Spore on the Floor

So imagine you're a well-heeled fitness buff running late for your aerobic drumming class. You make it to the club in time, but when you get upstairs the music is already thumpin', so you grab a pair of sticks and fall into a tense, constricted rhythm. That's when you spot ME. Rumpled and expressionless, I loiter about the edges of the workout space with all the enthusiasm of a third shift worker waiting on a factory bus. By then you're half wondering if I'm even real, until you see me swing that fish-eye right atcha. My fingers twitch, my eyebrows tighten and suddenly you worry I'm zooming in on the very body part you're working so hard to reduce...

What do you do, hotshot? WHAT DEW YEW DEW?

Well, if you're like the ladies at the 'Drums Alive!' class I crashed last night, you dig in your heels, tighten your grip and begin beating the gloss off an exercise ball. It's a good thing too, since I didn't weasel my way into an upscale health club to collect wet towels. No, I showed up ready to roll. And even though the nice instructor lady tried to beg off 'til next month, I wasn't about to leave with my lens unquenched. Not when there's a goofy new way to stay in shape. Not when fat's collapsing under the weight of bad techno. Not when there's a whole mess of reflections to play with. Not when I'm being paid to at least spray the place. Actually, that last part's not exactly accurate. I didn't spray the place...

I completely hosed it down.

Understand, a puff-piece on aerobic drumming calls for a different cinema technique than say, an inner-city stand-off. Sure, both draw a crowd, but if you go slinging a lens at a crunked-up gunman the way I did to those ladies, somebody gonna stumble away with a cap in their glass. Thus, I save my doofier moves for happier locales, where the biggest danger to the cameraman in question is a drumstick to the skull, or worse yet, a face full of mace from a camera-shy society wife. Luckily for me, nothing but the occasional glare befell me, as I invaded the personal space of total strangers all in the name of a b-block feature. Hey, I don't decide what passes for news these days. I just show up where I'm told and act like I'm welcome.

You should too.