A lot of women are very very angry with Ahhhnold right now. I am one of them. I can't seem to get off the topic. I cannot leave it alone.
Big Cuter calls and tells me that he is disappointed but not surprised at the news. He'd always thought of Ahhhnold that way. "Were you really surprised, Mom? Didn't you know?"
Well, no, honey, in fact I didn't. In fact, I bet that Maria didn't know either. She may have suspected and endured wondering eyes from her friends who loved her enough to worry but knew enough to keep still. She wanted to love him, she loved her family, her religion must have figured in there, too..... it doesn't have to make sense to her because she wants to believe him. So she does.
I watched a friend's marriage implode as she and I marveled at the fact that we seemed to be the only two people on the planet who thought that he had been faithful to her. In retrospect, it was absurd. And yet there it was, the embarrassing truth that we'd been duped.
Unbelievably naive? Perhaps not so unbelievable at all.
So there's the humiliation of it all and that's just not right. Maria Shriver had a real career and a nice family and she up-ended it all for Ahhhnold's political dalliance. As I'm typing this
I'm flashing to The Good Wife and hoping that *spoiler alert* Maria has someone to take her to the Presidential Suite tonight.
I have tried three times to type a sentence that cleverly presents my disgust. Two women. Two pregnancies. One house. One man. I went down a Thomas Jefferson route. I twisted those pieces around and around and I have come up empty. I just can't imagine how creepy it must have been.
Is he really that good an actor? Hard to believe. But still..... he did give us a machine with a sense of humor and a tender heart, after all.
Oh, dear. There I go again...... finding something to like about him.
Please. Make it stop.
Showing posts with label Arnold Schwarzenegger. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Arnold Schwarzenegger. Show all posts
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Not Again
I was just getting used to liking politicians again. Our President's gutsy call in Abbottabad, Jan Brewer actually vetoing two of the more egregious bills sent to her by the Legislature.... well, I've been sitting here for a few minutes and that's all that I can come up with but you get my drift. Things were looking up for the ones I admire and those I do not were at least not digging themselves deeper holes.
Personally, I was feeling kinda sorta sorry for myself (see last week's posts as evidence). I needed to put on a game face. I needed intensity and concentration and devotion to specific goals. My physical therapist took me at my word and loaded me up with exercises. There was nothing else to do - I had to reread Education of a Body Builder.
I needed Arnold's encouragement to reach my goals. I needed to immerse myself in the body I wanted to create. I had to stay focused and strong and use my strengths to overcome my weaknesses. I had to go outside and breathe the fresh air and....
..... everytime I get to this part of my Arnold Affirmation I hit a little bit of a speed bump. This is the part of the book where he talks about climbing the Austrian Alps to lift weights in the sunshine.... with his buddies.... and his beer.... and some girls..... and no clothes.
I recommend this book with a caveat - you have to remember that he was 18 then, and just get over the wanton sex. It's the best primer on the how's and more importantly the why's of body building. There's no doubt in my mind on that score.
This is a kid whose father was an Austrian policeman, a member of the Nazi Party (though not guilty of any war crimes according to the Simon Weisenthal Center), and by all accounts a rather despicable character. This is a kid who ran away to find the American dream and who made it big, literally and figuratively. It's real estate as well as body building and movies. He learned from American political royalty and turned that knowledge into election and re-election in California. I was sad that his foreign birth precluded his running for President.
He is a pro-choice, pro-gun control, pro-gay rights Republican. Are there more than 4 of them extant? It wasn't only that I liked him and admired him. He was an endangered species; it was my job to protect him.
I made excuses. I looked the other way. I shrugged my shoulders and chalked it up to European values. His sexual escapades kept making the news, but I was determined to admire him. He was Ah-nold, after all.
I wondered about Maria Shriver giving up her fabulous career to become California's First Lady. I didn't judge, though many of our generation did. It wasn't seemly to comment on another woman's choices, I thought. She saw in him what I saw in him and she was willing to give up some of herself so that he could be all of himself.
I couldn't fault her. I moved from Chicago, from my friends and my history and my life, so that TBG could run his own business with somebody else's money. I got it then and I get it now. Neither of us made a bad choice. It might not be your choice, but that doesn't mean it wasn't the right choice for me.... or for her.
Yahoo! alerted me to the fact that Maria and Arnold were splitting up. No reasons, "we still love one another," she wasn't living with him any more, the kids were going to be fine..... yada yada yada. I was sad. I wondered about the possibility of an annulment after 4 children and 25 years of co-habitation. I sighed and moved on.
I woke up this morning to TBG's face - a mysterious amalgam of distaste, confusion and surprise. CNN had alerted him to the fact that Arnold was the father of a 10 year old child whose mother was a household staffer who had just recently retired after 20 years of service to the family.
Service, indeed.
My heart is broken, denizens. I stood up for him, I defended him, I made excuses for him because I thought the reports were typical media hype. He's a big sexy guy who smokes cigars and wields weaponry with aplomb. Reports of groping and innuendo seemed par for the course. I was willing to laugh it off.
Foolish child. Silly, ignorant, foolish child. I put my heroes on pedestals and that's it. I'm committed for life. I'm all in. I can justify all manner of silliness that seems to stick like feathers on tar, for that is all that it is .... a mob overreacting. Get a life, people... or at least a sense of humor.
No longer. This is it. The man had a baby with a woman who had worked in his employ for 10 years. He had a 12 year old daughter when he created her half-sister, and she had 3 other siblings living in that house. In the house. With his wife.
And the woman stayed there, working, in the house, with his wife, for 10 more years. Am I the only one who finds this kind of creepy?
I take that back - it's totally creepy.
So, here I am, disappointed once again in a man of my generation. Bill Clinton.... Arnold.... John Edwards...... they each have fabulously talented, intelligent, successful wives and they can't keep their pants zipped.
I sound like G'ma. I know. I don't care. She's right.
I'm going to have to find my gym inspiration elsewhere today. I'm just not in the mood for Arnold right now.
Personally, I was feeling kinda sorta sorry for myself (see last week's posts as evidence). I needed to put on a game face. I needed intensity and concentration and devotion to specific goals. My physical therapist took me at my word and loaded me up with exercises. There was nothing else to do - I had to reread Education of a Body Builder.
I needed Arnold's encouragement to reach my goals. I needed to immerse myself in the body I wanted to create. I had to stay focused and strong and use my strengths to overcome my weaknesses. I had to go outside and breathe the fresh air and....
..... everytime I get to this part of my Arnold Affirmation I hit a little bit of a speed bump. This is the part of the book where he talks about climbing the Austrian Alps to lift weights in the sunshine.... with his buddies.... and his beer.... and some girls..... and no clothes.
I recommend this book with a caveat - you have to remember that he was 18 then, and just get over the wanton sex. It's the best primer on the how's and more importantly the why's of body building. There's no doubt in my mind on that score.
This is a kid whose father was an Austrian policeman, a member of the Nazi Party (though not guilty of any war crimes according to the Simon Weisenthal Center), and by all accounts a rather despicable character. This is a kid who ran away to find the American dream and who made it big, literally and figuratively. It's real estate as well as body building and movies. He learned from American political royalty and turned that knowledge into election and re-election in California. I was sad that his foreign birth precluded his running for President.
He is a pro-choice, pro-gun control, pro-gay rights Republican. Are there more than 4 of them extant? It wasn't only that I liked him and admired him. He was an endangered species; it was my job to protect him.
I made excuses. I looked the other way. I shrugged my shoulders and chalked it up to European values. His sexual escapades kept making the news, but I was determined to admire him. He was Ah-nold, after all.
I wondered about Maria Shriver giving up her fabulous career to become California's First Lady. I didn't judge, though many of our generation did. It wasn't seemly to comment on another woman's choices, I thought. She saw in him what I saw in him and she was willing to give up some of herself so that he could be all of himself.
I couldn't fault her. I moved from Chicago, from my friends and my history and my life, so that TBG could run his own business with somebody else's money. I got it then and I get it now. Neither of us made a bad choice. It might not be your choice, but that doesn't mean it wasn't the right choice for me.... or for her.
Yahoo! alerted me to the fact that Maria and Arnold were splitting up. No reasons, "we still love one another," she wasn't living with him any more, the kids were going to be fine..... yada yada yada. I was sad. I wondered about the possibility of an annulment after 4 children and 25 years of co-habitation. I sighed and moved on.
I woke up this morning to TBG's face - a mysterious amalgam of distaste, confusion and surprise. CNN had alerted him to the fact that Arnold was the father of a 10 year old child whose mother was a household staffer who had just recently retired after 20 years of service to the family.
Service, indeed.
My heart is broken, denizens. I stood up for him, I defended him, I made excuses for him because I thought the reports were typical media hype. He's a big sexy guy who smokes cigars and wields weaponry with aplomb. Reports of groping and innuendo seemed par for the course. I was willing to laugh it off.
Foolish child. Silly, ignorant, foolish child. I put my heroes on pedestals and that's it. I'm committed for life. I'm all in. I can justify all manner of silliness that seems to stick like feathers on tar, for that is all that it is .... a mob overreacting. Get a life, people... or at least a sense of humor.
No longer. This is it. The man had a baby with a woman who had worked in his employ for 10 years. He had a 12 year old daughter when he created her half-sister, and she had 3 other siblings living in that house. In the house. With his wife.
And the woman stayed there, working, in the house, with his wife, for 10 more years. Am I the only one who finds this kind of creepy?
I take that back - it's totally creepy.
So, here I am, disappointed once again in a man of my generation. Bill Clinton.... Arnold.... John Edwards...... they each have fabulously talented, intelligent, successful wives and they can't keep their pants zipped.
I sound like G'ma. I know. I don't care. She's right.
I'm going to have to find my gym inspiration elsewhere today. I'm just not in the mood for Arnold right now.
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Last Sunday
There were some strange people at the gym on Sunday.
The Amster and I can usually count on welcoming smiles from the regulars as we lift and grunt and sweat and lift again. We've been at it together for almost two years, now, and it just keeps getting better. Not that we keep getting better. Like everyone else who's ever exercised on a regular basis, occasionally we have been derailed by life. But we're still having fun, with her Army mojo and me quoting Arnold between sets.
Most gyms have a demographic - 20-somethings on the prowl gyms, women who want to show their exercising selves only to other women gyms, 50+ retired Yuppies and their much younger trainers' gyms, serious 'roid gyms. Our gym defies categorization.
Tattoos are everywhere, and TBG and I were taken aback at first. Body art's not our thing (just ask my nieces) and we were about ready to dismiss the wearers. That is, until TBG watched the most heavily decorated young man gently and kindly demonstrate then teach a teetering older man how to use the cables.
There are 30-somethings who certainly looked healthy enough to be at work instead of lifting weights in the middle of the day. The Amster and I were commenting on this one December afternoon and the guy on the next bench leaned over and said, "Most of us have been laid off; I recognize half-a-dozen guys who should be working today."
Lots of fire department t-shirts are on lots of very buff bodies. High school wrestlers and basketball players and track stars wear t-shirts proclaiming their loyalty and superiority. Candidates for The Biggest Loser gamely breathe and roll and concentrate on their transverse abdominals between sorority girls from the UofA on one side and 78 year old grandmothers on the other. Ballroom dancers practice while 8 year olds shoot hoops with their moms.
No one judges. No one smirks. No one cares that the gym shorts I'm wearing were worn by the Big Cuter when he was in 5th grade or that my Sausalito Art Festival t-shirt is held together by a few tenuous strands of cotton.
We notice things, of course. There's the guy with what must be the world's largest collection of Jesus-themed t-shirts, the grey pony-tailed retired contractor who is invariably decked out in red/white/and blue to match the flag flying from his truck, the Haitian woman who can do 20 perfect pull-ups. The father-son pairs are our favorites; the boys are lucky to learn from men who are less interested in impressing one another than they are in using good form. For a while last spring and summer there was a dad and his daughter; we miss them.
So, Sunday. The first weird person was race walking around the gym, hitting himself in the chest with a 5 pound plate. Leaning on a pole in the middle of the gym floor, the second weird person was swinging a 10 pound dumbbell around and around in what looked like but couldn't possibly be ever widening circles. A trainer had a this-is-my-first-time-in-the-gym client doing one-handed push-ups with her feet on a giant ball. The juice bar was closed and the lights were off but there was someone sitting on the stool at the counter looking into the darkness.
And it wasn't a full moon.
"I loved the feeling of the gym, of working out, of having muscles all over" Aaaah-nold in Education of a Bodybuilder
The Amster and I can usually count on welcoming smiles from the regulars as we lift and grunt and sweat and lift again. We've been at it together for almost two years, now, and it just keeps getting better. Not that we keep getting better. Like everyone else who's ever exercised on a regular basis, occasionally we have been derailed by life. But we're still having fun, with her Army mojo and me quoting Arnold between sets.
Most gyms have a demographic - 20-somethings on the prowl gyms, women who want to show their exercising selves only to other women gyms, 50+ retired Yuppies and their much younger trainers' gyms, serious 'roid gyms. Our gym defies categorization.
Tattoos are everywhere, and TBG and I were taken aback at first. Body art's not our thing (just ask my nieces) and we were about ready to dismiss the wearers. That is, until TBG watched the most heavily decorated young man gently and kindly demonstrate then teach a teetering older man how to use the cables.
There are 30-somethings who certainly looked healthy enough to be at work instead of lifting weights in the middle of the day. The Amster and I were commenting on this one December afternoon and the guy on the next bench leaned over and said, "Most of us have been laid off; I recognize half-a-dozen guys who should be working today."
Lots of fire department t-shirts are on lots of very buff bodies. High school wrestlers and basketball players and track stars wear t-shirts proclaiming their loyalty and superiority. Candidates for The Biggest Loser gamely breathe and roll and concentrate on their transverse abdominals between sorority girls from the UofA on one side and 78 year old grandmothers on the other. Ballroom dancers practice while 8 year olds shoot hoops with their moms.
No one judges. No one smirks. No one cares that the gym shorts I'm wearing were worn by the Big Cuter when he was in 5th grade or that my Sausalito Art Festival t-shirt is held together by a few tenuous strands of cotton.
We notice things, of course. There's the guy with what must be the world's largest collection of Jesus-themed t-shirts, the grey pony-tailed retired contractor who is invariably decked out in red/white/and blue to match the flag flying from his truck, the Haitian woman who can do 20 perfect pull-ups. The father-son pairs are our favorites; the boys are lucky to learn from men who are less interested in impressing one another than they are in using good form. For a while last spring and summer there was a dad and his daughter; we miss them.
So, Sunday. The first weird person was race walking around the gym, hitting himself in the chest with a 5 pound plate. Leaning on a pole in the middle of the gym floor, the second weird person was swinging a 10 pound dumbbell around and around in what looked like but couldn't possibly be ever widening circles. A trainer had a this-is-my-first-time-in-the-gym client doing one-handed push-ups with her feet on a giant ball. The juice bar was closed and the lights were off but there was someone sitting on the stool at the counter looking into the darkness.
And it wasn't a full moon.
"I loved the feeling of the gym, of working out, of having muscles all over" Aaaah-nold in Education of a Bodybuilder
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