I’d take it all back.

If I could.

If only there was some way to undo it.

Some way to travel in time and warn myself.
Check the can a little more closely.
Get a second opinion.
Slow the pour.

I did not go out in public in this shirt. Or go anywhere for that matter. I battled the modem until around 9pm when I did an abs workout. Exciting.

If only somehow I might have realized that what I thought was coconut milk was actually some kind of horrible, artificial white sugar and MSG-based tempura paint concoction used in Pina Coladas intended for brain damaged tourists.

If only I could slow time and go back to the moment I dumped the entire, vile contents of said chalky chemical sludge into my otherwise presentable Pad Thai creation.

And if only I could have resisted the temptation to taste it.

You know.

Just in case.
Somehow.

If perhaps.
By some miracle.

It was edible.

Edible or even choke down-able rather than the horrific Reeses’ Peanut Butter cup on acid that assaulted my mouth and left a burny aftertaste that lasted about an hour.

Oh, the humanity…

It can really only be described as a crime against my taste buds.
An abomination. And a potential blitzkrieg on my digestive system.

Make no mistake.

It was hard core.

A cry of despair rang out in the Mexican desert tonight, I can tell you.

There’s a Turkish proverb I very much appreciate: “No matter how far you have gone on a wrong road, turn back.”

I would assume it's obvious, but here's the back in case you were wondering.

I get that, and needless to say, the vile mess is in a trash bag now, but still…
I mourn for what could have been a night free of beans and avocados and tortillas…

But alas.

Duped by my own stupidity.

Yet again.

This being St. Patrick’s Day you may wonder, ‘Hey? Where’s the corned beef? What about the cabbage? Or the Guinness?’

Well, if you’re sporadic about reading my infrequent posts, you may be interested to learn that I’m in the the middle of goddamned nowhere Mexico poisoning myself on cheap cocktail mixer-based pasta dishes while trying to write a new book in record time. That’s what happened!

Sheesh!

Speaking of poisoning, I would just like to say that I have now been brushing my teeth with tap water for two weeks, and I am fit as a fiddle. Not so sure about the double shot of MSG now swirling through my veins, but I can rumble with the best of South of the Border bacteria and come up a winner.

In other news, all things technological have gone to hell in a hand basket.

Yahoo thinks I’m a spammer and is blocking me in kind.

I swear, it's like I cannot take a bad picture on these stairs. I might need to buy this concrete shack just to have long-term access to them.

Not every day, mind you, just in 48-hour chunks during which I have to write them and plead my case and then they let up for a day and then, you guessed it, start blocking me again.

I can receiveth, but I cannot giveth.

And I’m really bad at those ‘guess what warped letters these are to prove you’re a human’ puzzles. And they don’t work anyway. I still get a message that I’m blocked even when I finally slog through the painful alphabet test six times. And it’s aggravating. And a waste of my time. And I hate to waste time. And I have a few candid thoughts for you Yahoo mail: Bite me. Suck it. Go to hell. Yo Mama.

But that’s not the worst of it.

Oh no.

Far from it.

That was the worst of the technology struggles until yesterday when it was trumped. The stakes were raised when my laptop gave me the message that the “USB device is drawing too much power and the port will be shut off.”

Ever since then, the modem is totally shot to sh*t.

And it was kind of a POS (not to be confused with Point of Sale, from my old background in debit/credit card processing) in the first place, so saying it’s shot to sh*t is really saying something.

It will log on for 2.3 seconds and hang up…27 times in a row.

And each time I log in, I have to type a password, and then I’ll sit there and hit ‘send, send, send’ on an email I wrote perhaps an hour ago, but 2.3 seconds is not enough time for it to go through and…argh.

Trying again…

I need a haircut.

Oh, and I had to buy a new USB cable for the damn thing. The old one had a slice in it (given to me that way) and the wires were frayed (probably the source of the problems) and kept shocking me once in a while when it would land on my thigh (and yes, sweat was involved. What can I say? It’s really hot here.)

Anyway, the guy charged me 150 pesos ($12) for a cable that would run for $2.99 in the US, but I was at my wit’s end, so I paid it.

You can’t find anything in this country.

He knows it.

I know it.

He could smell the desperation coming off me like Pad Thai made with pina colada mix.

So what could I do?

That’s right.

Give the man what he asked for and thank him for the fleecing.

And listen to a pitch about how I should bring my blankets down to be cleaned by his super-size washing machine.

But the thing of it is – through no fault of Daniel at the Neptune Laundromat and strange array of computer parts shop – now it still doesn’t work.

The modem itself seems to be fried.

And is in the freezer right now.

Here's a pretty sunset from the other night.

Chilling out.

Composing itself.

Taking a breather.

Cooling its heels.

Hopefully soon to acquiesce to my will that it work.

As this blog is already a day late thanks to its antics.

But whatever.

It’s still St. Patrick’s Day somewhere.

Right?

p.s.

The worst of it is, the smell of that horrific meal is still lingering in the air.

And it kind of smells like Easter.

Easter is now totally ruined.

The world is always ready to receive talent with open arms. Very often it does not know what to do with genius.

~Oliver Wendell Holmes

There you go. All this time I’d been thinking my talent was going to bust this thing wide open any day now,  but suddenly I realize that the delay is that I’m shining too brightly. I need to dial it back a few notches to ‘mind-blowing talent.’

Then it all comes together.

Oh, and just in case there was any confusion, that’s a a mind-blowing talent who will NOT be converting this into a ‘dirty secrets’ or ‘pay me to stop posting inappropriate pictures’ (a.k.a. Project Blackmail My Dad) blog any time soon. But thanks for the “gimmick” idea, Mark. Maybe back to the drawing board on that one?

Not offended, just not my style.

I was thinking more like G-rated gimmicks, like finding someone already famous to tie my star to (i.e. the whole Julia Child thing) or going on a diet of nothing but Taco Bell food and losing 80 pounds…and then dying and leaving a skeletal corpse.

Seriously though, have you seen these ads?
Is this for real?
Who gets the idea, “I’m going to eat nothing but pseudo-Mexican fast food for a year and lose a ton of weight!”???

A friggin’ genius, that’s who.

Ick. Jared.

Good for Taco Bell. That lady looks a lot better than Jared. Just seeing Jared’s ugly mug has kept me far away from Subway for many years.

Any restaurant that decides to use that dweeb as their poster child has some figurin’ out to do.

Moving on, it’s seeming like maybe I need to find my own deep-pocketed chain I can “diet” with. Starbucks? Nothing but non-fat lattes and those awful dried up sandwiches they sell? Wendy’s? They sell salads, right?

Although maybe dieting isn’t my thing?

I’m kind of on the small side already.

Perhaps some other kind of self-improvement tied to a widely disbursed commodity…?

A no-fail workout routine involving McDonald’s Happy Meal toys? Something really awesome involving, I don’t know, Dora the Explorer? Bratz? Something omnipresent and generally lame?

Hmmm…  That one needs to go in the think tank for a bit.

In other news, if you ever decide it’s time for your young child or foreign exchange student to learn the “F” word, then have I got great news for you! Just let them watch five minutes of Gordon Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares. Holy macaroni, that man drops an “F” bomb every 2.2 seconds, AND it’s the worst bleeping job in the history of television. The only part they ever manage to bleep is the “ing” or the “ed” or the “me”.

Pretty much all he does is show up at your restaurant, use and abuse the “F” word, and generally tear you a new one.

And that’s what I call entertainment.
Seriously tough, the Brits seem to be finding their stride with these ‘tough love’ television shows. First there was the no-bullshit Super Nanny, then Gordon Ramsey, and now this Tabatha’s Salon Takeover lady. All three are quick to criticize and even quicker to infuriate.

I always think of Brits as polite and reserved, but apparently, once you offend their sensibilites…look out. Or make that look the f*ck out. The gloves are coming off.

Six of one, half dozen of the other.

Speaking of reality TV, I’ve been trying to coerce at least one person into watching Jersey Shore so I have someone to gossip with about it. So far, no takers.

None.

Not one.

I don’t understand, I know it’s complete crap, but no one wants to laugh with me about the situation with “The Situation”? What about Snookie’s hairdo? The fact that Pauly D. seems gay?

(No. I am not secretly a twelve year old boy from Long Island. Why would you suggest this?)

Lastly, well, who can top the train wreck that is MTV’s Jersey Shore?

No one. That’s who.

You can’t top that.

Neither can I.

So I guess there is no ‘lastly’.

I got nothin’.

So I went to the gym today, and I was expecting a mob scene. You know how it works: People make all kinds of resolutions to join a gym or get in shape or lose 20 pounds and give it their best shot for two weeks, and it really cramps my style when they hog all the machines at my club in the process.

The guy I saw managed to dislocate something and get his foot up over his head.

However, perhaps due to ye olde econonomy, things were pretty normal. I did see a number of folks on sales tours, but all in all it was a typical Saturday morning with the usual suspects (Old Chinese guy who does everything at triple speed, Anthony Hopkins doppleganger, my friend and chiropractor who is a serious gym rat, etc. etc.).

So status quo except for a few weird ass things going on that I have to tell you about. In fact, the silver lining of the whole experience was the happy realization that “Houston, we have blog material…”

So without further ado: I was sitting there quietly working on my triceps in a most lady-like and human fashion, and to what to my wondering eyes should appear but this woman crawling along the floor in what could only be a reenactment of the stages of evolution. Seriously. It was whacked.

Upon closer examination, she was apparently executing a push-up going into a lunge going into a push-up, a la “the crawl of a dying gila monster” back and forth across the room, and I felt embarrassed just looking at her. She must have been at it for hours, too, because I saw her more than once as I mixed in the biceps and triceps machines that line that section of the gym. She would come in the corner of my peripheral vision, and I would think “What is that!?!?” (being unaccustomed to large objects lumbering around on the ground at the gym), and thar she blows. Back and forth in the open area between the weights and exercise bikes, performing her strange one-woman show for all 50 people in the cardio areas’ enjoyment.

I’m certain if she saw videotape she would never do that in public again.

Oh, my stars. See what I'm saying? Is this really necessary?

Anyway, in an effort to avert my eyes, I looked away in the direction of the basketball court wherein I happened to catch a glimpse of what appeared to be a foot sitting atop a head. I squinted and yes, there was a guy with a stretch band tied around his ankle, yanking his foot over his skull and toward his stomach.

I don’t know who advised this or how it’s a good idea, but what does a stretch band cost? Five dollars? Less? Don’t these people know that they can do this weird stuff at home? The slithering crawler lady would be better off at home where at least the germs all over the floor are hers.

I, for one, perform all odd-looking or awkwardly posed activities (i.e. everything abdominal and all squat-based or lunge-related behavior) behind closed doors. We’re all better off that way.

In other news, I attempted to watch the movie Julie and Julia last night. I had heard good things about it from everyone from girlfriends to male friends to my male dermatologist, probably because I have a blog…although not one with a book deal. (Note to self: GET A GODDAMNED GIMMICK ALREADY!!!)

Anyway, it’s still sitting in the DVD player half-watched because – and I don’t mean to sound like a prude here – but I was getting unnerved by all the suggestions of Julia Child’s ardent sex life. I mean, it’s JULIA CHILD already. She kind of looks like Susan Boyle. And she talks all weird (what WAS that? She was American, right?), and I really don’t want to see her rolling around in bed – again and again and again – with Stanley Tucci.

I have to imagine the real Mr. Child was not nearly so good-looking as Stanley Tucci, and I will never ever ever Google an image to find out. What I’m already picturing with his beloved wife is bad enough.

Oh dammit!!!

I just did it.

Why do I do this to myself?

It’s horrible folks.

It’s worse than I imagined…

He’s a little tiny old man and she’s gigantic. Oh baby.

God bless 'em. I'm glad they were happy. I just don't need to see footage (real or recreated) of them in bed.

So where was I?

Oh, yes, Julia made some comment about “It’s like a stiff cock!” and admittedly I wasn’t looking at the screen and maybe she was talking about a dead rooster or something, but I don’t care. That was it for me. Movie off.

I think it’s just that there’s some people where it’s better if they keep it to themselves.

If I went to a movie called Maddy and Madonna all about how 30-something Madelieine is hoping to learn the entire Madonna songbook on the ukulele and inter-spliced with scenes from the now-deceased Madonna’s life, I would expect a fair amount of sex. We all remember the “Truth or Dare” years and the cone bra and Sean Penn and Dennis Rodman and David Blaine and the father of Lourdes and Guy Ritchie and allegedly Sandra Bernhardt and on and on and on…

It’s to be expected.

I wouldn’t be shocked or put off or creeped out.

But 6′2″ weird-talking linebacker Julia Child and her tiny Mr. Magoo husband? I don’t wanna know.

Just talk to me about butter and pastry and keep it clean.

So last night around 11:00 p.m. after sharing a spectacular dinner of raw oysters, grilled oysters, beer battered cod, grilled salmon and crab bisque (a seafood extravaganza!! There was some rice and creamed spinach, too, because you have to have balance) with some dear friends, I was sitting on my couch surrounded by said friends. And we were all appreciating that it was rather late, and I suddenly had four very clear realizations:

1. No gifts will be wrapped tonight. I wrap like a monkey on the best of days, and this wasn’t even that.

2. There will not be a timely final ‘12 Days of Christmas’ blog post.

3. I have wonderful friends.

4. I am drunk as hell.

So there you have it.

And Merry Christmas.

Enjoy your twelve drummers drumming. With any luck, they’re those monkey cymbal toy drummers and you can throw them in the garage and drive over them with your car when you’ve had enough. And if they’re not – like if they’re real drummers – might I suggest Rohypnol in some eggnog?

Otherwise, I am freaking tired from all this blogging, so enjoy some holiday photos while you wait. Before you know it, I’ll be back to discuss New Year’s Eve and all kinds of grandiose plans for 2010. Let’s muse about what could be…

Until then, Merry Christmas!!!  Happy Hanukkah!!! Happy Kwanzaa!!!

Joy to the World!

Last night while in the shower I remembered #4.

He's very pale and there's no beard in sight. Technically, he's kind of unattractive, but he's funny and an amazing chef, and if you ask me, that more than compensates.

Wylie Dufrense.

If his name isn’t enough to convince you he ain’t easy on the eyes, here’s a photo.

He’s the chef/owner of WD-50 in Manhattan and a disciple of Catalan chef/god Ferran Adria (if I could’ve, I would’ve structured my whole trip last year around eating at El Bulli…until I learned that two million people request a table every year and seven thousand actually get one. Ahem…) and a leading proponent molecular gastronomy.

Anyway, his food is really bizarre and scientific and yet somehow sublime (or so I’ve heard and somehow it seems from the cooking shows on which I’ve seen him. I’ve never quite eaten at WD-50…yet.), and he’s very funny (big with me), and there you go.

And – in my defense – he does not look like a rabbi.

And for that, me and my psyche are grateful.

Completely unrelated: Me looking like an escaped member of the 'Ice Capades' and holding the iPod touch I just won from the Googlewaveblogger.com. I love it!!!