Waterboard This (points to crotch)

So i've been on a torture kick lately.  Case in point reading love/sex advice column Savage Love (written by the incredibly funny, incredibly gay Dan Savage) when i am loveless/sexless.  Also, bingeing on frozen churros after an intense core workout, followed by a cookie dough eating stint topped off with a midnight gym visit has my body in bipolar shock.  I am becoming a masoscizophrienichist.  

But by far the most achingly painful anguish inducer i've practiced of late is reading The A.V. Club's My Year of Flops entries with a day old intense core workout still pulsing through my abs. (Yup, i just used the phrase "intense core workout" again, three more mentions and i get a free bow-flex...and the quoted one counts).  This recycle bin for film failures is written as the final verdict on their controversial floptitude: are these stinkers failures, fiascos, or secret successes?  The secret success feauture of the grading system itself is a real comfort to  frequent flopwatchers because movies like Dirty Work and Be Kind Rewind are overlooked, hit and miss gems.  The whole thing is a well written, reference-a-minute torture chamber complete with gut-busting snippets from the cine-turds in question (its like an intense core workout, except its for your funny bone...and gut.) 

I'd like to share this suffering, anyone up for a Nicolas "barbed-wire laced" Cage of cinematic hell night?  We can make t-shirts...Let me know...

intense core workout.

Amish Controlling Mother Bread

I arose from bed yesterday afternoon to the sweet smell of what i thought was french toast with bacon on the side.  And when i say "arose" picture a vampire cocking his body tick by tick with arms jutting forward at the chest.  I ambled to the kitchen thirsting for syrup and bacon fat...but alas, there were none.

"Where's the french toast?," I wondered.  "The cinnamon? The syrup? The bacon grease?"

Turns out: its amish friendship bread for breakfast, yes, my amish friendship bread, the one i've been massaging for ten days...my own festering, fermenting reeker baby.  And who is baking Christina Reeki ( i named her...they grow up so fast)?  None other than mommy dearest.  I calmly voice my problem: "What the hell are you doing?"  She's shocked by my indignation and slices back with her own complaints: 

"Where's the big thing of Crisco? I had to buy a new one.

I left it at kyle's...dyou know how old that thing was? Two years! (if it were human we'd be potty-training it, teaching it the alphabet, and dissembling its crib to make room for a bigger toy box...)

Doesn't matter.

Wait a minute, why are you making my bread?

It was gonna go bad.  You were supposed to--

No, today is the baking day, it's written on the bag!" 

She unapologetically backs down as if to say what's done is done, that suckers already in the oven, greased, timed, and baking.  I inspect the loaves as they bake, accepting that my mother has once again grabbed my life's steering wheel.   Of course, she means well.  Of course, she grabs with love.  And of course, her amish bread was heavenly (baked with apples no less).  But it wasn't mine...in one simple act of motherly kindness she breadnapped my baby, usurped it of all its friendship qualities, and hijacked my life's course.  Hyperbole aside, all i really want from my mom is a chance to fuck up my amish friendship bread, my own life and someday a kid of my own .  Sounds fair, right?  So i kept a bag of the starter for myself, a do-over for my own piece of mind.  I have a feeling Reekard Gere is gonna enchant a few tongues.

(Remember that bacon smell wafting throughout the house?  Yeah, me too, but where did it come from?  I haven't a clue but I'm still willing to get to the bottom of the mystery of the phantom bacon.  Everybody loves bacon.)