Ah, the gym.

A place where I can escape to feel even uglier, fatter and more unappealing than I might feel at any particular moment on any given day anywhere in perpetually shallow Los Angeles.

It’s a marvelous getaway stuffed to the breaking point with people far more beautiful than I, whose immaculate physiques only serve to put my comparatively flabby build in far greater relief.

So why go? What drives me to subject myself to such subtle, sustained humiliation, day after day sporadic day?

A desire to get in shape?

No.

The allure of a healthy, active lifestyle?

Not particularly.

The distant promise of a longer, happier existence filled with greater energy, stamina and vitality?

Meh.

I’ll tell you what it is.

It’s the awesome early-nineties rock, the omnipresent smell of perspiration and CNN on every. single. television.

Nothing motivates me to “get my sweat on” like Anderson Cooper’s perfectly peppered silver coif bobbing along to Deep Blue Something while I’m basking in the scent of an unfortunately hairy dude manhandling the neighboring elliptical machine.