Following up on this column, I would like to share the top of Gwyneth’s GOOP e-mail newsletter on how to eat a healthy breakfast, lunch and dinner, you fat bastards.
(My comments are in italics and parenthesis.)
“This week brings easy, delicious, healthy options for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I absolutely love these buckwheat and banana pancakes, which I came up with when making breakfast for a friend who doesn’t eat eggs or dairy and doesn’t love wheat. (Who is your friend and why does he hate America?) I like the challenge of making super healthy food that doesn’t taste like it belongs in California in the 1970s. (What does that mean? It doesn’t taste like Buttermaker’s hat from the Bad News Bears?) If my son likes them, then anyone will like them! (Ah, your son is Mikey. Got it.) The quick tuna sandwich makes a satisfying lunch and the soy-mayo spread really makes it sing. (Sing? Even though it’s about to be devoured by joyless vegetarians, the quick tuna sandwich’s lyrics can’t be any more depressing than Coldplay’s.) The chicken dinner is so easy it’s ridiculous. (Who actually wrote this? Tracy Morgan? Come on. This is ridiculous, Liz Lemon.) Just make sure your pantry is stocked with fish sauce and rice vinegar from the Asian market – they add incredible depth of flavor, it will taste like you have been slaving all day. (Our Confederate friends will be pleased to know that slaving, once again, is in vogue.) If you only buy one organic item, it should be the chicken. (I have been saying this for years, people.) Cook with love! Make it great! (Or don’t. But try to. Just make sure something is nourished. It’s GOOP, yo.)”
Best e-mail newsletter ever. It is the gift that keeps on giving.
Update 11/03/08: I have received several entries. Thank you. For those of you who are too lazy to click on the comments section, here are my favorites:
“You look like what Vic Mackey would look like if he was in an improv group with Mike Costantini.” - Dan
“Damn it, I’d be PERFECT for that ‘Shield’ spinoff: ‘Son of Shield.’ If I don’t get that, my agent’s fired.” - Sarah
“Huh, everyone here has a date. I really wish I’d known.” - Soren
“Jason Kidd gets more ladies without the goatee, but his on-the-court presence isn’t quite as terrifying.” - Silver
Can these be topped? I put it you you, JDC readers.
Some prominent conservatives are throwing their support behind Barack Obama. Who are these people and what do they have to say? I explain it all in my latest post on dipdive.com
Halloween is wonderful. It is a reminder that we should fear things. Because of the size of my biceps and my powerful sense of self-confidence, not much strikes fear in my heart. If a job interviewer asked me what I feared most my response would be, “My only fear is that I will never find anything TO fear.”
I will know I am in the right place if he responds, “You are the one the human resources director spoke of in the prophecies. And so it will be written in the Outlook calendar, that you were here, on this day, and we received you.”
I would pledge my undying loyalty to any company that greeted me in such a manner.
Outside the house I live in are two Styrofoam gravestones. They are decorations that my roommate planted in the yard to invoke the spirit of Halloween for visitors. Nothing says “let us celebrate a holiday” like the replica of the lifeless stone that will be placed above your body’s final resting place, a stone that tells the world you lived a life, you gave it your all, and look what damn good it did you.
I have a feeling that if there was a Funeral Channel, my roommate would watch it.
(Sweeps week on The Funeral Channel. Photo by Brent and MariLynn/Flickr.)
I do not really fear sickness or war or plague or clowns or plane rides or the economy or bears or burglars or global warming or public speaking or gun violence or bioterrorism or that fish that can crawl on land.
The list of things that fear me is far larger than the list of things I fear. Things that fear me include insects that are inside a house, the computer on Madden 2009, messy rooms, bocce opponents, cats who think they’re better than dogs, pints of Guinness, weepy songwriters, companies that pretend to just make robot vacuum cleaners but really manufacture robot killing machines, buffalo wings located near ranch dressing and ignorance, sadness, racism, prejudice and injustice.
I really only have one fear, and I have to say, it is a silly, stupid fear. Most people would not place it atop their list of fears and probably cannot even relate to it. I fell stupid for bringing it up, because you will probably laugh at me and think I am a little girl. I fear hillbilly meth barons with a penchant for sadistic, ritualistic games. Ever since I watched The Salton Sea, my main fear has been that while driving from Los Angeles to Las Vegas my car would break down in the desert and I would be confronted by a Vincent D’Onofrio-looking speed dealer with a detachable nose who mistakes me for someone named Tony who owes him money.
(Above: My greatest fear.)
The meth baron, who would have a colorful name like Snoopy, would abduct me at gunpoint and take me back to his lair, a villainous den of tweaking trigger-happy henchmen and nasty, underfed animals in tight cages.
(Above: The meth baron’s secret lab. Note the RV, abundance of trucks and general melancholy of the place. Photo by Worker101/Flickr.)
While tied to a chair I would plead, “I’m not Tony Santario. I don’t know who that is. I don’t have your money. My name is Joe. I am driving to Las Vegas to meet my friends for a fantasy football draft.”
“Whatever you say – Tony,” Snoopy would say back to me.
Well, Snoopy would not actually say that, he would sort of breathe the words using what little is left of his lungs, throat and rapidly-decaying mind.
At this point one of Snoopy’s boys, a weather-beaten man with a blonde ponytail who looks like one of the Dreadnoks from G.I. Joe, would untie my right hand and threaten to stick it inside a wolverine cage.
“Last chance,” Snoopy breathes. “We’re going to take that $15,000 out of you one way or the other.”
“I’m not Tony Santario,” I yell.
“Let’s go,” Snoopy whispers, “wolverines.”
My arm is thrust into the cage and it feels like I am shaking hands with the propeller of a Mercury 350 HP outboard engine. This is when I black out from the pain.
When I regain consciousness, I am in a bathtub full of ice and all of my vital organs are missing except the ones I need to keep me alive long enough to read the note that is staple-gunned to my chest. The note says:
I told you we’d take that $15,000 out of you one way or the other. Feed the wolverine on your way out. – Snoopy
Then a wolverine peers around the corner into the bathroom. As I slip into unconsciousness I hear a commotion in the front of the house. A door opens and slams shut. One of the Dreadnoks yells, “Tony!” And the last thing I hear is Snoopy belly-laughing and the blonde Dreadnok yelling, “Who the fuck is in the tub?”
The Joe Donatelli Column covers relationships, work, politics, pop culture, research, robots and the pursuit of happiness.
