PAX: Goose, Honeysuckle, ANA, Popeye, Paradox
AO: Tuesday Tuff
By: Goose
At 5:12, it was just Suckle and YHC, and YHC was pondering how to give him a proper 1-1 challenge with only one bike when ANA pulled in for his second in a row this week. Popeye wasn’t too far behind, but Paradox was. (T-claps for persevering through whatever baby obstacles made him unable to leave his house until 5:20.)
Warmups of the usuals, and then we started with a light appetizer before getting into the main course–7 of diamonds around the track, rifle carrying the coupons between each corner:
-7 WW3 situps at first corner
-above, plus 14 tricep curls/presses at the second,
-all above, plus 21 curls at the third,
-all above, plus 28 block pull-throughs at the fourth (plank position, drag the block with one hand from one side of your body to the other, repeat. This created some abstract art/crop circle-esque markings for the interpretation of the culturally conscious members of The Settlement.)
Now that the blood was flowing, it was time for the main event–Name That Tune, Part 3, block-and-bike edition. The rules were as follows: a song would play with a given exercise to complete AMRAP until either someone guessed both the title and artist or a PAX was assigned and completed the bike loop (after it was clear that no one had the answers). The loop was the large loop around the newer section, up to the pool and back through the maze of dumpsters and port-a-potties.
YHC had a nice, long list of songs cued up in case we had all four human jukeboxes present (Suckle, Popeye, AB, and Teravanilli). Dox would be good for one or two showtunes or top 20 hits from 2003-2006. ANA was the wildcard, but the chances were low that a newer guy under 40 who hadn’t been exposed to the full force of the musical battle of the past months would be able to do too much damage to this curated list. There was a mix of second-or-third-most popular songs from bands who were played on the radio a lot, but not like a lot, a lot (like Gin Blossoms and Sister Hazel), but YHC knew that Popeye would have his way with those. So, we had to lean on a large number of the type of songs that everyone’s heard at least once in their lives, but either the artist or the title is on almost no one’s radar. For example, the song, “I Just Want To Celebrate”–everyone knows it, but who (besides maybe Vanilli) knows who Rare Earth is?
Dox, of course, had plenty of guesses (everyone sounds like Billy Joel, I guess), but when the third song played, his tone changed. After just a second or two, he shouted out with confidence, from the depths of his being, “Depeche Mode!” We were stunned–he was right. “Yeah, Paradox! That’s right! Amazing!” He kind of turned away and choked out, “Thanks…” When he turned back, there was the residue of a tear he had wiped away, and he was looking wistfully around the group, but his eyes weren’t searching for any of us. The truth is, his moment had come, but AB wasn’t there. It was like a child had taken his first steps, but his parents had missed it. It was hard to watch. Popeye even tried to pretend he didn’t know the next song just to give him another chance to save the group. Alas, all he could eke out was, “I’ve heard this one…I know I’ve heard this one, but…”
Thankfully, the group was distracted by ANA coming in clutch with Gnarls Barkley after having verbally given up on any chance of contributing. His heroics saved us from a lot of dips (unless Popeye also knew it…I mean, he probably did).
All said and done, it was a nice mix of superhero performances by computer-like brain units and enough stumps to give all five of us a turn on the bike and some burnt out abs.
Some exercises we did a lot more of than we wanted to: shoulder taps, WWI situps, x-factors, penguins, dying cockroaches.
YHC enjoyed the challenge of trying to find songs that these geniuses don’t know while also making the younger ‘uns feel like they’re valuable members of society. We’ll do it again soon! Thanks for playing, fellas.
SYITG,
Goose