I have a membership at our local Planet Fitness (the basic one since I have a difficult time imagining myself dropping in at another one someplace else) that I use on weekday mornings. Right after I get up at half-past three, I don my gym clothes, sorry it's 2017, work-out togs, and head out for an hour on the treadmill. I go so early to trick my brain as I'm not fully awake because otherwise, I'd never agree to spend an hour at a time on a treadmill.
Some wags have suggested in light of the distance from my house to the center I would add great health value to my sessions if I ran to the center and then, after finishing, ran back home. My response is usually some sarcastic variant of an anatomically difficult suggestion, even for a yoga-master (as opposed to a Jagermeister) to accomplish. (I know, you drink it for the 56 herbs; who doesn't, right?)
I use that hour to catch up on everything that's happened in the world from the time I dropped off to sleep the evening before usually while watching the PBS NewsHour. I use a treadmill where I can toggle between CNN and the CBS Overnight News on the big screens hanging on the far wall as I'm someone who needs to see as well as hear (on headphones) TV news as these days so much of it is driven by visuals as opposed to editorial/reportorial word count.
The next screen over is Faux Gnus which, not surprisingly I never watch. When you refuse to listen to a different point of view, you're a bigot. When I do it, I'm principled. see? I am aware of the concept of irony, I just like being made an example of it.
Overnight TV that doesn't just run infomercials is a strange beast indeed. There's a lot of 'we can get you out of debt with the IRS' ads and George Foreman is always on, not hawking his grill (which someone told me was first pitched to Hulk Hogan to sell and he took a pass), but about a company that works with inventors.
My current favorite is Hunter Ellis whom I had to Google to learn he was once (or maybe more than once) on some season of Survivor one of the thousands of hours of 'reality shows' produced for what must be the rest of the nation who are all more easily amused than I as I hate all of that stuff. Hunter does a celebrity endorsement for the Atomic Beam Lantern that causes a more elevated heart rate than I would have if I could run at 100 mph on the treadmill. He has, to read his biography, kept himself employed rather nicely but he doesn't have a Facebook page or not one I could find, even using the Atomic Beam Lantern.
In the future said Andy Warhol once in a very distant past, everyone will be famous for 15 minutes. That's why I stopped wearing a watch because I think that might be my best shortcut to being famous forever, or maybe just infamous.
-bill kenny
No comments:
Post a Comment