work it out!

hi friends.
recently i've been a little lax in adding new posts, and for that i apologize. i came down with a bad case of 'the staples blues,' a fleeting illness marked by late night paper ream anxiety and something only described as the 'three hole punch sweats.'

luckily i have fully recovered, thanks to a night of drinking with old friends and a new membership to kent state's wellness center. while it is a bit pricey, it's been a great cabin fever reducer. plus i think all of the new year's resolutions are long gone so midday the place is relatively unoccupied.

today was my first day, and thankfully everyone in the sauna had shorts on. one guy, however, did keep making occasional glances over my way. i'm not sure why but after the third time i greeted his eyes with mine, hoping that it would put an end to all this profuse sweating awkwardness. it did not. his stare was unwavering and i was the one that eventually had to pull away. it was really weird.

i also saw a bunch of old naked men. something i haven't seen in a while and had almost forgotten exist. but lo, dear reader, there was unstoppable force of wrinkles and loose skin at hand in the wellness center today. i just did my best to avert my eyes and not breathe in the gold bond a smallish older man was slapping all about his naked body. gross.

it did remind me of a column i wrote for my college paper, though. years of suffering through a gross rec center were over as everyone was excited to get a brand new facility. everyone but me, i guess. i was that asshole who vocalized completely fabricated negative traits of the new facility. some fabricated, i guess. others were far too real.

enjoy!

Critically Cocksure
By Jeff Miller

Here’s your advance warning: join the YMCA. Find a Bally’s. Go look around for an empty warehouse somewhere that you can throw a stationary bike and a treadmill in, because that’s the only way you’ll be getting your workout in come February 5.

Yes, that day that’s been on the tip of everyone’s tongue for years: the opening of UC’s new Rec Center. Finally, days of sweating it out in a small, white drywall prison are over. Expansive glass walls welcome students new and old, along with new dining options, a rock wall, a swimming pool and a lazy river. A lazy river!

But hold on there, cowboy, it may all sound like ginger snaps and crinkle cut French fries now, but just wait when it opens.

What I expect to see is something parallel to a Michael Jackson concert in the early 90’s or a Michael Jackson trial earlier last year – unadulterated mayhem, no pun intended. Come Monday, plan on seeing girls wearing ugg boots wounding, pouncing and eventually maiming other girls wearing other pairs of said uggs in attempts to get first dibs on a new stairmaster or elliptical machine. No holds barred, no mercy, no more tubby thighs.

For guys, the weakest and the smallest will be pushed into trash cans or pool filters as a race for the dumbbells breaks out. Once those weights get occupied, then those smaller guys will be pulled out and used as free weights and punching bags. It’s like prison, just with not as many poorly-crafted tattoos – I also did see some freshmen being sold for cigarettes in a racquetball court once.

In short, don’t plan on finding free time in the Rec Center for about the next five quarters, you’ll either have to pull a fire alarm or just be OK with standing on top of someone on a stairclimber or sharing a treadmill with a guy named 8-Ball who smells oddly enough like long-cut Skoal and trucker speed.

It doesn’t stop there, though. I’ve seen what this Rec Center does to people, I’ve been down this road my friends.

A long time ago in a world where gas was under $2.00 and the Y2K virus was still plausible, I saw what a new Rec Center does to people: it makes them stop being lazy.
People who have no business putting physical strain on their body take this as a wake-up call, so they lace up tennis shoes that haven’t seen the light of day for the better part of a decade, slip on some jogging pants and put down their greasy handful of spare ribs.

It gets worse. It’s not just college students that do this, it’s old people. Old people! Spider veins will be out in full force as memberships to the new gym will be selling like hotcakes. Have you ever brushed the naked thigh of a 60-year old man in a lazy river? Doing it just once made my cousin go mute for seven whole years.

What’s even worse is what happens after these oldies get their workout in. After years of wearing clothes at all times bashfulness is no longer an issue-be prepared. Get ready for when you change in those locker rooms, co-eds. Full on geriatric nudity will soon be at hand. They don’t care if you look, they don’t care what they look like and they definitely don’t care that gravity is great for physics but the cruelest of jokes on the human physique.
It’s best to just avoid eye contact and make sure not to brush into anyone, lord knows when the last time that back hair was shaved or conditioned.

So bonne chance, my friends. If you’re one of the lucky ones that can find an open space to work up a sweat more power to you; if not, there’s always binge drinking.
E-mail Jeff at givemepizzaorgivemedeath@hotmail.com.