The Gastronomical Inferno: Part One

My Los Angeles health club looks like an enchanting pleasure dome, an extravaganza of taut, sweaty bodies scandalously exposed in spandex tights contorting on space-age cardio machines, oil-slicked skin shrouded in a synthetic fog of dry ice colored by the dizzying splash of lavender disco lights. Tribal drum music plays loudly. Bottled water flows freely, as if from some Elysian spring, over burnished flesh. The communal purgation appeals to me. My fellow cardio junkies and I are so self-abandoned, free, and euphoric, liberated in our gym paradise.

But right next to our workout heaven is a gastronomical inferno, one of those all-you-can-eat buffets, part of a chain, which is, to my lament, sprouting all over Los Angeles. I despise the buffet, a trough for people of less discriminating tastes who saunter in and out of the restaurant at all hours, entering the doors of the eatery without shame and blind to all the gastrointestinal and health-related horrors that await them. Many of the patrons cannot walk out of their cars to the buffet but have to limp or rely on canes, walkers, wheelchairs, and other ambulatory aids, for it seems a high percentage of the customers are afflicted with obesity, diabetes, arthritis, gout, hypothalamic lesions, elephantiasis, varicose veins and fleshy tumors. Struggling and wheezing as they navigate across the vast parking lot that leads to their gluttonous sanctuary, they seem to worship the very source of their disease.

PART TWO    PART THREE PART FOUR

Comments

[Ed S.]

I know what you mean, but I like to occasionally strap on the old feedbag at the local Grand China Garden (is that the one you have in mind?) or Soup Plantation, and so far, I'm not obese. Now, that "Home Buffet" place is another story. Yech.

[Jeff McMahon]

I was referring to Home Town Buffet next to LA Fitness. True stories I'll be writing about it.

[Ed S.]

Yeah that Homestyle Buffet is a horror, but those "big eaters" who go there are addicted. I think they know they are paying a price in their long-term health for their short-term pleasure. I knew when I was smoking.
But, ah... we choose our bad stuff and hope we dont pay the price. Choosing to live here in LA, for instance, you and I chose higher rates of respiratory disease, due to the pollution. (Children raised in LA have 15% less lung capacity.) There is no Risk-free life.

[herculodge]

Though I think the South Bay has clean air relative to Los Angeles. No?

[Ed S.]

Have you ever taken off or landed at LAX or Long Beach? Most days there is a goopy brown cloud that covers everything, the beach included.

[herculodge]

I'm sure it's a reality I'd rather not confront. I worry too much as it is. I rarely fly. But I do believe you.