Despite that whole food poisoning thing I dragged myself to Tina Thompson’s Ultimate Conditioning class at Crunch last night. You may have taken aerobics classes before but until you’ve taken a class with Tina you’ve never truly challenged yourself in a class setting. The woman is a force of nature. She has her own fitness videos, fitness shoe and crazy boot camp in Florida. She pushes her class until you’re floating so high on endorphins you can almost ignore the pain. One class is usually enough to convert any newcomer to the cult of Tina. I dropped an entire dress size in 2 months last year when I started her pilates class. She’s also without a doubt the most irreverent and hilarious teacher you’ll ever have. I remember her advising us at one point to make sure to pack our husbands’/boyfriends’ gym clothes so that we could be certain he was dressed poorly at the gym, (“You don’t want him to look good when you’re not there, I never want to hear ‘I met her at the gym baby.’ Oh no you didn’t! Put him in those purple sweats with the holes, she won’t even look at him. That’s right ladies, you know what I’m saying.”). Most importantly Tina truly cares about her students; she remembers me and pushes me to surpass what she’s seen me do in the past, (“I know you can do better than that! What are you doing with those little weights? I’ll get you some weights.”). This is Tina:

Tina Thompson at the National Ms. Fitness Competition

Exhausted but proud of myself I stumbled down to Happy Endings to meet P and K for the ‘In the Flesh Erotic Reading Series.’ It was very exciting to see Susie Bright in person.

Susie Bright at Happy Endings

Susie Bright is to erotica as Michael T is to parties. She’s been in the business since the era of angry feminists who believed dildos represented the patriarchy. Ooops… they still exist. Well, anyway, in NY at least we’ve embraced the erotica scene and these writers have added extra flavor to our fine city. I believe there were 10 readers whose stories are in Susie’s latest collection. We heard stories of anal sex and Fox News, sex during an erotica reading, elaborate fantasies and Santa Claus. It was an excellent evening and I intend to follow these authors more closely in the future.

Feeling lusty and famished the three of us headed uptown to the late-night restaurant ‘Redhead.’ It’s fairly new and I highly recommend you check it out. They serve a sort of NY version of Southern Comfort Food including lust worthy buttermilk fried chicken and creamy mashed potatoes.

There’s lots going on this weekend and I’ll be posting a complete guide later today!