Our Club Schlub!

Exercising at the gym should be about more than weight-lifting and pushing one's body to improve. Look around and observe others smiling, rooting on their favorite teams on the television sets, enjoying the music between circuits, making new friends and the like. Any of my friends who deny the undisputed pleasure of hard bodied women in sports bras bouncing around, and I shall indeed show you a liar; or a blind man. All this being said, no man who takes pride in alienating other members by over staying one's brief window of “undress me” staring or becoming all too friendly and involved in the workouts of strangers. A sports club is only so big, and the same members will be there working out at the same time of day most likely. The implications here are fairly simple. The middle-aged men in colorful, Jack Lalaine-ish get ups patrolling from woman to woman making up special methods of doing reps and inconsequential small talk...should piss off. The ones at my gym always seem to take it upon themselves to share an unenlightening back story in between every set on the circuit machines they take turns on with their interests. Half of them are in Florida having their vacation homes decorated while others are powerful hedge fund managers whose physicians have suggested an exercise regiment akin to their studly college playing days when they were not only an Olympic champion but also did some background acting work next to Schwarzenegger on Muscle Beach in the 70's. Of course, that was before Mr. Weinblatt threw his back out cutting a piece of cheese-filled Entenmann's coffee cake at his nephew's Bar Mitzvah last year. Do the rest of us non-schlubs and any club member not an absolute dunce trying to workout with straight faces a favor and spare the asinine pick-up lines on the same handful of women everyone else stares at inside every gym? If negative Ghost Rider and the pattern is full, at least make an attempt at being slightly less obvious so onlookers do not fall off treadmills laughing. I know a perpetually horny insurance agent to whom a majority of my commentary at hand would relate. At least he is a utilitarian about it. He skips out early on the crunches and stretching, pulls up to a massage parlor in Korea Town, buys their version of the business man's lunch buffet and calls it a day.