This past weekend saw a few momentous events take place. My friend and sometime shit-starter, Lois, had a sendoff fling this past Friday night as she has opted to move away. Although Lois and I never exactly butted heads, and she could be terribly generous and fun, she trailed behind her a spreading cloud of drama -- like one of those skywriting airplanes, only one that spells out �DRAMA�, and then clips the top of a radio tower, bringing down communications for area for a good fortnight, during which time everyone starts accusing each other of being aliens and then eat each other to survive -- and it was all too easy to become implicated in the fallout.
That being said, she had a little gathering that Dr. Goodhead and I chose to attend in our classic style. By which I mean, we got there late and sort of ended up sitting by ourselves, gossiping. Then Clyde showed up and the drama quotient tripled itself because of a misunderstanding involving my cell phone (now malfunctioning, thanks to my tequila-fueled antics of July 4th), his incendiarily-worded questions (�Do you want me to drop everything and come, or do you not want me there?� like, what the hell is the right answer to THAT?), and a big fat helping of jealousy didn�t make matters any easier, either. Fortunately, some very important (and prevalent) issues came out that needed to be discussed, and things were smoothed out okay.
Saturday night was my friend Ambrose�s birthday, and he held his festivities at a bar in Hollywood. This was actually quite a fun night, and Johnny Knoxville was there, and he totally touched me, you guys! Okay, I touched him. Okay, I bumped into him, but it�s practically the same thing. I mean, you could tell that somewhere deep inside, he wanted to run off and do dirty things with me, he just hadn�t been brainwashed yet. He�ll realize it someday though, and then he�ll be sorry he washed his arm after I ACCIDENTALLY bumped it on my way past him.
I also discovered that there�s apparently a huge online contingent of people who resent my own personal anathema, Rachael Ray, and a kind soul named Jill Hunter Pellettieri decided to defend her honor. This may surprise you, but I�m all for that. I mean, I know I�ve cast my fair share of aspersions on La Ray and called into question her charisma as an onscreen persona -- and I almost wrote an entire new entry about her yesterday after watching an episode from her program�s new season, in which she exuberantly welcomed the carbohydrate back into the American diet, the whole time gesturing vigorously with her entire upper body like Dick Vitale, which is NOT a constructive comparison -- but at the same time, I have freely declared my undying love/hate, and you best not be busting on my girl unless you do it with respect and acknowledgement of her bizarre and gravitational appeal!
Don�t get me wrong: there�s a lot that gets me all riled up when watching 30 Minute Meals, but I absolutely love Rachael Ray, for and in spite of all her quirks. I think I also figured out the origin of her �garbage bowl�, too. I mean, the program is predicated on cooking time, so they don�t want her to waste precious seconds ferrying refuse back and forth around the set, right? So one irritating quirk is explained. At least, enough that I�m willing to move past it. And as for the rest of it, I know I�ve hinted at this before, but I really do appreciate the accessibility of her recipes. It�s all well and good to have an epicurean like Martha Stewart making us all feel inferior for not grinding our own flour or raising free-range chickens on our expansive Connecticut farms, but when Rachael Ray comes on my TV, I at least know that I might someday have a shot at recreating one of the dishes she prepares. I might not be able to poach my own farm-fresh eggs in genuine burgundy from the Loire, but I know where I can get my hands on some store-bought beef stock for that �all-day cooked flavor�!
In any event, the truth behind this entry is that there�s other stuff that�s troubling me, about which I am trying to avoid writing. Or thinking about, honestly. It�s depressing, albeit not dire, so I�d rather focus on the stuff that makes me smile.
Tune in next time when I�ll talk about pantaloons and Judith Miller being tossed in the clink for being a tool in a thinly-veiled, politician-spurred plot to get revenge for the public criticisms of a government employee who...turned out to be telling the truth. Damn him!
Someone Got Here By Searching For: Eliza Dushku I�m Watching: Passions. Y�all, the Disaster is just around the corner! I�m Reading: Ten Big Ones, by Janet Evanovich. Or, I will, when I have the time.