I’m not a morning person.

The trainer who’s been helping me at the gym (a 61-year-old, gay, “daddy” type) suggested that I do my cardio in the morning. So I got up extra-early this morning to go to the gym.

“Extra-early” for me was 7:15.

I know, that’s not at all early. But usually I can’t pull myself out of bed until 8:15 or 8:20. My official starting work time is 9:00 am, but I rarely get to the office before 9:25. I just cannot get myself up.

I used to be more of a morning person. In high school I got up at 6:30 every day. Then again, in high school I typically went to bed around 10:30. These days I stay up and watch The Daily Show, and sometimes part of The Colbert Report, so I’m in bed sometime between 11:30 and 12. But it takes me a long time to fall asleep. Even when I fall asleep easily, in the morning I can’t get out of bed. Is it possible I need more than eight hours of sleep a night?

Anyway, I got up “early” this morning, went to the gym and did 20 minutes of elliptical followed by some suggested stomach exercises. The trainer suggests that I do cardio and weights on alternate days.

Perhaps I can get myself out of bed two mornings a week to do cardio. But the weights will probably remain an evening activity. I just can’t start out every day with the hassle of going to the gym.

Ick. A profile of the rather creepy 61-year-old CEO of Abercrombie & Fitch.

His biggest obsession, though, is realizing his singular vision of idealized all-American youth. He wants desperately to look like his target customer (the casually flawless college kid), and in that pursuit he has aggressively transformed himself from a classically handsome man into a cartoonish physical specimen: dyed hair, perfectly white teeth, golden tan, bulging biceps, wrinkle-free face, and big, Angelina Jolie lips.

And:

As far as Jeffries is concerned, America’s unattractive, overweight or otherwise undesirable teens can shop elsewhere. “In every school there are the cool and popular kids, and then there are the not-so-cool kids,” he says. “Candidly, we go after the cool kids. We go after the attractive all-American kid with a great attitude and a lot of friends. A lot of people don’t belong [in our clothes], and they can’t belong. Are we exclusionary? Absolutely. Those companies that are in trouble are trying to target everybody: young, old, fat, skinny. But then you become totally vanilla. You don’t alienate anybody, but you don’t excite anybody, either.”

The article is written by Benoit Denizet-Lewis, who wrote a much-commmented-upon article about frat-boy culture for the New York Times Magazine last year.

Many of the comments in response are entertaining, too.

I teared up at the end of tonight’s How I Met Your Mother.

Matt was all sniffly at the end of Brokeback Mountain while I was completely dry-eyed. And yet my eyes just got all moist at the end of a sitcom episode. What’s up with me?