Some Monday weirdness + happy birthday, Jack LaLanne

I was going to play it straight today with a plain ol' video and some "fresh start Monday!" jibber-jabber, but I was also going to stop my drinking for the weekend after the (AMAZING) Saints-Texans game yesterday. Instead, I found myself talking to some new friends over Manhattans at a swanky hotel bar with Little Richard in the house (he was hangin' -- no big deal), and I learned about this little oddity, "Color Me Beautiful." So here we are.



C'est bizarre, non?

Workout video parodies are pretty old hat, yes, but mix it with an art-school director (Christian Simmons for Savannah College of Art and Design) and some aggressive, symbolically dubious blasts of paint, and you get "Color Me Beautiful."

Could it be a satire of the media's assault on women's beauty ideals? A surreal deconstruction of workout-video clichés? (My favorite bit on that front: "Without a little motivation in your life, you can quickly become a pool of stagnant drain water, collecting the polluted runoff of everyday life.") What about an unsettling allegory of existentialism?

Whatever. It's great to start off Monday with your best-shot earnestness, yes, but sometimes you need a little cheeky weirdness to get there.

If that's not enough to get your week off to an interesting start, go over to www.jacklalanne.com and do some Trimnastics, 'cos it's Jack LaLanne's birthday! The Godfather of Fitness, one of the sassosphere's oldest and brightest stars, would have turned 97 today. The man dedicated his life to superb health and fitness, and he all but invented the workout video. Do yourself a favor and celebrate Jack LaLanne Day with a half-hour of "The Jack LaLanne Show." It can only lead to good!