You Don't Sweat Much for a Fat Girl

by Rivenbark, Celia

  There are just some news headlines that seem ripe for fun-making. Take the time Obama invited the Cambridge cop and the professor to the White House for a beer in hopes that they could make up. While others thought this was a unique approach to opening a much-needed dialogue about race relations and, yes, profiling, my first thought was: “Oh, hells yes! I’m gonna ask Obama to help me patch things up with the carpool bitch who always gets out of her car and disappears to chat while we all have to drive around her stupid van.” If the leader of the free world has time for this sort of thing, I am so in!

  The other thing about the German would-be jokester is that he didn’t understand when to quit. You can’t keep telling the same joke over and over. Unless you’re Larry the Cable Guy. No, I was right the first time. You really can’t.

  Dave Barry, a little-known comic who, I believe, lives on a bed of plantain peels in a Miami alley, once noted that humor has to be a series of punch lines. You can’t just have one joke in your arsenal. That said, you also should be careful to always leave ’em wanting more. Jon Stewart? Yes, please. Carlos Mencia? Not so much.

  The problem with our German friend is that his timing was off. Way off. It’s the same reason it’s OK now to joke about Michael Jackson but right after he sailed away on a puffy cloud of injectibles? No flippin’ way. Only now is it acceptable to joke about those wacky Jacksons. And while I’m glad the chirren have found a stable home with Michael’s mom, I have to wonder if it wouldn’t be better if they were in the care of someone a little younger—say, Methuselah.

  The important thing to remember is that in humor, timing is everything. The German guy could’ve tried out his best Michael Jackson material instead of the underwear-bomb joking and nothing would’ve happened except the Germans, who love ’em some Thriller, might’ve been pissed.

  All of these are weighty matters that are best left to the deep thinkers among us. Yeah, that’s right: Dane Cook.

  3

  Movie To-Do List: Cook Like Julia, Adopt Really Big Kid

  I went to see The Blind Side with duh-hubby and the Princess a while back. For those of you who haven’t seen it, Blind Side is a fuzzy-wuzzy inducing movie in which Sandra Bullock plays a tough-talkin’ Southern belle married to a Taco Bell mogul. One day, she discovers a homeless high school boy walking alone in the freezing rain and immediately stuffs him into her fancy imported car and takes him to her house, where he will spend the next few weeks sleeping beneath an Yves Delorme comforter on her couch. Which strikes me as weird, since her crib looks like it would have at least a dozen spare bedrooms. Let’s just say that gorditas have been very, very good to this family. She works a little, too, as all good tough-talkin’ Southern belles do, and naturally it’s as an interior decorator. This makes it possible for the movie to include a few shrieking phone calls to some off-camera and impeccably gay assistant to show that, yes, she is quite tough-talkin’. It’s easy to see how she’d fall for her husband. When I think Taco Bell, I think interior design, don’t you? Aye Chihuahua!

  No matter. She is the classic Southern woman who will move mountains for those she loves, including and especially her new black son. She spends the crucial first few weeks together with him teaching him how to coordinate his Aber-crombie with his Fitch. Along the way, the kid becomes a football star at the fancy private high school her kids attend, which isn’t a real surprise because this kid is frikkin’ huge.

  All I can think is thank God Almighty that kid’s birth mama supposedly smoked lots of crack or he would’ve come out weighing, like, forty pounds when he was born.

  The movie was pretty good but I had a hard time concentrating because there was another bright screen just a Twizzler’s breath away. A woman I’ll call Turdette was sitting beside me and spent the whole movie compulsively texting on her Dingleberry, which had a screen bright enough to land a jumbo jet on a rainy runway.

  It was so annoying that I almost missed the best scene, where Sandra Bullock chews up her bigoted lunch buddies at the club and spits ’em out like Sanka at Starbucks.

  Even Turdette paused momentarily from her texting to watch, but then she went right back to it.

  I shouldn’t be surprised. The movie theater is the last bastion of lawlessness in polite society.

  Where else can you just toss your used food and drinks on the floor? I mean besides the opera, of course.

  Movie theaters have always had a slightly seedy vibe and not just because the back row is always reserved for blow jobs. Which I tried to explain to my mother as she headed up the steps toward the top row when I took her to see something forgettable starring Catherine Zeta-Jones, who, she made a point of saying, “looks like she’d be the kind of daughter who would treat her mother very nicely.”

  “You can’t sit there! That’s where the kids sit. It’ll be noisy and, uh, gross.”

  “I bet Catherine Zeta-Jones would let her mother sit anywhere she’d like,” she huffed.

  “But this is the illicit sex row! Everybody knows that. Children have been conceived back here. Remember that girl in the Princess’s home-ec class? The one who named her son Avatar? You think that was just a coincidence?”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she snapped. “I’ve got a bad back. I have to stand up every ten minutes. Do you really want me to do that in the middle of the theater?”

  Point taken. We sat in the back row and I breathed a huge sigh of relief when a bunch of older folk showed up and filled in the rest of the row. Throughout the movie, it was like everyone had little national anthems playing in their heads as they periodically popped out of their seats and just stood there for a minute or two cracking and stretching before sitting back down.

  From our perch on high, I could see all sorts of movie-going malfeasance. For starters, there were the latecomers. These tardy assholes like to come in and ask you to scoot down so they can take an aisle seat.

  What they don’t understand is that dues have been paid for that aisle seat. Until you’ve suffered through seventeen minutes of movie trivia (“Sandra Bullock was born in Arlington, Virginia!”), all I’ve got to say is talk to the imitation-butter-soaked hand.

  Another violation? Using your coats and assorted shitwear like crime scene tape, to rope off a bunch of seats just so your trifling friends will have somewhere to sit when they stumble in late.

  And then there’s the creepy theater-etiquette violation: If the theater is practically empty (think any Steven Seagal comedy), make sure not to sit close to the only other person there. That’s just plain pervy.

  Without a doubt, the worst movie behavior isn’t bright screens, pervs, saved seats, or latecomers who lean over to ask, stupidly, “Is this seat taken?” spilling half their popcorn into your lap or (back row only) your girlfriend’s head.

  Just because you’ve seen a movie once or twice, this doesn’t entitle you to spoil it for the rest of us. Don’t say, “You know he ain’t coming back alive, right?” when Diane Lane watches her beloved Richard Gere speed off in his fancy-doctor car to save sick orphans.

  Years ago, I was watching Pay It Forward when the clod behind me coarse-whispered to her friend, “This one has a sad ending.” The friend tried to shush her but it didn’t help. “I mean this is the saddest ending I’ve ever seen. You’re not gonna believe it.”

  The friend said, “Shhhh!” again but the coarse whisperer was unstoppable. “Well, I’d just better tell you, don’t get too attached to that little boy with the eyes that remind you of Hummel figurines ’cause, well, he’s gonna get dead!”

  Overall, I love going to the movies, although there are some I wish I’d just waited to rent instead. Like Marley & Me. It’s another fuzzy-wuzzie inducer based on a book that a newspaper columnist wrote about his mischievous lab dog.

  And by “mischievous” I mean shithead.

  As my fellow moviegoers stumbled out sobbing into their tissues and remembering their own long-gone pooches, I asked Duh if I was the only one in the whole
damn theater who thought Marley needed to die a lot sooner.

  When the “rascally” Marley tripped the couple’s toddler, who happened to be human and still possessing a soft spot on his little noggin, that would’ve done it for me.

  “That kid could’ve had a hematoma!” I said.

  “You don’t understand dogs,” Duh sniffled, pausing to look at a faded picture in his wallet of his childhood dog, Tyrone, who died twenty-seven years ago, I kid you not.

  “Don’t you get it? Dogs are perfect creatures because they love you unconditionally,” he said. “They have no expectations and they make no demands.”

  “Well that’s just messed up,” I said.

  What good is love if you can’t extract something fabulous in exchange for it? Well? I’m waiting here.

  A red-nosed theatergoer who overheard all this gave me the stinkeye on the way out. What can I tell you? I’m a shallow creature who craves order and calm. If I walked into my living room and discovered my “lovable” dog leaping about in a snowstorm of couch stuffing, I’d have to be sedated. Seriously.

  The book which Marley & Me is based on sold millions and made John Grogan very rich indeed. Maybe now he can afford a cat. His newspaper career was steady but unspectacular until he started writing columns about his dog’s latest misbehaviors. Having been a newspaper columnist for a couple of decades, I can tell y’all that writing about your pets is what we in the bidness call “pulling one out of your ass.” It’s right up there with the “from the mailbag” desperation column. These columns usually, in journalistic terms, reek.

  But in Grogan’s case it clicked. Which means that my next book will be a collection of heartwarming stories about the antics of my three cats. Look. It’s not like old, dying professors named Morrie are growing on trees, right? Between columnist Mitch Albom’s Morrie and Grogan’s damn dog, I need to read the handwriting on the Whiskas.

  If that doesn’t work out, I can always write a book like Blind Side. I will cruise the highways and byways looking for an exceedingly large and innately talented young man whom I can befriend in hopes of selling my screenplay. (Plus, this will get those exchange student nags off my back. Why would I want to take in some kid from another country who doesn’t even understand football?)

  Duh thinks this is all a tad ridiculous. But until he becomes a Taco Bell mogul (God, I love that phrase), I’m not paying a lot of attention to what he has to say.

  “You start coming home with sacks full of pillowy cheesy goodness and then we’ll talk,” I huffed.

  Despite our movie friction, we trudged out to catch Julie & Julia, about spunky New York blogger Julie Powell who cooked all 534 recipes in Julia Child’s cookbook in just one year.

  What can I tell you? I had myself a good old-fashioned epiphany. The next day, I sat down the fam and made my announcement.

  “Don’t try to stop me,” I said, shoving my own copy of Ms. Child’s ginormous Mastering the Art of French Cooking toward Duh with my foot because it is simply too heavy to lift.

  “I know it sounds crazy but I’m going to cook one recipe from this book at least once a year.”

  There. I said it. No applause, please.

  “Big deal,” said the Princess, who stomped out of the kitchen to return to her full time-job: staring at the life-size poster of Robert Pattinson in her room. Oh, wait. That’s my room. Well. I like to support the arts whenever I can.

  “Once a year,” mused Duh as he constructed the only thing he knows how to make: vanilla wafers stuffed with peanut butter. “But in the movie, she makes something every single day. That was kinda the whole point, wasn’t it?”

  “Well, I believe we established that she was spunky, which I am not. Go ahead: Pick out any dish you like from this book and I will make it. Some day. Within the next year.”

  Naturally Duh went straight to some amazing looking multilayered torte thingy dripping with chocolate ganache.

  I love the pictures in this cookbook more than anything. I love pictures of food in general. It’s why I’m curiously bitter when eating at fancy gourmet restaurants, because they almost never have pictures of food on the menu. Except Olive Garden, of course.

  Truly, the only fault I could find with Julie & Julia was a definite shortage of food porn. I love a movie like Like Water for Chocolate, where there’s food in every single scene. The camera did linger lovingly over Child’s classic beef burgundy for a few extra blissful seconds, but I craved more naked butter shots.

  Julie & Julia went a long way toward restoring my food equilibrium after watching Food Inc., a nauseatingly well-done documentary about where hamburger comes from. For months, I had only been able to buy organic chickens, tough old birds who dropped dead in their tracks from a life well lived. The kind of chicken that was given a little bonnet and shawl to wear at night to ward off a chill. The kind of chicken that would stand up in the last row of the theater every so often just to stretch.

  So, yes, the movies have a huge effect on me. I started going to the local farmers’ market but felt like an outsider because I (a) shave my pits and (b) think patchouli smells like ass.

  No matter. I’m learning. And in the meantime, there’s that torte to make. Sometime in the next fifty-one weeks.

  4

  Kiosk Bee-otch Makes Mall Trip Treacherous

  A skinny woman in a white coat jumped in front of me at the mall.

  “Ess-cooz-uh me, ma’am. Do you wor-ray about the moisture in your skin?”

  Her tone was shrill and a tad desperate. Apparently it had been a long day. Her Bumpit was listing to one side as though she was hiding a chocolate muffin in her hair for later.

  She pointed a pump dispenser of lotion at my face and, without looking down, reached for my hand.

  What the hell?

  “Give me your hand!” she fairly shrieked. “I will make it beautiful.”

  Unless she was planning on presenting me with the diamond eternity band that I’ve been hinting to Duh about for the better part of twelve birthdays, this conversation was officially over.

  “No thanks,” I muttered. I tried to walk away, but damned if she didn’t lurch back in front of me. The desperation reminded me of those movies where the pimp is secretly lurking across the street to make sure his hos are really giving it their all.

  I looked around but didn’t see anyone resembling a pimp. Just a fat guy eating a fried hot dog wrapped in pretzel dough and rocking in a rocking chair.

  One thing I love about a mall is that they don’t even bother to pretend. This is not a place of restraint and fitness. This is a place where you can eat at seventy-five places within fifty feet, then collapse into a chair and rock your fat ass right into sleepyland. It’s a little like I imagine heaven, if you must know.

  “I don’t want any of that stuff,” I told her. She looked pissed but quickly regrouped, smoothed her Bumpit and scurried away to offer to make beautiful someone else. Pretzel-dog guy wiped some mustard off his chin in his sleep. Nah, he was no lotion pimp.

  As I journeyed deeper into the impacted bowels of the mall’s kiosk court, a man in a shiny shirt and tight black pants gave me his best smile-by-Lumineers.

  “Madam, if I may ask, wouldn’t you like to have the shiny hairs?”

  Ooooh, the shiny hairs.

  He was holding some sort of flatiron gizmo in one hand and tapping it on the palm of the other hand. The gesture reminded me of a cop with a nightstick. Except instead of wanting to subdue me with force, he wanted to give me the shiny hairs.

  “No, thanks,” I said with way more courtesy than I felt. He trotted along behind me.

  “Madam, I just want to show you something amazing!”

  Something told me it wasn’t his Mensa scores.

  There were other offers as I continued to wade through kiosk hell.

  “Lady! A massage today! Very relaxing, make you a new woman … .” There was even someone who wanted to throw me into a recliner and thread my eyebrows. I have no idea what
the hell that is but I’m pretty sure it’s not something you want to do in public. What’s next? Quickie Brazilians by the Dippin’ Dots?

  Mom: “Junior, you and Sister go get you some ’nanner ice cream. Mama’s gone be right here gettin’ her cootch waxed. What do you mean you’ve lost your appetite?”

  A woman dressed in a long gingham apron and wearing fake wire-rim glasses hollered to no one in particular: “Glazed pecans, better’n your granny made!”

  OK, first, my granny never made glazed pecans. She didn’t make much of anything except the world’s best bread pudding. I could’ve happily lived off that bread pudding and nothing else, but my sister and I both used to squirm when she would offer to cook supper for us. Invariably, she’d burn a couple of quarter-inch thick T-bones, then cover them with a bitter-tasting snowstorm of some ghastly salt substitute.

  Glazed pecans? Not so much.

  A few steps farther away from Pepperidge Weirdo I was confronted by a greasy teenage boy who grinned demonically while tossing a toy glider dangerously close to my head. It boomeranged back to him just in time. He looked at me and grinned loopily. Hmmmm. Looks like somebody took time out to visit the Ecstasy kiosk.

  I was still pondering how close I’d come to getting a toy plane up my nostril when a woman in her twenties sprang at me like a cheetah.

  “Can I see your nails, miss?”

  I frowned and walked past her but she was quick and I nearly tripped over her. I was now officially pissed off.

  “You no want bee-you-tee-full nails?” she asked with a little fake sad look.

  “Nope,” I said. “And no soft hands, pecan cones, eyeputting-out toy planes, shiny hairs, or public backrubs, either.”

  But there was one thing I realized I wanted very much. A fried hot dog wrapped in a pretzel. The grease would be good for my cuticles.