THE SHINING Weight Loss Plan

What if watching Thinner could make you thinner?

My wife is here reading me her favorite magazine. . . Readers Digest.  I do not know why she reads me this.  It's like an old people's joke book. I have tried to get her hooked on Cemetery Dance, but it's too infrequent.

Just as I start to tease her, she reads me this snippet:

New research shows scary movies make you adrenaline surge.  Burning as many calories as a thirty minute walk. The top "workout"?  Kubrick's The Shining -- 184 calories. 

                  --Readers Digest, January, 2013 p.10 

Of course, if you eat popcorn during the viewing, you might actually gain weight.  Or, even worse, blog and eat popcorn while watching.

I wonder how many calories Cujo would burn.  I want a calorie guide!  Someone could make a Stephen King movie calorie app.

Sleepwalkers might have some value after all, right? Probably not, you have to actually get scared,

I Got Stephen King'd

It happens to the best of us. . . we buy something because it promises to have a "tribute" or essay or something by Stephen King -- only to discover HAHA!, you've been Stephen King'd.  His named gets slapped on all kinds of things that at times offer nothing more than a passing mention of him.

For me, it was the July/August 2012 edition of Readers Digest, "best of America" issue.  The cover reads, "including tributes by Stephen King, Dave Berry. . ." A tribute by Stephen King?  Wow!  I was interested.

Finding the "tribute" was real work.  I realized it wasn't going to be a muti-pager, so I began searching page by page.  Maybe a half page?  Nope.  But at least a box, right?  . . . Nope.  Remember in the olden days when Readers Digest printed their contents on the cover, and with each headline was a page number?

WAIT!  I found it!  Here is the Stephen King tribute:

Stephen King on MAINEIt was a beautiful summer's day, flawless, the kind that the tourists came to the Mine seacoast for.  You don't come to swim because the water is never really warm enough for that; you come to be knocked out by the day." (From The Stand)

1. That wasn't a tribute, that was a quote from a book.
2. That quote got cover billing on the front of Readers Digest.  Never mind the "13 things your TV weatherman won't tell you" was two full pages -- it didn't make the cover.  Stephen King did!

Question: Have you ever bought something a celebrity's name was on it -- only get realize the product really had nothing to do with that person?