Cock Tale: A Spiteful Rooster

With remarkable sensitivity, John proposed adding greenery and vegetables to Janucz’s diet in order to add distraction, to quiet him down. We were at the pen when he was saying this. The birds were free — Janucz tends to crow less when roaming. Moments later, in the garage, I heard John’s plaintive call from around the corner. Racing back to the yard, I saw that Janucz had backed John against a brick wall and was holding him hostage.

My friend Cathy helped me transport Janucz back to the Van Nuys chicken farm from whence his egg came. The owner, Ken, was impressed not only by Janucz’s visual splendor but with what a personable character he had. Janucz would be kept separated from the other roosters, he assured me, free to roam the yard like a pet. We walked away from the upsetting sight of Janucz in a wire cage, bewildered and awaiting vaccination.

I wasn’t there, but Ken tells me that the next morning, Janucz attacked him, scarring his left arm. Janucz was then summarily deposited into a pen with a dozen other roosters, all of whom Janucz reputedly defeated in battle. I later pointed out that he had returned home like King Oedipus to Thebes, and that he might even be living with his parents. No sentimentalist, Ken answered, “He’s probably kicking the shit out of them as well.”

But when I went to visit him a week later, I saw a very different picture. The flock had wreaked its revenge. Janucz sat cowering, his feathers in tatters, his comb bent and caked in dried blood, his face chalky gray, one eye swollen shut, an abscessed boil below his ear. He had lost a quarter of his body weight and had stopped crowing, Ken reported, saying that he could not vouch for the rooster’s survival.

Janucz sleeps once more in the dog cage, quarantined. As I write this, he sits on my thigh, where he’s been perched for about an hour, napping, sometimes clucking. He won’t eat unless it’s from my hand. He won’t drink unless I hold a water dish to his face. Three times a day, I dab antibacterial ointment on his swollen eye, which he tries to open on occasion, but I suspect it’s now a useless appendage.

There are many allegories in the chickens’ cycles of violence, but you can find them for yourself. My only comment is a lesson that even Janucz has learned: Crowing can be as lethal as it is presumptuous. That’s why he stopped. Take it from a rooster who knows. —Steven Leigh Morris

Getting Physical: Spin Cycle

It’s just past 9 on a Wednesday morning, and spinning instructor Laurent Boye, tall and wiry in short shorts and a scoop-neck tank, bounces along to Chic’s “Le Freak” in the mirrored third-floor training room of the Hollywood YMCA.

He moves as if his back were attached by a string to the ceiling, enabling him to sway and writhe while maintaining superhuman speed. The 20-odd students do their best to keep up. “Geev me ev-ry-sing!” Boye shouts in nasal Bordeaux-ese. “Everysing! Yeee-esssss! You cahn do eet!”

Spinning, or teacher-led stationary bicycling, has been around since the mid-’80s, long enough to become a gym-rat mainstay. And the key to the success of any spinning class is the teacher — someone who can make sure you never once look at the clock. There are many ways to do this. At the Hollywood Y, one instructor employs what I call Western Spin, in which he refers to the seat as a saddle and the pedals as stirrups. Pedaling at a moderate pace becomes galloping. When he wants the students to sprint, he tells them to “chase the bunny,” conjuring images of a dusty scramble through the underbrush. Periodically during class he’ll slap his thigh and shout, “Heeyah! Heeyah!” Several other teachers have adopted various forms of Eastern Spin, which involves a lot of deep breathing, yoga-inspired stretching and an end-of-class â meditation during which one must lie on the sweat-puddled floor. There are also those who swear by what can only be described as Boot Camp Spin, entailing much grunting, barked orders and shouted counting.

And then there is Laurent, whose schtick might best be described as Whirling Dervish Spin. From the moment he steps onto the bike he is a man possessed, pedaling so fast and hard he vibrates, all the while shouting encouragement into the mike. “Today you weel be strongehr, fastehr zhan evehr befahr! You cahn do eet! Come weez me!” He is a hummingbird, a hand mixer, a washing machine on, well, spin. He tosses his head and jerks his shoulders forward and back, flipping his shaggy brown hair in a balance-defying, coquettish manner during which he still, somehow, manages to remain centered over his seat. Throw in that Bordeaux accent and he is ridiculous, over the top and hilarious — Richard Simmons, Mike Meyers and Dudley Moore all rolled into one. And he knows it.

“I am here to entertain you,” Laurent explains later, in a normal tone of voice that sounds strange because I’m so used to hearing him shout. “My job is to make you forget.”