As someone who only lifts diamond chandeliers on filaments of platinum while wearing gym shorts made out of hand-tamped gold leaf with ruby and emerald trim (no shirt, of course) and quenching my POWER thirst with baby-protein infused angel-tear smoothies, this article about homemade gyms in Haiti was shocking to me:
Technique is one thing [...]

Boots: I was at the gym the other day, and I could only do five pull-ups!
Worker #3116: So? That’s good.
Boots: Really? I thought you were going to make fun of me for being weak.
Worker #3116: No, that’s totally good.
Boots: OK, well, I didn’t actually do five pull-ups, I just did bent-arm hang for five seconds.
Worker [...]

There is a girl at my gym who has been declared “the hot girl,” because Ti-1000, Hamtram, Lenny Travitz, and I have all brought her up separately at some point in a fashion much like this:
“There was this girl at the gym today doing these stretches–”
“–Oh, the hot girl?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“Fuuuuuuuuck. Does she have to [...]

Last night, at the gym (NATCH), I was doing this ab machine when a personal trainer came over. “Hey man,” he said, “do you want to do something much more effective for your abdominals?”
Uh, yeah!
So he sort of does this “come into the back room” hand motion and takes me over to the personal [...]

I got all excited to open my new six-pack of socks this weekend, only to discover that I’d bought those little ankle socks? Who buys those? Teenage girls and dudes with sore butts. That’s the thing about New York, though. If I had bought these socks back in [redacted], it would have been out of [...]

[Two guys talk to each other in the locker room at my gym. Shortly after the exchange they both head to the showers where they can continue the conversation, as well as bathe.]
Guy 1: So she’s helping me and I’m just like, Okay, if I’m going to buy something, today’s the day. Right?
Guy 2: [...]

When you have a theme, you stick with that theme even if it’s so fucking annoying: My Gym Nemesis.
I know that most of you don’t have a Gym Nemesis, because you are a fatty, but if you have one, you know that these guys are the worst. I used to be just like you, gross [...]

Speaking of the gym: this online diary is now over three years old, and for the bulk of those three years I worked tirelessly to scrub it of any identifying information. To some extent, it was more fun that way, but more importantly it was practical. I didn’t want people at my work and people [...]

When I’m not at the gym watching Bravo or VH1 on the elliptical trainer, I’m at the gym watching The CW on the elliptical trainer. Last night I happened upon an episode of Smallville, which is not a show that I have ever watched in my life. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever watched [...]

I can’t decide who my favorite guy was yesterday:
the one on the subway in the homemade “World’s Awesomest Dad” t-shirt and dirty track pants, with a dirty yellow backpack, 1996 shoes, a broken arm in a sling, and the prison face,
OR
the European vampire who was wearing a brown pin-stripe suit and had [...]