Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER
#1 Originally I became obsessed with weight training after I saw Arnold Schwarzenegger in ‘To Kill a Painter’. I don’t really understand what the appeal was, but I suspect it had something to do with his accent, a kind of Scandinavian American cross that often had one struggling to understand what the hell he was saying. Anyway, bizarrely, the plot of the movie had nothing to do with killing a painter, yet everything to do with the history of “Art through the Ages,” a seminal secondary school textbook for students of art. It covered everything from painting, sculpture, architecture and history itself – religious and philosophical. I can clearly remember the scene when Arnold looks quizzically at the painter, a forlorn, out of work artist and asks, “assisted lift may be required.” “Vat does dis mean?” And then the poor fellow, a young Cezanne, having to explain the meaning, which by the way, had nothing to do with catching a lift to the Men’s department, which was precisely where the scene was set. Kind of like a ‘Are you Being Served’ setting. A stuffy, old fashioned, department store with old queens preening themselves and looking down their noses at anyone who dared requiring assistance. Ah, there we are, back at the assisting part of the story. All in all, it was quite dreary, a washed-out grey palette of a visual and lacking any details as interesting as a space capsule with all the buttons, lights and beepers, over stimulating your brain.
#2 The Japanese have a saying; what goes up must come down. Well that’s right, open an umbrella and bingo, you stop the rain on your head, but at some stage the rain stops, and the brolly goes down.
#3 Next minute, the rain comes again and up goes the umbrella, it’s a never-ending cycle, which is a bit like the movie. It went on and on, over the centuries, giving amazing insights culturally and spiritually into the world that we humans have created. But how does it end you may ask?
#4 I couldn’t make it out at first – what was it that Cezanne and Arnold have in common? Other than engaging in delightful, incomprehensible dialogue, it suddenly dawned on me. Blue eyes, they both have blue eyes! Now you might ask, what does that have to do with my obsession with weight training. Well when,
#5 I couldn’t find the switch to bring me back to reality, having just experienced the most heart rendering break-up, I knew I needed to change things up. Now I’ve always hated a few things physically about the opposite sex.
1/ facial hair
2/ fat fingers
3/ body builders’ physiques
#6 It was brilliant. I thought, ok, now you must face your demons. You must find a new lover – one who looked like Arnie Schwarzenegger, has fat fingers and sports a hipster, barista toting beard. Well do you think that anyone of that description existed on this planet. Yeah, you’re thinking right, no siree! But then, riding home one night, past the vaults on Flinders Street, out stepped the most beautiful man I have ever seen from the hardcore, Doherty’s City Gym. And yes, you guessed it, great muscle tone, fattish fingers, a super cute goatee and blue eyes to boot! Best of all, Arnie Number 2 and I, have lived happily after ever since.