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The Gym Saga

4 Oct

October 4, 2016

Yup, I’m a gym guy. Go there almost three times a month. Yeah, I’m pretty buff.

A lot of odd stuff happens at the gym, and that’s not counting the things that happen in the locker room that no matter how hard I try I can’t unsee. 

But this is a story I can tell. I was on the treadmill, doing my usual 30 mile uphill run in 15 minutes, when an old Chinese man wandered into the gym. And when I say wandered in, I mean that literally. He looked confused. The people at the desk tried to stop him but he looked around like he had no clue what was going on, and I think it may not have been an act. He was wearing beat up jeans, a Member’s Only jacket (remember those?) and regular shoes, albeit very worn. He carried a canvas bag which he put down next to an elliptical machine. He got on the machine and for the next 3 seconds or less tried to figure it out. Then he got off and wandered over to a pull down machine, where he hung his bag on one of the pull down handles, tried to push the cushions, and then got up, took his bag, and walked out of the gym. True story.

And there’s more. These are actual things I’ve tweeted from the gym.

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Who does this guy think he’s kidding? There’s no Pokémon in my shower stall at the gym. Get that cell phone out of here!

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What do you mean, I can’t get a cronut here? What kind of gym is this?

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Oh yeah? Well if hydration is so important why did the gym take away my super soaker?????

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Apparently, no one in this entire gym is interested in a lively debate about The Canterbury Tales. Smh

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OK, maybe some of those weren’t true. But my twitter feed isn’t all cronuts and Chaucer. (“Cronuts and Chaucer” would make a great name for a bookstore/bakery. That’s all mine, you can’t have that idea.) I also give Gym Pro Tips for those of you, like you, who would love some real advice from a real gym pro like myself.

Gym Pro Tip: wearing a shirt with fake muscles underneath at the gym doesn’t help you lift, just makes you sweat more

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Gym Pro Tip: leave the French fries outside unless you want snide comments.

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Gym Pro Tip: You look impressive in a tuxedo, but you look stupid in a tuxedo on the treadmill. Take it from me, my friends.

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Gym Pro Tip. Wear a shirt that is already worn and stained. That way you don’t have to work hard to make people think you’re working out really hard.

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Gym Pro Tip: when you get off a machine, increase the weight by 20 pounds. Makes you more impressive to whoever uses it next.

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Next time you go to the gym, remember, what happens in the locker stays in the locker room. That’s why I shower at home.

 

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Night Terrors 1979

6 Sep

September 6, 2016

I’m into things like ghosts and UFO’s (which is why I’m so hard on George Noory) and I just finished reading The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects from 1956 by Edward J. Ruppelt. He’s one of the original Project Blue Book leaders.

Project Blue Book was one of the Air Force’s attempts to investigate the UFO phenomena. It’s an interesting read, though you won’t learn much other than the Air Force in the 1950’s was as full of red tape as it is now.

But it reminded me that there was a TV show based on this called Project U.F.O. and it scared the heck out of me when I was a kid.

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From the internet:

Project U.F.O. is an American anthology television series which ran on NBC from 1978 to 1979. Running for two seasons of 13 episodes each, the show was based loosely on the real-life Project Blue Book. The show was created by Jack Webb, who pored through Air Force files looking for episode ideas.

The show features two U.S. Air Force investigators charged with investigating UFO sightings.

In an odd reversal of the Scooby-Doo dynamic, the series eventually settled into a pattern in which the investigators would spend most of the hour uncovering some conventional explanation for a UFO sighting, only for the last five minutes to reveal that UFOs (or some similarly unexplained phenomena) were involved after all.

I went to Youtube and found the specific episode that terrified young me, The Believe It or Not Incident. I saw the thumbnail and like a flash, I suddenly knew that it was the one episode that gripped me back then. It was so clear. This show has not aired in the United States since its original airing so this was the first time I saw it since 1979. I have not thought about this show in literally over 30 years, at least. Not since the last century!

Well, I can’t say it opened up a floodgate of memories, but it did bring back a couple. What scared me so much were scenes of a giant alien ship replaying images of people and events as it hovered over a man in the desert. These were scenes the aliens inside had no earthly way of seeing. (It’s around the 19 minute mark in the video at the end of this post.)

project ufo ship

For years that part stuck in my head, gave me nightmares and kept me up at night. I’d nervously look up into the sky when I was outdoors, and I live in crowded NYC. The other part that spooked me was at the end of the episode, when the house shakes as the giant ship passes overhead.

Nowadays I’m not sure anyone but me would be creeped out by it, and had this not been the stuff of childhood nightmares I, seeing this for the first time now, would be bored. But little 1979 me was spooked badly. For a long time that UFO replay was the cause of that tingle at the back of my neck.

Much like my last post about the audio tapes, I was again brought back to a moment in my childhood when all it took to scare me were cheesy special effects and my imagination.

 

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