I
force my fatass like to work out at Planet Fitness in North Dallas after work several days a week.
The first part of my routine is to spend 30 minutes on an elliptical machine in front of a bank of TV screens. I generally only listen to my iPod if there is absolutely nothing semi-good to watch on one of the 5 TV stations that I can see from the ellipticals: Discovery, TNT, Univision, ABC (local WFAA), and one of those cable news stations, probably MSNBC. Each elliptical has a little box where you can plug in your headphones and listen to terrestrial radio or tune to the audio for one of the 8 TV stations they have over your head in a row. They have about 16 TVs mounted in a single line tuned to stations 1-8 and then repeating the stations 1-8 so that each zone of cardio equipment has an OK view of many different stations (except for the ellipticals in the corner where we can really only see the last 5 stations).
(This is not a picture from my gym but the layout is similar except they may have more TVs than we do at North Dallas)
TNT is ALWAYS Law & Order from 5-6pm during the week and I will generally only watch that if it's one of the newer ones but I don't get to the gym until around 5:30 after work so I'm stuck with the trial part of every episode. And the only DA pairing that I like is Sam Waterston and Angie Harmon. I love me some Angie Harmon. It's very difficult to watch a Law & Order that's already in progress because you've missed The Crime. When I was a child, I thought the name of the show was "The Crime" because my dad would be in an all-fired hurry to get the TV set up so they could watch the show - "Hurry or we'll miss The Crime!" Twenty years later, as a sometimes-watcher of L&O, I can totally agree that the show is worthless if you've missed The Crime. Bones starts at 6:00pm on TNT on most weeknights but I only get to watch the first 6 minutes of it before I'm done on the elliptical which is very disappointing because I adore Bones (and David Boreanaz except even he couldn't save that train wreck of a show that was Angel).
Discovery does this weird thing where they don't play the same thing at 5:00 or 5:30 every weeknight. It bugs me. Often it is Cash Cab and I've taken to watching that. It's still very difficult for me not to blurt out the answer which makes people around me look at my funny because they, of course, can't hear the question. Sometimes Mythbusters is on Discovery and I do love Mythbusters. BUT - sometimes it's one of those West Orange Coast County Chopper type shows and I cannot stand them so no Discovery Channel for me that day.
MSNBC always has the ED Show on and I don't know who that guy is or what his deal is but it's rather annoying. So no MSNBC for me.
ABC is The Evening News with Diane Sawyer. I don't like watching the news because it's rather depressing and there's not near enough fart jokes so I generally avoid that.
Univision. I don't speak maid. I can read it a little but no way do I know what's going on in a Mexican Novela (what they call Soap Operas). And Univision at 5:00 is Novelas. 6:00 on Univision sometimes brings a variety/interview show which to my high school Spanish knowledge translates as "The Fat and the Emaciated." There's this rotund dude and this skinny girl and they do weird stuff and interview people. There's also some kind of Mexican drag queen that is an ancillary character. Don't ask me because I have no idea.
Anyway, I'm usually watching Cash Cab and when they take a commercial break, I'll look to see what else is going on on the other stations: The Crime (someone crying at trial), Diane Sawyer nodding thoughtfully, Windbag political commentary, and Mexican Novela.
The men under 50 in Mexican novelas are gorgeous. I know, the men under 50 in American soap operas are gorgeous, too, but they don't make hot, sweaty love to the camera like those Latin men do. Occasionally when I'm working out I'll see this one guy on a particular novela who is gorgeouser than all the rest, at least to me. He's obviously not anything like a main character because I see him so infrequently but he always catches my eye.
The other day, there was NOTHING on TV at the gym so I was watching Diane Sawyer squint and nod through an evening's broadcast when on the television immediately to her left I saw my new Latin lover and he had more than 2 lines in that scene. Heavy brow, smoldering brown eyes, Roman nose, and an ass for days.
Ever one to share what's going on in my brain, I posted on Facebook:
Someone was having a baby (I bet that happens weekly in a novela), somebody else was having fever, fits and flashbacks in a shack somewhere, and a bunch of other people were standing around looking like they wanted to rip each other apart, physically or sexually. One of my friends asked what the show was called because his boyfriend has been watching novelas to brush up on his Spanish. How was I supposed to know? When I got home that night, I set out to find not only the name of the novela but also the name of my yummy Latin lover.
First, I went to the Univision website. Easy enough, right? Not in the slightest. Of course, it's all in Spanish. I wasn't surprised by that but I was a little surprised that there was no button at the top or bottom of the site to switch over to English. How inconsiderate of them. I lamented to Michael and he reminded me that when you search on Google, you can have the page pulled up as a translation so I did that and it was not much help. I couldn't find a schedule of shows and there are a million novelas listed to wade through. They did have a link to male actors in novelas. Google-translated into English, the link said "Myocardial" which I am guessing is what "heartthrob" in Spanish turns into when translated literally to English. The link was no help because my lover is not a main character.
Then we tried to search through the program guide through the cable box. The only problem is that 5-6 on local Univision is always a news program. So we looked up some names of novelas that had played recently and I started Google-Image searching for cast photos. I found one group picture that I thought might be him but couldn't be sure and it was already embiggened to 200%. Then I remembered that the logo I see at the gym says "Univision by Dish Network" so I went to TVGuide.com and pulled up a schedule for Dish network in Dallas. Lo and behold, Dish not only carries the local Univision affiliate but also the international channel which replays novelas and series where local stations insert their own content. After at least an hour of searching everywhere, Paydirt.
The show is called "Mar de Amor" or "Sea of Love" in English. I don't remember ever seeing the sea. Maybe it's more of a creek. Then it took me about 20 more minutes of fancy Googling to come up with my lover's name.
Arturo Carmona.
Rolls off your tongue, doesn't it?
(click any image to embiggen.)
And...I happened upon a rather racy compilation video someone put together. I won't post it here but the link is here:
Arturo gets busy.
Myocardial, indeed. I think I just had an infarction.
