Finally, A Use For Cake Fear
There’s something about the Richard Simmons Show that makes repeated exposure to it about as attractive as cheating death or selling combs to minors. Is it the host, who possesses a personal magnetism ranking just slightly below that of a relocated witness?
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Finally, A Use For Cake Fear
CREEMEDIA
THE RICHARD SIMMONS SHOW (Syndicated)
NEVER SAY DIET by Richard Simmons (Warner Books)
Rick Johnson
There’s something about the Richard Simmons Show that makes repeated exposure to it about as attractive as cheating death or selling combs to minors. Is it the host, who possesses a personal magnetism ranking just slightly below that of a relocated witness? Could it be the studio audience, a mass of grounded airships in tights rolling around on the floor like waterbeds stuffed with mittens? Or is it merely the stench of fake affection that rises from Richard and the gathered oinkers?
It’s all that and more. Of course, Simmons personally is the main crime against the senses. An ex-blob himself, Richard is now proud of his small, Gumbylike body clad in running outfits seven sizes too big. You’d probably be able to hear his stretch marks hollering “Uncle!” if it wasn’t for his wimpy/crawly voice, which sounds like Lassie whining through a kazoo.
The self-proclaimed Weight Saint almost died on a crash diet himself at age nineteen. Thanks alot, Sara Lee. The starvation left him fashionably weentzy but so sick that he shed his face and was losing hair in clumps. Impressed by this brush with death and premature baldness, he ran out and got himself a hair transplant that resembles a scale model of an amoeba being electrocuted. After that, all it took was a Carol Hensel LP, a new license plate (YRUFATT—is that cute?) and a role playing himself (ineptly) on the daytime soap General Hospital to propel himself to national attention and his own ugly program.
The format of the Simmons Show is simple enough. First, an opening sketch tahere the host—disguised as a cop, angel. Garden Weasel or whatever—stops actual pudgos on the street and offers to negotiate a settlement of the war games being fought beneath their caftan.
Then we cut to the studio, where ruffage-face talks briefly about low cal hairball-burgers, you and your carrot or sometimes, the gifts with which his adoring public shower his mailbox. All-time best gift was a plaque from a Scout troop making him an honorary cubbie. Richard’s eyes began to drip real tears, but whether it was sensitivity or his filthy thoughts of activity around the batrack was not disclosed. I believe it was this sort of thing that led small-loathsome-animals-criticlggy Riegel to coin the scientific term curlytop puppetwipe.
Exercise time is next. Simmons gets the rubber boxcars off their rears and flapping that flab in time to some hippity-hoppity disco tune. The clammy mammies eat this up, in a manner of speaking. Big Weenie puts ’em through all 16 exercises, from the shy-but-introspective tuna to the eels-at-my-feet-hop while they yelp and holler like hungry Rush fains.
Oh-oh, it’s quiz time for the fatlings. Here, the heroic sprout tries any one of several tests from his # 1 book, Never Say Diet, including the Very-Honest-And-PreferablyPainful-Image-Test, the EmptyYour-Purse-Test (is that blatant?) and the sordid What-Are-YouPutting-In-Your-Mouth-Test, on which the suspected Rod the Mod tummy pleads the Fifth.
The lights dim, a small baby blue spot picks the host’s face out from the rest of the lard and “You’ve Got A Friend” is piped in from a nearby jewelry box. That means it’s time for the dreaded Motivation Speech. As “proper mental attitude” (what a concept!) is a major part of the Simmons spiel, he excretes a few words about how wonderful, important and above all special all of his diet victims are. Well sure they are! Have you ever seen so many ballpark figures torturing their spare tires in one place at the same time? Special nothin’—that’s incredible as they say in tubesville.
Attention all blimpos! If Richard Simmons’diet plan sounds too. v. icky or you’re not quite ready for something drastic like the Lost At Sea slimdown or the Bobby Sands E-Z Weight Loss Plan, why not try the all-new Ranger TV Diet? According to the FDA, watching television burns up 80 calories per hour. That’s 1280 calories in one typical 16-hour viewing period!
Additional hints: blink your eyes a lot, change channels frequently, cross and uncross legs often (ditto for chin/hands) and most importantly, leave the TV on all night and diet in your sleep!
