More follies at the Canandaigua YMCA

I’m at the vaunted Canandaigua YMCA, working out in the exercise gym.
I’m blasting silently away on the exercise-bicycle.
Channel Eight, the Rochester CBS affiliate, is on the nearest wall-mounted plasma-baby.
It’s about 12:40 p.m. when I start, in the middle of The Young and the Yammering, a soap.
Young honkey male eye-candy wanders silently into the secret boudoir of young female eye-candy, who’s sleeping under the covers of her queen-size bed.
“How ya feelin’, babes?” asks Studley.
The covers peel back, and young female eye-candy appears, strikes a pose for the camera, and says: “Oh, all right, I guess.”
“Just awfully tired.”
“Wassa matter, babes?” asks Studley. “Got mono?” (What prompted that? Makes perfect sense, doesn’t it? An entirely reasonable question: the kind I ask my wife when we wake up in the morning.)
“I don’t have time for mono,” the girl says — she looks all of 18.
“Can’t mono develop into hepatitis?”
“Sure ya ain’t pregnant?”
“Of course not; we used protection.”
“Sure did, but protection is not a 100% guarantee. I think ya should see a doctor.”
The girl gets up, fully dressed in office clothes.
“They sell test kits at the grocery,” she says; “I’d rather do that.”
“Okay, let’s you and me go to the grocery,” Studley says.
“I don’t wanna go to the grocery,” the girl says. “I don’t wanna take the test. I’m not pregnant!”
Huggypoo time! “It’ll be all right, babes,” Studley says; pat-pat. “It’ll be all right.” (Fade to black.)

1 p.m. now passes; I’m still on the exercise bike — about five more minutes.
Time for The Bold and Bellowing.
We’re in the house of a young blonde matron, who despite her sex is trying her best to look like David Bowie.
She’s about 30 or so.
Two others are with her in the house, a graying studley, and a young oriental girl in her early 20s.
“Get outta my house!” Blondie screams.
The plasma-baby is silent, so what we’re getting is closed-captioned, but all the characters are baring their canines.
Yelling and screaming and angry posturing.
Suddenly Studley wrestles the oriental out the front door and off the set; both at the same time.
Leaving Blondie alone to stew in her rage.
“Why am I doing this?” she asks.
“Because it’s in the script,” I say.

“Plasma-babies” are what my loudmouthed macho brother-in-Boston calls all high-definition wide/flat-screen TVs. Other technologies beside plasma are available, but he calls them all “plasma-babies.”