Your friendly host, hard at work on yet another entertaining blog, and doing some unpaid product placement for Grape Nuts while she's at it.

So yesterday at the gym, I had an idea. It was around the time that I was using the chest press and marveling at my own weakness, and the guy with the giant steroid body and tiny little head walked by. I suppose the sight of him made it suddenly occur to me that half of these people belong in a zoo. Like if aliens ever come, they should stick a majority sampling of the individuals frequenting my local club into cages and give them some gym equipment and leave them be.

• Like the skinny Asian guy who does all the weights crazy fast, as if in some sort of ‘bad form’ speed competition.

• Or the old man that wears the tiny short shorts and then groans really loudly every time he lifts a weight so you’ll look at him.

• Or the lady who wears the slacks and button-down shirt and lifts free weights.

See? Look at the gathered crowd. And in the rain, no less. People love performance art! Or naked guys sitting in plastic bubbles. Either way.

Anyway, all these human oddities got me thinking about performance art. You know, where someone stages some kind of odd event – be it twenty people hula hooping at once, or the individuals mulling around Grand Central station becoming suddenly, eerily quiet all at the same time – in the name of art. Speaking of which, can you imagine being the guy wandering around Grand Central the day that happened and NOT realizing what was going on? Definitely an end-of-the world ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers’ moment, if ever there were.

At any rate, while musing on my own potential as a performer of the absurd, I decided that if I ever had the opportunity and the government funding, I would have someone build me a zoo habitat, and I’d hang out there for a couple weeks. I’m thinking a part land/part water habitat might be nice. Something like what they build for a hippo or the penguins, only not so cold. I could swim some laps, or maybe play with a ball.

That's what I'm talking about.

A couple times a day, they could bring me my food in a bucket, and toss individual shrimps or Chicken McNuggets into my mouth. I’d act either ferocious or friendly at my keeper’s approach, depending upon my mood. If you were in charge of my maintenance, you could never be sure if I’d hug you or try to swipe you with my paws (hands).

Once in a while they could introduce a new object into my habitat to keep me entertained and watch me interact with it, like a cardboard box or an old, discarded Christmas tree or a Nintendo Wii. Or maybe bring my dog by for a visit, and we he could kick my @ss at tug-of-war (like he usually does, only without an audience). Heck, bring me a Bow Flex, and I could do some unimpressive weight lifting or approach the machine in fear and awe like the monkeys with the monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

And, of course, if you ‘accidentally’ fell into my cage, I would attack you with extreme prejudice. But remember: I am a national treasure, so you can’t fight back.