<!– Field notes for becoming Fitter Happier –>

A few quick notes that I will fill in shortly:

• J., my fitness consultant, didn't even know the name of her certification, though she did know it was administered by CanFitPro
• we had a discussion of my background
• height, weight, body fat, resting heart rate, and anthropometric measurements were taken
• a photo was taken of me, shirt off (asked by J. if I would like to, ultimately my choice)

  

• the body fat monitor is electric: it sends a current through your body and measures the time it takes to travel from hand to foot against the conductivities of fat and lean body tissue
• J. is so tiny there is no way she could ever be "fat" … how can she be empathetic in her role?
• though the confessional is a Foucauldian concept, most of the "expert" knowledge comes from the computer — J. is simply a circuit
• this process seems less like a "consultation" and more like a "diagnostic" — which is what the heading on the final printout read
• I am reminded of Baudrillard's observations of cybernetic society — indeed, I am simply in a cybernetic loop with the "expert" computer that measures my fat and tells me how much to lose, how fast in order to be "normal"
• the exercise bike is another cybernetic device providing "expert" feedback on my performance
• the appraisal room is separate from the main gym
• it also has black-and-white "artistic" shots of disembodied "ideal" body parts: a male biceps and pectoral, a female breast and torso, and a male back
• J. was not supportive at all

<!– Field notes for becoming Fitter Happier –>

Today is my Fitness Evaluation and Consultation at the club. This evaluation is mandatory for all new members of PF, and anyway, it probably will be useful to have some sort of benchmark from which to chart my "progress" towards the neoplatonic ideal of the 99th percentile.

The process begins before I arrive at PF, when I am at home completing a five page questionnaire for my consultation, which includes the PAR-Q (Physical Activity Readiness Questionnaire) published by the Canadian Society for Exercise Physiology. Other sections ask me to divulge my fitness background, my medical history, my nutritional and wellness status, and my lifestyle habits.

The final section, entitled "Desired Results You Wish To Achieve", offers a series of checkboxes in which I may check the areas I wish to "work on or improve". They include:

• Weight loss
• Aerobic capacity
• Muscle toning
• Body building
• Intensity training
• Flexibility
• Sport Specific Training
• Stress management
• Knowledge/Education
• Nutritional wellness counselling
• Development/Implementation of a rehabilitation program
• Other ___________________

Right after that I am asked to check the goals I wish to achieve, but now there are only boxes for Fat Loss, Weight Loss, Muscle Tone and Weight Gain. I check the first and third boxes and move on to the final question:

"On a scale of one to ten, how important to you is achieving these goals that you have set for yourself?"

My reply: 7.

It is always interesting filling in a questionnaire like this, particularly when it is purported to be a precursor to expert advice. Interesting thoughts run through your head …

Why do they ask me about every damn pain I feel in my body? I'm aging — of course there's going to be aches here and there…

Am I normal?

Q: Do you think that Corey Dillon goes home every night, fires up Madden 2004, and plays through a season with himself traded to any team other than the Bengals, muttering to himself as he breaks every rushing record in the books? — Derek, Washington, DC

SG: Is that a rhetorical question? That reminds me, have you ever wondered what someone like Jon Kitna does when they're playing a game like "Madden"? I mean, you would have to play yourself in a video game, right? So what happens if you suck? Would there be anything worse than having a crummy rating, or watching your character make terrible plays and repeatedly let his team down? It's like a constant reminder that you're a failure at your own possession.

From the advertorial for NBA Live 2004 by EA Sports:

"10-Man Freestyle is a revolutionary addition to NBA LIVE 2004 that provides the most realistic movement for all ten players on the court. Thanks to extensive motion-capture sessions using ten players in real game situations, the NBA LIVE 2004 team captured lifelike positioning, technique, and movement for each player on the court. The motion-capture data allowed designers to build individual players from the ground up, as single data points morphed into wire-frame figures, which were then shaded and textured to produce amazing player reproductions. The result is a fluid, seamless reproduction of life on a real basketball court, where all ten players work both independently and in conjunction with each other to produce dynamic and intelligent offensive and defensive play."

1. The standard model of communications: Sender –> Message –> Receiver
2. Unlike a tangible industrial product (eg. a widget), an image-sign does not exist without a receiver to decode its meaning
3. Therefore, both firm and customer produce the image-sign, in ever-escalating oscillations of meaning
4. The customer then consumes goods associated with/attached to that image-sign
5. In this sense, the customer is a prosumer of the image-sign's meaning, while the firm simply takes a producer role
6. However, the customer/prosumer has few, if any, legal rights with regards to the creation of meaning of these image-signs
7. Thus the transfer or transaction of meaning is primarily one-way towards the customer/prosumer
8. This is problematic if individuals increasingly communicate with one another using the image-signs produced by popular culture: language is essentially being privatized
9. Prosumers must seek ways to assert their fundamental human right to communicate by injecting meaning into image-signs — through fair use or other legal mechanisms, or by illegal means if necessary

<!– Field notes for becoming Fitter Happier –>

A quick overview of the geography of Premier Fitness, from my tour on Wednesday and a quick visit today:

The main workout area is divided into three sections: the first is a cardio section composed of treadmills, etc. that faces a bank of televisions (I haven't seen what is playing on these televisions yet … perhaps the 99th percentile?); the second features basic universal weight equipment, designed to work all of the muscle groups; the third offers free weights as well as machines specifically devoted to leg exercises.

There are five satellite areas from the main gym area: a fitness testing area for new members to the club; a women-only workout area; an aerobics/kickbox studio; a spinning studio replete with stationary bikes; and a boxing studio that includes heavy bags, peanut bags, a full canvas ring, and a hard-ass-looking instructor.

From my visit to Krystal's office, and after walking by the open door to the women-only gym, I noticed that there are giant billboards in the women's workout area that exclusively feature a thonged female posterior. While I am a big fan of thonged female posteriors, I can only imagine the sort of "encouragement" this provides for the women working out in this area. The aerobics studio also offers billboards of idealized and disembodied breasts, triceps and glutes, both male and female alike.

The main gym area smacks so strongly of Foucault's disciplinary technologies it is bracing. However, there are elements of Baudrillardian hyperreality here as well: the order (odor?) of consumption is strong, since everyone is really here to purchase sex, no matter how diluted the form in which it is represented/commodified. The simulacra is that everyone is beautiful and that sex is readily available, when that is most far from the truth. As a matter of fact, the patrons (conveniently enough) appear to be tripolarized into those mawkishly thin, desperately obese, or humorously hypermuscular — none so beautiful as to warrant an appearance on one of the facility's billboards.

smithers:

[Aside] I was looking for background sources on the use of propaganda billboards within Asian factories, and my Google results offered vampires, porn and Nike.

And the link is … ?

[Exit]

McDonald's should borrow the slogan from Premier Fitness to promote their new Go Active meals, the fast-food chain's new adult version of the Happy Meal. "Being yourself only happier," the campaign could crow to the obese masses.

To quote the press release, "Instead of Happy Meal standards like a burger and a toy, the new Go Active meal will include a salad, an exercise booklet and a pedometer meant to encourage walking."

Best of luck to Mickey D's. Decades of successful branding are going to prove extremely difficult to reverse. But might as well get on the fitness bandwagon.

Well, my "research" is going to become a little more autoethnographic: I just signed up for a membership at Premier Fitness Clubs, which is just down the street from my place. Their (trademarked!) slogan is "Be yourself only better", which I think is pure tragicomedy. In fact, I think that the whole experience will provide a ton of tragicomic material for the reading pleasure of sportsBabelites.

fitter happier
more productive
comfortable
not drinking too much
regular exercise at the gym (3 days a week)
getting on better with your associate employee contemporaries
at ease
eating well (no more microwave dinners and saturated fats)

. . .

calm
fitter, healthier and more productive
a pig
in a cage
on antibiotics

– Radiohead, Fitter Happier

While I am extremely excited and exhilarated that my rudimentary framework for a tripolarization of the electric body closely parallels the categories of bodily annihilation proposed by a luminary like Jean Baudrillard, I'm not sure that either of us are getting the whole story. And based upon what I can surmise from his pseudonimage, I don't imagine M. Baudrillard (nor Thom Yorke for that matter) has spent much time in a fitness club/image factory such as Premier Fitness for quite some time. My goal is to step in and fill that void.

That said, there are many questions I need to answer for myself: Is this *really* research, or am I just rationalizing my attendance at the image factory? How often will I actually attend? Will frequent exercise in such a disciplined environment change my thought processes, perhaps imprisoning my creativity? Do I really just want to try and change my body so people will love me? Am I sick with fear and loathing that my mirror image less and less resembles the video image of the 99th percentile? Am I hysterical with aging?

Or is there a middle ground somewhere in between that isn't so reprehensible? Is it OK (Computer?) that our bodies desire some physical attention when more and more our minds are being outered into the vast networked global nervous system? Is PAIN a desirable or appropriate aesthetic response to our increasingly cyborgian identities? Can occasionally nihilist tendencies interface with a desire to live a long, healthy life?

Much food for thought (eating well) while I am on the hamster wheel. Wish me luck …

Anorexic culture: a culture of disgust, of expulsion, of anthropoemia, of rejection. Characteristic of a period of obesity, saturation, overabundance.

The anorexic prefigures this culture in rather a poetic fashion by trying to keep it at bay. He refuses lack. He says: I lack nothing, therefore I shall not eat. With the overweight person, it is the opposite: he refuses fullness, repletion. He says: I lack everything, so I will eat anything at all. The anorexic staves off lack by emptiness, the overweight person staves off fullness by excess. Both are homeopathic final solutions, solutions by extermination.

The jogger has yet another solution. In a sense, he spews himself out; he doesn't merely expend his energy in his running, he vomits it. He has to attain the ecstasy of fatigue, the 'high' of mechanical annihilation, just as the anorexic aims for the 'high' of organic annihilation, the ecstasy of the empty body and the obese individual seeks the high of dimensional annihilation: the ecstasy of the full body.

– Jean Baudrillard

War has often been used as a metaphor for sport and vice-versa. The comparisons are fair, given that the similarities between the two run deep: a competition between two parties, using strategy, arsenals of weapons, and featuring many small battles within the larger contest. Motivational speeches from brilliant tacticians are invoked to inspire the competitors to victory. Lombardi himself could be the Sun Tzu of our era.

You never win a game unless you beat the guy in front of you. The score on the board doesn't mean a thing. That's for the fans. You've got to win the war with the man in front of you. You've got to get your man.

– Vince Lombardi

In fact, the relationship between the two is even closer. For centuries, sport has been used by societies as a means of developing skills or bodies that would be useful in the warfare of the day — think javelin, lacrosse, fencing, kendo, and football, to name but a few.

If the future of warfare is in fact information-oriented (ie. Netwar) or asymmetric in orientation, is sport then obsolete as a model for developing combat-ready soldiers from the citizenry, perhaps to be replaced by computerized training of some sort? Perhaps so. At the very least, it appears that certain forms of modern sport have outlived their usefulness in this regard, and that symmetric forms of team sport may one day be as quaint to future generations as the notion of tug-of-war being an Olympic event seems to us today. Indeed, World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), viewed by some as a postmodern form of sporting entertainment, may in fact be more true to the form we should come to expect from our sporting institutions in the future.

With its ambivalence towards the Truth of victory, its disregard for the boundaries of the playing space, its overt hyper-muscularization taunting modern doping policy, and its hyper-mammarization titillating participants and spectators alike, the WWE is true to its label of adding "entertainment" to the sport product. But it is the nature of its asymmetric competition that is of true interest: 2-on-1, 3-on-1, royal rumbles and allies rushing out of the dressing room give wrestling a cachet that modern sports cannot match — and perhaps offer North American society a more appropriate model for a future of asymmetric warfare.

smithers:

[Aside] Tihs psot is inmtaropt for two roasens: frist, it is a mmee clerrnuty sanpdrieg lkie wldfiire turouohhgt the bgoeorlsphe, wcihh oferfs a decnet idicatoinn of the caetahcrr of our eetdnxed msas noruves stesym.

The snecod rseaon is taht you are aluactly cbalape of rnadeig tihs. Rreaesch has iacditend taht we olny perocss the frist and lsat leetrts of a wrod in odrer to dintmreee waht taht wrod is. Cinotoncens form the lsat lteter of the pecdernig wrod to the fsirt ltteer of the flwlonoig wrod are waht raerdes use to deeihcpr a txet pssaage.

[Exit]

This omnipresent cult of the body is extraordinary. It is the only object on which everyone is made to concentrate, not as a source of pleasure, but as an object of frantic concern, in the obsessive fear of failure or substandard performance, a sign and an anticipation of death, that death to which no one can any longer give a meaning, but which everyone knows has at all times to be prevented. The body is cherished in the perverse certainty of its uselessness, in the total certainty of its non-resurrection. Now, pleasure is an effect of the resurrection of the body, by which it exceeds that hormonal, vascular and dietetic equilibrium in which we seek to imprison it, that exorcism by fitness and hygiene. So the body has to be made to forget pleasure as present grace, to forget its possible metamorphosis into other forms of appearance and become dedicated to the utopian preservation of a youth that is, in any case, already lost. For the body which doubts its own existence is already half-dead, and the current semi-yogic, semi-ecstatic cult of the body is a morbid preoccupation. The care taken of the body while it is alive prefigures the way it will be made up in the funeral home, where it will be given a smile that is really "into" death.

– Jean Baudrillard

When Wayne Gretzky chose his jersey number, he wanted to honour one of his idols: number 9, the great Gordie Howe.

But the number was already taken when Gretzky came to the junior Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds in 1977-78, so his coach at the time suggested that he change his number to double 9, and the legendary image-sign of the number 99 was born.

But the number has a deeper significance, for Gretzky represented the very best the game of hockey ever offered — the 99th percentile. His scoring records won't be broken for years, nor will a team likely ever win five Stanley Cups in six years again. He is hard-working and humble, and generally represents the kind of qualities you would want in a partner, or a son, or a friend.

He is also handsome and telegenic, and was the ambassador the NHL picked to sell the game in star-studded Los Angeles some years ago. In relation to the general population, Gretzky's looks are more like the 99.99966th percentile.

Now retired, Gretzky is the pitchman for all sorts of products, ranging from automobiles to his own clothing line. Why? The 99th percentile sells.

Regardless of Gretzky's other attributes, if he weren't attractive, his popularity wouldn't be nearly as Great. There are no ugly sports stars hawking goods out there. Think about it.

On the 1936 Games:

• the athletes salute the Fuhrer on the march-in;
• how much the national flags have changed since then, yet the Olympic rings have not;
• I only saw 6 black people in the movie. Jesse Owens, with his cute, dimpled grin and blazing speed, is strangely reminiscent of another American sprinter we would see six decades hence: Marion Jones. And his performance in the long jump versus Germany's Lutz Long was simply clutch in what was a great head-to-head battle;
• the 1,500 metres is described as "the greatest race of the Games";
• what we think of as modern technique is strangely absent, or what is in use is obsolete today (and let us not forget that "technique" comes from the same Greek root word as "technology").

On Leni Riefenstahl:

• her studies of the body are beautiful;
• her selective usage of slow-motion photography was amazing (men's hammer and triple jump and women's high jump in particular were excellent);
• some interesting camera angles that we do not see today (eg. shooting the sprints from the perspective of the starting blocks);
• interesting studies of the athletic shadow, which makes me think of the new Nike billboards.

So, is this movie tainted somehow for me by the fact that Riefenstahl created it for the Nazi Party? Absolutely not. It is far less propagandistic than your average NFL Sunday afternoon (or league highlight film, to compare apples with apples), yet it is ten times more beautiful.

Today, no staging of bodies, no performance can be without its control screen. This is not there to see or reflect those taking part, with the distance and magic of the mirror. No, it is there as an instantaneous, depthless refraction. Video, everywhere, serves only this end: it is a screen of ecstatic refraction. As such, it has nothing of the traditional image or scene, or of traditional theatricality, and its purpose is not to present action or allow self-contemplation; its goal is to be hooked up to itself. Without this circular hook-up, without this brief, instantaneous network that a brain, an object, an event, or a discourse create by being hooked up to themselves, without this perpetual video, nothing has any meaning today. The mirror phase has given way to the video phase.

– Jean Baudrillard

Kobe, KG and T-Mac all want a piece of LeBron (as we can tell by KG's trademark scowl and LeBron's wussified worry lines). But it's nothing like the piece of ESPN that Nike — who won the right to shoe LeBron's feats — will want after the swooshie publicists see this crappy montage featuring King James in adidas gear. Whoops!

You stop a horse that is bolting. You do not stop a jogger who is jogging. Foaming at the mouth, his mind riveted on the inner countdown to the moment when he will achieve a higher plane of consciousness, he is not to be stopped. If you stopped him to ask the time, he would bite your head off. He doesn't have a bit between his teeth, though he may perhaps be carrying dumb-bells or even weights in his belt (where are the days when girls used to wear bracelets on their ankles?). What the third-century Stylite sought in self-privation and proud stillness, he is seeking through the muscular exhaustion of his body. He is the brother in mortification of those who conscientiously exhaust themselves in the body-building studios on complicated machines with chrome pulleys and on terrifying medical contraptions. There is a direct line that runs from the medieval instruments of torture, via the industrial movements of production-line work, to the techniques of schooling the body by using mechanical apparatuses. Like dieting, body-building, and so many other things, jogging is a new form of voluntary servitude (it is also a new form of adultery).

– Jean Baudrillard

N.B.: The irony of the Foucauldian parallels is delicious.

One could call her the Roone Arledge of film. Leni Riefenstahl, a filmmaker and Nazi propagandist who spent a lifetime devoted to capturing the beauty of the physical body, passed away yesterday at the age of 101.

Most relevant to sportsBabel, Riefenstahl shot the 1938 film Olympia, a documentary about the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games, which were central to Adolf Hitler's attempt to "prove" the ideology of Aryan racial supremacy.

(Interestingly enough for Arledge and others, the Berlin Games were the first to be broadcast on television, which allowed locals to follow the action free of charge.)

Photo galleries from Olympia may be found here and here.

Ultimately, the founding or "minting" of any group identity, either corporate or cultural, is always dependent on the material that exceeds this imprint or group signature. However the capitalist, corporate identity aims at purification — a precise profile stamped-out of seemingly raw materials that fall away as waste. The new identity allows the corporation to indefinitely replicate its name-brand to consumers.

– excerpted (via Discordia) from: Counting On Your Collective Silence: Notes on Activist Art as Collaborative Practice. First published in Afterimage, The Journal of Media and Cultural Criticism, (11/99) 18-20.

How, then, to reconcile technology to humanity? The answer is not to retreat to a spartan cabin in the wilderness, or to bemoan at length the fate of communities and environments flattened under the steamroller of technology. We must, instead, begin a new search for ways to bring the "eye" and the "I" together.

– Steve Mann, Cyborg: Digital Destiny and Human Possibility in the Age of the Wearable Computer, p.26

Thus commodity industries under automation share the same structural character of the entertainment industries in the degree that both approximate the condition of instant information. Automation affects not just production, but every phase of consumption and marketing; for the consumer becomes producer in the automation circuit, quite as much as the reader of the mosaic telegraph press makes his own news, or just is his own news.

– Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, p.303