Night shift ponderings and info-mercials with Soul.

As a night-shift emergency medical dispatcher, I frequently find myself staring blankly at after-hours infomercials.

The SlimLift, I learn, will instantly carve two dress sizes off my clearly inadequately proportioned frame. The SlimLift is a woman’s undergarment which looks not unlike an over-done pair of bike shorts that starts above the bustline and finishes at the thigh. Lumpy middles disappear in its stretchy wake. Cottage cheese can be eaten without being worn.

It must be true, because picture after picture proves it. “Before” bodies and “after” bodies parade before our tired eyeballs. We see a heavy-set woman in her thirties standing between two skinny chicks with measuring tapes. I can’t hear what they’re telling her because our audio is so choppy, and then cuts out completely whenever a rig calls on the radio (I have to believe there are larger forces at work there). But just from what I can see, the two broads are convincing the fatty to submit to some kind of fitting, so that she too can wear the SlimLift and lose two dress sizes.

Shortly, we see the before and after. The results are irrefutable. One can only assume this poor woman has been sprayed up and down with Pam, then dropped off a three-story building into her neck-to-knee control stocking to affect this kind of magic. Where the hell is my credit card?

My partner in dispatch, Dave, muses about what it must be like to pick up a woman at the bar who looks like a size five… get her home, pop the thing open and get your neck broken when it snaps open and reveals a size 14 ass. From a man’s perspective, if you live through that, then I guess you’ll feel plenty comfortable slipping off your scull weave before the two of you get down to brass tacks.

I work out a lot, but you can’t tell because I eat about 50,000 calories a day. Thereabouts.

At the gym, the elliptical machine asks for my age, starts me at the number twenty and makes me press the arrow key 14 times. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Same with weight. Starts me off at 150. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Fuck it. I’m switching to the tread mill.

At 2 o’clock in the morning, the only alternative to the world of infomercials is “Soul Train.” Now that I’m 34, and raking leaves can put me in traction for a week and a half, I see Soul Train as nothing short of a chiropractic event. It is a marathon of aerobicism (made-up word alert) and shear slap-happiness, that’s what Soul Train was.

Not a white person to be seen nor heard, and nary an earth tone, either. The 80s are apparently something we should only be reminded of when we are either half in the bag or half dead, as any normal person should be at that hour.

“Are we watching this again?” Jerry chimes in after dispatching a helicopter to St. Cloud for a heart patient. He complains, but he will watch it. We all will. We always do. When Soul Train is on, you can’t just turn away and read People or something. You can’t just not watch the mad gyrations of a generation that can’t stop doing the “Neutron Dance.” You can’t just pretend that Zubas never happened. They happened. Those who turn their backs on history are doomed to repeat it.

I’ll tell you one thing, when they bring back those pants that fit so tight on the ankle that we had to put zippers on them just to get them past our feet, I’m not going for it. Those things make my hips look like two army tanks. I also plan to just say no to hot pink for related reasons.

I’m open to leg warmers, though. What? Shut up.

I miss the 80s because I miss my 16-year-old body. I miss the summer when just walking five blocks to the gas station for smokes three times a week caused me to lose 15 pounds. I miss being whistled at/frightened by construction workers as I swished my Guess cut-offs down the road. I miss my tight skin, my flat belly.

I tell you what, nobody on Soul Train ever needed a hyper-sonic-super-fatty-neck-to-knee girdle. Hell na. Thirty minutes of that boogy-woogy-woogy every Friday night at 8 p.m. central, and you’re set, mama.

Gotta go. Solid Gold starts in five.