A Chick Called Mick

I'm the kind of person who likes to exercise, so long as I can pretend that I'm not actually working out.  I listen to music while watching TV as I run so that there's plenty of stuff to think about besides how much further I have to go.  The catch is there are only two TVs at my gym, so sometimes I don't have a say in what I end up watching.

This weekend, I went to the gym and had my choice of sports (No, thank you!  If the goal is to focus on things other than working out, watching sports shatters the illusion.) and music videos.  I picked a treadmill next to a guy who was hauling ass, and we watched one or two videos before Best Week Ever came on.  That's fine, too, though.  It's fast paced, and very visual, so that could work.  Except, according to the collection of clips VH1 had assembled for me, this is one of the more bizarre weeks in pop culture--and that's saying something.

First, there was a bit from Dancing with the Stars, and while I haven't watched this season, I knew that Cloris Leachman was on it.  Until that moment, however, I hadn't seen her dance.  So, I'm running along, and a guy who could probably be her grandson is grabbing her chest and making sexy faces.  At one point he does a dramatic wink like "Oh, yeah!" and the whole thing was so wrong it knocked me off my stride.  I glanced at the guy next to me to see if he found it off-putting, but he didn't seem to notice. 

But then, THEN, they showed a clip from a show called Living with the Wolfman, and there was no closed captioning, and I had headphones on, so the specific details are a bit unclear.  From what I could see, though, a woman was lying down with a bunch of wolf pups, and one of them was sniffing her, licking her face, and then, best I could tell, it BIT PART OF HER FACE OFF!!!  Possibly her lower lip.  I can't say for sure, but they showed it three times, and there's clearly biting before the pup retreated to chew on something fleshy.

Do you know about this?  Have you seen it?  If so, please explain it to me.

It was completely disturbing, and just when I was about to get back into a groove, I was scrambling again.  This time, though, my neighbor turned his head and we exchanged a nice, "What the hell was that?!?!" moment.  It's the closest I come to developing relationships with people at the gym.  When I show up, I just want to get my workout started.  When I'm done, I'm sweaty and red in the face, which seems like a bad time to strike up a conversation.  But I find moments like that comforting.  Whenever something unusual happens, I like to look for somone who gives me a look that says: "I know!  Crazy, right?"  I trust my myself to judge such things, but sometimes it's nice to check.