Feel the Burn…But Turn the Channel!

There used to be a time when gym rats would judge you merely by the size of your ass—or by the size of your free weights or by even the magazine that you read on the stationary bike. But ever since my gym installed TVs on its elliptical machines, there's a whole new criteria for passing judgment on your machismo: what programs you watch.

Now, you have to understand that I spend most of my time sitting in chairs in dark rooms, stuffing high-calorie foods down my gullet. I don't exactly look like Albert Pujols, you know? So I try to use stupid humor at the gym to overcompensate for my lack of pecs and washboard abs. I have a wide assortment of T-shirts with sayings on them, such as "I Like Glue!" or "Got Clemens?"

But yesterday, as I was working on destroying some of those calories tucked into body parts I didn't have two years ago, I noticed that the woman next to me on the elliptical was watching a bloody episode of CSI on Spike TV. I was watching Emeril Lagasse make a grilled banana split on the Food Network. I felt the need to turn the channel to ESPN.