How To with John Wilson

John Wilson: Hey, New York.

When you're young, life is simple.

You don't have to worry about dressing yourself.

Your social life is prearranged.

And you naturally get plenty of exercise.

But, as you get older,

you become responsible for your own well-being.

You start to eat a lot of junk.

You sit around and get stoned at home all the time.

And you drink a bunch because it's the only way

you know how to be social.

But, after a while,

this lifestyle will start to catch up with you.

You barely have any energy to do anything.

You're too weak to defend yourself.

And you're so out of shape, that people call you

really hurtful names.

And what was once a fresh ball of clay

with unlimited possibility,

has hardened into something disappointing.

And you no longer like what you see

when you look in the mirror.

You were on a plane recently, and during takeoff,

you had an unobstructed view of the flight attendant.

You couldn't stop staring at his biceps,

which looked like they were about

to burst out of his uniform.

And you kinda wish you could have those, too.

Your entire life, you just thought that people's bodies

just were-- were the way they were.

But, the more you look around New York,

the more you notice all the hard work people are doing

to maintain their physiques.

They make it look effortless,

and you've never really understood how to do it right.

But, maybe if you tried,

you could finally have the beach body

you've always dreamed of

and surprise everyone

with your incredible transformation.

So, instead of just letting gravity suck you down,

stick with me, and I'll show you

how to finally get off your butt and...

and start to, uh, work out.

Now, there are a lot of different gyms

to choose from in New York,

and thankfully, a lot of them offer a free trial,

so you can take a tour to see which you like best.

Most gyms just have machines that simulate

a bunch of activities that you hate doing outside,

like walking up stairs,

rowing a boat,

or looking over a wall.

There's a large common area where people lie down

to send text messages.

You have an unlimited supply of free paper towels,

and a bunch of high-definition TVs above you

playing, uh, inspirational, uh, programing.

At Retro Fitness, all the equipment is yellow,

there's a movie theater with treadmills

instead of seats

that, uh, p-plays "Space Jam" on a loop.

And a fireplace room

with three numbered pods.

At Equinox, they have a steam room

and really nice showers with signs

telling you not to have sex in them.

All the gyms seem nice,

but you, you may not be able to picture yourself

going there every day.

You have a couple of pieces of equipment at home

that you never do anything with.

You also started smoking again after a bad breakup,

and you don't know why having a gym membership

would suddenly make you wanna work out.

But, you're just gonna have to figure out

some way to get yourself excited.

You spent an afternoon

with a compulsive masturbator recently,

and you were curious how he stayed so motivated.

I think it's just prolonging...

prolonging the orgasm,

I think is the, is the main goal.

Um, you're consuming porn, obviously, to finish,

to orgasm.

Um, gooning is riding that orgasm

without finishing.

Recently, it's evolved

into making these things called "Goon Caps."

You write, like, motivational text on it,

like, "Keep going!" Or "You're doing great!"

And other people look at them, and they masturbate as well.

- -And you keep it all going.

Sorry, that's work.

No one can make you feel

as good as you can make yourself feel good.

- -Oh, my gosh!

Oh, that's work again. Mind if I take that?

John: Yeah, sure.

It seems like having someone else to motivate you

helps you stay committed to something that's hard to do.

Gooner: The wordplay is part of

the aesthetic of being mindless.

John: Oh, like "stay tuned"?

Gooner: Um, I wasn't going for that specifically.

- -John: Oh...

Thankfully, most gyms have personal trainers

that kind of do the same thing.

You wanna feel better, you wanna look better,

you wanna get strong? What is it?

-John: I think I wanna look better. -You wanna look better?

-John: Yeah. -Okay.

-John: Like this? -So, I'm staying in this spot

-right here for about 20 seconds. -John: Okay.

-And pull right up. -John: Okay.

-I squeeze this out into a T. -John: Oh, okay.

-John: Okay. -And crunch.

John: Oh, wow.

Okay... Okay.

Over here, we do multiple things on this.

So, we go one, two, three, four, five.

I got 'em counted all over here when I'm doing multiples,

-when I'm trying to get up to 300 reps. -John: Oh, okay.

I think something's on fire over here.

-Trainer: What do you mean? -John: I think this blanket's on fire.

Oh, shit! Wow!

We got the tires. We flip 'em,

we jump on top of 'em.

We hammer 'em. Uh...

John: I think the dumpster's on fire now.

Jesus.

-Ooh, yeah! -John: Oh, jeez.

Yeah. Do, do we have a fire extinguisher or something?

John: Okay, that's better.

-We could do some steps. -John: Oh, wow.

You're like, it's, it's--

It's kind of like a-- it's like you're a mime, kind of.

The first day everyone goes to the gym,

they should immediately take a picture of their whole body

for themselves.

John: It seems like if you wanna

take fitness seriously,

you're gonna need to get a full-body photo of yourself.

Otherwise, you won't know how much progress you're making.

Okay. Wow, that looks cool.

You tried taking some video at home,

but you couldn't really... get the angle right.

Thankfully, you were at a cat show recently,

and you found a professional photographer there

who agreed to take seminude photos of you.

-This is the best kitten of the year past. -John: Oh, okay.

This is the best alter.

-The alters are neutered and spayed. -

John: I just started to work out,

so I kinda wanted to maybe get a before and after photo.

Photographer: This is the before? Okay.

You got big glasses and glares.

John: Okay. What's today's date?

Photographer: Today is the 16.

-John: And you'll send them to me in an email? -Photographer: Yeah.

Eileen Watkins: This is a mystery series.

It's about a woman who has a cat grooming and boarding business,

and she solves crimes connected with her customers,

-human and feline. -John: Oh.

Is, uh, "The Bengal Identity" is that like "The Bourne Identity"?

Yep.

John: You were having a really good time,

uh, looking around

at all the different,

uh, cool stuff at the cat show.

But you still couldn't stop comparing your body

to other guys' there.

You started to feel like a scrawny geek

who's waited too long to put on muscle.

Maybe the world is just one big cat show

where all your physical imperfections

are being carefully logged by everyone around you,

giving a number value to every visible feature

to determine if you're worthy of their approval.

And you don't have a choice

whether or not you participate.

You're excited to get your professional photos back,

but the next day you got an email from the photographer

telling you that all his equipment

had been stolen straight from his tent,

and now your embarrassing photos

were in the hands of some anonymous Jersey crook.

You keep looking back at the footage to see

who there might have done something like this,

but there were too many suspicious people,

uh, to count.

And then, you remembered that there was someone

that you met there that might be able to assist you.

She'd written dozens of animal-related mysteries,

so you thought she might be able

to help you solve this one.

Was this the guy who was the professional photographer

-who takes the show cats? -John: Yeah, like Larry Johnson.

-Yeah. And it was his equipment that was stolen? -John: Yeah, yeah.

Oh, my gosh. Could it be a rival?