Grainy Dog Porn: My Secret Hobby

I first thought about using a Hula Hoop to get fit back in the late '90s when, unable to afford a gym membership, I decided that dropping $20 on a cheap hoop and a copy of ABBA GOLD held the promise of a tight booty and daily endorphin rushes. While that didn't quite take at the time, a couple of years ago, I got a very cool hoop, bigger and heavier than the toy Hula Hoops, and I started working out with it. Again, I put it down. Do we see a pattern here? But this past NYE, one of my resolutions was to start hooping again, every day, and save for one day so far I have kept that vow daily since January 1st.

It's got a built-in bonus, one that dovetails nicely with another resolution. I'm so addicted to audiobooks that I realize I had been neglecting my substantial (by my standards) music collection. I wasn't making time for music even though music is more than an important part of my life, it's crucial to my mental well-being. (I think I just read an Oliver Sacks' piece about how the brain processes music. I'll let you go dig up that link.) So now, for at least 20 minutes every morning-- sometimes longer-- I listen to excellent tunes and hoop it up. It's a serious workout. I let shuffle do must of the deejaying for me, though sometimes I will skip ahead if a song isn't conducive to some hard swiveling. M. Ward has a couple of excellent hoop tunes (Chinese Translation, Never Had Nobody Like You). The White Stripes (My Doorbell), Elvis P. (A Little Less Conversation, Viva Las Vegas), Elvis C. (Indoor Fireworks, Uncomplicated), Mickey Avalon (My Dick, Jane Fonda), The Wainwrights (Rufus and Martha), The Who... and the list goes on and on-- Magnetic Fields, Southpaw Jones, the Carpenters, the aforementioned ABBA, Modest Mouse, and-- maybe my two favorite hoop tunes-- an old Arcade Fire tune I don't know the name of but which was the triumphant anthem of my last divorce and Big Audio Dynamite's Medicine Show.

Here's how it looks when I bust out the hoop. Bubbles, as ever, doesn't give a shit. Rebound gets a horror stricken look on her prehistoric fish face and huddles, often with her back turned, as if the swinging hoop has descended from outer space to kidnap her and express her anal glands with some Martian probe. Dante will lie, majestically and sphinx-like, watching unblinking as the hoop twirls round and round. And Tatum-- ah, Tatum. Curiously enough, Tatum likes to lie right AT MY FEET when I hoop. She seems to enjoy the hoop swinging around over her head. Or maybe it's just that she's getting old and very clingy and maybe her cataracts prevent her from even noticing the hoop.

Everything will be humming along, I'll be belting out the My Dick lyrics explaining to Dante how I am much better endowed than he is, when suddenly, there comes a shift. Bubbles, Little Miss Not Interested, will decide it is time for a round of Tatum domination. Bubbles does this fairly regularly-- hops on Tate's back and starts humping her neck wildly. But she is especially driven to action under two particular circumstances: when there is live theramin music in the room (more often than you might think) and when I am hooping. Recently, shuffle pulled up Marvin Gaye singing Let's Get It On and, as if she could hear the song and decided to take it as her cue, Bubbles mounted and some great dog porn ensued. Not wanting to break from my calorie burning, but yes wanting to capture the magnificence of this event for the six of you, I went ahead and shot this video while simultaneously hooping. I know, I know-- damn I'm good.

I call it Grainy Dog Porn and I think the bad lighting, shaky camera, and in-and-out-of-frame swinging hoop technique deserves some kind of award, don't you?