Waters of the Mind

I recently replaced my old rowing machine with a new-fangled gondola machine. Calories are burnt by imitating Venetian canal poling instead of river rowing and O Sole Mio can be sung during the workout if you wish, but I would need a personal trainer for any vocal exercises so I concentrate on the poling action. Neither do I wear a stripy shirt nor a circular straw hat circumnavigated with ribbon. I do, however, pretend that my IKEA shelving unit is the Bridge of Sighs. It's almost as if I'm actually gondoliering around Venice but with no fear of drowning. Then, when I'm thoroughly exhausted from my poling, I collapse into the couch like a Doge relaxing in his palace after a hard day's doing whatever a Doge did. Who needs to travel?

So I'm now considering upgrading to the home gym paddle-steamer machine manufactured by the same company. "Excellent for cardio," it runs on pedal power, obviously, and is equipped with a realistic funnel and preprogrammed Dixieland jazz soundtrack. I can imagine myself floating down the Mississippi river while strengthening my abs and gluts. But I'll probably just settle for the yacht machine which is much simpler and has a smaller footprint in the living room. This fitness regimen involves repeatedly running fore and aft while shouting incomprehensible sailing gibberish and ducking to avoid being hit in the head by the swinging boom. Should be a novel, not to say, naval, way to lose some of that excess winter weight.

Comments

[Tatyana]

Genius Soviet comic Arkady Raikin had a gig sometime in the 70s, called "Inventor", impersonating one self-styled character. The Inventor advised to chain soccer players (all 22 of them)to an asphalt machine - to get the field leveled and asphalted, for free. And to tie a dynamo to a ballerina's leg, to transform 32 fuete rotations into an energy for an "underdeveloped regions"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uu-YQkGo3t8

[stephenesque]

Thank you for that link. I've always admired Russian comic novels but never really explored comedy performance as I'm shamefully ignorant of the language. I'll try to track down some of those films if available with subtitles.

[Tatyana]

never heard of Russian comic novels

here's what i could find in 2 min
https://vimeo.com/227503538
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwBr6tyLEfg

[stephenesque]

What I meant by 'comic novels" was things like Ivan Goncharov and Mikhail Bulgakov; novels that are amusing (to me). I didn't mean novels with literal jokes in them. I should have been clearer.

But then I think Kafka is funny.