I really have to start writing things down as I think of them. Because I’m pretty sure I had two really quality ideas for posts over the past 24 hours, but I can’t remember any of them. So obviously in this case I’m going to talk about silly crap I may have noticed while walking around, because of course all of that lameness is permanently burned into my brain and needs to be shared.

I went to the gym again yesterday; I’m really starting to enjoy doing so, or at least, I enjoy the thought of having gone, once the deed is done. I certainly don’t enjoy driving out of my way to get there, having to park 1/4 mile away, and walking over. I most DEFINITELY don’t enjoy the actual lifting of heavy objects, because it hurts. A lot. And I don’t enjoy the part where about 24 hours later, I lose the ability to move around. The euphoria of going home and crashing on the couch after a hard workout, however, > *. Not that I’m really seeing any major results. I certainly can move a lot of weight on the ab-abber machine, but there’s still a good 3/4″ of fat over the muscles, so any rippitude developed there remains unseen. Also, my biceps muscles look good for about an hour after the workout, but by the evening they’ve returned to their usual flabby selves.

My ass, as usual, looks outstanding.

I even have a whole workout process, and I document what I do thoroughly. I have a specific order of exercises that maximizes the amount of rest I give a group of muscles before they are exercised again. For example: I don’t do the bench press right after the shoulder press, since both require the triceps muscles. I write down the reps I do per set, and the amount of weight with which I exercise, and all that excellent stuff.

Unfortunately, since I have a specific order to my exercises, I am subject to the exercising whims of the other people in the gym. I work in the faculty/staff gym of the Carpenter Sports Building at UD (I am technically neither faculty nor staff, but my wife is the latter, and nobody’s kicked me out yet because I’m relatively well-behaved, compared to the students), so most of the other exercisers are older, averaging I’d say about 50 years of age, but going as high as 65 or 70, I’d say. The apparent style of workout for these folks (and, to be honest, anybody in any gym) is to sit on one machine and do set after set with lengthy rest periods in between. This of course means that that crazy old man is going to be sitting on the bench press machine, frantically lifting weights approaching 17 pounds as fast as humanly possible for about 30 seconds, followed by a good 7 minutes of rest while his stroke symptoms subside. Repeat. 7 times.

I, meanwhile, have to rearrange my weight-lifting regimen, and usually find myself well into my second set of exercises on all the other machines while I wait for some old fart to finish using the seated row, or the lat pull, or the abdominal machines. (I’m always amused to see some 57 year old guy, about 60 pounds overweight, working his abs at level 0 like he fully expects to step off the thing looking like Eric Nies. GIVE IT UP OLD MAN. GO GET ON A TREADMILL.)

(Those of you who are 57 years of age or more and are insulted that I called you old: stop aging.)

Here are a few of the people I see at the gym at various times when I go:

• The slender, moustachio’d gentleman of about 55 or 60 who is clearly in FAAAR better shape than I am or ever will be. Every time I go to the gym, he is there. He lifts weights for tone and strength, I believe, ’cause I can lift more than he can, but mofo appears to be able to run a mile in about 6.5 minutes, which is roughly twice my current top speed.
• The two little secretaries, both around 60 or so, who come in, sit at a machine EXACTLY as I’m beginning to walk towards it, talk and giggle for a while, do exactly three repetitions of a bench press or bicep curl with almost no weight on the machine, and then leave, their workout complete. Note that I’m not saying they do three repititions on each machine: they do 3 repititions on one machine, selected semi-randomly, and then they leave. And the machine they use is always the machine I need at that particular moment.
• Any number of random middle-aged professors, desperately trying to hold back the grim reaper by damaging their shoulders by sitting at the bench press machine, doing set after set with the worst exercise form I’ve ever seen. I’m no expert, but I think if you’re doing a bench press by shrugging your shoulders up to your ears, holding your breath and letting your eyes roll back into your skull, you’re just asking for serious trauma.
• A bunch of younger UD employees in various shapes and sizes. Some of them are very fit, and some of them are not so much. I’m about average by the standards of others in my age group, which makes me feel nice. Of course, if I go down to the student gym (on weekends the employee gym is closed), I’m a fat slob with horrible hair. Still, a little ego-boosting never hurt. It’s why I watch TV.
• The piece de resistance, a funny little man I like to call Luigi. He’s like a pocket Albert Einstein; same hair, same moustachio, same European looks. This guy, however, is much more entertaining. He always wears green sretch pants, which are tucked into his socks, which are worn under a pair of running shoes that he may have purchased in 1967. He has some kind of purple stretchy device with a small ball, about golf-ball-sized, sown into it, and carries it around like some kind of security blanket. Equally entertainingly, he sits down at a machine, takes a deep breath, and does about 300 repetitions at very low weight, moving the weights only about 2 inches (doing a full range of motion on a given machine moves the weight bars about a foot). It’s not as entertaining to read about as it is to see, trust me. Every time I see him I smile.

I think I go more for the entertainment than the exercise. Which I’m sure you would deduce were you to see me at the moment, gut blubbering over my belt like jello.

April Fools! Oh, MAN, did I get you guys good!

No?

Shut up.

I think I’m beginning to understand why it is that most American musical theatre written after about 1960 completely turns me off. Pop music in the 1950s ruined it for everybody.

Let me backtrack a bit. Last summer, when I did Brigadoon, I remembered how much I enjoyed performing in musicals. I hadn’t done it in many years, mainly because (as I revealed to everyone) the last one I had done was Grease, which is, in case you weren’t aware of it, the worst piece of dreck ever to hit a Broadway mainstage. I hate it. Hate it, hate it, hate it. I hate the original production, I hate the movie, I hate the soundtrack, there’s honestly not one thing about it I can stand. Most of all, I hate the fact that the rest of the world seems to adore it, such that every year or so some local theater performs it, and invariably a friend of mine is cast in it, so I have to go see it again. And I sit there, and stare at the stage (which is invariably pink walls in every scene, with black checkerboard floors, as if every business and home in the continental United States closed down and became a friggin’ sock hop on the weekend), and hate.

There are two basic reasons why my anger on this subject is so strong:

• The “plot”. Here’s a basic outline, leaving out some of the more pointless stuff (of which there’s a lot): New girl moves to town, sees the boy she met over the summer. He turns out to be a jerk when he’s around his friends and spurns her. His friend buys a car. She makes friends with the local bad girls, who invite her over. One of them reveals she’s quitting school to go to beauty school.

  The friend with the car starts nailing the baddest of the girls. The girl in beauty school discovers she has as much beauty-creating skill as a gerbil. Jesus comes down from heaven and sings a song to her about going back to high school. She crucifies him.

  Wait a second, I’m getting off track here.

  The bad girl tells the guy with the car that she might be pregnant, and it’s probably not his. He is sad. The main boy and the main girl are still having issues ’cause she won’t give up the punani and he’s dirty.

  All this turmoil builds until the final scene, in which:

  • The main girl turns into a slut, and presumably gives up her virginity to the main guy.
  • The baddest girl turns out to not be pregnant.
  • The beauty school dropout starts a cult in Oklahoma and is killed when she sets off a nuclear device near Tulsa.

  It just makes me insane that they spend over 2 hours building up all this pressure on the characters, and then BOOM everything’s fixed and they sing. Hate. It.

• The “music”. Why do we revere the music of the 50s? So much of it is painfully bad. My ears start to drip blood when I hear a lot of it. In the 40s we had swing music, much of which was brilliant and jazzy and fun, and inspired dance moves that required the athleticism of a starting point guard for the Pistons; in the 60s we had Motown and Rock and Roll and the Beatles and Joni Mitchell and lyrics from Bob Dylan that won’t be topped in 500 years unless John Mayer gets particularly insightful. In between, we had horn-rimmed white dorks from Minnesota playing songs with 3 chords, screeching horrific falsetto death rattles, and crashing airplanes left and right. Worse, some idiot wrote an entire musical just to relive that decade. And if I meet that man, I will stab him in the neck.

I think most of what I don’t like about musicals today is a direct result of Grease’s immense popularity. The shoddy music ripped off from top 40 radio, the lame plot ideas, the bad writing; everything’s gotten sloppy because playwrights and composers realized that all you have to do is throw some hack dialogue together with a big dance number with some poor idiot screaming notes that make her vocal chords spray blood into the first three rows, and the audience will eat it up.

Another problem is that the quality of the singing seems to have gone WAY down. Right now I’m listening to the original “Off-Off-Broadway” cast recording of “Godspell,” and I’m not enjoying it terribly, although it’s not the fault of the composer, whoever he or she might be. The recording I have features singers that are simply God-awful. Seriously, it’s like they hired homeless people to record this album. And it doesn’t make sense because I personally know a half-dozen or more singers with incredibly strong voices.

Here’s the thing. When you’re hiring performers, you want to get the best actors and singers and dancers that money can buy. Unfortunately, I think that casting directors tend to focus on acting, to the detriment of singing. And this is not a smart idea, because while I can tell the difference between a grade-A actor and a grade-B actor, once I get into the story I won’t notice. (Example: “Napoleon Dynamite” did not feature actors of the caliber of Steve Buscemi and Al Pacino, but it didn’t detract from the overall hilariousness of the film.) I can tell the difference between a grade-A singer and a grade-B singer before they finish their first measure, and I think most people can as well. The people on this recording of Godspell are approximately Grade-D singers. And I have no idea if they’re quality actors, because you never see or hear that part. I wouldn’t have even issued an “original cast” recording, I’d’ve just hired professionals to lay down the tracks.

Still, there’s hope for Broadway, I think. Back in February HearnWife and I and some family folks went to see “Wicked,” which I believe I described at the time as “OH MY GOD THAT WAS SO AWESOME I THINK I JUST POOP’D MY PANTS,” which still holds true. The score is a delicious mix of classical and popular styles (the pit orchestra was a true ORCHESTRA, and yet it still had guitars and drums and all the fun stuff that audiences today dig), the melodies were fantabulous, the lyrics and book just right, the acting was righteous, and best of all they found two leading ladies with some SERIOUS pipes. Elphaba in particular could absotively WAIL. I haven’t bought the soundtrack yet, but it’s on my list.

So clearly it’s possible to find writers who can really come up with quality shows, and the performers exist to make them memorable. Let’s keep it up, Broadway, and prevent the musical theatre scene from becoming like Hollywood: the occasional gem lost in a sea of horrific pap.

Here come the Bill Simmons-style ramblings, at you like a HURRAKANE.

Don’t be scurred.

• I was in the shower this morning, carefully cleansing my taint, and singing “Moon River” very loudly in my best Andy Williams croon, when it occurred to me: has there ever been a bad song with “river” in the title? “Moon River,” “Deep River,” “Ol’ Man River,” “River” (by Joni Mitchell), “Across The River” (Bruce Hornsby), the list goes on and on (like most of my sentences) and sadly comes to a crashing halt at “River of Dreams” by Billy Joel. I hate that song.
• While on the subject, is it wrong of me to dislike almost all of Billy Joel’s songs? Some of them were okay when I was in high school (“Piano Man,” “Uptown Girl,” a few others) but have grown REALLY tiresome ever since. (I think the best thing he could do for me now is come visit Delaware and “accidentally” run over a few folks I dislike with his car.) What about Springsteen? Am I basically a communist because I think everything but “Born to Run” and “I’m On Fire” is pretty much a snore? I need this questions answered, dammit, I’m starting to question my manhood over here.
• Do you ever wonder what must have been going through the head of the inventor of the urinal cake? I mean, first of all, what kind of crazy piss does this guy, or his friends and coworkers, have? Did he work at an asparagus farm or something? I just can’t fathom what would make somebody say to himself, “Holy crap [no pun intended], this urinal smells gosh-AWFUL! I wonder what could be done to remedy the situation. I know! I’ll make a minty tablet of material to put in there! And companies in New Jersey will vie for the licensing for it and the nifty plastic pee target that will contain it! I’ll make millions!”

  And he undoubtedly did.

• Today is Kyle’s birthday. Yes, the Kyle from Kyle’s New Girlfriend. In honor of these, and at the request of Milo, I have penned an ode:

  Ode to Kyle

  With shorten’d hair
  And flatten’d ass of furious fire
  He waits.

  and plots.

  and prays that when he gets his Tommy Hilfiger tattoo
                     (on his wang)
  the pain will not be too extravagant
  and he will be able to pee.
  and no one will take a picture of him (wi’ cam’ra fone) crying in agony.
  like B-beef did on the toilet that time that Kyle nearly lost an O-ring.
  tommy->T O M M Y

• The weather’s getting warm. This pleases me. I’m about tired of my entire package shrinking deeply into my body, even when I wear my cold-weather pants, because it’s hours before I can pee properly. (When shrinkage occurs, it’s hard to shake out the remnants, and so you think you’re done, and you put the tackle away, and it turns out you weren’t done and you suddenly have a few ounces of stinky asparagus pee running down your leg. This is why I wear thick, absorbent pants.)

  Of course, with this warm weather has come clouds and rain, which I guess is good in that it gives me just cause to stab anyone who complains about the possibility of drought.

  “You shouldn’t wash your car, Mr. Hearn, the water table is awfully low!”

  “Are you fricking kidding me? After we got something like 42 inches of precipitation last winter? Did it all evaporate? Shut up before I buff the skin off your face.”

  So that’ll be fun.

• In case anyone’s wondering how my NCAA Tournament bracket is doing: don’t ask. I’m pretty sure I’ve set a record by being completely eliminated from contention by 4pm on the first day. After winning it all last year, this strikes me as patently crazy. My statistical analysis has done me little good.
• Happy Easter, all a y’all. I’ll have much to report on Monday, as we’re going out for Sarah’s birthday on Sunday, and I expect nudity to occur.

Last night I went with my parents and our friend Tolly to New York to see the Bach B-minor Mass at St. Bartholemew’s. We had a riotous time, starting with a lengthy meal at a restaurant in the Waldorf-Astoria hotel (we’re some posh mofos, we are) named Oscar’s.

Our waitress there was named Imolina, and had been working there for 37 years, after arriving from Puerto Rico at age 16. She was totally righteous, taking all of our bizarre requests in stride. The food was particularly good, although like most gourmet establishments, the portions were annoyingly small, and the prices were exorbitant. I think the meal for four came to $160, not including tip, and we didn’t even have that much to drink (although I did have a Tiramisu Martini, which is as good as it sounds, and a reasonably value even at $9).

After scooting out of there, we headed to the church (which was handily adjacent) and sat down to enjoy the show. The performance was good; I won’t bore you with the details. More noteworthy was the behavior of the individuals around us.

I’m sure you’ve noticed that some of the elderly population can be difficult to take, particularly in a public setting of some kind; I’m here (among other reasons) to inform you that the old folks of Manhattan are beyond comparison to whatever geriatrics you may have lying around in your home town. To be fair, some of these folks weren’t technically OLD, but were of what might be termed “advanced middle age,” but they were annoying none the less.

In front of me, slightly to the left, I had the “informative” gentleman who was intensely interested in every possible conversation near him. If you entered a discussion in which he felt he had some kind of useful anecdote or opinion, he felt obliged to share it with you, in a low mumbly voice that was all but incomprehensible. During the performance, he was kind enough to stop mumbling (mostly), but he kept glancing around with a strange look in his eyes that I can only describe as “I wonder how many savagely gored bodies I could store in the nave.” Not crazed; just gauging.

To our right, we had a strange middle-aged fellow who, I assume, knew the people behind us, because he kept trying to get them to pass down some things he had left in a pew. It turned out the items were in OUR pew, and we had sat next to them while he wandered off somewhere, and he didn’t want to squeeze by us, he just wanted to sit on the end of the row. Rather than asking US to pass the things down, though, he kept asking the people behind us, who didn’t have the foggiest idea what he was talking about, and so he became more and more vehement about his items, until finally WE realized what was going on and passed them down to him. He then spent the entirety of the performance leafing loudly through a copy of the score he had brought along.

The couple behind us was extremely decrepit, and probably not long for this world. They also seemed prone to periodic outbursts of sneezes, snorts, hacks, coughs, and soft, sad moans. We’re hoping they just had pneumonia, as opposed to tuberculosis, because I don’t particularly feel the need to move to Arizona for the dry air and then spend 25 years wandering aimlessly from silver-mine town to cowtown, gambling for my living and shooting cardsharps with a pearl-handled sixgun.

The real big winner, however, was the gentleman in the row in front, slightly to the right, who arrived a few minutes before the performance was scheduled to begin, dropped a massive rucksack on the pew next to him (I swore he was going to set up camp and start cooking s’mores over a fire), and began asking loudly of everyone near him if they’d come to the lecture the previous evening. Apparently Peter Schickele (“biographer” of P.D.Q. Bach) had given a lecture on Monday that he’d been unable to make, so he wanted the full details of what it was all about. Most annoyingly, he sounded like a cross between Carson Kressley and Barbara Streisand. He was about 100 pounds overweight and apparently thought it was appropriate to come to musical performances in churches in a sweaty tshirt and ripped jeans.

After finally finding someone who had apparently almost made the lecture (the body-hiding old fellow in front of us), they discussed this at length, and at volume, until the performance began. Mr. Streisley then managed to remain relatively unobtrusive until the second half, when at the end of the creed he apparently had an orgasm and almost broke the pew. Then apparently he needed to go clean himself up, for during the Sanctus he got up and wandered off somewhere, we assumed to the bathroom, and then returned during the Benedictus and sat down, HARD, on the pew.

I guess he doesn’t have a lot of interest in the last few movements of the mass, because in stark contrast to his pseudosexual response to “Et Vitam,” he started getting out all his subway maps and shuffling them around, planning his route back to Castro or Queens or wherever the hell he dragged himself.

It’s entirely possible that he simply went down into a subway station and assembled a pup tent, but we didn’t follow him to find out. We skeedaddled back to the car, and then forged our way down to the Lincoln Tunnel (the amount of people and cars on the streets in New York at 10pm is baffling to me) and made it back to Wilmington by around 12:45. I, of course, didn’t make it to bed until 1:30, since I had to purchase gas (and nearly got shot in the process, I think) and put a large washing machine outside by the curb. Still, the day was a resounding success, if only because I think I might have managed to get a picture of the hair of a woman three rows in front of us; it appeared that she had painstakingly ironed it straight, and then styled the crown of her head with a dremel tool. It was amazing. I dreamt about it all night.