A Sweaty Smile

This morning, I dragged my ass out of bed ridiculously early, as I sometimes do, so I could go work out. I started off on the bike. I hate the bike. In fact, I hate it so much that I'm sure it holds the key to my permanent physical fitness. It is the Darth Vader to my Luke, and I have a sinking feeling that the exercise bike is my Daddy. Anyway. I was busy actively hating the bike and hoping that the hate would get my heart rate higher so I wouldn't have to pedal more.

I was on there for awhile. Longer than I should have been. It became clear to me that the hate was not raising my heart rate. It was just making me cranky. Just as I was trying to decide which machine to switch to, a music video came on the television in front of me. I had been ignoring the channel, as California is currently suffering from one major meteorological/geological crisis after another and the news footage was both riveting and sad. Anyway, for some reason, my eyes shifted away from that horrible mudslide scene and landed on...

...Pink.

Normally I wouldn't give Pink a second glance. Only one of her songs is on my iPod, so why bother? If I ever ran into her in a social setting I would give her a big pat on the back for her successes, but I would do that knowing I didn't contribute to them (I downloaded that one song off Limewire for free! Eek!). Anyway, here she is, with some other crappy song, and she is dressed up as a saloon girl. She is spending the whole time assaulting people, I think because she was outraged over the treatment of a horse...?.... Anyway, there she was, running around, breaking bottles over people's heads, and getting thrown in the clink, etc. The whole time I feel an uncomfortable stirring in my soul. This isn't unusual for me while watching a Pink video. But this time was different...

It suddenly dawned on me. As my body worked to burn fat at a staggering heartrate of 137, I realized that she looked just like my favorite comedian Eddie Izzard. I'm talking Exactly.

For the rest of our short time together, I pretended that Pink WAS Eddie Izzard, and that every bottle she broke and table she overturned was accompanied not by the syrupy-sweet, inane pop music coming over the loudspeakers, but by some witticism about European architecture or the Pope.

"Guns don't kill people, people kill people. And so do monkeys when you give them a gun. Now take THAT!" as Pink Izzard sails overhead on a chandelier.

"We prounounce Herbs HHHERB, because there's a fucking H in it. Get offa me!" and throws a man across the room.

Then, in my head, as sweat poured down my face, I thought about Pink Izzard freeing the supposedly mistreated horses while grabbing another saloon girl and throwing her over his shoulder. All while speaking French. "The mouse is under the table."

I smiled. Then I wiped the sweat off my forehead. I thanked Pink and Eddie Izzard for helping me escape the torture of the exercise bike for a few precious minutes. Then I quickly switched to the treadmill and another television. Wolf Blitzer, unfortunately, did not inspire nearly the same whimsy. Surprise, suprise.

Tad-Dau! g