A little over a year ago I started working out at a gym in order to improve my muscle mass, swell my self-esteem to the size of a small skyscraper and get so diesel that every time I break into a run everyone around me hears that crazy sound effect that the Ten Million Dollar Man made when he jumped over buildings or flew a jetpack into a mountain.  For a while this worked pretty well, and eventually my co-workers got used to hearing "Na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na" when I busted through my cubicle wall like the Kool-Aid Man every morning at 9AM before flexing my rippling biceps and yelling, "Ooooh Yeeeeah, Invoice tiiiiime, babyyyyyy!" in my best Macho Man Randy Savage voice and snappin' into a Slim Jim made out of pure horse adrenaline.

However, you all may recall that I got sick of being told that "I'm not getting paid to work on my website" every fifteen minutes, so I quit my old job and started a new one in February.  This was pretty cool because now when people get pissed at me for losing their dissertations or forgetting to issue their college diplomas, I can just yell, "get the hell out of my office" at them and close my door or cover my ears and pretend I don't speak English.  That shit wouldn't have flown at my last job because I was afraid of my boss and was pretty sure that if I had given her the opportunity to kill me and make it look like an accident she would have buried me under ten tons of cinderblocks a long time ago.  However, the downside to my new job is that it's like (at LEAST) five blocks from the gym I was going to and if you've learned anything about me in the last two years I've run this site it's that I am REALLY fucking lazy and unless there's an automatic conveyor belt that will carry my ass down there while bikini babes bring me lemonade and take their tops off I'm not going to hike out to BFE just so that I can push some weights around like a prison inmate in a rock quarry.  So needless to say I stopped going to my old gym.  The bad news is that the stupid sadistic jock douchebag club ownership had me by the sack because I signed some bullshit contract so I had to pay like fifteen bucks a month for eight months membership to a gym that I had no intention of ever going to again, but that's really my own stupid fault for allowing the babe that worked there to make me sign that shit with ink made from my own blood.

I continued to be extorted by Asshole Gyms, Inc. while months passed and I sat on my ass at home eating sour cream and onion potato chips and drinking concentrated pig lard out of juice boxes.  As the days grew longer and more tiresome, I became flabbier and softer until eventually when Hot Andrea and I sat on the futon watching TV on the weekends it was like we were Jabba the Hutt and Princess Leia on Tatooine.

"Ho ho ho ho... Forensic Files is on tonight!"

Well eventually I heard about this National Fitness Month bullshit where you get a free pass to some gym for a period of time that I can't remember how long is it.  Since by this point I was too weak and pathetic to tie my shoelaces without being winded or pulling a muscle I figured that maybe it would do me some good to get back to the gym and regain my Mr. Universe form so that I could start tipping waiters at fancy restaurants by throwing rolls of nickels at them from across the room and then headbutting the dinner table into splinters because nothing gets a classy woman horned up like watching her boyfriend break things with his skull.  So Andrea and I decided to take advantage of this free gym offer like it was a drunk chick at a frat party.  Since my last article about going to the gym was so unbelievably fucking hilarious that re-reading it make me want to punch Jesus, I'm going to spend this week talking about the newest gym experience and the unbelievable excellent adventures Andrea and I have had physically exerting ourselves for hours on end and getting hot and sweaty while doing so.

About the New Gym

So the new gym is pretty much the exact opposite of the one I used to go to with the notable exception that there are STILL fucking old naked dudes in the locker room talking to each other about colon cancer or fiber intake or Shriner cars or whatever the hell naked old guys talk about these days.  I'd really rather not think about it if I can help it, but I did think it was worth mentioning.  Perhaps there's an Old Naked Guy Union out there somewhere that just contracts guys to go stand around in gym locker rooms all throughout the country.  It's like a conspiracy or something.

The main difference between my new gym and my old gym is the quality of babes.  Every time I stepped onto the floor of my old gym I used to feel like I was walking onto the set of one of those crazy Telemundo daytime soaps where every chick is super hot.  It was ridiculous.  This gym is like a more populous version Average Joe's from Dodgeball, where ninety percent of the chicks are either "meh"-quality or look like they should be yolked to a wooden cart and used to till farmland.  It's sort of tough to get yourself psyched up to lift weights when the only girls you have the possibility of impressing are girls that you probably wouldn't get busy with unless there was serious money involved and you can't even feel good about yourself because it's been so long since you last lifted anything that even the 5'6" Indian guy is using more weight than you.  Luckily, Andrea's been working out at the same time as me so I can always fall back on my constant desire to impress her with my physical prowess and ultimate manly manliness; an insatiable desire for validation I thought would subside over time but for some reason persists like a malignant venereal disease.

The Infernal Crunch Machine

One notable difference in the two gyms is that the new one has a machine that was constructed in the black fires of Hell's forges:  the weighted lever crunch machine.  Even the name sounds like some sort of fucked-up medieval fantasy torture device -- "If the Elf Lord insists on denying us the information we desire regarding his stronhold's weak point, we have no choice but to subject him to the CRUNCH MACHINE!!!  Mwahahaha!!"

For all the similarly ab-challenged flab-bags out there like me who have never seen this instrument of pain before, the Crunch Machine is a foul device built from the bones of martyred saints designed to destroy the abdominal muscles of all who dare sit upon it's curséd throne.  The way it works is that you sit on it and lean up against the pivot point, set the weight to whatever you want (it doesn't really matter), use your abs to bend over into the traditional "attention all passengers, we're going down" airline crash position and then sprain your back.  The miracle of this machine is that after three reps you're completely unable to sit upright for a duration longer than fifteen seconds for the next two weeks without passing out, vomiting, or breaking your spine.  However I continue to subject myself to this shit like the masochist I am, in the hopes that one day I will have such cut abs that you will be able to crash an airplane into my gut and I won't even feel it.

If I keep this up, you're all going to be calling ME "The Crunch Machine".

Goals

Well, certainly many of you net dorks are going to be like, "what's the fucking point?"  And you would have a valid argument.  So in my infinite wisdom I decided to put together a list of goals for this attempt at gym-going.  I'm going to post them here not so much for your benefit but mostly because I'm going to feel contractually obligated to complete them once they are forever immortalized in cyberspace.

• Goal #1:  Run the Boston Marathon

  Speaking of hating myself, how awesome would it be to run twenty-six point two miles and receive nothing more than a T-shirt in return?  If you said "WICKED AWESOME" you are right!  Man, I love running.  It makes me feel like I'm being chased by a wild animal or a flying saucer or something.  And I really love how my quads kill the next day.  It's like a party for my legs!

  Yeah, so I want to run the Boston Marathon because I'm a sick asshole and I hate me.  So that's definitely something to work towards at the gym, and when the big day rolls around next year I'll be confident in the fact that attempting a marathon will either result in me passing out dead, cheating like a bitch, or quitting halfway through and then telling everyone that I finished ninth.  Whatever happens, it will pretty much rule.

• Goal #2:  Enter a Strongman Competition

  I've watched enough of the Met-Rx ESPN World's Strongest Man Competition to have figured out the strategy for winning the events;  you gotta stay low when pulling the bus, you gotta keep your feet more than shoulder-width apart when lifting stuff over your head... I've got the cerebral part DOWN, so now all that's left is the part where I build up enough muscle to carry two motorcycles eight hundred meters on my back while people shoot full kegs of Guinness at me from a Civil War-era artillery piece, and learning what exercises I need to concentrate on if I want to be able to bodyslam five passenger trains into mountains in less than thirty seconds, because not only is there a shitload of money in strongmanning (the World's Strongest Man gets like a staggering $30,000), but chicks totally dig guys who can pick up really heavy objects and move them around.  I mean, Andrea's pretty much in love with Mariusz Pudzianowski, so it's pretty safe to say that I'd be the ultimate babe magnet if I could pick up a safe full of bricks and throw it into orbit or pierce tank armor by stabbing it with an uprooted tree trunk.  I mean, what woman isn't turned on by a guy who can bench press her with one arm while simultaneously armwrestling a dinosaur on PCP?

  
  
  
  Yeah, chicks dig it.
  
  
  

I guess that's really all I have today.  I promised someone a good drunken story this week, but unfortunately was unable to scan the pictures necessary to make the tale complete.  Hopefully I'll be able to get that up next week.