The gym rats

Mary cancels her old gym membership, and the entire household (minus Bianca) signs up at Planet Fitness.

“There should be a sitcom episode about this.”

“Yes: ‘The Gang Joins the Gym.’”

“There already is one. It’s called ‘Sweet Dee Has a Heart Attack.’”

We tour the building. Very nice. There’s purple everywhere, and a lot of fat people.

There aren’t a lot of weights; this is to keep out the bodybuilders and the fitness nazis. A “lunk” alarm goes off whenever you grunt too much or you brag about your workout or about shedding your toxins. If you set off the “lunk” alarm very often, you lose your membership. The gym is trying to be a safe place for “regular people.”

Slogans:

NO GYMTIMIDATION

NO LUNKS

JUDGEMENT FREE ZONE

At first we wonder how we’ll manage without judging people, but soon we’re putting the ideal to good use.

At Wendy’s:

“Are you really going to eat all of that?”

“Hey, I can take it over to Planet Fitness and eat it there. It’s a Judgement Free Zone.”

The other day I was on a treadmill, running next to a very slow man. I did not judge him.

It’s kind of lovely, actually, what capitalism is achieving here. No judgment + just $10/month + free pizza + lots of purple → lots of people exercising who ordinarily wouldn’t.

Principles of composition

Now that Christmas and Carlos Muñoz Day are over, I’m getting ready for my next semester of Principles of Composition (W130). I’m revising course policies … perusing new readings …

… and writing a sample essay.

(I want to suffer what my students suffer.)

IUSB’s English faculty have determined that in each W130 essay, the introductory paragraph must list all of the sources, and each body paragraph must explain how passages from at least two different sources are related to one another. Consequently, these essays are like nothing else I’ve read. They’re their own kind of artform.

Like the sonnet.

Later, I might post my own W130 essay — my opus.

But I’m not 100% sure whether I’ll teach the course again, because the contracts still haven’t been issued, and when you’re adjuncting it’s better not to count your chickens.

The mall rats

Day Two of the winter holiday. Mary exercises at her gym; Martin cleans; Stephen cooks; I read.

Later, it might be interesting to watch some TV.

Stephen asks me to go with him to the mall. He’s itching to leave the house. Well, the mall does have a bookstore, and I do want to buy Dance Dance Dance — the sequel to the Murakami novel that I’ve just finished reading — and The Luminaries, the most recent Man Booker winner.

We’re all set to ride the bus when Mary comes downstairs: “All right, I’ll drive you to the mall.”

Then she sees Bianca sleeping on a chair.

“Hello, my little furry friend. You’re so cute. Who is it who loves you? Who is it who takes you to the vet?

“I love you, Bianca. Will you cuddle with me? Do you enjoy being cuddled with? Do you like it when I hold you? Will you miss me when I go away to the mall?”

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Mary drives us to the mall.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

At Barnes & Noble I run into an IUSB student who got an F in my course. Friendly as always, he shakes my hand. I glare. I’m not very gracious in these situations.

Mary buys me The Luminaries, which turns out to be an 830-page (zodiacal!) mystery set in 19th-century New Zealand. Its prose style reminds me of Kate Beckinsale’s in the movie Cold Comfort Farm (“The golden orb had almost disappeared behind the interlacing fingers of the hawthorn”) … which is a good thing, in my opinion.

The Luminaries is Eleanor Catton’s second novel. Aged twenty-eight, four years my junior, Catton is the youngest recipient of the Man Booker Prize. Jeez Louise, I feel unaccomplished.

What we’ve been watching

Our household has gained a new member: Stephen, who’s just finished his undergraduate career. And I’ve just finished being a teacher at Bethel, and my IUSB semester has ended, too. Today was the first day of my winter break. The household spent the afternoon in front of the TV. First the men (and Bianca) watched soccer, and then Mary watched a DVD of Beverly Hills, 90210. The men also watched this.

Earlier this week Mary put on Blackfish, about the imprisonment and abuse of killer whales — one of the saddest movies I’ve ever seen. Afterward we felt badly, and so we were extra nice to Bianca.

10 books

This has been going around on Facebook:

“Rules: In your status, list 10 books that have affected you in some way. Don’t spend more than a few minutes, and don’t think too hard. Then, tag 10 people, …” (blah, blah, and the blah).

Here are my ten books in the order in which I first read them:

E.B. White, Stuart Little • Charles and Mary Lamb, Tales from Shakespeare • Roland Bainton, The Church of Our Fathers • Agatha Christie, Cards on the Table • Evelyn Waugh, A Handful of Dust • Roger Ebert, The Great Movies II • Peter van Inwagen, Material Beings • J.M. Coetzee, Youth: Scenes from Provincial Life II • John Rawls, Political Liberalism • Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

Each book influenced how I write, or how I live, or both; or else it interested me in a bunny trail of other books.

The beach

Mary & Martin reminisce about their honeymoon at a beach in Mexico.

I shouldn’t like to go there, I tell them. I’d get headaches from the sun.

M&M reply that their resort had large, thatched umbrellas. A person could sit under one of them and read all day long.

Even so, I object, the brightness would chafe at the corners of my eyes.

Don’t you enjoy the beach, John-Paul?

No, not really. I got plenty of it in Esmeraldas when I was a child.

(But then I qualify myself:)

I liked the Esmeraldas beach well enough. We’d go there in the afternoons, when the light was low. And it was a different sort of beach: It had garbage. It had sewage. It had stray dogs. The bathers were naked or in their underwear.

And there were jellyfish, says Mary.

And muggers, I say. A person had to be careful. And every ten minutes or so he’d have to leave the ocean and walk back fifty yards to where he’d gone in, or else the current would carry him out into the deep.

There were little dunes with vines on them, and broken glass.

There was a long jetty with a lighthouse at the end of it. We’d walk to the lighthouse sometimes, looking out for muggers because that place was so isolated.

You realize (says Martin), for most people, those things would diminish the value of a beach.

I do realize it. It was an interesting beach.

Sometimes I’m astonished, says Mary, at how boring so many others’ upbringings seem to have been.

(Poor Martin! He feels excluded.)

It wasn’t a pretty beach (have I conveyed this?); it didn’t attract many tourists; but during Carnival, at sunset, thousands of sand-covered bathers would walk past our house. The path up from the beach was lined with discotheques blaring salsa and merengue. I liked to peer in over the chest-high walls of the discotheques in order to watch the people dance. Then, at night, half a mile away, cozy in my bed, I’d go to sleep listening to the music.