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.
