Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Font of All Useless Knowledge

Scene: the gym, about 6:30 am this morning. I am rifling through the piles of magazines for some reading material for my elliptical session. I find the latest issue of Us Magazine (OMG Jessica Alba's post-baby diet! style tips from Lauren Conrad!) and then unearth the holy grail of gym magazines: Runner's World! I pull it out and then look quizzically at the cover. "London Marathon! Khalid Khannouch breaks his world record and sets new world record of 2:05:38!"

Wait a minute...I think. Exactly how OLD is this magazine? Haile Gebrselassie just set the world record of 2:03:59 in Berlin at the end of September and he broke the world record he set in Berlin last year!

I flip rapidly through the interior of the magazine and discover it's from July 2002. (Why a six-year-old magazine is at my gym, I have no idea.) This magazine is so old Deena Kastor is still shown as Deena Drossin!

Then I think, Oh my god...I have achieved a new level of dorkdom. Not only did I instantly know this magazine had to be hopelessly out of date because of the obsolete marathon world record on the cover, I knew the name of the current record holder, his world record time, and the race at which he ran it.

I am not sure whether to be proud of or kind of scared of the fact that I know these things.

Edited to add: ALL RIGHT I CONFESS, I LOVE CELEBRITY GOSSIP. OKAY? I'm sorry to burst y'all's bubble, but I am NOT the intellectual and cultural snob you think I am. I read Us Magazine (and OK! and In Touch when I find them) at the gym and every single day I visit my favorite celeb gossip Web site: The Superficial. I have to stay abreast of all celebrity news.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

You're hard core!

raulgonemobile said...

This post really cracked me up. Hilarious.

chia said...

hahahaha! wow! holy runners trivia batman!

Glaven Q. Heisenberg said...

Did it ever occur to you that you read the year backwards? & the rag wasn't from 2002 but really from 2002?

How're THOSE for imaginary numbers, huh?

Lookout! They're behind you!

You should put SPOILER ALERT on posts like these - I for one didn't know Jessica Alba was even having SEX, much less that she was pregnant and already had her baby! She told me she was saving herself for ME!

And furthermore ... who's Jessica Alba?

Razz said...

my favorite ones are Formula One and Popular Mechanics at my doctor's office AND he's always running late. Ugh.

tfh said...

No shame. You're up on Hollywood celebrity gossip AND running celebrity gossip. I miss the former ever since I started going to a magazine-free gym.

BeachRunner said...

Yes you CAN have it all at least on a superficial level.

Kristin said...

Hey, I'm totally about the gossip magazines at the gym. Large type, big pictures, no deep thinking, it's perfect! I can evaluate the quantity of workout time by whether I can get through the week on just the US and People from the office, or whether I have to get extra magazines from the grocery store to get by! (I save my Runners World mags for when I can really sit down and enjoy them, I don't waste them on the elliptical machine!)