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Blog Entry 37 of 44 Welcome to The Retroplex
I'm usually in full-blown reminisce mode anyway, so why not make the rest of you poor saps suffer along with me, right?

Here, you'll find no shortage (well...unless I can't think of any new material) of meaningless but ultimately harmless bits of ephemera covering the past 20 or so years of pop culture, and my occasional interactions with it. Whether you're into the iconic or the ironic, sooner or later, I'll probably get around to it.
Watch, as the hilarity ensues! Or, if you prefer, gawk like a shocked passerby witnessing a horrible accident!

Blog Url: http://denver.yourhub.com/~TheRetroplex

Freaky fitness

Contributed by: Jared Keller   on 7/26/2007

Like the idiot I am, I've agreed to join with a couple of buddies, and attempt to enter next year's Ride the Rockies. As such, I've realized that if I don't get myself back into something resembling decent physical condition, I'll likely suffer spontaneous decapitation, or inhale a mountain goat as I gasp for breath at the top of some mountain pass or another.

My trip to the gym today got me thinking about fitness, which, as is so often the case with my crazy noggin, caused me to go off in a number of completely random directions, mentally (anything to make the 40 minutes on the elliptical machine pass more quickly...). One such tangent involved the fitness craze that swept the land back in the 80s, and the various ways in which it expressed itself in both TV programming, and the products that came our way.

A lot of this stuff was just out there.

None of it more so than our first example: Slim Goodbody. If you were a kid stuck with watching PBS after school at any point during the 80s, chances are that sooner or later, you would have encountered this freakish horror. Yeah, yeah, I know the motives behind the creation of the character were great, and all, but c'mon...what kind of nimrod knits himself a skin-tight suit designed to look like something out of a George Romero flick, and then decides that children's television is the perfect medium for his vision? The dude gave me nightmares for years...

Next up? Get In Shape Girl. My wife remembers this stuff, and I have a vague recollection of the ads, as well. Hmm. Not a bad concept, I guess, but I can't help but think that each and every girl in that commercial snagged themselves an eating disorder or three by the time the decade was out. Maybe I'm just a pessimist, though.

Lastly, though I can't find any video from it, let's not forget about the first true infomercial - that seemingly endless ad for the first of the overpriced home fitness systems to hit the market: the Soloflex. On this one, I can speak from experience. My older brother gave me one a few years back, and I have to admit - at first, I was really excited. I used to daydream about getting all ripped like the guy in the commercial (I don't know what I expected to have happen after that. The commercial featured him playing frisbee with a dog, though. FYI - you'd think they would have aimed for a little more in the category of obvious benefits, eh?), and I have to admit that I clung to that hope right up until the moment when I first tried to use the bloody thing. Now, in all fairness, it probably wasn't designed for somebody 6'5". But, given my experience, I'm rather convinced that the ideal user is roughly the size of a Keebler Elf. The thing was not made for actual human use.

Add to the crazy dimensions the fact that the weight bands gave the impression that they'd snap at any moment, rending each and every muscle in your body, and to my mind, you've got a loser. Oh well...somebody had to have used the thing successfully somewhere, right?

In the meantime, I'm off to hit the bike. See you tomorrow. If I can walk.


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Showing 1-3 of 3 comments
Submitted By: Barbara Neff
posted on 8/7/2007 @ 11:11:37 AM
Rated Blog Entry
Good luck, Jared.
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Submitted By: Gladys Mercier
posted on 8/6/2007 @ 8:05:27 PM
Rated Blog Entry
Wow, Ride the Rockies would be way cool.
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Submitted By: Bill Boucher
posted on 7/29/2007 @ 4:56:43 PM
Rated Blog Entry
Slim Goodbody was indeed scary.
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Showing 1-3 of 3 comments
CONTRIBUTOR INFORMATION

Jared Keller

Littleton

Jared Keller has posted 44 blog entries and 57 comments since joining on 12/1/2005. Jared Keller 's average blog rating is 5.
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