We're Going Through the Quad and into the Gymnasium!

The machines in my gym have little TV screens with DVD slots. Which is nice, because laughing at Buster Bluth works well to distract one from the idea that one is operating much as a hamster on a wheel: An routine of running in place, repeating the same activities, doing the same thing every day, all in the vain hope of keeping those tires from rolling.

At the very least, the gym is an entertaining place to be, if only for the characters. There's a guy in my gym who comes in on occasion. He always walks in wearing a leather coat with fur lining its hood. This is odd, because the gym is in my apartment building. There is absolutely no need for one. This guy carefully takes off this coat, folds it, and goes straight to the free weights, picks out the smallest ones, and does maybe five minutes of curls before putting his coat back on, pulling his hood back up, and then leaving. He remains, however, thin, to which I credit anorexia and cocaine.

Then there is the opposite end of the spectrum: a big guy who kind of looks like Bill Belichik, and who, in my estimation, comes in at a deuce and a half, at least. This poor bastard spends at least an hour on the elliptical machine, producing enough saltwater to create a new home for Willy, should he no longer be Free, and, um, come back to life. Regardless, this man doesn't lose a pound, and his only accomplishment, sadly, is that he makes the gym smell like an open-air slaughterhouse, or perhaps a repository for drowned elephants. In any case, the smell is almost worth the glare that the Stepford Wives give him when he ascends that elliptical machine with lumbering gusto: It is the look one would imagine Dubya has reserved for Bin Laden.

This morning, as I was on the elliptical machine, a small Asian man walked in and got on the machine next to mine. Then he put a DVD in the machine, and it turned out to be, of all things, Notting Hill. Fifteen minutes later, perhaps frustrated by the romantic tension of Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts, he was done, and left the gym.

Notting Hill? Really? For the gym? I can't think of a movie less suited for that environment. Perhaps the Care Bear movie would rise to that level, but it's doubtful. Maybe The Joy Luck Club. Or Hostel.

At least it wasn't a porn.