So THIS is hell...

Many people will tell you that my previous estimation of what hell must be like was an Arizona summer. I must announce now that Arizona is off the hook for yesterday I truly experienced what hell must be like. Don't cry AZ .. your summers are still a very close second.

I like to change up the music I listen to on the way home in the car and on my MP3 player at the gym pretty often. I'm constantly burning new mixes to CD and putting new tunes on my player. Yesterday was no exception. I had gotten a hold of some new Sevendust songs I wanted to listen to at the gym along with Alter Bridge and Mudvayne tunes that are great for the gym. So I bring my MP3 player into work to get the new music on there. Remember me describing my MP3 player in a previous post? It sucks.. its old and very much a pain in the ass. I put new music on it at work because it will often take an hour and several reformats of the flash memory to get it to take new songs again. Yesterday it only crashed the app once and I didn't have to reformat it. It was a good day. Or so I thought.

I loaded up all my new gym worthy music. Loud, driving songs to keep things moving and motivated for the workout. Determined by Mudvayne is probably my favorite workout songs right now. Listen to it and you'll see why its great for the gym. You can find it here, but its not safe for work, children, the elderly or anyone who listens to Rascall Flats.

Anyway, all loaded with new music I was looking forward to listening to at the gym that afternoon, I put the MP3 player on the side of my desk. I go about my business for the rest of the day and when its time to go, I walk right by the damn thing and manage to leave without it. I don't realize this until I am already changed for my workout and am scrounging in my gym back to find it. Not happy. But I was there.. dressed for the gym.. might as well get a workout in. It couldn't be that bad. They always have music on in the gym and there are the TVs to watch even if I can't hear the sound have sound.

Apparently when it was discovered that I had left my MP3 player at work, Satan himself, still bitter over his brutal ass kicking in Guitar Hero 3, worked his magic and tranformed my gym into a Curves in Sun City. Curves for those of you that don't know is a women only gym chain and Sun City is a 55 and older retirment community in Arizona. See the picture forming? I get out to my elliptical as it was a cardio only day for me and I look around. It was all old people. No hotties on the tredmills or ellipticals. At this time, the radio is on commercial, so I had high hopes that it was on the local hard rock station like it normally is. As the commercials end however, I was much dismayed to hear the call sign for the radio station announced. Magic 98. Oh yes, its pretty much as lame as it sounds. Its contemporary easy listening music. Sonuva....

Ok.. ignore the music. Watch the TV with no sound.. get through your workout and get out of there before a hole opens in the wall and demons come pouring out. I start my cardio.. glance up at the 4 TVs and what do I find? Sports Center? CNN? Oh no. Not today. Some crappy WB show like 'Gilmore Girls' or something equally horrible is on the far one that I couldn't really see at my angle. The 3 I can see are showing these shows from left to right. Oprah. Ellen. Oprah. Yes, Oprah was on 2 TVs because apparently one is not enough to contain the excitement that is the Oprah show. There is no sound so a talk show is really kind of pointless when there is no closed captioning and you can't hear it. Oprahs title said the show was something about vegans or some such hippie crap anyway so I guess I'm grateful I couldn't hear that one.

So Oprahs out. That leaves me listening to Magic 98 which is currently pumping a stirring playlist consisting of Celine Dion as a follow up to Lionel Richie and making up my own dialog to the Ellen show. The only redeeming thing about the Ellen show I found is that she has the worst case of White Girl Syndrome I have ever seen, but apparently no one has told her. Don't believe me.. check out this clip:



Honestly.. that example wasn't even as bad as yesterdays episode. Apparently there is a zoo somewhere that has a posh enclosure for their gorillas. This zoo decided the gorillas were deprived and thus needed a big screen TV. So behind a plexiglass window in their enclosure is a big screen TV.. I'm guessing about a 60 incher. First off.. WTF is that. That zoo better not be in my state because if my tax dollars are going to buy big screens for gorillas, I'm going down to the state capitol building after work to bitch slap whoever allowed that to happen. I don't even have a big screen so it irritates me that a monkey has one.

But I digress. The whole point of bringing up the gorilla TV thing was that they apparently show Ellen on this TV. As if its not bad enough the gorilla is stuck in a cage with people staring at him all day, they have to test his breaking point by playing Ellen on the TV too. So here is this big gorilla sitting, apparently with a copy of Ellens book (at least thats what I assume it was) watching the Ellen show. Well whenver she launched into one of her spastic dance routines on the TV, the gorilla got agitated. Whenever she was sitting there talking to her guests, he would tear out and eat pages of the book.

They showed that clip of the gorilla on yesterdays show. Now Ellen, apparently fascinated by the gorilla, is now testing to see if she can get him to go into a true fit of rage and possibly maul the next zookeeper that comes into his area. She gets down out of her chair.. carrying a copy of the book and starts tearing pages out of and eating them while lumbering around and doing her best to imitate an agitated gorilla. Suprisingly, this is really not much different from her normal dance routines other than she is eating pages from a book at the same time. She is crouched and swaying like a drunken frog. I can't hear the sound, but I can only assume she was grunting and making her best gorilla noises around the wad of tasty paper in her mouth.

At this point, I have actually forgotten about the music playing as I watch in stunned silence like a deer caught in headlights. I don't want to watch .. but I can't look away. This whole monkey dance routine continues for about 2 minutes. My only hope is that at the posh zoos everywhere there are gorillas in revolt and flinging their big piles of gorilla shit all over the plexiglass to try and cover the crime on humanity that is the Ellen show.

The routine ends .. and Ellen brings out some oversize T-shirt that someone made up that has a life-size picture of her head on the front and on the back says something like "I'm Ape for Ellen" She shows the audience both sides and puts it on her little table. Her guest comes out now and I have no idea who it was, but she was actually pretty hot. Of course Cathy Bates might look hot next to that cave dwelling troll Ellen. This woman is also dressed perfectly.. providing you want to stand very still and not breathe. Seriously, if she sneezed the skirt she had on would have been a belt. Since I can't hear the sound of the show, at least I can enjoy the view right? Nay nay friends. Apparently when she tried to sit in this thing, Ellen was embarrased or the network was. The guest stood back up and they all pondered the dilemma. Ok fine, I have no idea what they were discussing, so I get to make up my own version of the story. Back off.

What solution could they come up with for this problem? The t-shirt! As the guest trys to lower herslef back into the chair without giving the camera a Britney like crotch shot, Ellen dives into action, grabs the t-shirt and promplty covers her entire lower region with this shirt. Now I can clearly read "Ape for Ellen" on the t-shirt. Remember what was on the other side? Yes, that means Ellen's face was in this womans crotch now. Apparently this little slip was noticed by someone on the show because it was promptly flipped over. I am pretty sure I saw Ellen wink at the guest and make that little thumb / pinky phone symbol for "call me" when the camera was panning away. So was the face down thing a subtle pickup line from Ellen or a true accident? You decide.

Now my irritation has set back in. Ellen is no longer performing like a monkey for my amusement and she has covered up the hot chick with a crappy t-shirt with her own face on it. Now there is not just one hideous rampaging flesh ripper staring at the camera but two! Lucky us America. Its time to Celllllabraaate Goood Times.. Cmon. Yes, that was the song playing on the cutting edge sation that is Magic 98. /sigh

I cut my cardio short at 25 minutes because frankly I was concerned for my safety. After I had experienced in the gym that day, I felt it was prudent for me to get out of there before that whole in the wall did indeed open and hells minions came pouring out to destroy us all. Of course it might have been a welcome relief at that point. If the gym yesterday wasn't actually hell itself, we must have been right next door.

At least this experience has a life lesson. Never go to the gym without your MP3 player. I think there is also a warning in there. Know your dancing limitations. Ellen should really at least drink heavily on the show so that she would have an excuse for flopping about the stage like a big fish taken out of water and tossed down to die. If she were drunk we would all strain to remember times when we too were drunk and trying to dance. Then we would all smile and yell 'You go girl!' in encouragement as she incited nationwide gorilla riots. Actually nevermind. If I ever utter the phrase 'You go girl", run away.. as fast as you can because my mind is being controlled by some evil valley girl whose true intentions must be to destroy the world.