Over the weekend, my friends and I attended a Taco Festival in San Jose that was pretty much an amalgamation of all awesome Bay Area food trucks offering tacos. In case you’ve been living under a rock, the hispanics no longer have claim over the word “taco.” Pretty much any culture can slap some delicious slosh onto a tortilla these days! We had Cajun tacos (shrimp, crab, and lobster in a gumbo-esque sauce, and blackened catfish with a splash of hot sauce), Indian tacos (curried beef or chicken), Chinese tacos (honey walnut shrimp… on a taco), Thai tacos (roasted duck or sauteed lamb), Korean tacos (bbq short ribs)… pretty much every kind of taco except for Mexican tacos.
(Here are some pictures I stole from my friend’s Instagram… bcuz I was too busy eating to take any of my own photos. Thanks, Leiman!)
The point of all this is that there was a whole lot of sniggering going on all weekend due to the phrase “taco fest.”
Similarly, there was a whole lot of sniggering going on in our corner of the movie theater when Judy and I went to go to see Hunger Games.
Quit sighing all exasperated. This is the last Hunger Games post, I swear.
Ahem.
We were laughing because Jennifer Lawrence is kinda an awkward actress. Not in the annoying, I-wish-my-phone-had-a-ninja-star-app-so-I-can-stab-myself-rather-than-actually-finish-this-movie type of way like Kristin Stewart, but certain scenes weren’t exactly depicted that way Judy and I had pictured them in our minds.
Also, did anyone notice that a canon never went off when Rue died?
Anyways, the whole movie had the same effect that those damn Olympic recap/preview/montage commercials had on us: WE NEED TO WORK OUT.
Given that Judy and I haven’t actually been to the gym for 2 weeks, we were suddenly very aware of the fact that we never would survive the initial blood bath at the cornucopia (or worse, never get hired as strippers). We ran home and (semi) immediately got ready to head out for the gym. Typically we record our workouts on Fitocracy, but then I realized that these numbers don’t mean much when you don’t correlate it to real life, so here’s figures from last night’s trip to the gym in terms of Hunger Games:
- Running (treadmill):
- 0:08:54 || 1.1 mi (+114 pts)
- Barbell Bench Press:
- 45 lb x 12 reps (+56 pts)
- 95 lb x 8 reps (+74 pts)
- 100 lb x 6 reps (+72 pts)
- 105 lb x 3 reps (+56 pts)
- 85 lb x 8 reps (+69 pts)
— 1/3 an adult male deer (average 300lbs), 90% of an adult female deer (average 125lbs), or Bambi
— 70 squirrels
— 2.5 cases of wine
… I’m obviously going to go with the wine.
- Bent Over Barbell Row:
- 50 lb x 8 reps (+31 pts)
- 50 lb x 8 reps (+31 pts)
- 50 lb x 8 reps (+31 pts)
- 50 lb x 8 reps (+31 pts)
- Stiff-Legged Barbell Deadlift:
- 50 lb x 8 reps (+55 pts)
- 50 lb x 8 reps (+55 pts)
- 50 lb x 8 reps (+55 pts)
- 50 lb x 8 reps (+55 pts)
- Standing Barbell Shoulder Press:
- 40 lb x 8 reps (+70 pts)
- 40 lb x 8 reps (+70 pts)
- 40 lb x 6 reps (+66 pts)
- 40 lb x 4 reps (+56 pts)
Obviously, this lift is for when I upset Peeta with my overly raunchy comments and I have to stand outside his man-cave holding a 40lb stereo over my head to apologize. I’m just a girl, standing in front of a boy, asking him to keep his feelings in his vagina.
(Whoops, wrong 90’s rom-com. Although I think Julia Roberts and John Cusack would make a cute couple.)
- Lying Barbell Triceps Extension (“Skullcrusher”):
- 20 lb x 12 reps (+11 pts)
- 20 lb x 12 reps (+11 pts)
- 20 lb x 12 reps (+11 pts)
- 20 lb x 8 reps (+11 pts)
Skullcrushers probably won’t have much use for me in the arena, but they’re called skullcrushers after all, so that’s got to count for something.
So that sums up HungerGamesWorkout #1.
It occurred to Judy and I that there are some obvious strategies the tributes could have utilized that Suzanne Collins blatantly disregarded.
- Why didn’t anyone bring their Blastoise pokeball as their district token? You’d always have water available, plus he has a shell you can throw from your Mario Kart as you’re chasing the others around the arena.
- INVISIBILITY CLOAK! I bet every kid has one, given that it’s the year 3012 or whatever.
- Find some wild savage animals, sing to them like a Disney princess, and train them to attack your opponents. They could also cook for you, do your laundry, and help distract your evil step mother from hooking up with your true love.
- Give the technician who inserts tracking microchips into everyone a prosthetic arm so that once you get into the arena, you can just hide out somewhere until everyone dies.
- The most obvious survival skill: play dead. All you’d have to do is throw ketchup all over yourself, fake some dying noises, and imitate the canon sound (obviously, you spent your whole life training on how to beat-box various canon noises). If you want to get technical, you could even sneak in a mini- air horn / fog horn thing and a mini projector to both fake the UFO that collects your body and your picture in the sky at the end of the night. You might be worried about being able to sneak an air horn into the arena, but if I can do it for my little sister’s graduation, I’m sure getting it through the Peacekeepers will be a breeze. Also, don’t forget to send out a tweet announcing that you died… and HASHTAG CANON SOUND!
The Bestie+Beastie Project 