The great and powerful AAARRGH!!, or "Who is that man behind the curtain?"

My name is Len Whitney.   When I was a kid, I was that seeming contradiction -- a smart, ambitious hillbilly farmboy.  I was competitive, but determined to make it all look easy.  My two role models in life were Superman and Miss America.  If there had been a Miss America-type contest for budding Supermen, the direction of my life could have been so easy.  By the time I was six feet five and 200 strapping pounds, the scales tipped toward the Superman side. As it was, I wasn't sure what I wanted out of life, but I knew it had to be in Hollywood.  Especially after I read some magazine expose about the gay side of scandalous Tinseltown.

"Fa-CHOOM!" 36" x 36" acrylic and silkscreen 1999 Len Whitney

 Armed with the closest approximation of Peter Berlin's leatherboy / rocker skintight hiphuggers, boots and Teutonic sexgod attitude, I cut a wide swath through my Jesuit college cronies.  As misguided as I was, I learned an important lesson.  Right or wrong, not looking like everybody else sets you apart.  Years later, I found out that the gay boys at Loyola thought I was some prototype of ANGEL (straight A student by day, Hollywood hooker by night).

When I moved off campus the last year of college, I discovered my lifelong love.  In a musty, hand-built gym on Holloway Avenue, owned by 1950's physique model Brad Moore, I discovered the amalgamation of all my dreams.  Working out on that rough-welded black iron equipment, I could be Superman, Miss America, clean-living farm boy and alleycat gay porn street urchin all in one.  My superhero was born.

In the intervening years, moving to New York, my life took many turns.  I was alternately a magazine editor, restaurant manager, bartender, nightclub doorman and video artist.  When I came back home to Hollywood in 1995 I worked in the entertainment industry as a production coordinator, and began painting huge pop canvases of my comic-book idols in my spare time. 

But through it all, exercise and going to the gym proved to be the common thread that held my life together.

Which is what brings me here today.  For years workout partners have told me that I was the best trainer they ever had (to the point that I used to neglect my own workout by focusing so strongly on their sets, their form and their progress).  

When I had the chance to really ask myself what I wanted most to do with my life, there was no contest.  If I could spend my time at the gym, working out myself and helping train others, that would be just about perfect.  Though other trainers warned me how hard the testing and certification process could be, I set my mind to it.  After studying hard and focusing at the job at hand, I attained the ACE certification (the most rigorous and academically demanding) as a personal trainer.  I take my responsibility to do a good, safe, and effective job very seriously.

Hope you like the AAARRGH!! internet experience.  Email me with any questions about me or about your workout.  I'll be improving and updating this site every month, so keep coming back.  I also plan to add a page of links to other fun sites, so if you have a site to promote, email me and we can link to each other. Your secret identity is always safe with me, Len Whitney