Harry Potter and the Wilkes Y

Tuesday night, well more like early evening I made myself go to the Y. There was nothing to do anyway, and the show I wanted to see, Damages, was not on until 10 pm. I left the office, went and had some horrible passport pictures taken, and finally the gym. I get on the elliptical and run for an hour – at this time I do realize that yes, GCC I should be lifting weights not just doing cardio, but at this time I am so out of shape I need to start somewhere – and I let me mind roam.
• There they are the cute little twinks – if they are straight are they twinks? – That think they rule the gym. Its cute they come in all shapes and sizes, there are the clean cut ones, and the tattooed all bad ass ones.
• There is the military guy
• Over there are the little girls, also knows and the groupies of the twinks, they are trying to use the machines, to not much success.
• Finally something that grabs my attention, this woman reading on the bike in front of me, it’s a big book – one of those hard covers with probably 800 pages – she is in page 253, I can see she is right in front of me. Then I see what king of typography it is, I also notice the yellow and red in the dust cover and realize she is reading “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows”. Imagine that, someone reading J.K. Rowling in Wilkesboro, I mean this upright Christian town, some one is reading witchcraft in public. I took my headphones off and asked about the book, she has read all previous books and she was really enjoying this one. I asked for no spoilers, but felt so happy to have a token Potter spirit here.

Then my mind wandered off, again, thinking I should stretch and after 58 minutes I decided enough was enough. I went over to the free weight area and stretched for 10 minutes or so, and then skipped to the hotel, where I proceeded to eat dinner and knit my way through Damages. It is a good show, but I guess I will have to watch the next episode to see if I really like it.
How exciting is my life eh ?

Snow, TV and cardio

These three words can describe my evening. Last night as I was about to leave the office for Chisel – I work in the hinder lands of Virginia, at 5 pm, a little problem arouse its ugly head, and being the anal retentive gay, I stayed to solve it. At first I thought it would be only 30 minutes or so, but that turned into a 2 hour effort, the good thing is I got a lot other stuff done. Yay! For work but bad for the figure. Once the crisis was solved, I drove to the gym and did some cardio while doing cardio; I was on the step machine to be exact I wasted 1 hour of my time by watching and listening to American Idol. I have to say this it was the first time I had ever watched said show, and I have a confession, I can see why people like it. I saw the “good” episode, where the no talents audition to go to Hollywood. OMG, there is very little talent out there, for a country of 300 million. Granted they were in San Antonio, but c’mon, they could at least have showed the better candidates, of course that would not be good television so we saw some pretty pathetic fools making asses out of themselves. My favorite line was after this sad girl, who apparently sang like an angel in her church’s choir, tried to sing a song. She was bad, had no personality, could not interpret a word she was singing, so I wander how can she sing in choir when she can barely put any emotion into it? The judges said no, and she left saying that they were all negative on her, and that they had judged her without listening to her and blah, blah, blah. But the pearl of the show was when her mother and sister received her after the failed ambition, they said that none of the people there knew anything, asked why Simon was part of American Idol when he was not even American and when the presenter said he was British, the said “well he needs to go back to British, to judge…”. Back to British, yes … I guess this goes to tell how well educateted the audience and participants of the show are. Of course this is a gross generalization, I know, but anyway just my observation.

The funny thing is that last week two of my co-workers, of conservative persuasion, were talking about Idol and said that it was the liberal’s fault that no one told people anymore that they are not good at something. I had no good retort to this, and said that it was not the fault of the liberal’s but just the fault of modern western world, that sees the chance of being famous as the only way out of poverty. After watching the show, I realized that this people that know they are bad singers, just go there to exhibit themselves. Some of them are delusional, I give you that, and most of them are told by their friends they are good, but how in his or her right mind just listens to ones friends. That is not part of the liberal bias that is part of the human bias. We will tell people we like that we like what they do, because they are our friends or family. I would like to think I am a liberal that does not delude himself about his talents, but I do keep a blog – and know I am no Phillip Roth. I will never aspire to be a singer or an actor, but maybe that is just because I am so overeducated that I have other incredible aspirations that will never come to bare fruit. This has nothing to do with political ideals. This all goes to show how a better educated group of people tend to look for opportunities elsewhere and the people with no other chances, with no aspiration or role models, see show business as the one way out. Are we all at some level part of the American Idol phenomena, trying to be something we are not good at?

Maybe the answer is yes.

PS. The snow refers to the craziness that ensues any winter precipitation in DC.