Gastronomy à la Karl

Fish soufflé
Quail flambé
Protein sachet

Today's entry in the food diary? Nope - it's tomorrow's. Because that's when I'll be starting the zany Karl Lagerfeld diet. Amid the many diet crazes to sweep the nation in recent years (and by "sweep" I mean misinform, traumatize, and finally, sabotage) this one was quite overlooked. I found out about it yesterday, over a lunch of deluxe pizza - one of the many food items Karl would deem unforgiveably indulgent in the way that is typical of Americans.

Our essential Americanness is probably the reason that the K-man's diet never attained Weight Watchers status in this country. We love: pie (both eating and baking, as a kind of heartland sport), spirited encouragement, positivity. We hate: hunger as punishment, harsh metaphors, words with suspect accent marks over the e. Karl gives us none of what we want in a diet plan and everything we don't. A 1,000-calorie limit? Snacks of homeopathic granule? Orders to be a "single soldier" marching toward victory? Dinners of rabbit? I mean, rabbit?! Dude, not unless it's chocolate and wrapped in pink cellophane.

But my favorite recommendation of Karl's is that we not try to lose weight for downer reasons like cardiac health or self-esteem. Rather, we must lose madly in the name of fashion. We must lose so that we become the fourth person in the world on whom skinny jeans are not an atrocity. This, he insists, is actually the best attitude toward weight loss: "nothing in your life depends upon it." You know, I think he's really got something here! Personally, I always have a difficult time succeeding at the things upon which my life does depend - that's why I'm starting this diet tomorrow!

Now, if only I could remember how to flambé a quail...

Read the Slate article, my main souce of information.

Living in Yellow

I was dreaming in black last night. Swirly, inky black, like the color of a movie with no plot, just terror. I awoke already upset and turned on the morning news - never a calming distraction, especially not in Baltimore. It wasn't going to be a good day, but then it was a good day:

Summer in March. A three-course lunch and laughter the whole way through. Early pardon from work following the three-course lunch, a retirement celebration. The scenic route and rolled-down windows - and the confidence that it was too early in the season for bugs to fly in. My third run of the week, in spite of sore muscles. A thunderstorm I ran right under and all the way through, soaked completely, before a quick dance in the rain.

So, you can save it. It can be saved.

More Whining

I'm pissed off. The bottom third of my computer screen has become a blacked-out mess of pulsating horizontal lines that make it impossible to get anything done without feeling epileptic. Tech support has been unhelpful, probably because I registered my complaint only minutes ago, after having put up with this problem for nearly two weeks. That's why I'm pissed off - I'm annoyed with myself. I can put up with anything. I won an award for it once. You could plop me down in the middle of the desert and instead of using the sun to navigate toward civilization, I'd lie down to get a tan and wait for the rain that never comes. That ain't good.

Neither is anything else I've done (not done) lately. Like I said in the last post, it's been all TV and weeping for the last few weeks, with infrequent breaks to go to Panera and work on the story I'm writing. Apparently, I can only write this story while dining on French Onion soup. This is not an acceptable quirk; in fact, I suspect it's not a quirk at all, but an excuse - I can't go to Panera every day. I can go maybe once a week. Once-a-week writing does not add up to great success anytime in the next five years or so. Which is perfect for me, because then I don't have to finish something I actually feel good about and think has potential.

Do I need psychotherapy, or what?

Anyway, I'm in unloading mode and I guess that's what this blog is for. I never took the time to define it, did I? Some people say right up front that their blog is a diary, some people insist it's a showcase of their serious writing, some people have an obvious agenda. Those people are probably also the ones with personal mission statements and five-year plans. (And readers.) I don't have any of that. Surprise.

March

Two weeks. Was I on vacation? Working overtime? Reading Michener? Protesting the war? Hiking through Tibet? No.

I was watching televison.

A while ago, I wrote about having become obsessed (re-obsessed, actually) with the first season of Felicity, the show that followed a group of nervous, drama-prone New York college students for four years. Since then, I've watched the other three seasons on DVD, which, at twenty-some episodes a season, required serious dedication. I finished the series two days ago - it was a five-tissue finale - and am now officially in mourning.

But it's time to come back to my life. I hope I can find it.

Two Fifty-One, and Nothing

I was going to win Mega Millions. I knew. The day was filled with bizarre happenings, little blips that meant something unusual was about to transpire. I woke up with my contact lenses still in my eyes, having completely forgotten to take them out. I started to take a shower, but we had no hot water. Randomly, the pictures fell off the bathroom walls. When I opened my wallet to pay for lunch, the only money I had was a two-dollar bill. Later, after an ATM visit, the lady at Royal Farms gave me too much change. Concerned for my financial karma, I tried to correct her, but she brushed me away. So, clearly, I was going to win Mega Millions. Just had to.

I'd been gearing up all weekend, making plans, rehearsing lines. I simply couldn't believe it when I looked at the ticket! Is this really happening? Pinch me! I joined forces with a group of women at the gym. We signed our names to an official document and surrendered ten dollars each. We pooled two hundred and fifty tickets bought from a variety of locations. The amount split twenty-five ways, even after taxes, would put each of us into the rank of people who can buy groceries without anxiety and mental math. Groceries, or, you know, yachts. Wooohooo! We would all go to Aruba together to celebrate our luck.

Of course, I also bought myself a ticket. A single, secret ticket. A potential fortune to be shared only with those of my choosing. I imagined paying off all my debts and loans, and buying an entire block of houses in the city to rehab at my job-free leisure. I decided I'd turn the place into a community for artists, musicians, and writers. Then I'd establish a charitable foundation and direct it myself, traveling around the world to deliver inspiring speeches. Finally, I'd get a dog.

I stayed up until 11:22 to watch the drawing live from Times Square. It happened so fast, number after number - dreams were flattened and shattered in seconds. I could hear the neighborhood sighing along with me. Who didn't have a Mega Millions ticket last night? Or, two-hundred and fifty-one of them? Who didn't believe in some small way that it was going to happen? 11:23 was a sad, and sadly unexpected, minute. There was nothing I had to do, or could do. So I got up off the couch, took my contacts out, and went to bed.

Ego

I zig-zagged around the parking lot, in search of the elusive Saturday space. Crowds were worse than usual – it was a sunny day, a happy weather day, a get-me-outta-the-house day. In the best of circumstances, I wouldn’t have ended up at a large chain store off Reisterstown Road, but for reasons too depressing to divulge without having had a single potent beverage today, my action-adventure options were none. So I circled the parking lot.

In the way-back right side, farthest from the door, I thought I saw a space. Two spaces? An SUV was blocking my view, but it looked like I might be in luck. Just before I swung my ’98 Saturn into it, I saw the Aston Martin convertible of “Meteorite Silver”, parked diagonally across the two spaces. For those of you not familiar with this car (as I was not, until I looked it up on Wikipedia), it’s a six-figure purchase. It’s a house. It’s a college education. A fancy one. So, I was rather relieved not to have smashed it.

And then I got annoyed. Because, really, how unimpressive is that? How do you become such a person – who is not James Bond – who spends the money that could have gone towards many dozens of life-enriching experiences to obtain a bulletesque vehicle instead, who cruises out to a big-box discount store on a road notorious for bent fenders, who thinks it’s his right to take up two spaces on a busy Saturday while the real people are out buying their toilet paper? Show-offs. I’m may sometimes be jealous of their posessions, but never their incredible capacity for delusion. How much lovelier is life when you understand that you are not your stuff?