Rachel McAdams plays a beautiful and popular teenage girl who wakes up one day to find herself inside the body of a mid-30’s man played by Schneider. Understandably perplexed, she relies on her best friend played by Ana Faris, and two other friends named Lulu and Keecia to help her figure out what caused this, and to help get her body back. Along her journey, she learns first-hand the pros and cons of being a man, and discovers how mean she was to the other girls in her school. Eventually, Faris falls in love with McAdams’ character who is represented by Schneider, and the two share an uncomfortable love scene.
I’ve had a lot of regrets in my life.
This particular experience would have to rank in between licking the cafeteria floor in elementary school and voluntarily drinking my own urine some years later. The film did however, give me an idea for a similar movie that I might begin writing a script for:
An enthusiastic and intelligent 18 year old boy with a chiseled physique and aspirations of becoming a doctor wakes up one day to find himself inside the body of an apathetic and unemployed mid-20s male with a spare tire around his waist and aspirations of reaching the rank of General in Call of Duty 4. Understandably perplexed, he relies on his friends to help figure out what caused this, but unfortunately they all seem to have the same problem, so nothing ever gets solved. One night he meets an unattractive woman on the wrong side of 200lbs at a bar and the two share an uncomfortable love scene.
The storyline will be equally as uninteresting, and it will be entitled
The Life Fail starring me as myself.
That self-loathing thought, plus the fear of developing bed sores motivated me enough to get up and do something active, so I threw on the same clothes I had been wearing for the past 6 days and headed to the gym. I’ve been going to this place for over a year now and not much has changed in that time. I’ve gotten used to seeing a lot of the same people there and have learned to tolerate most of them. When I entered the gym today though, something seemed different. It smelled like boiled cabbage and a month-long neglected litter box. I had no clue what it was, but I just knew something was out of place. As soon as I entered the locker room, the issue became clear. My gym had become immersed with fat people.
I had completely forgotten about this event. Every January, America’s overweight and obese embark on their annual Hajj to gyms across the country in recognition of the sacred New Years Resolution. During their pilgrimage, they are required to pool beads of gelatinous sweat upon equipment, perform unsightly leg lifts, and wear insufficient amounts of clothing. The journey lasts about a month, after which participants return to their regular place of worship on the couch and continue their everyday ritual of eating parts of a pig’s anatomy that were never intended to be consumed.
I have never understood the concept of the New Years resolution; not the resolution itself, but mainly why people seem to want to eliminate something that has hampered them, or do something to make themselves a better person only when the calendar year changes. We all have issues, I’m certainly no exception, but why is New Years the only time people seem to want to address them? Most people make their resolution plans several months before January and decide as soon as the new year begins that they will make their change. I would think that if you have identified a personal flaw that has held you back in life, then the second that realization is made, you would act on it. Delaying a diet or quitting smoking till a specified date simply gives you time for a swan song with your bad habits, and in that time you’ll end up realizing how difficult it will be to change your ways. Knowing this fact, I tell myself almost everyday that I need to drink less, and when I do that, the decision is in effect immediately. My resolution never seems to survive beyond 8 hours, but at least I’m persistent and I'm not making a change simply because it’s the popular thing to do.
So since everyone wants to spend January pretending that they’ve turned over a new leaf, I’m stuck dealing with more fat asses than the toilet seat at a Denny’s in Alabama. My first encounter with one of these creatures came in the form of a rotund man at the corner locker near where I was getting changed. He was wearing latex gloves and nothing else. The man was covered head to foot in body hair, giving him the appearance of a static charged balloon in a barbershop, and he was rubbing some kind of lotion on his body while humming what I believed to be the synthesizer breakdown part from “Do you Think I’m Sexy?” by Rod Stewart. If you can think of a more disturbing image, I’d love to hear it. I knew right then and there that this would not be an enjoyable experience. I finished changing, made my way through the hallway, and proceeded to enter the gym area.
Before I go any further, I want you to try and remember the feeling you had when you woke up on Christmas morning at the age of 6, or the time when you first laid eyes upon the love of your life…
Now think of the polar opposite of those feelings, and you’ll know exactly what went through my head as I walked into that room. Immediately, I identified the girl from Precious on a treadmill, and right next to her was the Biz Markie. I bounced through all of these new members on my way to the free weight area as if they were moguls on a ski slope. After about a five minute search, I finally found an open apparatus and jumped on it as quickly as possible. I sat down on the bench and scanned the room in attempt to examine the catastrophe that was taking place.
Now being a former High School athlete, I’ve had a lot of instruction as far as what to do when working out, so it really isn’t fair for me to criticize the techniques of someone who is just a beginner. But for Christ’s sake, I would think general common sense would be enough to at least give you an idea of what you should be doing. To the left of me, I saw a man-whale rolling a medicine ball from one hand to the other as if it were a slinky. I’m not sure what muscle that exercise was suppose to work on him, but I can tell you my jaw muscles got a good work out from clenching my teeth while watching that idiot. Not far off from him, there was another whopper leaning against a wall just swinging his leg back and forth. Then to the right of me, I witnessed a large woman flapping her arms. No dumbbells or weight of any kind in her hands, simply flapping her doughy, Michelin Man-like arms. I smiled at that though, it reminded me of Dumbo trying to fly.
I removed my focus from the freak show going on in front of me, turned up my Limp Bizkit playlist, and began my work out. Almost immediately after I finished my first set, a girl who looked like one of the Gorgs from Fraggle Rock came up to me and asked, “Do you mind if I work in with you?”
I was obviously annoyed, but she was wearing a shirt that said “Don’t be a Hater,” so I took her advice and shared the machine. She waddled right on, and before doing anything, she looked at me and asked, “How am I supposed to do this?” Annoyed again, but not wanting to be the proverbial “hater,” I instructed her. She giggled through about 2 and a half reps, and then looked at me again and asked, “So what’s your name?” I couldn’t be sure, but I got the distinct feeling that this bloated disaster was hitting on me. I didn’t have any Jameson in my system, so I had enough presence of mind to fully reject the situation. I told her my name was Yanni and pretended that I had to get a drink from the water fountain. I headed straight back to the locker room, which at this point resembled a Drew Carey look-a-like convention. I grabbed my clothes, stormed back to the car, and drove home. When I got there, I jumped back into bed and watched a special on Anorexia and Bulimia and enjoyed every minute of it.
