Any 95 pound weakling who’s ever had sand kicked in his face and then picked up a set of weights to do something remedially about it would understand what this is all about.

Not that Joe Weider, the famous “Master Blaster” advertised himself or his barbell company wares on the strength of bullies and the Charles Bronson Death Wish revenge principle. Nah. The payback to the bad guy motif was left up to mail order entrepreneurs like Joe Bonomo and Charles Atlas. Atlas, particularly, was the one who had these whacked, arcane theories of “Dynamic Tension” available only to the 95 pound gimps who responded to his comic book ads.

Instead, Joe Weider was the one who took the whole idea of body transformation and brought it to the next level with enormously read publications and complicated but exciting-sounding theories of progressive weight resistance. Thus Weider created not just Mr. Americas or Mr. Universes, but Mr. Olympias like Larry Scott whose arm development was beyond the beyond even in those days.

I know all this because I was one of those skinny kids who heard the call from Zeus, bought all the Weider magazines I could get my hands on, and tossed iron religiously, thinking I might be the next Steve Reeves or Reg Park by subscribing to the Weider principles of better living.

So I’m sitting at a picnic table yesterday afternoon, obviously my best barbell days behind me but still practicing better living. Only this time through Tequila. I’m sucking down banana and strawberry Margaritas as though I were in serious training for the next Ernest Hemingway lookalike contest, let alone Mr. Olympia.

I came to this little Memorial Day gathering, and the guy sitting next to me looks awfully familiar. My parents always told me it’s impolite to stare so I don’t. But his wife- now, you couldn’t mistake who she was. Not in a million years. So I… stare, probably because at 73 she still has this killer face and figure.

Of course. This is Betty Weider, formerly Betty Brosmer, www.bettybrosmer.com regarded by some as THE glamour babe of the Fifties by way of her sweet, girl next door features, great legs and some pretty impossible 38-18-36 measurements.

And I would know, because as a 13 year-old I discovered them as I drooled over Betty Brosmer from some 8mm glamour loop I saw in a penny arcade in Atlantic City. The same night I bought my first Weider magazine to be exact. To my teenage crush chagrin, Brosmer in matters of synchronicity went on to marry Joe Weider and was featured in a regalia of sexy one and two-piece bathing suits on tons of his early magazine covers.

I mean, this is Joe Weider- the guy who brought the phrases: super sets, tri-sets, giant sets and bomb-blitz to the bodybuilding lexicon. I’m thinking what would I even say to this guy without sounding like a goofball, stalker or a mark? So I say nothing and am pretty anxious doing it, wondering more how the Weiders fit into this whole backyard barbecue scenario. [It’s explained later to me.]

Now it’s Joe Weider who breaks the ice as he leans over to speak. He’s keeping himself in the shade because he says the sun hurts his eyes.

“Sir, you are a powerfully built man,” he states softy. Weider, now 88, speaks just above a whisper, though we should all look so good and firm at his age.

This is my opening! The Master Blaster, still with his smartly trimmed and tidy handlebar mustache, has acknowledged my shoulders, chest and arm development which were obviously built on a foundation diet of the old Weider Super Pro 101 powder recipes plus the secret bomb-blitz routines of Larry Scott and others. At the moment I was kind of aping Weider’s imperial cross-armed palace guard pose he was so duly noted for.

Because I’m seated, Weider doesn’t notice, too, that the rest of me comes courtesy of my intense workout regimen at Jerry’s Deli in Woodland Hills. Which is just down the street from the Weider building, by the way. I neglect to mention how I consider corn beef and cole slaw to be invaluable protein supplements in any training schedule.

Rather, Weider’s just staring- rather sadly like a betrayed family member- at my heaping platter of tri-tip , beef ribs and potato salad. He mentions in a subtle hint fashion that he’s a fish and vegetables man himself. I slip in the fact that this must be the first beef I’ve had in months. I’m lying, and he knows it. You don’t bullshit the Master Blaster.

“How much do you weigh?” he asks out of the blue. I tell him, and Weider pretends like he didn’t hear the answer. This is the ultimate psyche out play, of course.

“228,” I repeat when he asks again. Weider just shakes his head again like some admonishing uncle, and I promise to rebuke all future considerations of Pastrami. He perks up at that, noting that all bodybuilders need to lose weight as they get older. I tell Weider he’s preaching to the choir, that I seriously realize my need to get the deli monkey off my back.

Our chat on a range of subjects that includes, books [especially the Book of Genesis], the Big Bang theory, religion, politics and movies continues for the next five hours. Weider whose psyche certainly seems molded in the spiritual realm, is curious what I thought about the film Angels & Demons. Not much I tell him simply because it’s based on a Dan Brown novel which I put in the same league with James Fenimore Cooper for literary style and sometimes absurd content.

For a guy who crosses those arms in magazine ads like Ivan the Terrible, Weider’s a pretty serious guy in the ways of religion, and it shows in everything he has to say. Unfortunately, the parables could get potentially uncomfortable for someone like myself whose stock conversations at Jerry’s generally include references to deadbeats who haven’t paid their checks, whether Karl The Birdman is coming in that evening, and ad nauseam recitation of lines from The Big Lebowski.

Noting that I’m from Philadelphia, Betty Weider asks if Sylvester Stallone’s from there. No, I tell her except everyone gets that impression from the Rocky movies – many scenes of which were shot blocks from where I used to have a trophy shop. She really liked Rocky 6 but was sorry to see it didn’t do that well, financially.

I probably did sound like a mark at some point as I referenced an obscure article from a 1960 issue of Weider’s Muscle Builder in which he detailed how you build this enormous chest from a series of “Gladiator 7” heavy breathing pullovers. The early Weider mags were printed on pulp with black & white photos. The whole effect was a bit sleazy but in a charming, nostalgic way. Besides, they had that neat pulp smell. Like the heroes they profiled, the magazines later became these muscular, handsome tomes and models of great design.

Weider mentions that he won a Publisher of the Year award in 1984. When he heard the news, he told the people in charge they must be pulling his leg or something.

I also bring up an early Steve Reeves piece that made some impact on my young body when I was trying to build a lat spread like Reeves’; and Weider goes on to explain how the two of them met. In fact, Weider gives me the whole cook’s tour of how he got started. It’s real Horatio Alger stuff because he was a very poor kid growing up in Montreal and later became captain of an industry whose popularity and worldwide membership is pretty impossible to gauge at this point.

Weider tells me how he bought his first set of weights for seven bucks and how he kept waiting anxiously for them to arrive in the mail. In the meantime he made due with old axles and locomotive wheels from junk yards.

I return serve with my own dumb little story about how I scrimped up $29.95 to buy his advertised “Multi-Power Exerciser” at the time his business was located in Union, New Jersey before his move to California. In retrospect, this piece of cheesy equipment became the first genuine purchase of anything substantially my own.

I ask Weider what he thought of the book about him called “Brothers Of Iron” which came out not too long ago. [Weider’s brother Ben died just recently.]

What with loud music and kids yelling in the pool, Weider’s answer was lost in the blare, so it’s truly hard to tell whether he liked it or not. Weider’s also famous for having developed Arnold Schwarzenegger in becoming the bodybuilding icon Arnold was. When Schwarzenegger had saved $20,000 – “a lot of money back then,” recalls Weider, Arnold asked for advice about starting a business.

“I told him they’d eat him alive,” continues Weider. “I told him to invest in real estate instead. That’s where he made his money.” Weider believes Arnold became what he was because he was never afraid to ask questions but thinks he should have continued acting and not got into politics. Many would agree.

Occasionally, Weider stops in a middle of a thought.

“That’s what happens when you get to be 88,” he apologizes, noting that seven years earlier he had back surgery which had him out of commission for about six months. LA doctors wouldn’t even consider his case which was caused by a freak lifting accident involving a 30-pound box which threw his vertebrae out in some weird, unforgiving way.

But a Cleveland specialist, upon seeing that Weider had the body of a 35 year-old, felt differently about the anticipated results. Except for an occasional sensation in his right hand, Weider seems fine, now.

It’s mentioned by someone that under normal circumstances Joe Weider usually keeps to himself at these gatherings and rarely talks except for this time.

I then overhear Betty Weider saying that it’s probably because the guy he was chatting with “used to work out.”

Thanks, Betty. Thanks a lot.