MM2K October 1996 -
Bombs Away -
I thought that was bad, but last week, I experienced something much, much worse. Maybe THE worst. But I’m getting ahead of myself. First, let me tell you about “bad.” Lars, who was obviously not from this country (with a name like that) or he was lying because he wanted people to think he wasn’t, was one of my training partners. Lars was trying to break the 500-lb barrier in the squat. I know, I know, 500 ain’t much. And Lars looked kind of pathetic with his supersuit, superunderpants, lifting belt that looked at least a yard wide, and his two miles of knee wraps. He had those lifting shoes that look like ice skates with the blades removed (which they were, in Lars’ case). It would’ve been cool if Lars were, like, 100 lbs and 4’8”. But he was my height and just over 200. Nonetheless, he always showed up with my other squat partner, and we all squatted about the same weight, so we didn’t have to break the bar down too much after each set.
But lately, Lars was becoming insufferable. His newest technique for reaching the 500 mark was eating 2 pints of Haagen ice cream each day. It was usually some butternut something or other, whichever one of the flavors had over 1,000 calories in a pint. His powerlifting buddies told him he had to eat his way up to 500 lbs and that ice cream was the most calorie dense food. I had suggested that he should just eat lard, but he told me all the greats ate Haagen Dazs. Nobody ate lard. Besides, he thought Haagen Dazs was imported from his country. Lars was pathetic enough already, so we didn’t tell him the Haagen Dazs name was made up by some guy in Brooklyn.
The problem was that Lars was bigtime lactose intolerant, which means his body couldn’t digest all the milk sugar in the ice cream. So it was shipped downstream to the fart factory in the large, nasty colon. And with two pints a day, the fart factory was working overtime churning out both a quality and quantity product. Maybe Lars watched off-road motorcycle racing and found out that the winning bikes all had big air shocks on them. He rationalized that all that gas trapped in his gut behind his lifting belt would spring him out of the hole.
Of course, the flaw in his logic is that human beings do have a pop-off valve called an asshole, which would kick in on Lars right at the bottom of his squat when he was trying to bounce out of the hole. And he went damn deep in the hole. And like clockwork, every rep had this “Braaaaatttt” sound like ripping cloth, very wet, wet cloth, by the way. Braaaattt. “Was that a fart, Lars, or did you just shit yourself?” Braaaatttt. “Why do I know your girlfriend is not into oral sex with you, Lars?”
I should point out that we only heard the “Braaaattt” sound during warm-ups when the supersuit wasn’t on. The suit was one size too small, and we needed a crowbar to get Lars into it. When he was really strapped in tight, he turned from a tuba into a trumpet: his flatulence was at least three octaves higher. Mariah Carey would be envious. Now here is when it gets weird, and I’ve yet to find an explanation for this. Lars was a “supersonic farter.” This means that his farts were faster than sound. Meaning first, we’d smell this awful, rank smell. And a millisecond later, the “Braaattt” (or, with the suit on, “Breeettt”) hit us.
We didn’t call Lars, Lars. We called him Two-Blue. He got this name because one day we set his supersuit on fire while he was still in it. We had this swift idea from my old college dorm days of trying to ignite Lars’ gas with a Zippo lighter. Unlike a Bic lighter, which doesn’t stay on, a Zippo stays on, and it’s nice and heavy, so it stays upright on the floor. So one day, we set the Zippo on the floor under Lars’ ass. During the first two reps, nothing happened, but at rep number three, we achieved liftoff. We expected a nice, big, blue flame. But we didn't expect two of them. At once. It must of been some interaction between the superunderpants and the supersuit diverting the methane into two distinct jet streams.
Too bad Too Blue didn't have 500 on the bar - he really did explode out of the hole. At the top of the rep, he told us: “I must have pulled a muscle because my ass feels like it’s on FIRE.” Of course, it was. So, we had a problem. Lars was on fire. We’re laughing our asses off. No water bottle. But I did have this jug of nasty goopy stuff made up of water, MCT oil, Crystal Light, baking soda, and protein powder. So I unscrewed the top and splashed it on Lars’ burning ass. It was bad.
The terrible thing about bodybuilding is that everybody has a fart story. Soy-protein fart stories. Milk-protein fart stories. Egg, oh yes, especially egg fart stories. Let me tell you why I know that homeopathy is a real science. Homeopathy is supposed to work like this: you take this substance, and you remove all the active molecules from it, and what you have left is a resonance, like a kind of shadow of the original substance which imparts the same effect. So, homeopathic testosterone is water that has a resonance of testosterone. Now, take an egg white. You take your whole egg, crack it open, remove the yolk. Throw the yoke away. Now what you have left is the egg white, which you eat. But your egg white has a homeopathic egg-yolk resonance still in it. Which is why when you rip off an egg-white fart, you smell the eggy-sulfur stench even though you didn’t eat that yolk. Amazing, ain’t it? Sometimes you can’t quite believe it’s yours. This is something to think about the next time you stand beside a 300lb off-season bodybuilder, and he’s bragging that he eats 10,000 calories a day.
Okay, before I tell you about the worst, I gotta tell you the middle one, which was worse than just bad. This happened about ten years ago, during one summer in Venice when a bunch of amateur bodybuilders were all dieting for their various contests. And for some weird reason, most of the supermarkets were selling this fresh white fish called orange roughy, with seemingly no fat in it (more on this later), very cheap, less than two dollars a pound. Chicken and turkey were both double in price.
My friend Gail ate at least two pounds of orange roughy a day, along with rice and lettuce. She kept trying to tell me that there was something weird about her diet, but for some reason, I wasn’t listening closely, but we (notice the plural) were about to find out how weird.
Near the back door at Gold’s in Venice was THE mirror. Every gym has one. The mirror that had the tiniest bit of flattering distortion, and the natural light hit the spot just so, so all the precontest bodybuilders would show off in front of it. And of course, all the gym members would gather around behind the posing bodybuilder, looking in the mirror, too. So one day, Gail was there at the mirror. Gail was a lousy bodybuilder—narrow shoulders, wide hips, never-could-get-cut legs. But she had outstanding abs. Killer abs. The perfect six-pack. You could place a quarter in her abs, and she could hold it there above her navel in that vertical cut. Gail would always throw one ab pose in at the end of a workout, which always ended with ab work, to show off and impress all the newbies in the gym. Right hand behind her head, left hand hiking her T-shirt up to below her tits. Gym shorts rolled below the navel. Left leg out, off to the side. Crunched down hard. The classic ab shot.
If, when she crunched the ab shot, all you heard was the fart sound, I would’ve never remembered it. If it were only that fishy smell when she broke wind, I wouldn’t have remembered it. No, it was worse. A small crowd was gathered around, and she crunched the ab shot. As farts go, it wasn’t terribly loud. And as fart smells go, it wasn’t terribly rank, but usually only my two cats could generate that kind of fishy fart. No, what made this fart memorable was the totally unexpected small stream of undigested orange roughy fish oil dripping down the back of her right leg from under her pant leg. I came to the rescue. Some bystander yelled, “Yo, your steroid shot is leaking.” If only... “Gail, take my sweatshirt.” “I’m not cold,” she said. And I whispered into her ear: “Gail, you just blew a wet fart down the back of your leg. Wipe it up, tie the sweatshirt around your waist, and walk away. I’ll stand behind you.” And we did. As we walked away, she said, “I told you something was weird. At least I wasn’t in bed this time.” Gail stayed away from the mirror for a while. And switched to chicken.
My bodybuilder friend Eric got shot a few weeks ago in the stomach. We’re talking about a bullet, not a syringe. The whole bit: ambulance, hospital, numerous surgeries. For the next few months, he has to wear a colostomy bag. What this is, if you don’t know, is when they make a detour away from your butthole, and all your crap dumps into a plastic bag, which in Eric’s case is hanging right in the center of his stomach. Every so often, he has to empty the bag, kind of like what they do with RV’s at a campsite. Can it get any worst than this? Oh, yes. Because, ever since he got shot, everything he eats gives him...gas. Except peanut brittle, which he is, by now, sick of. How he figured out that peanut brittle is gas neutral, I have no idea. Now remember, the gas can’t get out the usual back door. So it builds up in the bag. Which, remember, is right in front of his stomach. So as the hours go by, Eric looks like he’s getting pregnant. So he has to aspirate the bag. Deflate the bag. Or else. Can it get any worst than this? Again, oh, yes.
The beauty of a regular fart is that it escapes low and out the back. So by the time it reaches a nose, it has dissipated. Not so when 500 cc’s of trapped gas (the typical fart is only 50 cc’s in volume) is stored less than 2 feet from a nose, which is where Eric’s was. Eric’s options were limited. He could have worn a snorkel. But on that fatal day (I’m getting ahead of myself again), Eric remembered the match trick. Yes, you know it well—someone passes an unusually ripe one, someone lights a match, and somehow (I’m not quite sure of the physics involved) between the flame and the sulfur of the match, like magic, the bad smell is gone. This was Eric’s plan when he was sitting in his friend’s white-wall, white carpet, white-sofa living room. Need I go on? For some of you, yes, which is why I told you about Lars, as it was a premonition of the dreadful things to come. Luckily, I was not there when the shit grenade went off. But I have seen TV-newsreel footage of the Hindenburg, the hydrogen blimp that torched itself decades ago. Two-Blue had generated two large flames with only about one-fifth the explosive power of 500 cc’s of trapped methane gas.
Eric lit the match. He aspirated the bag. I’d like to describe the condition of the living room (which if it weren’t so stinky could have been called “splatter art”), but I don’t want to gross you all out. Lucky for me, I was in the adjoining hall at the time, so I didn’t get hit. Eric shouts, “Am I on fire?” “No,” says I, “but you are covered with caca.” It happened a week ago. And his eyebrows and eyelashes are beginning to grow back. So the next time you hear the term “killer fart,” you’ll know there is such a thing. I thought it couldn’t have been worse, but Eric had this to say: “Thank God I wasn’t eating peanut brittle. Otherwise there would’ve been...shrapnel; I could have put my own eye out.”
