Shut down the labs, stop all research, drink a toast from the test tubes and beakers--we're there. With the couch potato pill, the Dream has peaked. The free-lunch fantasies of the something-for-nothing society have all come true, and from now on everyone tones up without moving a muscle.
From this new height of American know-how, we look back with pity at the sad efforts of the Olympic athletes who were stripped of medals yesterday for using primitive performance-enhancing drugs. From now on, why bother? When everybody is in great condition effortlessly, all that competitive running and jumping, huffing and puffing will soon be passé.
To stay in shape as a young man, I walked around the world, getting to and from work. Trust me on the math: Forty brisk blocks twice a day came to almost a thousand miles a year for 30 years. What a waste!
Now we can board up the gyms, toss out the treadmills, junk the Stairmasters and settle back in our recliners. To get where we want to go, we can stop running and biking and drive there in style. Unless, of course, we run out of gas.
Showing posts with label fitness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fitness. Show all posts
Saturday, August 02, 2008
Sunday, June 10, 2007
Presidential Poles
Joe Scarborough, a clean-cut former Republican Congressman turned broadcaster, took a lot of flak last week for an allegedly salacious remark about the wife of Presidential Candidate-to-Be, Fred Thompson “working the pole.”
How soon they forget. In the late 1990s, Scarborough signed Newt Gingrich’s Contract with America, earned a 95 percent lifetime rating from the American Conservative Union and led the charge to impeach Bill Clinton for being too preoccupied with matters sexual.
When a straight arrow like Scarborough explains that he was thinking of exercise, not strippers, why would anyone doubt him? The man was talking about a cultural trend.
Scoffers should take a look at the latest manifestation of aerobic pole-working featured in a new luxury hotel in San Diego, “America’s Finest City.” The Ivy Hotel’s $3,000-a-night suite has king-size bunk beds, a group shower and, yes, a fireman's pole.
This is no sleazy retreat for Democratic peasants--it is being marketed to solidly respectable, fitness-conscious Republican convention-goers.
“The Ivy, which opened last month,” says the Los Angeles Times, “markets itself as class...decorated with floor-to-ceiling photos of legs clad in fishnet stockings and women in lingerie. Instead of curtains, red chain mail hangs from the ceiling. Couches are upholstered in red patent leather with black fringe. And in the restaurant...there is seating for six at a chef's bed.”
Relax, America. Six years of a teetotaling President have made us all uptight.
How soon they forget. In the late 1990s, Scarborough signed Newt Gingrich’s Contract with America, earned a 95 percent lifetime rating from the American Conservative Union and led the charge to impeach Bill Clinton for being too preoccupied with matters sexual.
When a straight arrow like Scarborough explains that he was thinking of exercise, not strippers, why would anyone doubt him? The man was talking about a cultural trend.
Scoffers should take a look at the latest manifestation of aerobic pole-working featured in a new luxury hotel in San Diego, “America’s Finest City.” The Ivy Hotel’s $3,000-a-night suite has king-size bunk beds, a group shower and, yes, a fireman's pole.
This is no sleazy retreat for Democratic peasants--it is being marketed to solidly respectable, fitness-conscious Republican convention-goers.
“The Ivy, which opened last month,” says the Los Angeles Times, “markets itself as class...decorated with floor-to-ceiling photos of legs clad in fishnet stockings and women in lingerie. Instead of curtains, red chain mail hangs from the ceiling. Couches are upholstered in red patent leather with black fringe. And in the restaurant...there is seating for six at a chef's bed.”
Relax, America. Six years of a teetotaling President have made us all uptight.
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