(or how I grew the fuck up and got over childish hang-ups about colour)
I was at the gym recently... (that's not the punchline, but go ahead laugh. Get it out of your system, I'll wait)
...and couldn't help but make observation of certain aesthetic changes that have occurred since last I frequented such places.
You see, I was clad in the same faded grey, Rocky Balboa sweats that I've been sporting since the dawn of time. These things are so old that they might have actually first belonged to the dead older version of me and were simply never bagged up when he shuffled off this mortal coil, so to speak. Indeed, these things are so well used that another 60 minutes of cardio (endurance, ladies, endurance) and they are likely to suddenly turn transparent.
Giving myself the most cursory of glances in the mirror (gotta make sure the beard isn't frizzy), I consoled myself that at least my fucking kicks were new.
Once out among the sweaty, frightening fashion show that passes for exercise these days, I was overwhelmed by two facts almost immediately.
1) Booty is definitely back... it isn't just a myth perpetrated by Drake, IG and SG (bless you all), but all that Azzzzzzzzzz is most certainly in style and as a connoisseur of such things (while still trying to remain well on the respectable boundary of the gym-creep factor), I must confess that I was not disappointed.
2) Which brings us to the colours... god help us, the garish, clownish fucking colours. A woman walked by and once I slotted my jaw back into place, I realized that she - and everyone else there except for yours truly - were now clad in the same horrendous assortment of colours that used to form the colour palette of winter jackets back in the day...
...if you were a child of the 80s or early 90s
...and your parents fucking hated you
The whole gym was transformed into a psychedelic kaleidoscope of colours that was reminiscent of the hallway that the candy-kids and ravers used to hang out in back in high school, only hi-tech spandex variants now replaced fun-fur and elephant pants. Interestingly enough, the only thing that kept me from full-on traveling backwards in time was the new twist that apparently spandex isn't even spandexy enough anymore, these days it has to be spandex covered in space-age, reptilian textures.
It was jarring to stand so confronted by the colours that had long haunted and embarrassed my awesome, Goonies-cum-Denver-the-Last Dinosaur-esque childhood, but after a short while of watching everyone effortlessly outperform the fat, hairy mess that is yours truly, I figured the the hell with it, I'm off to invest in some purple and green yoga pants and if my past self has a problem with it, I'll just tell him I'm hulking-out.
Fuck him, Days of Thunder neon was awesome in '91 anyway
