Fancy Lady

The wife from Hygenowang lives on! I will be reprising the role known as "Fancy Lady" in Team Tiger Awesome's new web series for FOX called "Hollywood House Husbands." Here are some answers to questions I know are on your mind, dear reader:

Q: Are those your real pearls?
A: Yes, they are mine, but they are not real. They are actually made of diamonds coated in sawdust and festooned with the spittle of underage workers.

Q: Are you an actual bitch in life, or just TV?
A: I am nice, unless you are my fake husband and cheat on me while a camera crew films me outside my fake house.

Q: Is Team Tiger Awesome actually composed of tigers who put you in things because their things are for FOX and you are really a rabbit (amount of daily consumed lettuce as evidence)?
A: Mmmaaybe...

UPDATE 6/9: TTA has ditched Fancy Lady in favor of putting me in an undercover detective-in-drag housewife role, Terry. I got a haircut today, because that's how Terry would roll...she would not have split ends. That's Method, folks.

Get Me to Them to the Greek

Last week I had a blast working as Rose Byrne's stand-in on the Nick Stoller film "Get Him to the Greek." A spinoff of "Forgetting Sarah Marshall," this Apatow production charts the journey of rocker Aldous Snow (Russell Brand) as he is escorted by a young music exec (Jonah Hill) to his comeback concert at the Greek theater in Los Angeles. I did get a chance to see a cut of a scene filmed in last month in Vegas, but the real treat of the whole experience was getting to watch lengthy improvised takes, which had us all doubled over trying not to laugh out loud while the camera was still rolling.

In addition to getting to meet and work with the gracious stars and hugely talented crew, I got to lie in a hay-filled manger holding a plastic baby, see a man purposefully lit on fire, and ride a tiny metal circle 30 feet straight up into the air while an entire African village's dance was choreographed below. All that, and lunch options including a choose-your-own-Pad-Thai bar.

I love Hollywood.

The Sleeping Beauty Question

All too many of us women secretly want to be woken out of our fog by an arriving prince there to rescue. It’s not that we don’t have plenty of greatness on our own; it’s that we’re built to relate and connect, which just can’t be fulfilled fully solo. Lest ye princes rush out to purchase white stallions and satin riding pants, here are some tips and tricks to enticing we awaiting damsels:

+ If we are actually asleep, you will need to wake us up. Things that are aromatic include freshly cut roses, your armpits after gallivanting all that way, and pickles. Pickles are edible, which is a plus.

+ Don’t make fun of our sleeping gown. You haven’t been around; why should we have laundered it? Yes, those are tomato sauce stains. Fuck off. Wait, no—not really.

+ We know you think it’s ridiculous to come bearing gifts, or at least requires at least fifteen minutes of your time when you could be playing video games or trading on the stock market, but it’s kind of important. We’re letting you into our house. We’re wearing our tomato stained sleeping gown, which you have to admit is a little revealing. You’re the prince.

+ If you expect us to have really long hair, you have been reading too many comic books. We got split ends. We had no choice but to trim. Sometimes we use a curling iron, but mostly we shower at the gym and hope it dries okay on the car ride back. We might be trapped in a tower, but we still have a car. We effectively talked the salesman down from the sticker price.

+ Just because you show up and kiss us awake and we like you and everything doesn’t mean we’re going to suffocate you and expect you to call every five minutes. We have things to do too, you know. Like keep away witches. And try not to get trapped in glass boxes again. Or spend too much time with dwarves.

+ Feel glad. There were other princes, and they didn’t even know how to scale a small brush to get to us, if you know what we mean. Or they bungled in and we pretended to be the asleep princess that’s actually dead. It worked—we fooled them. We made your job super easy knowing we’d get no credit, and you’d possibly get freaked out that we responded to you at all, even though you were the one who brought the horse and the big sword.

+ We’re royalty. We like velvet. Stuff ends happily.

Toast Puppet Multiplies

One minute, you're making a puppet of a toast ancestor; the next minute, you're at your friend Aaron's house making a silkscreen template of that same toast. In this lean economy, perhaps it makes all the sense in the world to cover your dresses with prints of food. You will soon recognize me by your desire to slather me with butter.

Winner of My Pony Drawing Contest

Who else could have drawn me such a fantastic horse in one penstroke with his left hand? Once a star, always a star...I love you.

Gabriel Bram Byer
1/19/70-5/20/08

Cures Recommended by the Internet

Thanks to holistic practitioners with DSL, we now no longer need to go to medical doctors, read books, or call our mothers when bodily woes creep up on us. Instead, there is a wealth of knowledge at the ready, simply by knowing what fad keywords to enter into Google. You too can fix yourself in a few short steps! Here are some examples of cures recommended by the Internet:

+ The Watermelon Cleanse. This fixes your kidneys. If you don’t know what kidneys are, they are beans inside of your body. I don’t know how they got there (maybe burritos). All you have to do for the cleanse is sit all day in a bathtub filled with water. You continuously eat two big melons and pee. Stones of all sizes come out, so hopefully you know a good jeweler.

+ The Water of Life Cure. Also known as the “Golden Fountain,” this cure is also about urine, but substituted for watermelon in your mouth. But instead of urine in your mouth and watermelon in your bathtub, there’s no watermelon in your bathtub. Basically you are drinking your own pee. Apparently this makes you feel connected to your true self, resolves mineral imbalances, and gives you something to talk about when you someday meet Madonna or some of the people on the Internet.

+ The Lemonade Diet. This sounds like another name for the “Water of Life Cure,” but it is actually lemon juice, cayenne pepper, maple syrup, and water mixed and set on repeat for ten solid days. Supposedly you will fix your metabolism, flush out old toxins, and be recognizable to grocery checkout employees in southern California. If you wonder whether you’ll end up more like the dancing lemon on the cover of the books or like Beyonce, who once employed the diet, the answer is that there is no dancing lemon. You are just hungry.

Hygenowang

And now for my FOX Reality Channel debut on Hulu: Hygenowang. I sniff crotch dressed like a Kennedy. Thanks, Team Tiger Awesome!

Behold, As a Grown Woman Takes Career Encouragement from an Online Word Game

Floaty Pen Oracle Self-Doubts

And yet you are employed daily. Let this be a lesson to all. (Good session FP...that'll be $200 for the 50 minute hour.)

Toast Puppet Says

Exactly. This oracle is bullshit. Its answer to everything is "I am very crispy!" On the other hand, this is what you get for placing your future actions in the hands of a puppet claiming to be the ancestor of some toast you ate.

My Day As Told to Facebook

I am in a shuttlebus full of twins.
x Are you on your way to Target? No, it's 6 A.M.
x Are you in Doublemint Gum hell? If it were set at an elementary school.
x Were you also given a twin? Silence. I am unsure.

I am watching a six year old make nine times more money than me.
x And the award for the most cryptic and vaguely frightening status updates of the day goes to. We are in a park converted to look like another park. She's wearing purple glasses. Her line is "Daddy, Daddy, Daaaddy!"

I am hanging out with a poodle with very large nipples.
x It's true, but it also had to be said.
x Maybe you've seen that dog of late, just east of Hollywood.
x Not to spread rumors, but that dog gets around.

A rabbi, a midget; and everyone thinks they've met me before.
x Are you trying to induce nightmares? No, but are the rabbi and midget?
x Baby shark fetus? That was another joke, unrelated.
x I didn't mention this, but the midget could do a Pantene commercial, her hair was so shiny.

Deaf men can be paparazzi too.
x They have cameras.

The German Translation

I feel you, Zeug. And what great heights you will someday rise to, when Zahnstocher is busy resting on its laurels, or cleaning someone's teeth, as the case may be.

w/r/t

I received an email from my friend Josh today that included the abbreviation "w/r/t." This usually stands for "with regard to," but let's not overlook the fact that Josh is a genius web designer, has a cool haircut, and hangs out with a cat named Trouble. He could have things up his sleeves. He could be making other meanings. The following is a compilation of the possible phrases and questions to live by that Josh may have meant:

+ Western revelation: toothpicks.
+ Whose reactive turkey?
+ Wilderness retreats tank.
+ Wither, rakeless tree!
+ Why return togas?
+ When regurgitating: teepees.

iSpam: Advice Column

Yet another helpful email from "me" to me arrived in my spam folder today. The subject read "Give Squish Mittens Due Attention." Fabulous! I was running out of euphemisms. And thanks to Gmail, I don't need to open it to know how the email begins: "It will make girl evaluate your rod..." Now that's an advice column if I've ever heard of one.

Mercury Finally Hits Adolescence

Observations from NASA's spacecraft Messenger today confirmed what we all knew was coming: Mercury the teenager. While planets Mars and Venus snickered in the background, Mercury at first refused to comment, saying only, "GOD! You guys...just leave me alone." "They think you look like the moon!" piped in an tactless Jupiter. Mars tried to hold it in but couldn't help himself: "Face...cheese face...impact basin cheese face..."

When plied with Twizzlers and attention—including willingness to see the planet's collection of soccer posters—the immature little rockpile finally opened up. "It sucks, actually," the planet moaned. "All of a sudden all these volcanic eruptions are all over my face, with molten muck bubbles everywhere. And what, now is a good time to send some spy cam to watch me break out?" It's not every day, however, that magnetic tornadoes appear on a planet's surface. "Tom Watters of the Smithsonian Institution said “We’re seeing a very dynamic planet that has a lot going on today." At least someone thinks I'm cool," huffed Mercury, before returning to his freshman year English homework.

Pony Seen Talking!

Dear Reader,
In celebration of this, the 100th posting of Talking Pony, I unveil to you yours truly's theatrical demo reel. As a result of viewing it, not only will you be convinced I can break a glass, talk next to a fence, answer a phone, and play with animals, your eyes will begin to glow like so many coveted, twinkling diamonds. Your whole mug will look like a Tiffany's counter as you consider the possibility of such an actress in either a horse costume or wielding cop paraphernalia as she lays down the law. You may even imagine me making you a sandwich, because you are hungry and have spent too much time browsing the internet. I hope you enjoy almond butter and jam, because that's what I've got in my fridge. If you want to go shopping, I'll make you something else...after all, what a multi-carated sweet face you've got.
Thanks for all the reading you've done thus far on my blog, even if you are only me writing it.
Love,
Audrey

Floaty Pen Oracle Self-Reflects

And so mote it be, Facade.com.

In the Place Where Words Should Go: Yummy

Yummy adj. The childish word for "delicious" employed by adults to either describe food that they are trying to convince another is palatable (ex. anything falling under the umbrella of poorly executed "health food"), create a mockup of their personality that attempts to coerce an audience to find them youthful and adorable, or out of sheer descriptive laziness.

A Brief Review of My Illustrious Career to Date: Update

+ A lady cop in Las Vegas, circa 1991

+ A hairstylist at a Japanese salon (dubbed)

+ A stewardess who hates it when people cry

+ The mom to a young boy who is advised by an imitation Robert Downey, Jr. to do coke before bed

+ A receptionist surrounded by vats of popcorn, a gospel choir, and a man in a Godzilla costume

+ A suspicious wife who sniffs her husband's crotch to investigate

+ The youngest sister, who secretly lapdances in Santa Fe, but isn't seducing the eldest sister's husband

+ A Grecian newscaster reporting on the activity of Furries

+ An eager would-be athlete using a serial rapist as a trainer

+ A lesbian stalker in love with bows, black, and tribal bands

+ A woman with a beehive who has fun barking like a dog and smashing cherry tomatoes on her face

These are some of the parts I have done in the last couple of years. These parts...and, you know, the like.

To review my original entry on the same topic, click here.

This Earth Day, Grass Dinosaur Fights Back

SANTA MONICA, CA—It was inevitable. Not forever would the excess of year-round green businesses, veganism, and recycled clothing in be tolerated. Not always would the sun shine uninterrupted by a startling roar. Eventually, a vagabond breed of metal dinosaurs would indeed come to wreck havoc, shooting precious water from their fang-filled mouths. When local environmental activists on their way to a drumming circle asked one such dinosaur by the 3rd Street Promenade to halt in its vicious ways, it only shrugged and said, "We're just trying to get you people to take a bath."

In the Place Where Words Should Go: LOL

LOL abbr. What you place in a sentence after something that is decidedly unfunny to anyone with the perspicacity to not bracket a joke with "LOL."

Hairspray is for Hiking

I am hardly out of shape, yet I cannot seem to hike Runyon Canyon in West Hollywood without curling over and feeling like I'm going to cough my lungs out my face. Why? Do all those hours clocked at the gym mean nothing?

As I'm asphyxiating two women jog by with the combined body fat of a single stick insect and perfect blow-outs. My addled respiratory system is temporarily set adrift from its desire for analgesics and mystified by their hair. Was there a stylist van at the foot of the trail I missed? Does the Botox in their foreheads mean no sweat will mar their enviable coifs? Are they actually lungless hiking puppets, sent by the city to fill yet another place to call "on location"?

In the great outdoors, filled with all that fine smoggy air, perhaps their helmet-y layers provide protection against the elements. Maybe the spray and lacquer that surrounds them acts like a buffer, makes purer molecules to breathe than what surrounds us on the climb. I imagine myself dressed as an apeable doll, my movable limbs film-worthy as in an up-do I arrive at the best place to view the Hollywood sign, take a deep breath, and await my close-up. If only that van did touch-ups at the top.

Mystery Solved: Survival of the Hipster

During the economic downturn of this last year-plus, one social group has emerged oddly unscathed, revealing to us all their deceptivity. Hipsters: how are they still able to afford $225 skinny jeans and $5 lattes? In this chilly fiscal climate, how is it their BMRs need only a diaphanous ethnic scarf atop their narrow UO duds to keep them warm? The answer, while simple, has eluded us all thus far: Hipsters are actually made of potato.

Potatoes never get cold. They just don't. Have you ever heard a potato complain about being put in the refrigerator, or told it needed to adopt a budget for hard times? Have you ever had to dissuade a potato from riding bikes to the print shop to pick up its latest band poster? No, you haven't, because you don't feel like driving either, especially if it means losing your good parking spot.

In order to maintain a certain lifestyle, you need to have the right friends. I mean you need to know people. And who knows more people than potatoes? They don't even have to go to sample sales, they get their Danish modern designs shipped direct. When it comes to culture and design, they've got good eyes. Don't believe the thick overlarge glasses; those are mere props to accentuate the socially awkward behavior and use of language. You expect so much: as if potatoes have practice with public speech!

Have you ever been privy to eco-friendly catering? If so, you have eaten with a fork made of potato. The only drawback is that you cannot use them with food cooked in alcohol, because they will disintegrate. Haven't you ever seen a hipster after a night at Spaceland or the Knitting Factory? He or she, resembling a mangled cat, paws at mascara stains and ripped jersey, barely suppressing an all-too-witchy mumbled "I'm meeeelting, I'm meeeelting!"

And by "witchy" I mean "starchy," because everybody knows pagans are made of carbs, and vegans hate Atkins, and spuds wear Grey Ant duds.

Q.E.D.

You can read about Hipsters On Ice here, and Potato.com here.

Pigeons Dangerously on Edge of Extinction; Cities Forced to Find Replacements

NEW YORK—Due to a recent discovery that pigeons are quickly becoming the latest animal to make the extinction list, city officials have been forced to replace the creatures commonly known as "flying rats" with colorful glass doppelgangers. Advocates for the once-populous birds were seen protesting as early as 6:30 this morning, claiming that the substitutes proved dissatisfactory, due to their lack of interest in such comestibles as old bagels, stale Cheez Doodles, and something from Papaya King. While these stand-ins do have the added feature of lighting up when plugged into sockets, "It's just not the same," sobbed an old man in Central Park. "How am I going to weave magic into the everyday landscape of urban life without those grey feathers?" chimed in a lurking shaman. "What am I going to needlessly insult?" added a passing tourist. One thing is certain: if Mayor Bloomberg doesn't act fast to partner with zoological specialists, the city filled with coos may soon fall silent.

Dress British, Think Yiddish

Yesterday not only did this kid get to meet living legend A.C. Lyles, a Paramount Pictures institution since—no joke–1929, but I got to play Vanna and hold the award he was collecting while he told stories about the stars. Mae West once gave him a lucky penny upon hearing the mailboy's producer aspirations, and said to wear it in his shoe until he made it (he did on both counts). He even graced us all with a nugget of advice which sums up what I've always suspected about success (aside from in-cent-ives). Lyles paused, said, "Dress British, think Yiddish." Dear audience, with this noggin, I am only one Topshop trip away.

iSpam

In my spam folder: an email from "Audrey." Subject: "Hi Audrey." First line: "Please don't ignore me. I found you on that dating site..."

After reading way too many self-help books in my early twenties and then dating way too many people that were wrong for me, it is official. I am romantically pursuing myself. Or rather, some scam company that uses spam to hunt for suckers is trying to lure me...with me.

"How could you turn you down?" the email seems to pander. "Is it not that you appreciate yourself enough to try going out on one little date? Is it not that you will also send my work colleague in England who frequents Craigslist $10,000 so that he can double your money through a legitimate business proposal?"

Perhaps this emailing trickster saw one of my new headshots, and thought, "She'd definitely go out with her." As if I needed a middleman. I'm out with me right now.

Victories on my Mind

Key Search Words Brought to You by Sitemeter!

Recent visits to Sitemeter to check out what is drawing an audience to this very blog has revealed that I am most popular in Germany and the Netherlands, where apparently searches for "ponysex" and "texxxt" and "tranny bars" pull up this site. To widen my readership, I hereby offer a list of other key words, which surely will leave me with hordes of visitors a day.

Nut milk
Lederhosen
Mermaid choreography
Chewy asphalt
Perturbed rabbit
Basement highlighter
Kleptomaniac shrink
Bowling tightwad
Legendary absence
Koala feet

And, to sum it all up...

Money on rollerskates.

Obama in a Yarmulke!

Nothing says "You're my President" like this accessory, Senator!

Wii and Cohort Goes Maxi

Feminine hygiene product, complete with aim and shoot diagrams? And thinly veiled pro-choice ad? I suppose gamers don't have time for babies anyway.

Specificity in Casting

Full Moon Rising

Does the moon have an eating disorder? All this waning-waxing business sounds a little too much like binge and purge. At least now we know the moon most likely came from a white upper middle class household with controlling parents and horseback riding trophies from middle school.

Hey Raw Vegan, Where Do You Get Your Protein?

I'm serious. You are never going to build any muscle if you keep on with the fruits and the vegetables like this.

MTV Movie Awards 2008 Spoof King Ad

After a month airing on MTV and in movie theaters nationwide, the MTV Movie Awards actually went ahead and happened. So while you can't flip the channel or head to Loew's anymore to catch it, the ad is now posted (illegally) on YouTube. I maintain that all those years temping as a receptionist were just for bringing authenticity to this role...and of course hanging out with that much popcorn, a man in a Godzilla suit, and the coolest AD ever, Big Riff.

The Fastest Furry

The setting: an idyllic Topanga Canyon estate. A sunny, gorgeous day. A talented cast and crew to zip through shots with.

So why, I asked the director, was I so freezing cold?

He said, Because you're wearing a toga and your underwear is dipped in sugar.

For your viewing pleasure, click here.

Hipsters On Ice

First the Lower East Side, then the Mission District, now Los Feliz, Silverlake, and Echo Park. Managing always to be surrounded by these tight-pantsed tattooed creatures, I've moved from enclave to enclave, learning their language of apathy for anything other than outdated technology and bicycle riding. Between the fauxhawks, and the American Apparel, and the takeoff on ethnic scarves, they are unmistakable. They studied art and the social sciences, mashed up mod and punk and hippie and anarchist, and attempt the appearance of low-income lifestyles while spending about half a million dollars every day on a hand-crafted latte. They are mulleted yuppies on wheels, meant to work in a show called Hipsters On Ice.

Imagine hordes of waifish men and women in grey jeans posing and skittering across a glossy rink while the White Stripes play over the intercom. There could be a girl dressed as Karen O from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs doing figure 8s while the president of Urban Outfitters skates with a rose in his teeth to a pack of boys admiring moccasins. There could even be a giveaway where the winning audience member gets a messenger bag filled with an ironic Christmas sweater and a vegan burrito. The winning audience member will be picked by the cast member who has the worst posture and owns barrettes made out of Legos, which will also be criteria for getting cast in the first place.

The sequel to the show will of course be called Hipsters On Nice, in which it is revealed that all the little poppets really wanted in the first place was to go back to their childhood in the 80s. The marketing potential therein is endless. They've got to slouch and remain their teenage weight for something.

Potato.com

Potato.com will mark the dawn of an era of websites that don't even require words. What I'm saying is, Illiterates, we want your money too. You will simply open the URL, scroll down to the image of a potato of your choice, and click on it. That potato will be added to your cart, by which I mean an elderly woman in your neighborhood will hustle up to your porch with the potato and put it in the basket on your porch. Nothing says you don't read like owning a basket, or knowing someone old. Voila! You've bought a brand new potato, and now I have your clams in return!

Why the potato-by-potato approach? Culturally we're moving towards the unique, the individually prepared, the hand-picked. Nobody's going to want a bushel of potatoes--who knows what bad fruit therein lingers? I don't know about you, but there's something about an individual root vegetable that screams, You're going to be my pet chicken Cackles and follow me around like the lover that you are until one day, I roast you for dinner.

And yes, there is a bit of resemblance in potato.com to those websites for Russian brides, but the difference is weight. Those brides are way fatter, no offense. And they talk more and relate to you, and if I get you correctly, you'd rather be eating or making stamps with a third grader than knowing somebody on a personal level. Bottom line: potatoes aren't demanding. They fry well, and go with ketchup. And coming to a website near you, they'll be available one at a time.

Me, Dita Von Teese, and a Piece of Bacon

Girl Woody

Sometimes I do feel like a girl Woody Allen. Even aside from the Sagittarius Jewish New Yorker comedy writer part. In recent history I felt terribly depressed, and when asked why, could only say, "Because I'm so happy." I was! I was very happy, and quite frankly, it was bringing me down.

Unable to successfully get out of bed this morning like the Aries stockbroker goyim, I reminisced about a better time in which I may have still experienced depression and sadness, but was at least on my feet for it. Oh, the motivation I had, bounding from my slumber to stare mournfully out the window! I can respect that: stumbling through one's personal fog in sneakers.

You psychoanalysts out there might be saying, "Oh, that's actually an agitated depression you're describing; there's the difference." I wouldn't say that the former experience was agitated so much as vertical. When the makers of the DSMV V call me back, I'm going to explain that here on out there should be two kinds of depression listed: vertical and horizontal. Maybe it's a blood-flow sort of issue: when you're horizontally depressed, there's some sort of biochemical effect such that if you stand on your feet or your head, the blues get worse. If I could find my old board game with the guy you operate on and when you do it badly, the whole thing lights up and honks at you, I could really prove this theory of mine.

But don't get me wrong, when all you want to do is hide under the covers, even a neurotic person such as myself longs for happiness. Even when I recognize that it might make me a little anxious, and therefore maybe a touch sad. If I have a say, however, I'd like to request the kind of happiness that does include lying down.

In Honor of Groundhog Day, The Mighty Beaver

Deranged Psychopath Fitness System

For a classy mock infomercial, click here:
Deranged Psychopath Fitness System

Tranny or Banana?

It's a fair question. An innocent question, asked by a small Philipino child wandering the Old Pasadena Target with his mother. Impossible that this kid queried anything in earnest but what I heard: "Tranny or banana?" Aisle after aisle, wanting to know, "Tranny or banana? Tranny or banana?"

Those on the banana side. At work yesterday a customer left behind a book with his tip. Perhaps the lunch quenched his thirst, leaving knowledge in the lurch? And who totes the complete history of the banana in the first place? The book, called simply Banana, appears to be an undelightful 200+ pages of what can only be thinly veiled references to foreskin and bunches. Call me adolescent; I can handle that name; I don't moniker around, though I do enjoy a certain yellow fruit.

And as for the tranny vote, the selfsame day, in walked a gorgeously handsome F-to-M. I'm normally uninterested in facial hair, but his appearance is helping the tide turn, lovely girlfriend in tow. With all the confidence in the world, a tranny wrecks a girl's sense she's seen all in compelling masculine expression.

I should've stopped the kid in his tracks, called the argument off, said "Tranny AND banana, my friend, tranny AND banana."

A Brief Chemistry Lesson

“There is a difference between nonfat and lowfat milk,” I calmly explained to the baffled 19 year old. “You see, when I drink lowfat milk, I’m consuming milk that has approximately 1-2% of the fat remaining in it. When I consume nonfat milk, all of the fat in whole milk has been removed, leaving 0% fat. I prefer lowfat to nonfat. And yes, there is a difference between the two,” I concluded.

Newly educated, the Starbucks barista went back to doing his job.

And Now a Word From An Anonymous Library Patron

Cracking open a public library copy of Tim Kasser's The High Price of Materialism, the first thing I read is not the author's quoting of Lao Tzu. Instead, I have the benefit of a pencilled-in brief review of the tome I have waited weeks to arrive at my local branch. On the title page, in careful script, Anonymous speaks.

The following is the work of said unknown author.

The writer of this book is a professor of a well known University and in his book he showing his resensment against the achievement of others. A professor! In other words there is no promise of success in high or good grades in school.

Maybe poverty makes people happy. To be a tramp, a welfare recipient for life is an honorabel thing to do. The author appear like envious in his writing.

Tim Kasser: psychologist, researcher, professor, writer, hobo loyalist.

Come All Ye Traif-ful

Such a good Jew am I that even after my dietary revisions to exclude blood agglutinating wheat and body poisoning sugar, I toss my unsweetened spelt pizza crust on the counter pre-bake and proceed to dress it with mozzarella and pepperoni. Lots of pepperoni.

Ignore the picture, folks: it's meant only as a vague representation. Imagine loads more pork and nitrate filled deli sausage slices piled high. Maybe for effect stick an angry rabbi in the background, or at least my horrified mother who is convinced that her toaster was bequeathed to her from the machinations of Adolf himself.

Dietary regimens, cultural history, the sensitive digestion of my people: all touchy subjects; subjects that can lead to two sets of knives and/or being unable to order anything on a menu, as you consider it Not Real Food. Come now, you say: Pepperoni? You consider that Real Food?

No, say I. Oh no. It's dessert.