Let me say this about that.

I’ll just come right out and say it.  I’m overweight.  To expand (pardon the pun) on that description, one could say that I’m rotund,  ample, stout, generously proportioned, corpulent, full bodied, oversized, plump, gordo, prodigious, gravitationally complementary – or most simply, I’m a lard ass.  I’m only six feet tall, but I’m always the tallest guy in the room – when I lie down.

I wasn’t always fat, but the last 10 years or so, I have steadily added to my bulk to the point that every time I go to the beach, the tide comes in.  There are a number of reasons for this steady increase in my gravitational profile.  Mrs. Shambo, for one.  She is a great cook, so good in fact that she is currently writing a cookbook.  She constantly wants to try new recipes on me and I’m happy to oblige.  It’s not that I want to eat all the time – I’m just being supportive.

Living in a neighborhood where ‘cocktail hour’ is celebrated with the same reverence as the selection of a new Pope doesn’t help either.  Walk down my street any day after 5:00pm and you can’t get to the end of the block and still pass a ‘breath-a-lizer’ test.  We don’t have an “Alcoholics Anonamous’ here ………  simply because everyone knows each other.

Mrs. Shambo has been trying to get me to buy an exercise machine to help lose some weight.  She points out that ever since she bought her “AssMaster 3000″  that she has dropped 10 pounds.  Funny coincidence, my nickname in college was “AssMaster” , but that was…    a whole other thing.

Anyway, I started to do some internet research on exercise machines and immediately discovered a plethoria of devises making all sorts of claims to aid weight loss.  Take the following machines, for example:

Red Fitness - XL

 Red Fitness – XL:

The Red Fitness XL is a device upon which one sits, holds on to the attached rail, while twisting and turning on the rotating seat.  The claim by the manufacturer is that the turning motion aids in the reduction of hard-to-lose mid-section body fat.  The accompanying product literature also makes another, rather bizarre claim.  It suggests that the basic exercise (twisting and turning a rotatable seat)  is “easy for beginners”.  Well, DUH !!  Ya think? 

Basically it’s a $119 bar stool without the benefit of a cocktail sitting in front of you. 

Power Plate

This device claims to be the latest technology in the reduction of body weight without actually doing any exercise.  It looks a little like a bathroom scale mounted on a bicycle frame.  The inventor claims that you can get a 30 minute workout in 10 minutes, simply by standing on the thing while it vibrates your whole body.  My ‘dirty-old-man’ inclinations instantly thought of a dozen alternative uses so I decided to buy one.  It was only when I found out the damn thing costs $4,500 that I came to my senses. 

Jeez, with four thousand, five hundred dollars, you can buy yourself a late model used car.  But an exercise machine?  Hell, for $4,500, a ‘whole body vibrator’  should at least provide a “Happy Ending”.

 

Shake Weight

I don’t see how this product can possibly fail since every guy I know is buying one of these things as a Christmas gift for his wife.  As for Mrs. Shambo, it’s the perfect compliment for her “AssMaster”  — both of them.

And, that’s all I have to say about that.

Shambo