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At the gym we go to there are a line of television sets directly in front of the treadmills, and each one plays a different program. Most gyms I’ve worked out at have the same set up: rows of treadmills, stair-steppers, stationary bikes, and elliptical machines all facing a row of muted, close-captioned televisions. You know, to keep your mind off the fact that you’re actually exercising.

Anyway, most days I try to run on the machines closest to the T.V. tuned to CNN, because I’m addicted to news and if I’m gonna be running in place for thirty minutes or so I don’t want to stare at FOXNews the whole time. That’d just throw my heart rate all off kilter.

Today I got stuck on the machine closest to the T.V. playing the Jerry Springer show. I haven’t actually watched the Jerry Springer show for several years, but not out of some elitist mind-set or anything. I just didn’t think it aired anymore. That show’s great isn’t it? It’s the television equivalent of going to a county fair: no matter how bad your life sucks, at least you know you’ll see a group of people with problems that make yours look quaint. Kinda like going to Wal-Mart after midnight.

After watching the entire episode it occurred to me that I’d like to get some friends together and send in an application to appear on the show. We could concoct an outlandish story full of adultery and incest, and before we appear we could choreograph some fight moves so that we’d be good and prepared come show-time.

The way I figure it, we could conceivable pull off a couple of body slams or a few spinning kicks before the indomitable Steve interfered. And if we choreographed the whole thing properly we’d only need a few seconds to do something really impressive. If you think about it, the typical guest on that show rarely does anything truly awesome. They may tackle each other or begin slapping each other wind-mill style, but I’ve never seen anyone do something really, really cool.

The women are the worst. They talk a big game, but come go-time they usually just pull hair and claw at one another. How cliché. What we need are two females who know how to fight, and we could come up with something really cool for them to do.

Just imagine: Two girls sitting up on that dais, and one says “Bitch, the next time I come home from havin’ an abortion and find out you been sleepin’ with my boyfriend it’s yo ass!” The other replies, “You know what ho? He’s actually yo brutha, and I’ll damn well sleep with’em whenever I wanna!” Then they jump up and run at each other, and right before they meet in the middle of the stage one of them launches into a tornado kick, but because we’ve rehearsed the fight the defender knows it’s coming, so she ducks out of it and sets up for a hip-throw. She throws her attacker, who immediately rolls out of the throw, and then they square off in preparation for the amazed, but impressed, security guards to restrain them.

Wouldn’t that be fun? We’d be the coolest Jerry Springer guests ever”¦although that’s not saying a whole lot.