Golfed again last night with Russ...
by jason
2003-07-23 11:47:53 PDT
Golfed again last night with Russ and Riley. It was pretty fun, though there was no 15-pack of beer this time. Probably going again tomorrow with some people from work, and I know I'll be going with Geoff on Saturday once he gets here. Apparently he's bringing me a surprise from Montréal (look who knows how to make accents on an English keyboard, that's right). I imagine it's something ridiculous, like a beer hat with the fleur-de-lys on it or something.
So yeah, Elvis Costello was pretty unbelievable. I thought it was gonna be cool, but I didn't realise it was going to be like in "Dumb and Dumber" when Jeff Daniels hits Jim Carrey across the back of the knees with the cane. (Hang around with me long enough, and you will hear me compare just about everything that's awesome to that scene, or some scene from that movie.) Anyway, at one point when Costello was playing some new stuff, some idiot yelled into the silence after a song, "Hey, Declan! You're putting us to sleep up here!" Costello just kind of ambled up to the microphone and said, in his odd accent, "You know where the door is, don't you?" It was pretty awesome.
That brings to mind something I was thinking about in there. This is directed at people who go to shows: Though I'm glad you get to go see a performance you really enjoy, when I was paying $80 for a ticket, I didn't really have listening to you tack a "WOOOOOOOOO-OOOO!" onto the end of every well-held note in mind. But thanks.
Finally, I almost had to challenge the lady at Gold's Gym to a footrace yesterday. Brad and Robb and I went in there for a tour and to maybe sign up (we had these 15-day free trial things the owner had dropped off at our office), and we toured around and checked the place out. Then the personal trainer lady giving us a tour takes us into some little room - I imagine it's their "closing the sale" room - and whips out membership forms. After a bunch of entertaining arithmetic ("See? Look at the savings due to these random numbers that I just made up in front of you!"), a little pressure ("This deal's only good today! If you come back tomorrow, we'll have to charge you an extra nine hundred dollars just to use our pen, let alone pay for a membership! Did I say today? I meant in the next eleven seconds! HURRY UP! SIGN!!"), and some unanswered questions about if I wanted to cancel my "Fit For Life" membership (you basically have to move to Antarctica or get hit by a bus), I told the lady I wasn't going to sign up right away and that I wanted to think about it. I think Brad and Robb were going to sign up - they were already filling out the papers. When I told her I was going to think about it, she got what I can only assume is personally offended, and then it got ugly.
Let me assure you that although I was paraphrasing the lady before, I am going to lay it out like it was now and give you exactly what she said.
She started going on, saying things like, "I thought you were committed to getting into peak physical shape," in the tone a disappointed mother would use to guilt a child into something. I told her, in a mildly confused tone, that yeah, I was into the idea of going to a really nice gym (the one in my building only has a four-station Universal machine for weights), but I did manage to get enough physical activity on my own right now.
She went on with stuff like:
"I mean, your work buddies here are going it, and didn't the three of you decide to try going together so you could stick to a program and get results together? There's a 10-day money-back guarantee - why don't you just sign up and think about it then?"
Then she said,
"You know, you sit at a desk all day, and you're [looks at my form] 25, and you're going to hit 30 and your body's going to fall apart on you, and [her voice began to, believe it or not, rise a little right here] you're going to come in here a mess and expecting us to work miracles over a month or two, and it's just not going to happen!"
That was where I had pretty much had it. I couldn't believe this biatch. I just told her I was definitely going to think about it, and that was it. (What I really wanted to do was tell her I'd bet her $50 I could beat her old, wrinkly, fake-tanned, Botox-addled ass in a footrace to the Wal-Mart parking lot and back and pick up a Pepsi from the vending machine while I was doing it. I got your personal trainer right here, pal.) Then Brad looked at her and said, "Don't do this. I was in sales, and we don't need the hard sell." Too little, too late to save that situation for me - I was done for in that place. I think Brad and Robb were pretty much turned right off of the whole place after that, because all three of us left without signing up. Easily one of the weirdest high-pressure sales situations I've ever been in, anyhow.
Jeez. After reading this, I guess I should probably make entries as this stuff happens, instead of writing a thesis every three days.