Monthly Archives: October 2013

I joined a gym

I saw this deal on Groupon for a gym by my house. Usually I only run, outside, but lately I’ve been feeling like it might do me some good to change up the routine. There are a bunch of reasons why I’ve never gone to a gym before, the self-consciousness of working out in front of other people, the not really knowing how to use any of the equipment. I remember one time I went to the university gym while I was in school, I had no idea what I was doing. I sat down at some machine where you put your arms on a platform and start moving some weight attached to a bunch of cables. It wasn’t even that heavy, I swear, but I totally did something wrong, because I couldn’t move my arm for like a week. And it wasn’t soreness, I know what being sore feels like, this was like somebody punched me straight in the triceps.

Honestly, probably the biggest obstacle preventing me from signing up is the cost. Most gyms by me are in the fifty dollar a month range, and I don’t know, I can’t even bring myself to subscribe to cable TV, there’s no way I want to drop that much money on a gym membership. But this Groupon sounded like such a good deal, just two hundred bucks for an entire year, no membership fee, unlimited classes.

I could make that work. On the way over I thought about the closest I’ve ever come to doing something like this, it was about four years ago, I wanted to take a yoga class, just to see what everybody was talking about. The lady at the front desk told me that a single class would be twenty bucks, or, I could spend thirty and get an unlimited monthly pass. Some guy behind me chimed in, “That is probably the best deal in New York.”

Sold. Then I went inside the studio and it turned out that the guy who encouraged me was the instructor. I felt played. I felt even more played when, a month after I had taken several classes a week, I enthusiastically asked how much it would be to continue my membership. That’s when they started throwing numbers at me, like big numbers, four hundred dollars, stuff like that.

I prepared myself for similar tactics at the gym. While I’d never been to a real gym before, I’ve seen plenty of stuff on TV, how they sit you down, they try to rope you in immediately. Sure enough, I walk to the front desk and the guy’s like, “How’d you hear about us?” My plan was to demand the two hundred dollar deal and stick to my guns, but as soon as I said the word, “Groupon,” the guy told me, “OK, well, we can iron out the details later. Let me you show you around the facility.”

And I knew right away that the two hundred dollar yearly wasn’t going to happen. All of my questions were met with a “We’ll get to that,” as the trainer showing me around guided me through his carefully orchestrated gym-membership speech. He showed me the protein shake bar, the spin studio, “You want to go check out the bathrooms?” he offered, “Eh, I don’t know, I don’t really think that’s necessary.”

“All right, well, unless you’re sure you don’t want to go check out the bathrooms, let’s go to my office and fill out some paperwork.” Wow, this guy was aggressive, both about the bathrooms and the roping me in to a membership. I followed him to a desk and he went from trainer to car salesmen as soon as he sat down in his leather chair. “All right,” he took out a piece of paper and started writing down numbers, “Let’s get down to business.”

“What about the Groupon?” I was kind of surprised about how meek I sounded sitting in this chair, something about taking a tour through this factory of muscle and sweat, here I was, I looked like I just rolled out of bed, I was wearing a Batman t-shirt and jeans, whereas normally I feel like I’m in great shape thanks to running, now I felt just really skinny and awkward.

“The Groupon expired,” he dismissed the offer, which I later learned after rechecking it out, it never really was an option to begin with. When you went to try and buy the Groupon, it would tell you that it was sold out, even though they kept posting the same ad every month or so. “But come on,” he tried to persuade me, “Thirty bucks a month, that’s a dollar a day, unlimited classes, it’s a great deal.”

It did sound like a good deal, and I don’t know if it was him taking advantage of my insecurities, but I had a pretty strong urge to join the gym. He could see me thinking, he could sense my hesitation, and taking something right out of the used car salesmen playbook, he looked at me and said, “You know what? I like you. I can tell you’re serious about working out.”

Really? He likes me? And how could he tell how serious I was? He wrote down the number seven on the piece of paper, “So here’s what I’m going to do for you. You see this seven dollar membership fee?” he drew a big circle around the seven, “I’m going to take care of that seven dollars for you,” he crossed out the seven, a big X across the whole paper.

I looked at him for a minute, he stared me down, right in the eye.

“Deal.”

My cousin spent some time in a Russian prison

One of my cousins got into some trouble years ago while he was backpacking overseas. I’m not too close with him, that is, he was never really too close with the family, once every couple of years he’d show up for Thanksgiving, but besides that, nothing, I didn’t have his cell phone number, he wasn’t on Facebook. Anyway I was in high school when my mom announced at the dinner table that Chris “fucked up really bad, got himself sent to some Russian prison.”

And everybody at the table was like, “What do you mean? Russia? When did Chris go to Russia?” but maybe we were all a little too enthusiastic, bombarding my mom with a bunch of questions she wasn’t really ready to answer, “I don’t know,” was all she would say, “Well what do you mean you don’t know? He’s in Russia?” and she’d say, “That’s what I said, Russia.”

“But how did he get to Russia? What did he get arrested for? Was it guns? Or drugs? Is he involved in some sort of organized crime? Does Chris speak Russian? What did Uncle Steve say? Is he going to go to Russia to try and bail him out?” And my mom was like, “I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t … I don’t … I couldn’t tell you … I … I don’t know! All right? OK? I don’t know! Why don’t you call up your Uncle Steve and ask him?”

That was it, really, everybody got quiet after that. Call up Uncle Steve? That would have been nuts. As it was, we all saw Uncle Steve a little more regularly than we did Chris, but what I mean by that is that Uncle Steve actually showed up to Thanksgiving every single year whereas with Chris it was always, “I don’t know if Chris’ll be here. Ask Uncle Steve,” and Uncle Steve would just be sitting in the corner drinking a Manhattan, so nobody ever went over to ask Uncle Steve.

And that was that, for a while anyway, I went away to college, I graduated, I got a bunch of boring jobs. Every once in a while my dad would say something at the dinner table like, “I wonder how your cousin Chris is holding up in Russia,” and we’d all get a little excited, “Did you hear something about Chris? Did you ever figure out how he wound up in Russia?” but I think my dad must have only brought that up as a way to get under my mom’s skin, like maybe they were fighting or something before dinner and they didn’t get a chance to resolve anything, so they’d both be sitting there, my dad would drop the bomb, “I wonder what Chris is up to …” and my mom would get fed up with everyone, “I don’t know! Stop asking me about Chris! I haven’t heard from your cousin in years!”

A couple of months ago my grandfather died, it wasn’t anything sudden, and he was really old, so it was kind of just like, you know, everyone was sad, but it was more of a lament over humanity, over old age than it was over a tragic death in the family. I called out of work, they were like, “How much time do you think you’ll need?” like even they were thinking, grandfather? That doesn’t sound too devastating, like everybody’s grandparents die, can you be back the day after tomorrow?

So we’re all at the second wake, and like an hour before the funeral home was about to close up shop, guess who walked in? Yeah, it was Chris. And everyone went crazy, “Chris! Oh my God Chris! What’s up man? Where have you been? Were you really in a Russian prison? Jesus Christ, look, mom, Chris is here!”

And it was pretty crazy to see him. For the first time all day, it didn’t feel like that weird death-in-the-family feeling, and it’s like, he was standing there surrounded by everybody, in those first few seconds before he really had a chance to say anything, I was trying to piece it together, how I got from a few minutes ago to where I was right now, and I must have been embellishing it already in my head, but I played it back, it’s like I pictured him leaping through those doors, “Hey guys! I’m back!”

It was unbelievable, Chris, right here, finally, everyone let him catch his breath, gave him a little room to explain himself, “Yeah it’s true,” he told us, “I got sentenced to prison while I was in Russia. I didn’t know I was in Russia exactly, I was backpacking through Eastern Europe with some friends, and then we were on a train, and I couldn’t understand anything, I thought we were in Poland or something, so these guards start getting all up in our business one night, we were just having a good time, they start pushing us around, and here I am, I’m thinking this is Poland, or Prague, I’m thinking, these guys won’t do shit, I’m an American, what a power trip, so I’m laughing and joking and not really cooperating at all, and then finally these guys take their guns out, and you know, I don’t understand a word, nothing, so I just put my hands up, we all get carted off, the next thing I know I’m before a judge, there’s a big bag of cocaine on the table, I swear, I have no idea, but what am I going to do? How can I get in touch with the ambassador? I never figured it out. That night they had us on a train to Siberia. Fucking crazy right?” and my mom shot him a look, like what are you cursing for, you idiot? And he saw it, he said sorry for cursing.

I said, “Chris? How’d you make it out?” “What,” he said, “Out of the prison? I got out. The maximum sentence in any Russian prison is like eight years. Didn’t you ever read Crime and Punishment?” and no, I never read Crime and Punishment, I think I was supposed to one year for school, but I don’t even think that the teacher read Crime and Punishment.

“Did you get beat up or anything like that? I can’t believe you still have all of your teeth. You actually look pretty good.” And he said, “Why wouldn’t I look good? Those Russian prisons have a bad rap. Those guys aren’t so bad. You just have to know how to deal with them, all of those prisoners, criminals, political prisoners, they’re all so used to being pushed around by the state, bullied their entire lives. You know how you deal with someone like that? You stare them down. You hold your ground. No, nobody messed with me over there. I was like an honorary guard. Let me tell you something about Russians …”

“Chris!” it was Uncle Steve. I hadn’t even said hi to him, “Let’s go. Now.” And that was it, they both said goodbye and left, we all hung around until they blinked the lights off and on and kicked us out. Afterward we went back to my parents’, we were all still going crazy about Chris, talking about Chris, “Mom! When did Chris get back? Did you know he was coming? Did Uncle Steve ever tell you anything about any of that prison stuff? Did that really happen? When did he get out? Mom? Mom!” but she wasn’t having it, it was all, “I don’t know. Look. I don’t know. You should’ve asked Uncle Steve, because I don’t know.”

And my dad was finally like, “Enough already, enough, leave your mother alone, she’s got a lot to deal with the funeral tomorrow, her dad just died, enough about Chris!” and everyone got quiet, but after a couple of minutes, my brother Phil breaks the silence, “Is he coming for Thanksgiving?” and I had his back, I said, “Yeah mom, did you ask him about Thanksgiving?”

I found a twenty-dollar bill on the sidewalk

I was walking down 21^st Street the other day when I noticed a twenty-dollar bill lying on the ground directly in front of me. “What are the chances?” I said out loud to myself as I bent down to pick it up, which I realized right away was a mistake, not picking up the twenty, but saying out loud, “What are the chances?” Because as soon as I did, there were these two guys pretty close to me, and I definitely caught their attention.

I wasn’t trying to flaunt my good fortune. I was genuinely happy. But one of the guys stopped and looked toward my direction, he said, “Hey, uh, I think that’s my twenty,” and I knew I was screwed. What was I going to do, protest? I didn’t have any defense. It wasn’t my twenty. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that it wasn’t his twenty either.

Still, I didn’t know how to proceed. In a situation like this, you either act or you don’t. If I hesitated at all, it could have started a fight, the guy might have gotten aggressive. And what if he did get aggressive? For all I knew it really was his twenty. I just had a gut feeling that it wasn’t. I know that if I were in his position, and it wasn’t my twenty, but I wanted the twenty, I would do exactly like he was doing, I’d try my hardest to pretend that it was mine, getting really upset that this other guy wouldn’t hand it over.

I just kind of stood there stuck in thought, until he started moving in to take it out of my hands. Luckily, that third guy chimed in, “Hey man, actually, I think that’s my twenty.” Now I could safely recoil my hand, even if just to help get to the bottom of this. Whereas before, I only knew that the twenty wasn’t mine, coupled with a hunch that the first guy was lying. Now I had two guys, one of them definitely lying, maybe even both of them lying.

“Really? Because I’m pretty sure this was my twenty,” I surprised even myself when those words came out of my mouth. It was a ballsy maneuver, but I figured, worst case scenario, two of us would be lying, meaning that there was no way I was getting teamed up on here.

But for real, I could just tell that all three of us were lying, because, again, I’m putting myself in a situation where I drop a twenty and then two other guys come over and make a claim on it, I’d be like, “All right, that’s my twenty, I’m taking it, bye.” But we were all just kind of a little too hesitant, nobody ready to make any direct accusations, everything was pretty civil so far.

And I still had the twenty in my hands. Should I try to make a run for it? I could have gotten away, again, I’m pretty sure I could have gotten away. I’m really fast, but I always like to keep a slight check on my abilities. The more and more I get used to just assuming that I can sprint my way out of any situation, it’s just setting me up for a huge fail when I try to get away from that one person capable of chasing me down.

“How about …” it was guy number three, “How about we all just split it?” and guy number two immediately jumps in, “Nope. That just proves that it wasn’t yours in the first place. My claim still stands. You?” He was talking to me, damn, did this guy have some sort of experience in situations like this? I didn’t know what to do, it was that same indecisiveness that I was dealing with when it was just me and him. I kind of held out my hand, he slowly moved in to make the grab.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, let’s just hold on a second,” guy number three again said, “That’s not your twenty,” I recoiled my hand slightly, “You’re faking it. Tell me, where’d you drop it from? What pocket do you keep your wallet in? You got any other cash in there? Why didn’t that cash fall out? How you going to prove it’s yours? Huh?”

I couldn’t believe it, but it worked, kind of. At least, guy number two fell for it, the rapid-fire asking of way too many unnecessary yet detailed questions. He should have just kept answering them, one after the other, making stuff up if he had to, because he already had the upper hand. But he just stood there with his mouth open, just five seconds too slow.

And that’s when he caved, he said, “All right fine, let’s just split it.” So then I got a little ballsier, I thought, I’m the only one who hasn’t deviated from his original claim, “Actually guys,” I chimed in, “It’s actually my twenty, I’m going to …”

“No, nope, no chance pal, sorry,” it’s like they could just tell. Guy number two yanked it out of my hands and they both started walking to the McDonald’s on the corner. “Guys?” I called out, “Am I part of the split? Guys?”

I followed them inside, they both started ordering, “Guys, can I at least get some food too? Come on, a Big Mac? We can all get Big Mac meals. There’s enough.”

Guy number three gave me a look like he wanted to say, get the fuck out of here man, but then he looked toward guy number two, gave him a look like, what are you going to do? He turned to the cashier, and said, “And he’ll have a dollar menu double cheeseburger.”

I was like, “That’s it? Dollar menu?” Guy number three said, “Take it or leave it,” and his look got real stern, like I could tell he meant it.

“I’ll take it,” and I took it. Whatever, free double cheeseburger, right?

A thought experiment about traveling faster than the speed of light

Scientists like to say that the speed of light is as fast as it’s possible to go, but I don’t believe them. Just think about it, say you have two things travelling at light speed. Let’s say I’m one of those things, and that you’re the other thing. So we’re hurtling through space as fast as we can go, and I then I reach out my hand and push you forward. I’ll slow down, yeah, but you should wind up with a little boost, even if you’re just going a tiny bit faster, there it is, faster than the speed of light.

That wasn’t so hard, a pretty basic thought experiment, really. That’s how Einstein came up with the majority of his most brilliant ideas, just sitting around thinking about stuff. He’d be lost up there in his genius brain, maybe he hadn’t yet gotten out of his bathrobe, and people would be like, “Einstein? Einstein! Hello?” but he had an incredible talent for focus, able to concentrate solely on the experiments being carried out in his mind.

Because, come on, you think a regular person could just come up with E=mc²? No, you need to be a genius. I mean, I’ve always thought about coming up with my own genius equations, because they have to be out there, more laws that govern the universe, stuff we haven’t yet figured out. The way I see it is, all I have to do is come up with the right equation, it doesn’t necessarily have to be proved. But once it is proved, I’ll have called it.

Like, how about m=Ts3(D-4)? That seems like a good one. Any math majors out there want to take a look at my work? Remember, any published findings are going to have to include me as a source, and I’m not cheap. Well, if it’s only a minor breakthrough, then I guess we can work something out. I’m not totally unreasonable.

Does anybody remember that episode of Boy Meets World where Eric mistakenly refers to Albert Einstein as Calvin Einstein? I remember watching that as a little kid and almost passing out from laughing so hard. For years afterward, I’d try to replicate the joke, waiting for a moment where Einstein’s name should have been brought up organically, like as the answer to a trivia question, or during a discussion about science.

Or maybe if I was in the middle of a conversation about something intellectual or scientific, I’d throw in, “Look, I’m no Calvin Einstein …” and wait for laughter. But nobody ever laughed. And it always made me think, is the joke itself not funny? Or am I just butchering the delivery, screwing up the comedic timing? Because, like I already said, that episode was great, I couldn’t have been the only one to have laughed.

Anybody ever remember that movie where Einstein is trying to set up his niece on a date? When I was a little kid, it was always on TV, like one of those random movies that they’d play during the day while most of the world would be either at school or work. I could never make it through more than ten minutes, but I’d always think, who thought about this movie? What a lame idea.

I think I got off topic from my opening paragraph, the stuff about traveling faster than the speed of light. But what about the opposite, is there some sort of a universal slow limit? I guess zero motion would be the slowest, right? But what if we’re both standing still and I push you? Then you go backwards. Huh. Can light travel backwards?

All of these question, only Einstein would have been able to really come up with a decent thought experiment worthy of taking on such heavy topics. I guess we’ll all have to soldier on without him, instead relying on Stephen Hawking, he’s pretty smart, but I think even he would admit to not being as smart as Einstein.

Don’t we have Einstein’s brain preserved? I know that we haven’t really ironed out all of those sticky ethical issues in regard to cloning, but don’t you think that, as a species, it might do us some good to make an exception for Einstein? We could create a whole army of Einsteins, entire labs set up where everybody is Albert Einstein, even the janitors, they’d all be geniuses. Think of all of the scientific advancement, the progress we’d make. And if we raise them in America, we won’t have to worry about that funny German accent. Did he have a German accent in that movie? I can’t remember. But honestly, that movie was terrible.

You call this a circus?

Tightrope walking doesn’t seem that hard. It’s just like a field sobriety test, but on a wire. And, you know, except for that wacko that walked across the Twin Towers in the seventies, there are almost always a few nets underneath to catch you in case you mess up and fall. No, I think tightrope walkers get a lot of unnecessary credit. Theatrics? You call that a performance? Come on, you’re holding a giant balance beam. Again, it’s like nets, balance beams, what else do you want, some sort of gyroscopic stabilizer? You’d have to get up pretty early to sell me any tickets to a tightrope walking show. And then you’d have to duck out of work even earlier, because as soon as I realized what I’d bought, I’d be right back on line looking for a full refund.

And those guys that ride their motorcycles in those enclosed spheres? Please. That’s not a stunt. A stunt would be if the motorcycle was on fire, or if the motorcycles somehow didn’t have any wheels. But three guys on three motorcycles? One, that’s not exciting at all, and two, it’s so loud. Like, I’m watching probably one of the most boring shows on earth, and to top it all off, I’ve got to sit here with my hands covering my ears to show everybody else in attendance just how loud I think it is. Besides, isn’t space-time supposed to be curved anyway? So riding inside a ball should be pretty standard if you ask me.

The clown car? Really? That’s just not safe. How do you train all of those guys to fit in such a tiny vehicle? What if something goes wrong, like what if that car catches on fire before they’re all done with the act? Are you really going to feel good about yourself having watched them all struggle to get out of there, some of them horribly burned, most of them having perished, but not before clawing and elbowing all of their friends in a futile last-minute attempt to escape?

True, the elephants look pretty convincing. But you think about what kind of an elephant lets itself get captured for a circus, I’m thinking it’s got to be the shrimpiest elephants in the herd. No, when I go see a show, I want to see the best. I’m not spending money on easy pickings. It’s like when I buy steak, I don’t want some domesticated cow, no, I want the one the killed the matador with his dying breath.

You call this stuff snacks? I’ve had better popcorn at the movie theater. Way too much salt, not enough butter, you’d think a circus would figure out how to do popcorn, but no, it’s terrible, I want the cotton candy to be fresh, not something out of a plastic bag, and if the vendor guy can’t figure out a way to bring the cotton candy machine along with him, then he might as well switch to candy apples. And come on, is that Pepsi? I hate Pepsi. Who doesn’t sell Coke?

I’m just saying, if you’re going to swallow a whole sword, it kind of defeats the purpose to just pull it back out. Anybody could push a sword down a throat. I mean, I could totally do it. I’m not going to, no, but if I did, I’d make sure to finish it up and wait for it to come out naturally. Yeah, you show me someone who can do that, I’ll call the papers, that’d be a circus. But this clown, and the flame eater guy, one time I was camping and I toasted this marshmallow that caught fire, and I ate it, it was fine, the inside of my mouth was wet and nothing got burnt.

So, no thanks, I don’t want to go to the circus, that sounds really boring. Ask your mother, maybe she’ll take you, but she’s probably tired from watching you run around playing soccer all day. Oh big deal, you scored a goal. You really think it’s that difficult to get a ball past another ten year old? That kid was practically asleep. Who’s coaching you guys? Did any of you even break a sweat?