Ah, memories.

When I was small and young and blonde and cute, my mother had a Richard Simmons Sweatin' to the Oldies 2 VHS. Almost every morning, she would get up and do all kinds of weird dances in front of our old tube TV while bad late '80s covers of '50s and '60s pop songs played in the background and Simmons yelled things like "four more!" at the camera. At the time, I thought this was normal. Actually, I think it might have been somewhere close to normal in the '90s. Sometimes I'd even join her. This video gave me the impression that it was socially acceptable for white men to wear tiny, brightly colored, striped shorts and hairy-chest-baring tank tops with sparkly crap on them. It also led me to believe that wearing white gym socks with shorts was fashionable. As a result, I more or less dressed like Richard Simmons throughout the summers of my youth. It wasn't a good look, but hey, I was a kid.

Anyway, I feel like Richard Simmons gets a lot of flack from people nowadays. Granted, he's a little flamboyant and, er, eccentric, but you've got to give the guy some credit! He lost about 120 lbs when he moved to LA in the '70s and he's been helping other fat folks be less fat ever since. Also, his forehead is magnificently rectangular. Or at least it was, it's been losing its shape in recent years. Regardless, I've always secretly loved Richard Simmons. He's fabulous, but at the same time, has absolutely no fashion sense, and although his hair may be thinning, he refuses to let go of the frizzy brown Jew fro he's probably had since birth. And you can't say he's just like every other celebrity trainer out there! Despite being 63 years old, Simmons still does his own damn thing, like grabbing a CNN reporter's foot and kissing it passionately on camera, or wearing absurd, not to mention revealing outfits where cameras are present.

I mean, sure, he looks like a weird, red, bedazzled chick, but I'm pretty sure he's perfectly okay with that! Also, I doubt many of you would have the balls to go out in public in that, especially at his age! Actually, knowing the people I know, that's probably not true. Anyway, I don't care what any of you say, I will always love Richard Simmons. He's marvelous.

“I might as well be gay. And not just because I love rhinestones and Barbara Streisand. But because I'm a sensitive person who is supportive of gay people the same way I'm sensitive to grossly obese people and ugly people.”

        -Richard Simmons

You may or may not be aware

Sloths are the greatest things. They're adorable when they're babies and they're just awesome when they're all grown up. As much as 2/3 of a well fed sloth's body weight consists of its stomach and its contents. Sloths are excellent swimmers. The average ground speed of the three-toed sloth is 6.5 feet per minute. This is why they spend most of their lives in trees. They eat, sleep and have babies in trees. Sometimes they even stay in trees after they die. Sloths move so slowly, they're prone to growing algae. Okay, so that's a little gross but this algae actually helps camouflage them from predators in the rainforests. Sloths also have extra vertebrae in their necks that allow them to turn their heads 270 degrees. I'm not sure if this is useful, but it's kinda awesome. And did I mention they're fricking adorable?

I mean look at this thing. It's irresistible. I cannot resist it. It makes me want to make high-pitched girly squealing noises like normal women make when they see puppies or whatever.

But this is infinitely cuter than a puppy. Look. It's got a little stuffed frog friend. I can't handle this much cuteness.

Honestly, just look at its adorable little claws! And its precious shiny little nose! And he (or she?) just looks so damn friendly!

Aaaaah!

Just look at this guy. Not the guy with the mustache. Ignore him. Look at the sloth. He's the important part of this photo. And you can't even tell he's approximately 67% stomach! He's just completely and utterly fantastic!










Now look, there's this sloth sanctuary in Costa Rica.There's one facility in Aviarios and one in Monteverde. They rescue and rehabilitate sloths. It totally kicks ass. Here's a link to their website. And here's a video of some precious orphaned baby sloths at the sloth sanctuary. Enjoy!

Today I did some things

I went to the Getty. And then I went to LA. I took a few hundred photos (not exaggerating). Here are some of them:

Okay, first let me tell you about the time I did that thing with the cheese. That was a few weeks ago. Danny (Savanna's boyfriend) needed some photos of cheese taken for some sort or school thing, and I was happy to oblige. So we went to Trader Joe's and picked up a smelly, runny, gooey, disgusting wedge of bleu cheese. There it is on the ground in the lower right corner.

And here it is again. We drove out to 170th St. or something like that in my sister's sporty new car (it has a G meter), unwrapped the cheese, and slapped it down on the pavement. Then I proceeded to lie in the middle of the road and take photos of it, getting up occasionally to avoid being run over by oncoming traffic, taking this ungodly dairy product with me. My and Danny's hands smelled rancid by the time we were done. Every time I brought my hand up to focus, I smelled it. Ew.

Then my sister ran it over.

If you ever have the chance to personally witness a large wedge of bleu cheese being hit by a Nissan Sentra SER driven by a small blond girl, I strongly recommend you do it. The sound of dense French cheese being run over at 40 or 50 mph by a medium sized sedan is one of the funniest sounds I have ever heard. You wouldn't understand unless you were there.

So anyway, today I went to the Getty with a girl named Bridgette. She had never been and seemed pretty excited about the whole tram thing. There she is. Ain't she cute?

There was a very pretty Asian woman on the tram, but I only got a photo of the back of her head. It's a pretty nice head, don't you think?

I took lots of pictures of Bridgette because I'm a creep like that.

I'll never understand why so many people at the Getty wear backpacks. It's one of the few places I feel out of place due to my method of carrying my belongings. What ever happened to pockets?

So we had to leave pretty early because we had things to to in Beverly Hills. By "things to do" I mean "strangers to take photos of." So I practiced this a bit on the tram ride back to the parking structure.

There's Bertha parked in front of a very nice, large house on Beverly Dr. She didn't fit in very well there, I must admit.

There's a big tree in the little park by the Beverly Hills sign. People have carved things like this all over it. I don't know who Ruth and Gino are, but I hope they're still together because that would be nice. Like, cheesy bullshit chick flick nice. Cute.

I'm really bad at adjusting my shutter speed when the clouds go away. Good thing I'm changing my major, hey?

I'm almost positive she didn't notice half of the pictures I took of her. I'm a creep.

There was a gaudy, hideous Bugatti parked on Rodeo Dr. I guess it belonged to some guy who died. I feel like that's what he gets for defacing such a beastly car in this way. Anything with four turbochargers deserves more respect than this.

Attempting to hone my stranger-photographing skillz.

The Tiffany & Co. storefront is oppressive. I do not appreciate it in the least.

Rodeo Dr. has the classiest fire hydrants I have ever seen. I have to admit they're a little garish, insofar as a fire hydrant can be garish.

I think everyone in this photo, excluding the young policefellow, wanted to punch the aforementioned young policefellow in the mouth. I know I did.

This woman got out of a Porsche Panamera, so I felt the need to follow her for about a block, taking pictures of her ugly oatmeal colored sweater and her too-long jeans.

There was this black man being followed by a cameraman or two, trailing an entourage of sorts and being altogether much too cocky and pompous for someone who looks like they weigh about 145 lbs. But hey.

So then we drove to Hollywood, where there was this woman wearing very nice-looking sunglasses asking for money. I didn't give her any. I did, however, give a forlorn looking homeless man my box of Triscuits because his sign said "I'M HUNGRY." I believed him; he started eating my emergency cracker stash the second he sat back down like it was the first thing he'd eaten in weeks.

I went home eventually. There are more photos, but I'm much too lazy to upload them.
Tomorrow is Mother's Day, you know. I'm going to get up early and make my Mama San breakfast. Because she's awesome. Like, really awesome. I adore my mother, even though I inherited my bad back, lactose intolerance and sausage toes from her. I also got some bitchin' nice teeth and great taste in hair tint from her. She's rad. So here's a pretty photo of my pretty Mama San for Mother's Day.

This is how I mourn my dairy-rich diet.

I've become lactose intolerant. Like, three days ago, my body just decided, "I've had enough of this dairy shit!" I didn't figure out what was going on until last night, when I ate a giant, cheesy dinner at Olive Garden with my pops. Now I feel awful, and I hardly slept last night. This is unspeakably upsetting to me, as I love cheese and foods that involve cheese. Like cheesecake. I fucking love cheesecake. Now I have to carry Lactaid around with me all the time, or just avoid dairy products altogether. Lactose intolerance sucks.

So now I'm sitting on the couch watching RuPaul's Drag Race reruns and reading the news on my laptop. Yesterday, my sister said something to me about fake hymens, and I kind of thought she was full of shit, so I looked it up. She's not full of shit. They actually make artificial hymens for women who don't want their new husbands to know they aren't virgins. Or women who just want to lose their virginity twice. The website is all pink and feminine and features a photo of a nude woman with rose petals covering her ladyparts.

Now, I understand that some women may want to hide the fact that they are not virgins from their future husbands, especially in countries such as China or India, but hymenshop.com also suggests that you may want to purchase a fake hymen in order to "have your first night back" with your partner or spouse. Right. Who wouldn't want to experience the pain, bleeding and awkwardness if virginity loss twice? Personally, if I were to relive the night I lost my virginity, I might just kill myself. At the very least, I'd need several (more) years of therapy, and I'm pretty sure that even the least traumatic deflowering isn't exactly something you'd want to experience more than once. The website also suggests that you may want to purchase the artificial hymen to "surprise your partner." I don't think I know any men who would consider unexpected bleeding during sex to be an especially pleasant surprise. But what do I know?

Well anyway, there it is.






Pretty cute, right?

It's Monday

H. G. Wells

I'm hungry. No, I'm fucking starving. All I've eaten all day is a yogurt and a bagel, and that was close to 12 hours ago. After taking my friend home, I pretty much just sat around and studied and read H. G. Wells. I fucking love H. G. Wells. My dad thinks that's weird, but I honestly don't see how anyone could not love The Food of the Gods or The War of the Worlds; they're really excellent books and I can always ignore whatever else is going on in my life when I'm getting my Wells on.

I spent the whole weekend with good friends, and some family too. Since my weekend starts on Thursday, I went to Santa Monica with some pretty excellent people and I'm pretty sure we offended more than a few innocent tourists in one way or another. Then we went back to the AV and made the best cheesecake in the universe. So on Friday I had lunch with my pops and dinner with my mom and sister; the best thing about having divorced parents is you get two of lots of things, like birthday meals. They were both excellent and undoubtedly fattening. On Saturday I more or less just hung around the house half-dressed. Then a friend came over and we hung around half naked together. It was great, except that he was convinced that I am both a lesbian and worse than Stalin. I really can't complain though.

On Sunday, my two best girlyfriends came over and we acted ridiculous and played really loud music on the surround sound system. A glass got broken and I got a really attractive bruise on my foot. I don't know how either of these things happened.

Anyway, since spring is in the air, my allergies are making my face swell and my throat tickle and just trying to kill me in general. But all these allergens sure are pretty, let me tell you.

I have so many things I need to do before next Monday. One of them is eat dinner. I'm starving, in case you missed that part. I want to go eat tons of sushi right now, but nobody wants to go eat tons of sushi with me, and that's just not something I can do alone. There are lots of things I can't do alone, I've found. I don't think I ought to list them here, being this is a public forum, more or less. At any rate, I'm really very hungry. I'm considering making myself a breakfast burrito, but I know deep down that it won't be half as good as a Joey burrito and I'll just end up disappointed. I'm going to eat a bowl of Frosted Flakes instead. No disappointment there.

I'll leave you crazy blog-readers with this excellent song by Dave Van Ronk, who is excellent.

This is my day

In photos and stupid captions

Last night we went to a hotel room; it had a lamp

My sister and I ate some girl scout cookies and my sister made awkward faces at me

I slept in the most comfortable hotel bed in existence

I like to wear pencil skirts and sit on beds

I tried to hide the ugly chair with my stuff; it was unsuccessful

We kept our girl scout cookies next to our beds because we are smart ladies

There was a large Phillies fan in the room next door

Our bathroom had an adorable blow-dryer that I wanted to steal (but didn't)

We got breakfast at a restaurant specializing in bagels

My sister had coffee

Sandy had tea

Sandy threatened the Phillies fan

My burrito was less tasty than it was photogenic

Phillies fan enjoyed his burrito, as evidenced here

We had lots of nonsense on our table in the aftermath of our breakfast

My sister was skeptical of my leftover potatoes

Restaurant mints are wonderful

Then we went to an antique store and my sister put on a hat

It was kind of an odd antique shop

We went to a garage sale. It wasn't very good

So we went to another antique shop

I am excellent at holding still in low light situations

There was a mannequin wearing a mu mu

Then we drove for a while

And we ended up on a beach

where there was a dead crab striking a dramatic pose

and some stairs

Then we went to an underexposed fruit stand

I used a porta-potty

Then we drove some more, this time with fruit

And then I got home and hung around in the kitchen for a few hours and ate a lot

That is all.