Here’s a quick tip from 30,000 feet: do NOT ask your flight attendant if she’s seen the uncut version of “Closer”, the video that set a whole new standard for the need for serious therapy.

“Ummm…sir…you’re going to have to turn that off now.”

“Why’s that? No one but you and perhaps about 10 people behind me will be affected by the artistically operose if not downright disturbing visuals. Besides, ever since that whole “we demand our rights as obese flight attendants” bit, I thought you’d join me in a nice healthy state of rebellion and counter-culture.

No? Well…look. There’s a dismal Hugh Grant film on the now unavoidable monitors, the child in front of me is torturing her row with re-runs of Full House on her portable DVD Pain Infliction Device — and, to top it all off, some hick named “Toby Keith” is plastered all over your airlines’ magazine cover in a shirt that most men in San Francisco would find utterly “dashing.” So you tell me…where IS the line? Where I ask??

SLAP.

Well, she ‘wanted’ to slap me, but 200-pound guys with large Mac laptops and a penchant for NIN-aroused shankanary probably got the best of her. Too bad…I could have used the money. Hell, that woman who sued McDeath’s over hot coffee was like…what…109 year old? Got a few mil from it. Like my buddy Carlos said, “The attorneys claimed she was old, frail and didn’t know better. The bitch knew coffee was hot since nineteen freakin’ TEN!”

I ask you…were truer words ever spoken?

Perhaps, but that’s still really funny.

Too bad the courts have redefined the term “justice” over the past 20 years to mean, “Tickets to pass Go and collect more than $200 and one’s freedom shall be freely bestowed to whiners, entertainers, vocal minorities, and rich guys who kill their wives…unless their name is Scott.”

Something like that ‘der.

Again, I’m not even close to the topic of burning fat, gaining muscle, or becoming healthy. Then again, you’ve come to expect such nonsense from me…in fact, you’ll soon become buddhadamn grateful for the opportunity to be allowed to even glance over my witticisms! Yeah. Take that. And…that.

(You know, my sidewalk never did quite reach the street.)

Actually I’m bored. There you have it. Four-hour flights you know…boxed in like a family of lemmings who just inherited an canning factory from Uncle Albertson. Must….pass…time….must….must….OH cool!..a cloud shaped like George Bush!…

Flew right through it.

God, there’s so much irony in that sentence that I ain’t gonna touch it with a 20-foot keyboard.

Speaking of irony, let’s talk about something that may seem completely unrelated (no, NO…surely not!) to fitness, but it isn’t. It’s all about the mind, ya know. This is ripe for mind-picking, which is more socially accepting than other types of picking. If someone would would tell Britney Spears this, I would highly appreciate it. She’s probably lost at least 4 pair of perfectly good thongs in there over the past 5 months alone.

Terrell Owens. You may have heard the name. He’s the now ex-wide receiver for the Philadelphia Eagles. Canned for being a complete and utter ass. One of the top receivers to play in the league in years, but the guy has a mouth a 400-pound sea bass would envy. Too bad there’s not a hook in it.

The good news is no one seems willing to toss this large-mouth smells-like-week-old-grouper back into the murky sea of NFL obscurity. In other words, this loser squandered his talent (we all hope, those who follow football) because he decided that there’s not “i” in team.

This mockery started years ago. No one was good enough for T.O. Coaches, owners and even the occasional player (a complete no-no in sports) came under his almost indecipherable scrutiny. This time he went too far. Thanks to the egging of another classic large-mouthed sea creature, Michael Irvin, T.O. decides that his team would be ‘perfect’ if they replaced their star quarterback with a falling star — Green Bay’s Brett Favre. That’s pronounced “FARVE”. Don’t even ask. I’m convinced that his ancestors were morons and misspelled it somewhere on some important document.

Now, Brett’s having one heck of a season…as in the SEASON FROM HADES. One wonders why Mr. Owens picked Farve (again, pronounced FARVE) to fictionally replace the Eagle’s African-American (pronounced “black”, unless you want to start calling me a “Native American-German-French-AngloAmerican”….well, do YA? No, you don’t. Great…so get on with it…) QB other than the obvious reasons. Those being that he’s a blithering buffoon — and on top of that, the second black white supremacist. The first was Dave Chappelle in a skit, so that doesn’t really count.

So, the sad sad story ended (pronounced “happy happy”) and T.O. is now booted out of the league as if Toby Gowen developed a kicking game and then…er…punted him out the league. That started off as a clever witticism and deteriorated quickly. We’re experiencing turbulence. Fasten your seat belts and assume a position of quite desperation.

Here’s my question to you: how many times have you sabotaged your own success with your mouth? Listen up 10ers: the mouth does not have to make a sound to destroy a life. You speak more with yourself than you do with anyone else in your life. Anyone. Think about it.

How many times have you “talked yourself” into being booted from the Health and Fitness League? Sure, they don’t pay $10M signing bonuses, otherwise you’d have a lot of ripped people walking about and I’d either be out of a job or flying in my OWN damn jet right now, but it’s a great League nonetheless. Quite elite, actually, even though anyone on earth can join.

Quick: think of a society that anyone can join. Not many come to mind. One may say, ‘church”, but try that when you’re openly gay or have a thing for choir boys. Well, openly gay and (preferably not) choir-boy weirdoes can join the Health and Fitness League. Just keep the latter the hell away from me if you don’t mind.

I’m sure there are other “come one, come all” Leagues out there. America started off that way after we clobbered my ancestors in a wonderful act of compassion and spread ever westward. After that rather rocky start, we managed to pull it together fairly well until recently. We’re kinda going back to an ethnocentric mindset if you asked or didn’t ask me, especially after 9/11, which is a shame. Diversity made America great, and it still does.

Still, we’re pretty open in our American League…except for those smelly Celtics.

(One of these days someone will pick up on that joke…until then, expect it at the most random times.)

So, are you in the Health and Fitness League? There’s a great denomination within the League (or should I say “conference”) called 10-in-10. Come one, come all. We accept anyone…with some rules. We’re the more strict version of the Health and Fitness League you know. I demand that people have a sense of humor, learn to swear in Eastern, discard fat and only fat at a rate of 1 pound per week, give or take, and above all have fun in the process. And give me money (optional, but preferable.)

Other than putting up with my smart-ass comments, that’s about it. No dues. No fees. No dunking babies in water or walking on hot coals required.

Just a passion to change your life and the lives of all you have direct influence over. Oh, also the commitment to end all forms of self-sabotage immediately. This includes:

• Radical diets where you try to lose what you gained ten times faster than you gained it in the first place.
• Self-talk that you would not ever repeat to anyone you love from the position of saying the same thing to them.
• Excuses such as “no time”, “no energy”, “no enthusiasm”, “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up”, or “What about Tai-Bo?” These won’t fly, even at 30,000 feet.
• Starting something with too much enthusiasm and ending with too little. Balance, baby, balance. Make your plans much larger in scope. Think in terms of the next 10 years, not just the next 10 weeks. Just make 10 weeks your rest stop and then do what every good trucker does — take a bunch of speed and keep going. Scratch that…the speed part, that is. Speed sucks. I’ll add that to the list shortly. However, do keep going.

Well, that’s all my musings from the blue skies. Thankfully there are no bullets in this blue sky to detract me from having some fun with you and, as always, seeking out cloud formations that resemble people who cannot form complete sentences. It’s been a hobby of mine since I was a kid.

Once I saw Anna Nicole Smith in cloud form…but I think it was fake.

Clouds imitate life. {10}