I am out of shape. I've slowly come to terms with it. I got out of breath just posting this.
Been thinking about exercise a lot recently. It’s a combination of eating too many jelly beans, being in the fattest city in America, and staying up watching insomnia-mercials.
“Have you ever been vacationing in the Serengeti, saw the gazelles, and thought ‘I wish I could run like them.’ Now you can! With this Gazelle glider!”
Who buys these things? Someone bored of running like a human, I guess. They get their Gazelle friends together, run in a herd. A guy in a lion machine running behind them.
Tony Little (pictured above looking not straight), self-proclaimed “America’s Personal Trainer," peddles these Gazelle gliders at 4 in the morning. I once heard him yell, “IT’S SO EASY, EVEN YOU CAN DO IT!” Whoa there, Thor, let’s tone down the insulting enthusiasm a little. It’s bad enough I have you fagging up all the TV channels at night, but I don’t have to take this sort of abuse lying down... on the couch... eating chips. I mean, you’re obviously nothing short of “man-tastic,” Tony. No one can deny your muscles are “pumpisized.” And the pony tail. Let’s not forget that chick magnet. But how about you leave me out of this?
And then there’s all the other fitness tapes. 7 minute abs. Buns of Steel. Bulimia Really Works.
Most include fitness exercises for you to try.
My favorite is the “reach” move. This consists of standing straight up, feet shoulder width apart, and extending your arm up and over your head as far as you can reach. Yeah, that’s a helpful little maneuver. Really workin’ stuff out with that one. Why not just... use the other arm? It's right there.
Arm circles, however, are easily the most humiliating and worthless exercise, without a doubt. I’d rather do the Thigh-master, followed by seven hours of “Sit and Be Fit” than one single arm circle.
In case you aren’t familiar with them, arm circles are a warm-up exercise where you hold your arms out to your sides and make circles in the air with your hands.
They’re ridiculous. They are designed to make you look silly, that’s it. You could do a thousand arm circles and you wouldn't shed a thing, except maybe your integrity.
I can just see it now, a fitness room full of unsuspecting saps, being led in an “arm circle” degradation. “Let’s do a little warm-up, shall we? Arm circles! Ok, start small. Circle, circle, circle. Now go big! And... reverse it! Now cluck like a chicken!” Finally, the instructor tells you to stop, before reaching over and turning off the video camera and placing the tape in an envelope marked “Blackmail.” Political elections have been won and lost on the discovery of embarrassing “arm circle” photos, believe me.
But you have to warm up. Nothing worse than pulling a muscle. First question everybody asks is, “Geez, what were you doing?” Same with bruises, broken bones, and perpetual motion, people just want to know “So, how’d you do it?”
Of course you’d like to say, “Oh, I was saving a Mormon family of twelve from a burning building. It was nothing.” But instead you hang your head in shame and say, “Well, I... I was walking.” And now you have to tell the story. Not only did you pull your groin, but you did it walking out to get the mail. You’re so out of shape you can’t stroll to the end of the driveway without injuring yourself and spending the next week swaggering around like a cowboy who dropped the soap.
Wherever you go, people have to know. People are just coming up to you on the street, “Whoa man, what happened?” Crowds are forming, the word’s getting out you’re hurt. “Come on, everybody gather ‘round, this guy’s telling us why his arm is in a sling!” And there you are, in front of a throng of curious faces.
“You really want to know?”
“Yes! Tell us how you hurt your arm! We must know!”
“Arm circles.”
