MON., JAN. 15, 2007

The beautiful thing about January is that the gyms are full of pasty chubbsters looking to get their fit on. It’s beautiful because they annoy the shit out of the full time narcissists who sometimes forget entirely that there are other people in the world. Other people come in all shapes, sizes, and types – one of those types are the people who park their shopping carts perpendicular in the aisle at the grocery store while they loiter at the sample table. These are the same ones who bogart the treadmills (set on “crawl”) at the gym. Yes Narcissus, there are other people in the world, and recent statistics show that 60% of them are overweight. That’s a disturbing figure to be sure, but since the majority of the exercise most people get these days is the digital dance their fingers do on their keyboards, it’s not surprising. Maybe someday we’ll evolve into something resembling a jellyfish, but for now we have to deal with a physiology that’s behind the evolutionary curve. If our bodies were evolving as fast as our minds, each of our hands would have ten fingers and our asses would be huge (come to think of it, maybe our bodies aren’t that far behind the evolutionary curve after all). Truth is, life in the third millennium doesn’t take a lot of physical effort, but fortunately we have technology to counteract the effects of technology. Treadmills, stair-steppers, stationary bikes, rowing machines, weight machines, and countless other ingenious contraptions make our bodies do what they were designed to do: move. Used to be people were able to move without the assistance of machines, but as the world gets smaller and people get larger, it’s probably best we have machines that can work us into a lather without taking up the valuable space of a basketball court, soccer field, or an 18 hole golf course. Maybe in the future we’ll just be working out to keep our bodies fit so that we can work out some more. No drama, no competition, just repetition. Bor-ing. Better enjoy the drama and competition while you can. For the next few weeks Hyde Park Theatre is hosting FronteraFest, a monthlong festival of fringe theatre that includes nearly every kind of performance imaginable: dance, improv, multimedia, music, films – you name it. This Saturday is the first Best of the Week, a night of performances selected as the best by audiences from each night of the previous week. Performances are short and snappy, clocking in at 25 minutes or less – about the same amount of time you would spend on a treadmill at the gym but less repetitive.