The Other Island I Lost

It’s often said that “you can’t go home again”, but as I recently found home isn’t the only place that may vanish when you’re not looking. The news hit me like a a shot to the gut. I was simply surfing the internet, using Google to check up on people and places long gone from my life; taking a break from worrying about my future to see how my past is holding up. And while pondering a trip back to Florida, which I last saw in my rear view mirror on my way out of the Navy and into law school, I looked up an old friend and learned the unthinkable. According to the Disney website: “By September 28, 2008, all of the nightclubs on Pleasure Island will close. It will be last call for the last time at 8 Trax, The Adventurer's Club, Mannequins™ Dance Palace, BET Sound-Stage™ Club, Motion and The Comedy Warehouse.” Nearly twenty years after it opened, the world’s greatest nightclub shut its doors. And just like that, I found out that not only had I lost the greatest place I had ever known, I had missed a real chance to say goodbye.

I know what you’re thinking, it’s a nightclub. But you’re wrong. Pleasure Island was far more than just a nightclub. It was the king of the nightclub universe in the nightclub era. You can keep your Studio 54s, your Hammerjacks and your Viper Rooms, I’ll take P.I. The island was the street party that we all imagined when we trekked down to our local nighttime entertainment districts. There were clubs for everyone, a DJ in a booth high above the street, live music, bars everywhere, professional dancers and every night for fifteen of those twenty years, a new year’s midnight countdown complete with confetti and singing Auld Lang Syne with people you hardly knew. It was a place which seemed to finally have achieved the Disney moniker of “The Happiest Place on Earth” - and mostly devoid of the commercialism (overpriced food, cheap souvenirs and ill-behaved children) that seemed to plague the rest of the Disney empire. More importantly, it was the first and only place I ever felt like I fit in.

The thing to do at Pleasure Island was to dance. It seems like a simple thing, especially when dance clubs have now become as common and commoditized as coffee shops. But I had never seen, nor have I seen since, a place so devoid of pretense as the Island was. It was a massive, nightly, large-scale version of the reckless abandon which you usually only see for brief moments during wedding receptions and bar-mitzvahs. Strangers danced with and around one another as though it really was New Years Eve. In the literally hundreds of times that I spent my evening there, I never once saw a fight. People danced in the clubs and danced in the street. People sang along with the bands and the songs. People took pictures they’d share as the highlight of their vacations. People kissed at midnight. People did things that they just don’t do anymore.

But as important as it was to the world at-large, P.I. was ever so much more important to me. When I first stepped foot on the Island, I was less than a year removed from living at home and graduating high school, and my social awkwardness was so painful to observe that I often had a hard time trying to convince any of my friends to take me out with them. At 5’8” and 135 lbs, my clothes fit me like a blind store clerk had tried to dress an undersized mannequin, and that was saying nothing of the horrifyingly bad fashion sense that growing up unpopular in a small town in Colorado had given me. I liked dancing, but the one time I had tried to it in public (at a school dance) I had gotten hit so hard that I literally slid 4 or 5 feet on my face. Needless to say, I was a little gun-shy. But at the Island, everyone danced like I did and like I wanted to. There was dance culture of respect there which not only allowed everyone a chance to shine in their own way, but also celebrated it.

The characters that I met and became friends with on the Island are indelibly printed on my memories. They were amazing dancers and larger-than-life personalities. There was Carl, the greatest street dancer I’ve ever seen - who famously “retired” from street dancing once he got a professional gig. Then Guyton, the other white guy in the crew, with whom I never really got along - because I think we were far too much alike for comfort - but who put an edge into his dancing that I always tried to emulate. Then Dave, short and insanely acrobatic, making up moves as he went along and the only dancer who I ever thought had as much energy as I did - and with a seemingly insatiable and indiscriminate appetite for meeting girls. And finally Herman, the clown prince of street dance. A guy who taught me about dancing and about life; a guy who taught me the secret of knee pads under my jeans and the delicate art of dance-floor clowning; a guy who taught me that it’s not the baddest moves that make you the memorable dancer, but rather the ability to unashamedly and loudly be yourself. I’ve danced, and lived, that way ever since.

I had two extended stays in Orlando, and two amazing runs at the Island. During those times, I was frequently there four or five nights a week dancing for four of five hours at a go, sometimes even bringing a change of clothes to school with me so that I could change in the parking lot without having to go home. And no matter how many nights I reprised my experience, I was never able to keep from actually running from my car to the front entrance with excitement, and I never got tired of that feeling of peace and joy that would wash over me as soon as I stepped onto those street bricks and into the world’s greatest party. In the years that followed, I visited less and less frequently, and each time, the Island was a little less like I remembered it, and there were fewer and fewer familiar faces. And finally, I stopped going altogether - confident that the Island would always be there and that I’d find my way back.

But, as it’s want to do, time marched on. The Island stopped celebrating New Years every night. There were no longer dance revues on the outdoor stages. Old clubs were replaced with more modern venues and people seemed more content to eat, drink, shop and stand around rather than to join in on the fun. And ultimately, the good folks at Disney chose to shut down the iconic clubs and turn Pleasure Island into another Disney-themed and ultimately forgettable shopping and eating venue. Thanks, Fat America - you turned the happiest place on earth into another tribute to your apparently unflagging appetite for consumption and the avoidance of anything even remotely physically taxing.

In the end, time and progress will take many of the places from us that shaped who we are and what we’ve become. Losing Pleasure Island was a poignant reminder of two important lessons. First, to take the time to revisit the important people and places from your past. They won’t always be there, and they often provide an otherwise unavailable perspective on how far you have (or haven’t) come. Memory lane is a great place to spend some free time and there’s nothing quite like a actual visit. Second, to take the time to remember and record the memories of those places and times in your life. Because, the only timeless thing we really have are those thoughtful recollections, colored by our own perspective and the only way they truly survive is in the words we write.

And though it's a little late and I couldn’t say it in person: goodbye, Pleasure Island. Thanks for the memories.

Fear of a Strange Red Planet

I have something to say to the red state zealots, to the right wing campaign volunteers, to the tea party protesters, to the Joe-the-Plumbers, and to the Populist movement who has turned a popular fear of government and the educated and moneyed classes into a political movement so sweeping and vast that the recent Presidential election, as a referendum on one of the horrific and tragically incompetent administrations in the history of American government, was actually a close call: I’m scared. I’m scared of you. I’m scared of your pundits. I’m scared that you’ve leveraged the technology around us to turn the Information Age into the Mis-information Age. I’m scared that we are on the brink of the ultimate Populist Revolt, the culmination of the rising tide of discontent against education, freedom and equality; and an intellectual apocalypse: the rise of the stupid.

The stupid have never had more power and influence that they do today. We’ve all seen the journalistic abomination that is Fox News, which has done for slanted and mindlessly partisan news coverage what Paris Hilton did for entitled celebutantes with loose morals: each of them now far removed from the sideshows, margins and shadows and suddenly paraded in front of us as the main act. With its hyper-stylized presentation and rapid fire pacing, Fox feeds the masses in the way they want to be fed, and allows them to ignore the substance of what they’re consuming. Much like Ray Kroc once opined upon reflection of building one of the greatest commercial empires of all times, Fox isn’t in the news business, they’re in show business. And the lesson that much of our country has failed to learn about food, they’ve also failed to learn about information: just because you like eating a Big Mac, doesn’t mean you should, and definitely doesn’t mean it’s good for you.

Glenn Beck is one of the most alarmingly ignorant and disturbing political personalities since David Duke. I’d like to say that it’s his manic mood swings that disturb me most about him. I’d like to say it’s the transparently nonsensical “logic” he uses to build and confirm his conspiracy theories and then passes off as “common sense” reasoning. I’d like to say it’s his clearly histrionic personality disorder (if you don’t know, please look it up). But it’s none of these things. What disturbs me most about Glenn Beck is that he’s popular. He generates ratings like Monday Night Football and Miley Cyrus, and people aren’t tuning in to see the train wreck. No, people are watching to learn; to have their own ethnocentric fears confirmed, and to join the angry hateful mob which looks at black man in the White House as a socio-political apocalypse. Glenn Beck is the face of a nation, and that scares me far more than anything that comes out Washington D.C. ever could. A parade of fools could scarcely pick a more appropriate grand marshall.

But compared to the most inciting modern rhetoric, usually passed around via forwarded e-mails and social networking updates, Fox News (Beck included) deserves a Pulitzer. Because when the stupid turns too ugly to be mainstream - it must be passed around virally. In the past year, I have either been sent the following:

• At the end of an e-mail incorrectly recounting some of the President’s actions to date in office, with special attention to his approval of assistance to Palestinan refugees and diplomatic approach to Middle East foreign relations:
  
  “WE are losing this country at a rapid pace.
 Now we know why he got so much campaign money from the middle east!”
  

• The punchline of a mortifying “joke” about three strangers in an airport:
  
  Finally, the American Indian clears his throat and softly he speaks, "At onetime here, my people were many, but sadly, now we are few." The Muslim student raises an eyebrow and leans Forward, "Once my people were few," he sneers, "and now we are many. Why do you suppose that is?"
  
  The Montana cowboy shifts his toothpick to one side of his mouth and from the darkness beneath his Stetson says in a drawl, "That's 'cause we ain't played Cowboys and Muslims yet, but I do believe it's a-comin."
  

• And a photo that pasted the President’s head on the photo of a scantily-clad witch doctor, complete with a photoshopped bone through his nose and references to Soviet socialism that I will not dignify by reproducing it here.

The worst thing about all of these things is that they came to me from my family.

To call these kinds of things “disgusting” is to vastly understate the matter. This type of thinly veiled racism is the sort of thing that embarrasses me, even as someone who served for ten years in defense of my country, to be an American, if this is really who we are. We have unprecedented access to information, including primary sources: black-letter law, court decisions, and legislative documents. And yet, we are more prone to let our news be spoon-fed to us by increasingly less intelligent and increasingly more hateful commentators than ever before.

This isn’t a battle of ideologies, because those battles are fought on intellectual grounds. This is a battle of emotion and fear versus intellect. This is an unwinnable battle of what “real America” is all about. The red state faithful will tell you that “real America” is white people living in suburban communities where American flags fly in front lawns, kids walk to school and play in the streets safely, and all you really need to know you can learn from your parents or at church. In this “real America” you need to be able to carry a gun, because marauders, communist sympathizers and foreign combatants masquerading as immigrants are amassing on the horizon. In this “real America” knowledge and education are “brainwashing” and if you can’t figure it out with “plain ol’ horse sense”, it ain’t worth a’knowin’. They’ve convinced a frightening majority of the people in this country that being stupid goes hand-in-hand with apple pie and baseball; and that being “simple” is being “genuine”. And that’s scary; like zombie movie scary.

As a matter of fact, it’s starting to feel a lot like a zombie movie, lately; where everyone save a few rugged survivors has been turned into mindless, shuffling consumers of brains - out to turn every remaining human into another drooling and moaning member of the infected masses. Because, like a super-virus, stupid is also infectious, contagious and dangerous. Ignorance offers comfort and offers up untenable and fantastic platitudes to conquer fear. Dumb is cheap and easy, and what could be more attractive in these difficult times? And how much do the pictures from PeopleOfWalMart.com need to look like cut shots from Zombieland or 28 Days Later before we do something about it?

It appears as though the Red Scare is back for a third go-round, and it looks a lot like the first one did back in 1917. Once again there is mounting fear and anxiety that a revolution that will destroy property, Church, home, marriage, civility, and the American way of Life is imminent. And once again the media has exacerbated those political fears into widespread xenophobia. But this time, it’s the “red” that purports to be the good guys, the warriors against socialism and the protectors of the American ideal. It seems that black is the new red, and red is the new, well, white? At least they’re still fighting with good ol‘ fashioned hate and fear-mongering. We clearly didn’t learn our lesson the first two times, and as the old saying goes: we’re doomed to repeat it until we do.

As in both previous Red Scares and zombie moves, the faces of these foot soldiers for idiocy and imbecility are the faces of our friends, neighbors and even families, and it makes the terror all the more real. Because we used to know these people and now we hardly recognize them. But the enemy of this new Red Scare is not the equally fallible “Blue”, the DNC, or MSNBC. Because a scant few years ago, they were scary in their own right. No, the only real weapon against the mindless is the mindful, the only way to defeat ignorance is with knowledge, and so that’s how I choose to fight: with my facts, my knowledge and my keyboard. But unfortunately, for zombies, well, you’ve still got to blow their heads off.

For Hate of The Game

I hate the Yankees. That alone hardly puts me in unique company, the Yankees are one of the most divisive professional sports franchises in the world. As the old saying goes: you either love ‘em or you hate ‘em. And I hate ‘em. But I think I may hate them more than most, and I can’t keep it in any longer. With apologies to those friends I have who do, inexplicably, love that team, I’ve got to let this out. The Yankees are the purest evil that isn’t an actual despot dictator or corrupt government. They are more despair inspiring than the entire cast of The Hills and a greater barometer for sweeping social decay than the mortgage crisis, political scandal and Miley Cyrus’ career combined. The Yankees have taken two of our most storied American institutions (baseball and New York City) and turned them into lessons in oppressive monopolism and narcissistic self-obsession being sold to us as confidence and sportsmanship. As a nation of sports fans, we deserve better, and we should demand it.

I swore that I would not watch the World Series upon learning the Yankees would be participating in it. I had watched the majority of the playoffs, and enjoyed the competitiveness and the annual demonstration by the baseball world that most expensive team is not necessarily the “best”. And with that cathartic proof less and less likely, I settled comfortably into the football season and put off thinking about baseball until next summer. But I did give one caveat: that if they would start throwing baseballs at Alex Rodriguez, I would tune in. In fairness, I said this mostly a as a throwaway - conventional baseball wisdom would nearly prohibit plunking a team’s best hitter; especially in the championship series. And Alex had, of late, come perilously close to actually earning a fraction of the quarter billion dollars he was being paid to consistently hit baseballs. But after news came over the wire that, impossibly enough, A-Rod had been hit three times in two games, I made good on my promise and tuned into the Fall Classic. I wish I hadn’t. Watching the Yankees win the World Series was like watching the rich kid in your class get the girl you had a crush on; or watching Goliath beat David. No moral, no inspiration, no joy. Just the affected and rehearsed mirth of a couple dozen millionaires and the smug applause of sixty thousand or so New Yorkers who seemed more relieved than actually excited. The Empire had struck back, and to my horror and disgust, evil had finally prevailed.

To be clear, I don’t hate the institution that is the Yankees. To love baseball in any capacity is to appreciate who the Bronx Bombers used to be. You can hardly talk about the lore of our national pastime without mentioning Micky Mantle, Lou Gherig or the largest character of them all, Babe Ruth; each of them Yankees, and remembered best in their pinstripes. But the modern day Yankees are no more that institution than Megan Fox and Kate Beckinsdale are Marilyn Monroe and Greta Garbo, Ryan Seacrest is Dick Clark or in terms closer to my heart, the Notre Dame football team is the same storied group that inspired ‘Rudy’, gave us Knute Rockne, or was even worth watching. At some point, as institutions mature and adapt over time, many of them lose so many of the identifying characteristics of their historical namesake that the name is really the only thing they’ve retained. So it is with the Yankees. Aside from playing in New York City and wearing mostly similar (albeit updated) uniforms, these are not your father’s Yankees.

The Yankees payroll last year was just under $210 million. Half of that was accounted for by just four players, and nowhere in that four was their World Series MVP or their fabled closer, Mariano Rivera (one of the few Yankees I do not hate). The Yankees overpay for talent like normal people overpay for movie popcorn. The real problem with this is that that’s $60 million more than any other team is paying, and it’s more than the four lowest payroll teams combined. Oh, and it’s near $100 million more than the team they were playing in the aforementioned World Series. In a nation where we demand fairness in our competitions, and talk of “even playing fields” has dominated our political and social landscapes since time immemorial, our appointed “national pastime” allows and even celebrates this inequity. So, in effect, we’re using the Iranian election method to determine a baseball champion.

So, how did this happen? It happened because Major League Baseball doesn’t have a salary cap, they have a luxury tax. Which basically means that if you spend more than a certain amount on your payroll, you have to pay a little more to the League. That’s right, the punishment for spending too much is, well, more spending. I’m not quite certain how requiring extra money from a group who can’t control their spending is an actual deterrent. I’m just glad the penal system doesn’t use this same methodology to control rape and murder. And who are the primary proponents of this “luxury tax” plan? The ownership of the Yankees. So to be clear, we’ve given the folks in New York City the opportunity to give the League and the rest of the country the middle finger and be the best by buying away every other team’s best players, and it’ll just cost them a little extra cheese? The same people who will spend in excess of $2,500 a month for a 500 square foot studio apartment, just for the privilege of living in their city? Normally you have to be a member of the Lohan family to get that kind of enablement.

And what of the lesson this teaches to those kids whose dads take them to the ballpark? I can just picture a father leaning over to his begloved son, face still stained with ballpark mustard and fingers still sticky from his first real box of Cracker Jack and passing on the timeless knowledge: See son, winners don’t make money, money makes winners. Wow. I can almost smell the American pride from here.

But I would be remiss not to mention the thing I hate most about the Yankees. And that’s Alex Rodriguez. "Pay Rod" is the most easily hate-able sports figure since Barry Bonds. Just a few years ago he was cast as the player who would save us from the Bonds scourge by wiping his name from the record books and doing it the proverbial “right way”. Ha! But it’s not solely the Yankees to blame for blowing up Alex’s head like a party balloon. After all, it was the Texas Rangers who gave him a 10 year contract in 2000 worth $252 million dollars. It was simply the Yankees who provided welcoming arms for a player who ultimately grew to believe he was actually worth that kind of money, and possibly more.

I could mention his marginal performance on the field (or at least marginal for someone making $200,000 for every game he plays), his recently admitted steroid use, his marital infidelity (and with Madonna, no less), or his notorious indifference over his own failures, but that’s really not it. It’s really the way he appears to be keenly aware that he’s Alex Rodriguez and that you’re not, and he’s bent on making sure you understand that. It’s really the way that he celebrates even his most benign accomplishments as though he’s some sort of underdog, and not one of the highest paid athletes in the world. It’s really the fact that you don’t just want him to fail, you want him to fail profoundly. You don’t just want the pitcher to strike him out, you want the 98 mph fastball to go cruising into his dome hard enough to wipe that damned smile off his face. It’s really that he is the consummate modern day villain: overpaid, under-talented and generally indifferent about the fact that he’s an absolute ass.

The modern day Yankees are, in many ways, simply a reflection of what we have all become, and in that, perhaps we have only ourselves to blame. We worship at the altar of material wealth with such great fervor that it has seeped into other, previously inviolate, areas and given us a single measuring stick for personal value. Nearly gone are the days of underdogs, hometown heroes and rags-to-riches fables. We’re left only with the hyper-rich becoming hyper-richer and overpaying to simply bear witness from our firmly entrenched seats in the proletariat. But for those of us who can’t or won’t give in to this sad reality, who believe there is something more and something better, and who love sports for the fairness it offers in an often unfair world, I offer you a start to your salvation in the form of a little sports hatred, or on the off chance you’re a major league pitcher, in one good hard throw at a guy’s head you can’t possibly miss.

A Healthy Dose of Shame

Despite the fact that we are the fattest nation in its fattest era, a robust health and fitness industry has provided us with greater access to the technology and know-how we can use to keep ourselves in good shape than we’ve ever had before. We have dozens of diets, devices and drugs, all designed to make and keep us thin, strong and generally looking good naked. There is, perhaps, no better indication of this than the rise of the franchised super health club. In communities and neighborhoods both small and large, rich and poor, monolithic fitness centers have been propped up. These churches of physical betterment offer the latest pieces of fitness equipment, a bevy of personal training experts, and an environment engineered specifically to motivate us sweat and push away those extra pounds and puny muscles. Unfortunately, it seems that a few of my fellow gym patrons appear bent on dressing or behaving in such a way as to leave little doubt as to why, amidst all these agents for self-improvement, we’re still a nation of fat slobs.

The Tank Top Brigade

Let me just say, I get it. I understand how flattering a fitted tank top can be for a guy. I’ve personally been wearing them for undershirts for most of my adult life. However, they’re just that: underwear. I can’t honestly think of a good reason for a grown man to wear one of these shirts by itself - including in the gym. And yet, I see dozens of men wearing these to work out in. And strangely enough, they’re often paired with oversized shorts or pants. But I’m willing to give this entire ensemble a pass, because there’s a new breed of tank top (if you can even call it that) that’s to the tank top, what the tank top is to the t-shirt. I’m speaking, of course, of the giant sleeve-hole t-shirt, or the douche top.

This shirt is commonly executed by first taking the sleeves off of a regular t-shirt and cutting out the neck. This allows, ostensibly, for greater visual access to one’s guns (because if you wear a shirt like this, you invariably refer to your arms as “guns”) and enough space to show off a little pec-cleavage (and perhaps some stylish neck jewelry). But the next step really takes it up a notch. You cut the sleeve holes open down to the very bottom the shirt, leaving just enough fabric to hold the shirt together. This gives much more liberal access for admirers to your entire upper body, and if you’ve done it right just a peek of nipple from time to time. After all, people are at the gym to get motivated, and what greater motivation than being able to see your sculpted torso, right?

Wrong.

Honestly, in addition to a dress code which would allow anyone wearing something like this in a health club to be immediately removed, this sort of apparel should constitute legal grounds to take someone outside and beat them with a dull shovel. No one wearing a douche top will contribute anything valuable to the world, and will likely spend the majority of their days preying on young women with self-esteem issues or, once they’re too old, telling stories of how they did. I’ll bet a year’s salary that Levi Johnston has a drawer full of these. Do us all a favor and put on a damned t-shirt. If anyone wants to see more, they’ll ask.

The Screamers

Lifting weights is a brilliantly visceral experience. Anyone who’s done it for a while can tell you about the rush you get when you push something impossibly heavy through a range of motion for the first time. There’s probably some sort of endorphin/adrenaline science that can explain it - but all I know is that its reliable bliss, which is often in short supply. Additionally, because of the intensity of the experience, its often difficult to appear at one’s absolute best. Some of the scariest faces I’ve ever seen have been on people lifting. And sometimes, the experience is so intense that the occasional grunt is involuntarily let out. Usually, this involves enough weight that its completely understandable. However, there are a precious few people who feel compelled to actually scream while lifting weights, or grunt so loudly that it may as well be screaming. And by “loud”, I mean, loud enough that I can hear despite the fact that I have my earphones in and my iPod at the highest volume I can stand.

For the most part, these weight room chodes aren’t lifting enough to warrant a good sweat, let alone any accompanying noise. And yet, they’re compelled to make sure everyone within earshot understands that they’re exerting themselves into even greater sculptitude, and we really ought to pay attention. For the few of them who are actually trying to lift something challenging, they’re doing it in the least effective way possible, or hardly lifting it at all - screaming all the while, just to make certain we’ve all taken a good look at precisely what they’ve racked up. In addition, these are the same jerk-offs who feel compelled to drop whatever they do manage to lift in the loudest way they can muster, so that if I failed to notice the screaming, there’s no way I’ll miss the dumbbells hitting the floor from two feet up.

A few important notes here:

1. If I came to gym to hear people working out, I wouldn’t have headphones in. And strangely enough, the vast majority of other patrons have them on as well. Take a hint: we don’t want to hear you.
2. Rest assured that if someone does rack up and lift something impressive, I’ll notice.
3. Invariably, every person I’ve seen do something I’d qualify as “impressive” in a gym has done it with hardly a sound. To put it in simple terms: they let the weight do the talking.

That’s the only thing in the gym that I want to listen to, so shut up and lift.

Pretty Angry Girls

From the looks of it, there’s something really bad going on at the gym for almost every girl there. Because I haven’t seen that many pissed off girls in one place since the prom queen announcement. Honestly, what is it, ladies?! I mean, I can understand the need for a plaintive stare at a nightclub, but at the gym? Despite the fact that I’m always at the gym wearing sweatpants and a t-shirt, headphones in and focused on my own workout, whenever I glance at a female gym patron (not counting any I showed up with) they look at me as though they recognize my face from the sex offender registry (for the record, they don’t). Now keep in mind I’m not leering or even attempting to initiate any sort of conversation, I’m just looking around the gym because staring straight ahead was something I had my fill of at military school. And yet, I’m forced to make a point of looking into obviously empty space to avoid hearing someone’s rape whistle and getting pepper sprayed while I’m making my way to the lat pulldown machine.

Is that really necessary? Look, I know there are guys at the gym who can be a little lecherous. But if you’ve been paying attention, they’re really not that hard to spot. Aside from the groups mentioned above, anyone wearing Under Armor (or anything skin tight for that matter), anyone wearing a necklace you can see, or anyone flexing in the mirror are safe to give your “look” to. For the rest of us, we’re just trying to get a decent workout in without being distracted by bad shirts and gratuitous yelling.

Additionally, if you show up to the gym with your hair and make-up done, in an outfit that looks like it costs more than your annual membership dues and showing more skin and cleavage than you do when you go to Vegas, having to deal with a little smarm just sort of seems fair, doesn’t it?

* * *

It’s not as though I expect the crowd at my local gym to look like a Bally’s Fitness Center commercial. I’m not sure I’d even want to go a gym like that (or else someone there might end up writing a piece like this about me). I’m just looking for a little less “crazy” in my workout facility. What’s more, no matter what someone looks like, if they’re in there seriously trying to improve themselves, far be it from me to give them any hell about being a work in progress. That’s what being there is all about, anyways. Unfortunately, too often it seems like many of the folks that show up really need work in the one area the gym can’t help them with, a severely underdeveloped sense of shame.