Here’s the thing I mentioned last week but did not reveal: I joined a gym. This, I know, is not particularly noteworthy. But I did not sign up for some long contract at some swank sweat palace in the burbs, or a grim spare serious place in The City. There’s a gym in the building of my lobby, and I first wanted to see if you noticed the spoonerism, because I didn’t. And it’s not really a spoonerism. Anyway, since my home exercises and diet changes had been producing noticeable results of a sort, I wondered if I shouldn’t get serious and get back to weights, for no reason I can conceive other than vanity and kicking Old Man Time back a few paces.

Besides, it’s getting cold, and the daily walks would be better if I was inside on a treadmill watching interesting things on my phone. The other day I saw an amusing and absolutely correct takedown of the Saudi Wall building. They’ve actually started building the stupid thing. Do they think it’ll happen? Do they think the project will only cost half a trillion dollars? It’s a fantastically impractical hellscape gussied up with every buzzword you can conjure.

Anyway. I checked out the cost of the gym in the lobby, and was surprised to learn something I should’ve probably known already: it’s free. To tenants. Well then! Off we go. After signing a lot of forms and promising I won’t keel over, and won’t sue them if I do, or rather would not be able to sue them, I took a brief tour. The number of employees was the same as the number of patrons: 2. Yes, two: a pair of miserable looking men hoisting barbells and weights in the back area.

I went back the next day to start my Fitness Odyssey, and spent a few minutes figuring out the locks on the locker. Did some free weights, remembering everything I knew back in the 80s when I hit the gym daily. Approached everything with wary care, since you don’t want to pull anything or get a crick that makes the whole enterprise a failure from the get-go. Did the treadmill, which has a screen that can play all sorts of entertainment, if you want to type out URLs while you huff along.

When I went back to the locker room, it was deserted save for one fellow, who of course was at the locker right next to mine.

The showers are nice, and they provide shampoo and soap and everything. I don’t think I’ve been in a gym / shower scenario for three and a half decades, and given how much I dreaded and hated it during junior high and high school - everything about group athletics, everything about the culture, the assumptions, the ease of others was alien - the idea that I would willingly go back to this would have struck me as strange. But also a good sign.

The second time I finished my workout, such as it was, the locker room was deserted. Except for one guy who of course had the locker right next to mine.

As it is, it’s like a private gym. The staff is cheerful and sweet, and they have little to do.

One of them set up her iPad and did Yoga over Zoom for members. It was the saddest thing I’d seen all week.

Anyway. The advantages of working downtown, right? The boon of office life? Now I have a new THING to do every day, and it’s already forged into the chain of THINGS that mark off the hours.

I wonder how much of this has to do with getting glasses that reprise my 80s look.

How quickly do you give up?

I know that I don’t give new shows a lot of leeway, for the same reason you don’t ask for a second date when the other person doesn’t say much or respond to your conversational inquiries with anything more than a head-nod. A show ought to make you feel it’s trying to earn your attention.

If you don’t watch past the first half-hour, you think: there’s about sixty-seventy million dollars worth of well-produced drama I’m ignoring. If not more. You look at the old sitcoms of the 60s and 70s, shows turned out by the dozen and shoveled on to the screen by a legion of Stakhanovite techs and writers, and the sunk costs were usually minimal: a two-room set for the house, and an office set. If That’s Our Bob died fast and got yanked after 8 eps, there wasn’t 27 million in CGI spent on the sets and exterior shots. 

If you bail, you have the faint feeling that you missed something, because they’re a rabid online fanbase that thinks the show's teh best ever, and dissects every single second of the show over and over. If you do like the show, and you join the rabid online fanbase, you’re put off by most fellow fans. I love Succession, but not as much as the people who pick their favorite rotten human and identify with them and create memes about the top 4 sick burns. (Succession fandom is particularly odd because none of the people in the show would have anything to do with anyone who watches such a show.)

I guess what I mean to say is that TV can be so much fargin’ work these days. But now and then it's effortlessly wonderful. I was watching the new Looney Tunes on HBO Max, an ep called Wet Cement. Porky vs. Daffy. Porky's trying to smooth a square of wet cement. Daffy is bent on ruining it. At one point Daffy dives into the cement and emerges in a variety of postures, imitating famous statues.

This appears for about 1.22 seconds.

An animation fan waits forever for a moment like that. IT WORKS ON SO MANY LEVELS!

Well, two. Okay, one.

It’s 1966.

Don’t fight the counter-culture . . . co-opt it.

I’ll bet this ad struck a chord with family men in their middle 30s.

In production from 1965 to 1992. Not a nameplate you hear a lot about, but it had its fans.

Then again, they all do. Every car has a cadre of old guys who are really into that car.

You may have had a good reason? There isn't any good reason.

I remember this stuff with great affection. A milk shake for breakfast? Yes of course! It’s okay, mom, it has all the vitamins! Astronauts drink it!

The strawberry version was pretty good, and if you didn't mix it completely you got a great strawful of crunchy flavored sugar at the end.

Today it's called Carnation Breakfast Essentials. Two of those word are questionable.

Picking her up for the radio was a smart move, but I wonder if she translated. If I remember, she had something of a nasal voice.

Or maybe that was her twin.

Then again, why wouldn’t the twins have the same voice?

Again, I must ask: why did Fisher advertise? Who ever had a choice?

Perhaps it was just to make people feel better about their car, as if they’d bought the upscaled option page.

You won’t get an answer from this ad. Perhaps the question is “why isn't he smoking Marlboros?"

“Right any time of the day.” That’s great, because I frequently found myself wondering why the 10:20 AM cigarette seemed off at 1:37 PM.

This is a subdued version of an earlier tire campaign, where a fellow watched his wife and child drive away with a dark expression, wondering what would happen if she had a breakdown.

The full ad.

Do we have to spell out what they’re implying?

“I’ve never been very big on car maintenance” is not the sort of thing criminals says upon capture; it’s a bit on the conversational side.

Tracy + slogan from the 40s: some things stayed around a long time.

That will do! Off to see who's endorsing gun-shot wheat this week.