — "No Way Out." Sidney Poitier plays a young doctor, working in a prison ward, and Richard Widmark is his no-good racist patient. It's unfolding well enough. Here are some early scenes...

... but then a tray of medical instruments is left right next to racist Widmark so that it's easy for him to grab a scalpel. I had to turn it off. I wouldn't subject myself to the cheap suspense of waiting for Widmark to whip out the scalpel and stab Sidney Poitier!

I switched to a different movie, "Terror in a Texas Town." This is a 1958 western that's of interest because it was written by Dalton Trumbo during the blacklist days, and it stars Sterling Hayden and Sebastian Cabot. But it's an absurd refuge from that scalpel, because it's absolutely no secret — it's shown in part at the beginning of the film — that in the final showdown between hero and villain, the hero is armed with a harpoon! Watch the ending here:

I watched that entire movie. All that harpoon action. The harpoon was displayed and described again and again. It's so weird that I wouldn't put up with the scalpel business, but I watched an entire movie that was about one man harpooning another man. Unlike Sidney Poitier's character, the harpoonee deserved skewering.

Now, you're probably thinking that the harpooned villain was played by Sebastian Cabot, a fat actor who always played a fat man. He was a villain — an evil capitalist — isn't a cartoonish capitalist always fat? He's fat, and a harpoon is displayed over and over again, and Sterling Hayden is getting more and more focused and determined. Cabot must be his "whale."

If you watch the clip, you know — spoiler alert — that guess is wrong. In fact, Sebastian Cabot filmed all his scenes inside a single room — a hotel room. He didn't attend his own shootouts. He hired people, while he remained ensconced indoors with copious room service food and a beautiful secretary. Luxurious for the character and low-budget for the filmmakers.