A belated holiday post.

Last year around Xmas, I went to a good friend’s holiday gathering as I do every year.  There was a holiday graffiti artist that was out in full force using snow and unsuspecting windshields as his canvas.

This year, I was pleased to see the return of the snow artist.  For those who worried his work would become stagnant and rely heavily on repetitive fecal references, luckily he’s branched out to images of dicks and balls.

What’s made this art even better for me was Photobucket’s suggestion of all the things I could put this artwork onto:

I joined a new gym.

Having felt a little meat and potato-y since a hairdresser decided to frame my face with a cut rivaling Ramona Quimby’s, I joined the gym downstairs in my company’s building. I decided that I wanted to forgo the feeling of relief that you gain when a new better paying job provides a financial breath of freash air.  I believe that my natural state is one of flailing. This gym causes weight loss by removing the extra pounds from the wallet.  You no longer spend money on food because you have convinced yourself that the convenience of an expensive gym downstairs justifies the price and outweighs rational thought.

I’m used to going to a gym with Norms.  The Norms wear old T-shirts and Umbros, they sport a pooch of a belly that never quite leaves because they have to leave the gym to feed their dogs at home.  They grunt, they sweat, they understand that they’ll never be models, their frame is what it is, god bless us, everyone.  I’m used to this.

This new gym is for Superheroes.  Superheroes who work in sales and power up with Miller Lite.  Superheroes that have tight butts in tight butt pants and shoot from work to the gym in pneumatic tubes.  They spend three hours in classes that have puns in their titles. “Fant-ASS-tic Workout!” “Be More BUTT-iful!”  ”ASS! ASS! ASS! ASS!! ASS!!!”  After the classes, they emerge glowing (not sweating), maybe even twinkling like Twighlight Vampires, and hover towards the dressing room.  There, they proceed to pose and flex without shirts.  In the women’s locker room, a staff photographer captures their perfect frames as they do 20 push-ups with their perky breasts before continuing to vogue topless.  They drop their towels and mousse up their already magazine-tousled locks as the photographer captures their god-like figures, shamelessly displaying a half-boner beneath his jeans.  Now, I know I live under a rock, but I was quite surprised at how many naked people there are in the locker room.

Of course there are a few other Norms at the gym that can be seen doing leg lifts under a heavy blanket in a dark corner, or are straining to keep up with the über-race in the “Save America from Burning Buildings with Your ASS” class.  They’re there.  We’re there.  And you may even see us buying some tight workout pants some day because they’re like, totes supes cute.  In fact, we gain confidence walking amongst the Superheroes. We know that we are protected and we are not really threatened by this race of  Übers.  They go about their business, and we go about ours.  Them with their lightening tree legs, us with our excess packaging.  It’s focused and calm in the gym since there is no sexual tension or possibility of mating betwixt the two species.  You don’t see humans lusting after cheetahs.  The Norms and the Superheroes are two different breeds. In the bedroom they would cancel each other out and there would be some sort of, I don’t know, sparky explosion as their piston-like genitals attempted to climax in a vat of sex dough. Capes would get caught in ceiling fans and Norms would have heart-attacks, breathlessly attempting to rescue the spinning lover just out of reach above them.

So in the gym, we feel safe, at ease even.  The Superheroes are there as eye-candy, as inspiration, and as protection in case there is ever an Evil Villain lurking, waiting… plotting… Ready to attack at a moment’s notice–

“WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT?!”  scream the Norms, struggling to sit up with their medicine balls.

The Superheroes’ ears perk to the sound of the gym walls crashing, the building’s innards shoveled forward.  The smell of cedar overtakes the room as the sauna crumbles and is pushed into the main machine room.  A steely tank-like machine now sits breathing smoke and steam in the middle of the workout room blasting Ted Nugent ominously from a tinny boombox strapped to the roof. The Norms stare in horror as they see a now half-toweled Norm, startled at this repositioning, scramble to safety away from this geared creature.

The metal beast begins to move forward, and The Norms now look to the Superheroes gazing calmly at this impending danger.  Just then, the top of the tank opens and a leathery Norm dressed in an ill-fitting track suit emerges from the tank.  He delivers his manifesto.  A lot of evil plan blah-blah-blahs similar to the ones at the end of movies, grandiose statements and gesticulations, those snap-poppers you throw on the ground during the 4th of July… But still, it’s not something The Norms see every day, so it’s pretty scary.  Then, a giant laser death gun rises out of the tank and sheer panic erupts in the gym.  The leathery Norm unleashes his fury and workout equipment explodes with a push of a button.  Yoga mats rocket across the room, slicing and mauling any slow-moving victim in its path.  The Norms desperately cry to the Superheroes for help. Surely this is the time when Good and Super-Good unite against Evil!  The Norms begin to psych themselves out for this great battle.  They have taken enough step-aerobic classes to help throw at least one punch at the side of their muscled comrades!  They look around to sound the battle cry, but the Superheroes are no longer found.  Realizing they are now alone, the slack-jawed Norms are left to be es’ploded by lasers.

If you were to check the surveillance video you would see a flash of spandexed individuals bolt out of the gym as the Evil Norm struggled to deliver his lengthy evil plans in iambic pentameter.  In perfect form, they speed off in their Audis and laugh about it later on leather couches over a Miller Lite and an episode of “America’s Got Talent.”  Tomorrow’s just another day at the ‘ol office.

To my darling wife, Maria,

I know they say that age is a relative thing, like, our relatives are aged and grow old and die, and that’s exactly what crossed my mind earlier this evening.

This, your 30th birthday, is something to celebrate.  And not just at TGI Fridays.

I don’t want you to expect gifts or songs or cheer, because think if I did not give you those things. What if I instead gave you one word:  “Life.”  Now, some would throw a fit and lock themselves in their room and eat the last of the Raisin Bran claiming it was the only thing she was going to have for her birthday dinner.  And that someone would be guilty of two things:  Not finding the $10 Borders gift card under her pillow, and not understanding that I just gave her the best gift ever.  Technically the gift of life can only be given to a child from a parent.  And technically that may have some truth behind it, but I am the one who will remind you of your alived-ness.

So this, on your birthday, seize it like you seize those sour cream potato chips.  Stop saying the word “old” to describe yourself.  You’re not old.  You’re just “alive.”  You’re at the age where people stop themselves when you tell them how alive you are.  When you say, “I’m turning 30,” people say, “You don’t look that–you don’t look like you’ve…reached that milestone.”

You’re at the age where previously mothers would hang themselves with their newly born baby’s umbilical cord once she realized the gestation period and birth alone nearly killed her and she had two more years before a dog with teeth ate her in a cave.  You have not been eaten by a dog with teeth!  That’s really living!

Thirty is the new twenty!  Plus, you apparently don’t look thirty, I mean, a haggard thirty.  And how are we supposed to act when we’re of age, really? I wouldn’t know since I’m not thirty, but these are all phrases that popped into my head while I was looking at birthday cards.  Being thirty means that you don’t have to finish that bottle of wine.  Now, there’s wine in a box now that’s perfectly acceptable for you to purchase, AND that has at least 2-4 bottles in it!  Who’s going to gossip about you if you drink 2-4 wine in a box bottles?  It’s not like you go out with friends or anything because they all have babies, probably.

What to do when you’re another year alive-r? Are you supposed to sit and check your messages on your phone as the young people joyously play Catch Phrase?  Are you proud of your ability to spend more money on alcohol because of your discerning taste?  You should boast of your many credit cards.  Young people have to spend two dollars on swill to have a good time.  Young people, or should I say, dead people.

(Okay, I know they’re not really dead, but they’re more dead than you in this metaphor, even though you’re like, way closer to actual death.  So maybe they’re more like comatose vegetable people.  Or the walking dead.  Vegetable people might be less creepy.)

So you’re thirty and looking at these zombie vegetable people and still feeling sorry for yourself because you didn’t get a cake or phone call or other meaningless expressions of good will?  That shit doesn’t matter.  ALIVE is what matters.  You know you’re alive and you know who you are.  You have to go to bed at night because you have responsibilities.  Young people don’t have that.  They are doing things like lolly-gagging that require frivolous double letters.  Your responsibilities are mono syllabic:  Work.  Home.  Drink.  Sleep.  You know what’s important.  You are not lost in the complications of whose bed you’re going to end up in, or what adventure you will find yourself in next.  Your path is mapped.

I hope you read this birthday card.  I’m sure you remember, but last year’s was nearly unintelligible after your tears smeared the ink so much, so hopefully this birthday’s message will last for years to come, unless you die within the year.

So happy birthday, my love.  I know you like marble cake, but they didn’t have any,  so I just got us toilet paper, which we needed anyway and you said you were going to buy but apparently didn’t get around to it.

Yours, as always,
Charles