A Cast of Daily Characters

I'm a big believer in keeping a detatched perspective when it comes to daily life. Our time here is so short, that it is better to laugh it off than to get aggrivated by all the little twists and turns that really don't alter our path in any way, shape, or form.

One of the things I do is that I view life as like one endless sitcom. Not a star vehicle, but an ensemble show. What I find interesting is that most often it's the unnamed players that wind up being most interesting.

• Pinky & The Brain: A red-headed man (Pinky) and his trainer (The Brain) who I encounter nearly every time I workout. Pinky has a tendency to babble incoherently and sing to himself in a vaoice that must sound like in his head, but like an American Idol reject to the rest of us. It wouldn't surprise me if Pinky drops acid before he works out. As for The Brain, he's also a little bit off-centre. One time I saw him walking down the stairs [from the locker room] backwards. I asked my trainer what the story was and apparently The Brain believes that it makes him symmetrical.
• Napoleon XII: Although Napoleon wasn't as short as the myth would have you believe, the story still lingers and it works here. N12 walks around the gym as if it is his playland and we are mere silent moving statues. He likes to turn on his Ipod and sing along while obliviously lifting weights that seem to precariously dangle over his head. Frequently, I get all high-school and entertain the thought of stuffing him into a locker. Then I start thinking about the potential lawsuit, because we all know Napoleon played for blood.
• Mr. Leg-Out: Mr. Leg-Out hangs out in front of the nearby Citibank virtually every day. He's in a wheelchair with one leg always stretched out. He doesn't appear to have any missing limbs (or at least has a prothesis) and is always engrossed in some conversation. I think he does enjoy seeing people dodge him because he tends to hang around the section of the sidewalk between the bank and the phone booth where there is minimal sidewalk space. I like him for that.
• Sweating Hat: So called not because he's sweating constantly, but because he wears a sweatshirt and hat all the time. Sweating Hat is another trainer at the gym, who I have never seen wearing anything else but a sweatshirt and a hat. I wonder if he even has any physical form beyond what the eye can see. The hat, I guess, is to cover up a receding hairline (though I'm a strong proponent of letting hair recede, since I think it's very sexy, cf. Christopher Meloni). The sweatshirt I cannot figure out. Perhaps it's steroid abuse gone awry or just body dysmorphia. Nonetheless, Sweating Hat seems to be an extremely tolerant fellow because one of his previous clients seemed to suffer a meltdown after every single exercise.
• Laflamme: Laflamme is one of Sweating Hat's clients. Unlike the aforementioned one, she doesn't meltdown after everything. She does however try to beat off aging by dying her hair to an unnatural shade of reddish orange. I think in some way she sees herself as Norma Desmond with Sweating Hat as her Joe Gillis.
• Heckle & Jeckle I: Two men whose machismo never quite meshed with their reality. So named because they would spend more time trying to assert their masculinity vocally than actually lifting any weight. Whenever they did, the fact that they had long since ceased being the uber-jocks they used to be came crashing down all around them. Since I haven't seen them in ages, I'm guessing they dropped one too many barbells.
• Heckle & Jeckle II: Like the circle of life, the void left by the first Heckle & Jeckle was filled with another pair. These two are somewhat younger than the original pair, and are clearly on steroids. Heckle II enjoys posing in the mirror to the oohs and ahhs of Jeckle II. There's a strong slightly depressing dynamic to this relationship, but I doubt Heckle II would change a thing.

More are bound to be added.