It’s officially that time of year. That time when weather turns wet and gloomy and I put rollers in my artificially straightened hair (for volume, duh!) even though it doesn’t do a damned thing. Okay, actually that happens year round, but moreso when it’s cold. It’s also the time of year when jeans wick moisture from the ground which is great exercise because the denim becomes very heavy and so pretty soon you’re walking around with weights on your legs. The downside is that you’ll sink like a stone should you happen to fall in any body of water or end up in a pair of concrete shoes in the Hudson. Concrete shoes, it should be noted, also function as excellent free weights for toning your glutes and your triangles. One time I wore concrete shoes during a sprint on the beach and by the end I could have sworn I had the body of a 22 year old… trapped in the tangle of kelp I was dragging around along with some tin cans and a desert boot. You never know what (or whom!!!!!!!!)  you’ll find at the beach!

But back to this weather, it’s also the time of year when weather people give you their forecast, which I’m pretty sure they make up (no offense to meteorogolists! Some of my best friends are umbrellas!) and they will employ the term “wintry mix” to describe a blend of slush, rain, wind, snow, carob chips and sometimes yogurt chips or dried cranberries. By the by, I’m not using the word craisin because I decided one second ago that I didn’t feel like it. I’m fickle.

Onward! The word fickle makes me think of pickle which reminds me that last night my friend and I had a long talk about our hopes and dreams and then an even longer talk about foods and flavors we like or don’t like. It also veered into smells. To be fair, we didn’t talk about our hopes and dreams. I don’t like the smell of distilled vinegar, for example. She doesn’t like the smell of Rosemary. I don’t like the smell of Edith. I don’t like octopus, but not because I’ve tried it and made an informed decision, more like because there is a part of me that’s five years old and thinks it’s grody. Also grody? A fair amount of innards and entrails including but not limited to brains, testicles and insects. I guess I’m not that unusual really. But when I was in preschool I ate gizzard and I think I even liked it. I suspect I’ve already written about that here. Is it ringing a bell? For “nutrition” which is what they called “recess” different parents would bring in a snack and it was usually kid friendly fare and if you ate all of it you were in the “clean plate club.” This was back in the 1820s before everyone was worried about obesity. Clean plate club = Precocious fat ass club. Anyhoozers, someone brought in gizzard and I ate it and was praised for being in the clean plate club and to this day I wonder why someone’s parents brought in gizzard for a bunch of preschoolers. You know? Did I mention it was human gizzard? It wasn’t because humans don’t have gizzards, and also the preschool was staunchly anti-cannibal (this was conservative Orange County in the 1820s after all) but just wondering if I’d mentioned it.

I guess that’s all I have to say. What foods or flavors (or smells) do you guys like or dislike?

Ok so I realize this episode may horrify some of you however I can’t stop laughing even when I watch it because I have a very refined and mature sense of humor.

Greetings my little pecan loaves. Last night I took a red eye flight back to New York. Normally I take flights that arrive late at night and then I suffer something I’ve dubbed “traveler’s melancholy” which is where I feel kind of lonely and overwhelmed with all my suitcases and thoughts. When I flew back from Canada last month the show put me on a super early flight which got me back in the morning and I realized I like arriving in daylight so I thought perhaps a red eye would be all kinds of awesome because I wouldn’t have to haul ass to get to the airport in time and I’d arrive with the whole day stretching out before me. What I didn’t quite take into account was how disoriented I would feel on the other side of the flight. But whereas the flight time from NYC to CA was a cruel seven hours, the time going the other direction was only four hours and twenty minutes or something like that and no, that’s not a pot reference. Although I snacked like I was stoned. You know what’s kind of healthy? The way JetBlue now offers hundred calorie packs of cookies. You know what’s less healthy? Eating three of them and a bag of munchie mix. I suppose it’s sort of balanced out by the way I only ate scrambled egg whites the day before because I was feeling kind of nauseous, if by balanced out you mean there goes all your hard work, fat ass. But anyway, would you like a breakdown of my activities in the air?

flight time: 4 hrs, 20 mins approx

flipped continuously through 36 channels of satellite TV: 4 hrs

worried that incessant channel surfing would annoy guy next to me: 2 mins

put on sleep mask and then took it off and then put it on and then took it off and then put it on and then took it off: 20 mins

debated snack options: 4 mins

picked through a bag of munchie mix looking for pretzels: 10 mins

ate a few cheetos from the bag. also, some doritos and sun chips: 8 mins

ate the whole damn bag which was NOT THE ORIGINAL PLAN: 6 mins

yes, I know I spent about 24 mins with that evil bag of munchie mix which I wish I’d never opened

tipped my head back and poured munchie dust down my throat: 2 mins

ripped bag open and rubbed it all over my body: 2 mins

smeared orange grease under my eyes and ran up and down the aisles screaming: 3 mins

tried to wipe orange shit off my hands but realized I didn’t have a napkin: 1 min

remembered I had an old kleenex in my coat pocket: 1 min

fished around coat pocket but coat was around my legs like a blanket so finding pocket involved kind of feeling up guy next to me: 2 mins

explained to guy next to me that while it was fun, I don’t want to be tied down right now: 3 mins

wondered why everything was all wet in the bathroom: 3 mins

slept: 17 mins, GIVE OR TAKE

slept like a log thru landing so that when I woke up the lights in the plane were on and people were standing up and I was confused: 3 mins

I’m not even adding all this up because I know it’s more than the flight time. No wonder it felt so long!

I’m at the gym not taking an abdominal class because yesterday I decided to get on some machine and do a few crunches and then the gym asked me to stop because I was doing it so well the other gym patrons were getting discouraged. “Save it!” I said, holding up a sculpted arm. “Story of my life.” It actually is, and the first line is, “Call me sculpted arm.” Catchy, right? It’s been ripped off left and right, which is also the story of my life. That one starts, “It was the best of arms, it was the worst of arms.” Around that time Hemingway came out with Farewell to Arms, which I took as a personal affront, so I went into witness protection. Ernie was always doing stuff like that, and I realize that now, but at the time I was really trying to be safe. Anyway, that’s why I’m not in that class, but damn you, that’s not what I was planning on talking about today! You’re just too distracting, you know that? When I look into your eyes I see myself. Very tiny in your pupils. There I am! Waving! Wait hold still I think I have something in my eye. Sorry, am I making you uncomfortable? I can almost make it out.

So I’ve put up with a lot of shark jumping from Keeping Up With The Kardashians and I’ve loved them all the same, refusing to see the obvious contrivances, because such is my love. But last night they just pushed me too far with the completely impossible to believe calendar mix up. For the uninitiated, which is probably all of you, I will briefly recap:

For her boyfriend’s bday, Kim Kardahsian decides to make a sexy calendar exclusively for him and she even gets her butt sucked by a vacuum in advance so her cellulite will be lint free. Then she has this photo shoot and her boyfriend actually shows up and is made slightly uncomfortable by the sexy factor but Kim tells us when he realizes it’s for his eyes only it’ll be okay, nevermind the fact that she posed in Playboy and there was a sex tape. So the big thing is that he can’t know it’s a surprise for him—he has to think it’s a magazine photo shoot. So then Kim is somewhere off screen and a package arrives at smooch, the children’s clothing store that the girls run. Because you’d obviously send your racy photos to a children’s clothing store. So then Kim’s mom Kris ‘where’s my nose’ Jenner, wife of Bruce ‘I don’t know, but I can’t find mine either’ Jenner opens the package addressed to Kim because she’s her manager. Might I say that is a really poor system? Upon seeing the racy calender, Kris thinks that obviously this is some project of Kim’s that she forgot about and she doesn’t want Kim to think she dropped the ball as a manager so she gets the thing published and puts it in four stores in Calabasas because she is a publishing magnate and that’s how it works. Mind you, all this happens in the time it takes freakishly small Kourtenay and or-is- she-freakishly-large Khloe to have a few drinks and realize Bruce is inspirational. They had some drinks at a sports museum in orange county and I have no idea where this place is, but that’s a side note.

So then Kim freaks out when she realizes her calendar is at the Stop & Go or wherever it is and also at the newstand and she has to buy up all the copies paying full price each and the guy selling doesn’t even seem to realize that the girl buying up all the calendars being followed by cameras is the same girl in the calendar. That is some good acting. Everyone else’s though was terrible.

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Greetings my little tortillas, I’m back on the bike after half an hour on the elliptical machine where I didn’t blog for all the reasons I listed yesterday. So it occurs to me that I’m overdue for giving you the exhaustive run down of Wednedsay’s Red Eye party which someone here asked for. Of course I will deliver this, however my hands are sweating something fierce and my little blackberry is sliding all around. It’s almost as if I’m getting ready to hold my own hand for the very first time.

Anyway, the party was held at a sleek downtown boite. I almost couldn’t find it because I was looking for a chic dowtown loft and well, I had my boites and lofts confused as one will do. Anyway, the guest list was quite exclusive as you can imagine. I was numbers one to twenty of the three hundred and I spotted myself in a number of situations running the gamut from surprising to dowright indecent! I was a veritable who’s who of the television elite. Also, I was shorter but even more beautiful in person. Blind item alert! Blind item after the jump!

[Whee!] (I just jumped)

Blind item! (I’ll wait while you cover your eyes) okay, what known canoodler was seen canoodling with a canoodle while canoodlers canoodled? Allegedly?

Send in your best guesses! In other news I overheard myself talking in hushed tones excitedly about things. The drinks were flowing which made the names bolder. My middle initial may have made out with my last name! Quelle gumption!

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Well here I am on the bike and I’m not even going to tell you what I’m working on because I think its quite clear I’m working on my valvolines, my trundle beds and my knapsacks. See, I was taking a break from the bike because I was getting this weird pain in my lower back that was strangely sharp and wet feeling. Were I back on the space station I would wonder if I’d wet myself, or worse, if I were hanging out with Doug, the drunk astronaut who was always spilling his freeze dried and then reconstituted mai-tais, as well as wetting himself. In fact we used to joke about how he’d ‘reconstitute’ anything freeze dried you gave him, if you know what I mean. But sadly I’m earthbound for awhile and so I could rule out the idea of the wetness being space mai-tais or urine. But there was pain and half of me half expected (that’s about a quarter expectation rate) that I’d reach back there and find blood. Have I been literally stabbed in the back, I wondered? Et tu, LifeFitness 95ri? But there wasn’t blood. No backmata or backcarriage or backstruation. Clearly I’m still working on that one.

Anyway, I decided to take a break for a day, which I did yesterday and maybe also the day before? Yes! And then I came here and did the elliptical machine for awhile and the did the stairclimber for less than awhile because that shit is hard and boring, like scrabble. Oh yes, I went there. I don’t like scrabble very much. I know this will surprise you because people expect I would be good at it, and oh I am, but I don’t enjoy it.

Right so the thing about the other machines is that you really can’t blog on them because you might fall off so all you can do is count forwards and backwards in your head in other languages and then you can count out the drum beat of whatever song you’re listening to in your head and then you can play drums in your head along with the music. My friend told me that while working out, men fantasize about calamity hitting the gym and then saving all the women at the gym. What about the animals, I ask? Man, what kind of humanitarian wouldn’t build an ark? But that’s where I came into all this, I was emailing at the gym and he said it sounded dangerous and I said I would die of boredom otherwise, as I did on those machines today. Those other machines.

So now I’m back on this bike. It’s like heroin only if I try to inject it and there’s an air bubble, I won’t die from the air bubble, I’ll die from the huge piece of exercise equipment I just shot between my toes. Truthfully I never thought I’d get to this point, stealing giant spoons (really they’re more like industrial ladle shaped forklifts. Do those exist? I need a joke intern asap), wrapping bikes in tin foil and smuggling them out of the gym.

Whoa, where am I? I felt like I touched God and also like I was in the womb and also like I was glowing and just warm. You know? And tired, so tired.

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Still at the gym where I’m thinking about reality television, more specifically my unironically beloved keeping Up With The Kardashians and I have to say that it’s weird to me how much the sister fued chronicled in the last two episodes really stirred up my own emotions. Did I ever tell you that my own sister and I once went to couples counseling? It didn’t work unfortunately, she just couldn’t get past the fact that were related, and no matter how many times I tried to explain that our shared background was a plus, not a minus, she just couldn’t. Said she thought of me like a brother. But I don’t see it as a failure of the psychiatric community. Nay! On the contrary I really feel like we got to know ourselves from the experience and think we’re only stronger. But really, I found the kardashians resonating on a level deeper than I would have liked and I may have squeezed out a few sympathy tears along with kim which surprised me. I was thinking about when you get to that point, or someone gets to it with you where the empathy just dries up and they’re clearly going through something or they think they are and all you can do is laugh because it doesn’t seem authentic to you. Or because you’re so hurt you feel like until they understand you, you won’t try to understand them. You know? No! Okay nevermind. But I do wish khloe had sounded a little more compassionate on her message to kim before kim pulled the storm out psych out maneuver which I thought was some grade A malarkey. And what was with her makeup being off and on and off and on? First I thought they must not have brought their makeup artist to colorado, but apparently he flew in between the crying jag and kim going in the hot tub.

I take no responsibility for this post. My blackberry seems to have fallen into the hands of a fourteen year old girl. Please forgive her. She’s easily exciteable because she just got braces tightened.

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Well here I am at the gym again. After seeing myself on tv this morning I decided to spend the next two to three decades here. It’s a little gift I’m giving to humanity. At this rate, when I get out in two to three decades I’ll be able to hit on hot fifty year olds. I like ‘em young. Seriously though, wow. Wow did I not love how I looked. I feel like I’ve been able to get away with not looking like everyone else on tv for quite awhile but this morning it hit me that I really need to go blonde. That’s what I’ve been talking about this whole time. What did you think I was talking about? Don’t be silly! And I think my favorite moment in our hard hitting political discussion was when I admitted I like bosom buddies.. Um, what else. Well I’m currently exercising in the residue of this morning’s heavy spackling (I tried to wash it off but there’s only so much you can do yourself. I plan to walk myself through a car wash later and then give myself a flea dip. I might get neutered too, cuz what the hell. Scratch me?) Um, yeah, that was awkward! Jeez, now I feel weird. Right so what I was trying to say is that I’m soon to be sweating in a light film of makeup which means I’ll be breaking out soon. Care to date me? I’m getting neutered at eleven, so let me know soon.

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I’m at the gym still. I’ve been on this bike for thirty six minutes and five, oh, wait eighteen seconds. That just goes to show you how slowly I’m typing. I’m pedaling faster than I’m typing but slower than in a cartoon where a character winds up his feet and then shoots forward. I guess that’s kinda obvious though. Were I pedaling that fast I’d probably go shooting through this mirror here and end up sitting on some man’s shoulder press, or in some other dimension. I’m not sure what kind of mirror I’m dealing with here: reflective or portal to another galaxy. The important thing is that if I went through it I’d leave a super hot and toned outline of my unbelievable body. Some kind of supermodel went crashing through this, they’d say. We’re looking for the lithe body of someone involved in a gym accident. All we know is that she had incredible form and her sweat smelled like ambrosia. Also, birds tended to perch on her shoulders while she was biking. Occasionally they’d help with her sewing. She favored gauzy fabrics. Sometimes she’d set her homemade pies to cool on the handlebars.

God, I know it’s kind of weird but I miss myself already! I just hope wherever I am they have wifi. And coffee. And showers, because I didn’t get a chance to take one before teleporting and my hair seems to have lost some of its usual bounce and sheen. I was planning on pumping up its volume later.

If you’re just now starting to read my blog, you’re probably concerned for my sanity. Fear not. I have a tinfoil hat which protects me. It’s a tinfoil fez actually. Like I’d be caught in some kind of tinfoil sombrero. Puhleeze!

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