Gunfight at the Golden Corral.

A couple of days ago, I found myself passing by a restaurant with a sign proclaiming a $4.99 lunch buffet (with drink!) between the hours of 2 and 4 p.m., so I had to pull in, of course. I figured it was time for lunch, and I had some time to kill after the whole J.Co eBay debacle, which I may tell here at a later time.

I sat happily at the table, eating something labeled "Awesome Pot Roast" (which I found just slightly less than awesome, yet very edible), downing Minute Maid Light Lemonades as fast as my server could dole them out, and eyeballing a small stack of paperwork that I had to conquer, but could find very little motivation to do so.

Midway through my meal, I saw a rather stocky man enter the dining area and find a seat two tables away from me. I could tell he was a bodybuilder type, not because of his ridiculous muscle definition, but his ridiculous rock-hard nipple-bearing tank top that showed off his slightly more ridiculous granite man-boobs that made him look like he had two bald toddlers in headlocks in front of him. I also noted, much to my chagrin, the requisite "World Gym" sweatshorts, black high-top shoes, and, of course, black leather fanny pack (why does this seem to be part of the required uniform?). He loaded up his tray with enough food to feed a short bus, and got to work eating food off of all three plates at once. Done observing this creature in its natural habitat, I went back to the business of finishing my own plate.

A few minutes later, I was going to get up to get a second plate when I noticed another gentleman, another bodybuilder type, enter the dining area. He was equally ridiculously defined, with a similar outfit, except his ridiculous boob-bearing tank top was tie-dyed. This gentleman took a seat at his own table, and sat facing the other muscle-bound gentleman. I decided to watch these two beasts interact.

I would not be disappointed.

Suddenly, the first muscle dude started inexplicably tensing up while he ate. I wouldn't have noticed it if it weren't for the muffled sounds coming from his table. Dear God, I thought, is he... grunting? I looked up and saw him shrugging his shoulders in a pronounced fashion. You've got to be fucking kidding me... he's flexing!

I looked at the diner sitting at the table next to me. We just stared at each other in disbelief for a moment. Surely he must be stretching, right? I thought silently. As though he understood, Fellow Patron shrugged at me.

I would not believe what happened next if I weren't actually there to witness this myself. After all, as Charlie Murphy once said, "You can't make this shit up."

Well, seconds later, we whipped our heads to the look at the other table, where Musclehead Number Two placed his hands on his table and started to scrunch his arms towards his body. He was responding, for crying out loud! A gauntlet was thrown, and we were going to have a flex-off! How fucking crazy was this?

Musclehead Number One started to stretch his neck, turning his head one way and pausing. Number Two responded by getting up momentarily, flexing his back muscles, then sitting down again. Number One then stuck his leg out from underneath his table until it was in the aisle, and flexed his calf. All I and my fellow patron could do was sit there, dumbfounded, getting more and more stupid as we continued to watch this display.

I was hooked like this shit was Wild Kingdom.

Number Two put his forearm on top of his head like he was going to stretch, and flexed his upper arm muscles instead. Number one obliged by crossing both arms over his head and shrugging his shoulders again. I momentarily thought it would be funny to use the back of my paperwork as scorecards, but thought better than to encourage this idiocy. This whole thing went down for a total of twenty seconds until the song playing on the overhead speakers changed.

I shit you not: "Working for the Weekend" by Loverboy came on.

It was unbelievable. Muscles flexed, posers posed, grunts and low groans were emitted. It really just sounded like two guys with very active head colds. Arms, legs, curving, flexing everywhere. It was like vogueing with 'roids.

This continued halfway into the song, at which point, Number Two did the absolutely abhorrent: he picked up a dinner roll, tossed it into the air with his bent arm, straightened his arm out, and hit the roll into his open palm with his bicep.

Yet another in a long list of times I'd wished I had a remote camera crew with me at all times.

It was at this final action that I, my fellow patron, and Number One all simultaneously put our heads down to look deeply into our plates: fellow patron and myself just incredulous that this shit went down in the first place, and that we'd bothered to witness it to completion, and Number One in utter shame and disgust, as it was obvious to all concerned that Number Two had just sealed a resounding victory for himself.

I refused to look up from anything directly in front of me for the next ten minutes, during which I finished off a plate of fruit, some banana pudding, and a dinner roll (which, thankfully, had not been hit by anyone's bicep, to the best of my knowledge). By the time I looked up again, I had just made it to the exit, refusing to acknowledge to any outside observers that I had even glimpsed anything out of sorts.

But I knew. And now, so do you. All about the Gunfight at the Golden Corral.