News You Can't Use: Injured SoulCycle Rider Files the Latest Legal Action Over Indoor Cycling

Exercise is hard and people are soft, so it doesn't take a nine hour certification class in "soul cycle" to figure out there will be a certain amount of friction when the fat-body converges with "Take your seat off! Are you going to quit? Are you a loser?" As the All-American obesity dangles precariously over the missing seat it takes a strong hand to guide the softie to success without completely destroying the so-called "feelings" of you weak meat-bags. Clearly, this balancing act is not for everyone and the result is nuisance lawsuits filed by protoplasm blobs who needed a coach to help them work out on a stationary bike for some reason.

SoulCycle has raced into the hearts of the Hollywood elite, but a first-time rider says she was injured because an instructor bullied her and now the company is facing the latest in a series of lawsuits filed since it was purchased by mega-gym Equinox in 2011. 

Apparently your favorite actress can't pedal on her own, what a scandal. Meanwhile it's time for "bullying," the new catch-all for any undesirable interaction, from the mega-gym. You take a mortal exer-bike man and put him in control. Watch him become a god, watch fatties middles a'roll.

Carmen Farias is suing SoulCycle and instructor Angela Davis — who is a bit of a celebrity herself — for gross negligence, according to the complaint filed May 31 in L.A. County Superior Court.

As a bit of a celebrity in my own right I have to say "Oh wow" to all of this.

She says the lack of instruction, design of the bike, volume of the music and darkness of the room contributed to injuries that continue to cause her physical and mental pain and suffering.

This is the kind of "spinning" instructor I'd probably be. "All right you Christmas hams, time to sweat thick yellow fat from every pour." *turns out lights, cranks up Motorhead, uses a cycle with an inferior ergonomic design* Rock and roll.

She says she had never been to a spinning class of any kind and, while she had ridden a traditional bicycle before, she had not engaged in a physical fitness regimen for several years.

Doctors now recommend you exercise at least once every several years, preferably in a b.s. "This is Sparta!" atmosphere.

An unnamed employee helped Farias clip into her cycle, but no one ever showed her how it worked or warned her not to get out of the seat while the flywheel was spinning.

Fudging exercise bikes, how do they work? Why are all spinning coaches liars?

As class began, Davis turned the music up and the lights down, so the room “was cast into a shadowy darkness."

As opposed to shadowy bright sunlight, I guess.

During the ride, Farias could hear instructors “mocking some of the other riders” because they weren’t keeping up with the pace.

I'm pretty sure you deserve to be mocked simply for participating in this goofy farce, whether you can keep the pace or not.

When her legs began to weaken and she tried to stop pedaling, she says Davis ridiculed her for slowing down and someone — possibly Davis — barked at the riders that “we don’t take breaks.”

Voices from out of nothing with unknown ownership, deep darkness, this is less a fitness fad and more an evil coven.

"The shame caused Carmen to momentarily attempt to pedal faster."

It's almost like it has a motivational quality, hard as this is to believe.

Farias says she quickly realized she needed to stop, but didn’t know how.

Some of that Jetsons "Stop this crazy thing!" up in here.

“Although her head and torso were now lying to the right side of the spinning cycle, Carmen’s left and right foot remained locked to the pedals.”

The end result resembled a parade float.

The momentum of the flywheel kept the pedals turning and her left ankle was repeatedly dislocated, she claims, leaving her "catastrophically injured."

You and I have a very different definition of "catastrophe." 

I ain't even playin' doe.

She says she completed and signed the new rider waiver form, but left it on her desk at work and any waiver she may have signed while checking in at the Beverly Hills studio in is a violation of public policy and unenforceable because SoulCycle failed to provide her with a copy.

The boring contract law that will, after lots of wasted time and money, ultimately defeat this nuisance lawsuit.

SoulCycle has a cult following and Davis is building one of her own. She has more than 41,000 followers on Instagram, and A-listers from Lea Michele to Kerry Washington have tweeted their praise of the instructor — oh, and Oprah celebrated her 60th birthday with a spin led by Davis.

Popularity automatically makes you a good person.

SoulCycle is also currently facing a potential class action lawsuit from customers who are unhappy with its policies regarding the expiration dates on pre-paid packages of classes. 

Still more legitimate than the Trump University lawsuit.

Full Article.

Aaron Zehner is the author of "The Foolchild Invention" available in paperback and e-book format. Read free excerpts here and here.

Which Way Books #2: Vampires, Spies and Alien Beings

After a potential hollow earth adventure ended by playing it safe and avoiding danger it's back to Which Way Books. They're what I'd imagine the Choose Your Own Adventure series would have resembled if it had been produced by East Germans. You've got stark, utilitarian prose, tons of White space where words or illustrations probably should be but are absent in a masterstroke of bleak, modernist art and a quality that veers from pretty good to "There are two doors, which one?" making up an entire page. For all its obvious shortcomings, there's a certain charm to this series. Like that Soviet bloc product, you get the feeling that with everything that was stacked against the makers, including their own considerable limitations, the moderately serviceable final result still represents the best that could be hoped for. On days when the kommissar is there it can aspire to even greater heights than, "well, that's something."

Compare that to Twist-a-Plot, where clearly talented people were involved but they just didn't care and had a massive amount of contempt for their potential readers. I'll take my entire page with two sentences on it, thanks, as long as those two sentences aren't full of terrible, suspension of disbelief shattering attempts at comedy.

You know what, maybe we should just start reading this book.

Today it would be vampires, factory owners and kinky billionaires.

With all the artistry of a Minsk apartment building I'm informed I won the "Grin Toothpaste Sweepstakes." That's pretty much it as far as that goes: no attempts to expand on the concept, no jokes about consuming thousands of tubes of the stuff en route to this amazing triumph, nothing. The only reason it's even mentioned is to provide a fig of explanation for what follows and having served that purpose we just move on. Nice.

The big prize is a trip to a movie lot, but before I can start watching amusing celebrity meltdowns there's crazy noises and the sort of glow that suggests imminent alien abduction. The guide is all "Oh no, it happened!" which might be more understandable in the face of a tantrum from a bankable star than this madness.

The explanation, as you probably already guessed, is the studio created a machine that turns fantasy into reality. Yeah, just let this idea wash over you. One thing you have to say about Which Way, they never met a high concept too ridiculous. "Turn on the reality machine, we need to create glistening blood-suckers of high school age!" Sounds a lot more sensible than endless remakes. 

I feel the Killer Goalie story should be told to every new generation.

The bottom line is we're caught in the "Reality Warp," which sounds more like what happens after a six pack of beer than a science fiction concept. An attempt to run, clearly the best weapon against the very fabric of our world being torn open in pursuit of an off-brand E.T. knockoff, fails when I crash into an invisible barrier and am confronted by three "grays." For some reason the book let's you simply walk away from this inescapable mess to see the vampire movie area, so I do that. 

I end up in a dark classroom where stern Mr. Draco (Man, Harry Potter stole from everything, no matter how humble and forgettable) and am instructed to take a seat. I'm informed by a classmate that the one I selected used to belong to "Charlie" but he was murdered the night before. Well, it's not like he's going to need it, then. 

  If Dracula had studied liberal arts instead of business.

The school day goes by without result and it's pretty clear this part was written to stand alone and then shoe-horned into the "Movie comes alive!" conceit to fill pages. The "reality warp" and movie lot tour have been forgotten and this is all described as banal and ordinary. The teacher wants me to stay after, since I'm new and all. The meeting is going down when halfway through there's a horrible odor. Yeah, creatures of the night were a little different before they discovered their love for erotic tie-up games. I'm given a chance to bolt, but honestly this book is robbing me of my will to resist and I'd kind of like to wrap things up.

Draco denies that there is any smell, which of course confirms that he's the origin. Then I get dizzy and pass up. Yup, they really missed the boat on the concept of vampires using their horrible personal hygiene to get their victims as the centerpiece of the new, totally lame mythology recent years produced.

I treat my hundreds of employees very well.

I wake up in a graveyard and, hey, it's Lisa! Remember her? Well no, in a nice continuity error the route I took to get here contained no references to this character, who apparently was another student that disappeared. I forgive the mistake. When you have to churn out dozens of words a day to write one of these it's easy to see how this might happen. Anyway, she's basically offering to turn me into a vampire, but I'm apparently so slow on the uptake that I just "feel strange" about this whole arrangement.

I tell her to put in the fangs and that's what happens. I'm given the dark gift and become an undying monster. Still, I'm an optimist to the last, realizing this means no more "decimal points" or being told not to stay up late. Sorry kid, if you're going to become an industrialist like most of the undead you're gonna need that long division. 

All amazing.

I didn't like this one. It seems likely that the author couldn't manage the 3,000 words required to produce a full Which Way Book and just combined some failed, poorly edited fragments with the "reality warp" nonsense providing the link. It doesn't really auger well for this series that this sort of almost unbelievable laziness is already happening two books in. I also didn't like how clueless to obvious genre elements my character was. This isn't a zombie movie ("Some kind of ghoul...or walker? I don't know!") so there's really no excuse.

Maybe the "aliens" and "spies" portions were better, but I'd bet a shiny nickel against it.

  Mars needs suburbanites. 

Aaron Zehner is the author of "The Foolchild Invention" available in paperback and e-book format. Read free excerpts here and here.

News You Can't Use: Driver Who Asked Jesus To Take The Wheel Hit Motorcyclist

Holding on to the wheel of a car is extremely difficult and painful, the sort of long dark night that often forces one to offer sincere prayers to the Creator of the Universe. That or just tell the Unmoved Mover to take the wheel because you think you saw a mostly undamaged Frito in the cracks of the passenger side seat and diving after that is more important than, say, not turning your car into a deadly weapon. Into this equation add a motorsickle riding organ donor with their patented "Eh, looks like I'm gonna die" attitude and you have the sort of story guaranteed to offend everyone except nihilist mass transit riders and who really cares about them.

Usually when someone says “Jesus take the wheel” it’s meant to help them through a rough patch in life.

That or when the Mexican racing team needs to switch drivers at the halfway point.

But police say an Indiana woman took the phrase literally on July 11th, when she took her hands off the steering wheel as she was driving.

If there's one disclaimer that belongs on almost every spiritual issue, it's "don't take this literally."

The Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette reports 25-year-old Prionda Hill told authorities she let go of the wheel because “God told her he would take it from here.”

"Okay Prionda, I'm done creating that nebula from nothing and populating a planet a few million light years from Earth with a complete ecosystem, I guess my "CEO of the Universe" duties can wait while I help you out with various banal tasks."

Unfortunately for Anthony Olivery, her car veered off the road and slammed into his motorcycle, throwing him to the ground. Then the car ran over him.

Clearly "bad luck" is the culprit and not almost unbelievable stupidity.

“When I looked at that bumper and looked at that tire, I told myself, today is the day you die,” he told the paper.

Ordinarily I'd be skeptical of this stoic calm in the face of death, but again, motorsickle rider. Every time you get on that "hog" you must be thinking "Yeah, this will probably kill me. I'm fine with that" while making sure to evade those tyrannical helmet laws.

The accident broke all of Olivery’s ribs on his left side, cut his spleen, bruised his kidney and caused severe injuries to his left arm and leg.

It was the least serious motorcycle accident that we have a record of.

Hill kept on going, according to court records, hitting a pickup truck twice and only stopping when her car crashed into an island between two fast food restaurants several blocks away from where she struck Olivery. Officials say she told officers she had a prescription for Vicodin.

So she's basically a dopehead and this cover story about "Take the wheel, Jehovah!" was the best excuse her addled mind could create on short notice.

This is some solid irony.

Hill was arrested and charged with failure to stop after an accident and criminal recklessness with a deadly weapon.

Sorry we added a bunch of irrelevant shaggy dog nonsense to a very straightforward "scumbag does drugs, injures man on sui-cycle" story.

Full Story.

Komment Korner   

I blame Hollywood for giving weak minds the idea that "magic" actually happens.

Probably a senior Obama adviser

What's up with the title of this article referencing Jesus. Obama clearly stated that "we are no longer a Christian nation". The article itself only references God. The separation between Church and Everything Else has been violated here.

The problem here is bad theology.

Piglosi is a hypocrite, and so are her defenders... IE YOU

Check Out My Books!

Aaron Zehner is the author of "Posts from the Underground," now available in paperback and e-book. Read free excerpts here and here.

His first novel "The Foolchild Invention" is also available in paperback and e-book format. Read free excerpts here and here.