Benny Jay: A Night At The Club

At eight o'clock I drive over to the health club. I'd been planning to go there all night. But the phone kept ringing and one call led to another and by seven I didn't have the energy to move. I thought about skipping my work out. But I figure -- I'm paying for this membership, might as well use it.

To tell you the truth, I'm not really a health-club kind of guy. Usually just run in the park. But my Younger Daughter needed a track to run during the winter and they were offering a deal and so in November, in the midst of the worst economic breakdown since the Great Depression, I signed up. If there's a dumber man in America, I haven't met him....

It's nearly empty when I get there. All the yuppies have gone home. I drag myself up to the running track and push myself through a mile and a half. I pick up the dumbbells and go through the motions of lifting them. And that's it. I'm so freaking tired I can barely keep my eyes open.

I walk to the locker room and head to the back to wash up and there's this fat, hairy naked guy blocking the ways. He's standing at the center mirror, his faced lathered with shaving cream, and he's talking on the phone. He's really loud, too. He's talking to some guy named Larry. He's going: "Larry, Larry -- listen to me, Larry...."

I don't want to listen but he's so loud I have no choice. I don't want to stare. But I can't resist. It's not often you see a guy this fat and that naked talking on the phone while shaving.

I take my shower. I put on my clothes and I'm heading for the door when I pass the big-screen locker-room TV and I see some guy is interviewing Craig Ferguson, the late-night talk show hows. So you have one talk-show host interviewing another talk-show host. I look closer at the interviewer and I think: Isn't that Michael Eisner? Yes, that is Michael Eisner. What's he doing with a cable-TV talk show? And how did I not know that he was doing this? I'm usually up on these things. And why would he even want to host a cable-TV talk show? You figure a big shot like Eisner -- former head of Walt Disney and all -- would want to do the talking, not the listening. I mean, Ferguson should be interviewing Eisner; that would make a lot more sense. And you can see that Eisner looks impatient, almost irritated, like it's a deal-pitch meeting and he can't wait for Ferguson to get to the point.

I sit in the big, soft, comfy leather chair to listen. The camera keeps zooming in and out focusing on Ferguson's hands. Sometimes it focuses on Eisner's hands. It's starting to annoy me. What's with the camera zooming in on the hands.....

I must have drifted off. I snap awake to see that Ferguson's gone and Eisner's interviewing Stan Lee, the old comic book artist. He's got to be like, I don't know, a million years old. But he's all peppy and full of big ideas. He's telling Eisner that he's got about a zillion projects going at once, including a comic-book movie featuring Paris Hilton. Eisner keeps asking these patronizing questions, like where does a man your age find his energy to have so many deals, like the old fart should be in a nursing home or something. I can see Eisner's really envious of Lee, like he's thinking: What the hell am I doing hosting this stupid cable-TV talk show? I should be making deals with Paris Hilton. I'm Michael freakin' Eisner!

The fat guy walks by. He's still talking on the phone -- talking to Larry -- but at least he's dressed.

Then and there I decide that I'm gonna be like Stan Lee as I grow old. I'll have a million projects, including deals with starlets, going at once. I feel a burst of energy -- my first burst of energy all day. Forget the economic depression -- my life's just getting started.