1. She makes bizarro YouTube clips with Gwyneth Paltrow.

See above. According to Jacob Bernstein's Daily Beast piece, Anderson and Gwynnie are still BFFs, and in 2008 they made this weird little promo together (apparently with the help of Oprah's production company) appeared on Oprah together. Note Gwyneth's grim-eyed stare as she tells the camera, "I work out six days a week." Also note what she perceives as her options: "when you're 35, you either starve yourself, or you do serious cardio. But there's no free ride." I get that Gwyneth's job dictates that she have what Anderson calls "a teeny-tiny body," but what's with the second person? When I turn 35, I'm heartily looking forward to neither starving myself nor working out with Tracy Anderson. Also, one YouTube commenter says Anderson's workouts will leave you "looking like skeletors nutsack," which I guess is body-snark but is also too awesome not to quote.

2. She even steals from herself.

In 2007, Anderson didn't have enough money to outfit her LA studio. So she just started taking machines from the Indianapolis facility. As the machines disappeared one by one, she told her Indianapolis clients "the studio was simply undergoing maintenance." Then one day her customers arrived for a class and the studio was completely empty. Invisible treadmills!

3. She never went to Juilliard, worked on music videos, appeared in Cats, or was sponsored by Carnation Instant Breakfast.

She claims to have done all of the above, but the Daily Beast could find no proof of anything in this grab-bag of impressive and unimpressive credentials (Carnation Instant Breakfast?). Tracy Anderson also did not invent the question mark, has not seen Obama's original birth certificate, and cannot turn water into wine.

4. She calls going to jail "bummer times."

In 2006, Anderson was very briefly jailed for the Dickensian crime of failing to pay the chimney sweep. The Indianapolis Monthly and The Daily Beast both persuasively accuse her of living a lavish lifestyle while ignoring her bills, but here's how she describes the whole experience on her website:

There was a period of about 4 years in my life when I went through several "bummer times." During this period, I got myself into an unfortunate situation in which several negative events happened to me because I let someone else take control of every aspect of my life from finances to business documents. My misguided trust led me to take on challenges I would never have dreamed of facing, and these events affected not only my business, but also my personal life and emotions.

That "someone else" is presumably Glynn Barber, an ex-boyfriend whose own version of events is that Anderson convinced him to invest in her business and then bled him dry. It's a little hard to tell who is telling the truth about their relationship, but Anderson wants us to know her side — for our own good. She writes,

To anyone reading this who has felt hopeless or alone, I hope that my story can help you start to find the inner strength that you need to overcome and start healing, because no one else can give you the strength that you can give to yourself.

Tracy Anderson: firming the glutes, uplifting the soul.

Madonna's Trainer Fights Back [The Daily Beast]
Tracy Anderson Method [Official Site]
Tracy Anderson Method : Madonna And Gwyneth Paltrow Workout [YouTube]

Earlier: Gwyneth Paltrow's Celeb Trainer: Financial Charlatan
Celeb Trainer Tracy Anderson Wants To Give Everyone A "Teeny-Tiny" Body

Former Village Voice columnist Tricia Romano has a piece in Thursday's New York Times profiling the phenomenon created by Ryan Heffington, a "choreographer, performance artist and designer" who has created something called "Sweaty Sundays," a weekly aerobics, errr, dance class held in a performance space in the heart of LA's very own Williamsburg.

Here, members of this creative class - artists, photographers, fashion designers and screenwriters - dance off the previous night's excesses to a soundtrack of indie rock, techno, and 1980s new wave hits. And they do it while looking fabulous in Jane Fonda leg warmers and belted leotards.

"It's kind of an American Apparel ad come to life," said Terence McFarland, 40, the executive director of the Los Angeles Stage Alliance, who is a regular.

On a recent Sunday, Christopher Kreiling, a 33-year-old visual artist, was among the first to arrive. It was his first time, but he already had the look down: a pair of very short white corduroy shorts, a pink-and-white striped tank top and the all-important headband.

"I just had 10 cigarettes and a coffee," he said. "I'm like, ‘O.K., let's go.' "

Heffington says that the class has become so popular with the local idiots that he's added a second Sunday class as well as a weeknight one called "Wet Wednesdays." And don't fret over not being able to participate in the fun yourself if you don't happen to live in the LA area, because there's a DVD coming soon. Yippee!

Now, the real question the article about this hideous trend brings up is what will the Williamsburg hipsters do to top it? Sorry Williamsburg, but your little kickball and tetherball retro-fitness trends don't stand up against this. You all need to step it the hell up! Surely it's the lack of availability of things such as "Sweaty Sundays" that stokes Tricia Romano's smoldering hatred of New York. Win back her dark, jaded heart! Do it for New York!

Here's a short version of Anderson's story:

After gaining weight and getting ridiculed as a ballet dancer, she developed a dance-based workout technique designed to "manipulate your muscular structure." She and her husband Eric opened several gyms in Fishers, Indiana, but quickly went into debt, partly due to Anderson penchant for driving fancy cars but not paying her sewer bills. After filing for bankruptcy and starting yet another gym, she asked Glynn Barber, a married dad who owned a tool-and-die business, to build her a "Hybrid Body Reformer," a variant on a Pilates machine that would both tone muscles and "make you super-tiny." Barber built twelve of the machine and, despite the fact that Anderson didn't pay him, both became romantically involved with her and invested in her business. Over the next several years, Anderson proceeded to bleed him dry of his eight-figure fortune, making him pay for luxuries like a $1,500 a night hotel in London when she visited Madonna, and an apartment in Los Angeles when she decided to relocate there. Though Barber is now broke, the home they shared in Indiana is being foreclosed upon, and one of her gyms has closed without fully reimbursing clients for unused lesson, Anderson apparently continues to train Madonna and Gwyneth Paltrow.

Oddly, an article by Donna Freydkin in today's USA Today makes no mention of Anderson's malfeasance. Freydkin calls Anderson "the woman responsible for Paltrow's attention-grabbing transformation from willowy to wow." And Paltrow (whom Anthony Bourdain called "the one bitch who refuses to eat ham") sounds like a promotional brochure when she gushes,

I had always been dedicated to exercise, but no matter how hard I worked, I never was able to change the things that bothered me. Her method is so rewarding because, yes, you are working hard, but you know you are getting somewhere. I really never thought that at 36, after two children, I could look better than I ever had.

How has Anderson gotten away with years of unpaid bills, bankruptcy, and using up a man's fortune, only to wind up a lauded trainer to the stars? We see two equally depressing reasons. One, Anderson embodies the pre-recession ethos of keeping up appearances at all costs. Her expensive car, home, hotel stays, and studio equipment were all part of Anderson's strategy: her associates told Indianapolis Monthly that "she sells herself with charisma and succeeds, time and time again, by giving the impression that she is already successful" — even when she has no money to pay for the things she buys. Though this strategy has resulted in devastating financial fallout for Barber — and for others too quickly taken in by the early 21st centuries buy-now, pay-later mores — it seems to be working for Anderson, at least for now.

The other secret to her success: people, especially actresses, really want to be thin. Anderson "promised that anyone could look like her," says former client Amy Paull. "Anyone could be a size 0 or a size 2." Paull adds that when people hear of Anderson's financial troubles, "the usual comment I hear is, ‘It's terrible what she did, but did her workout work? People are so desperate to be thin." Desperate enough, apparently, that they don't care if their trainer has cheated others and may well cheat them. Tracy Anderson: yet another sign of the end-times.

Getting Ripped [Indianapolis Monthly]
Meet the fitness trainer who transformed Gwyneth Paltrow [USA Today]

In addition to reliving the scissor-kicking devastation, we offer two more shocking acts perpetrated by Simmons on live TV in recent hours: On CNN's American Morning, Simmons offered a demonstration of the advanced shrimping techniques that helped him curb his cravings for actual shellfish, melting away the pounds and lowering his cholesterol in the process. And finally, a visit to the Fox News studios, the Jewfroed weight-loss guru molests a number of camera operators and crew—an act of personal violation so heinous, it's sure to be met with swift, concrete-boot retribution from the Teamsters union. [CNN American Morning]

[Photos: Bauer-Griffin]

• Vince Vaughn Goes to the Dogs [Bauer-Griffin via Celebslam]