GAY BIRTHDAY CAKE

I've been freelancing for LOGO, the "gay MTV" for the past week, and believe me, it's no empty promise that this is a gay network. I've found the LGBT community pretty well-represented in all my cable TV jobs, but at LOGO, I would say the ratio is 30:70 hetero:homo. Maybe even more like 5:95. Basically, if you're at all homophobic, LOGO is not the work environment for you -- unless you're okay going home and watching a marathon of Nascar while you drink your "silver bullet" just to Hetero-Up.

But I'm enjoying it, because A) it's very rare that, as a twenty-something, white, female, I'm the minority in any situation, and I think it's valuable to be one sometimes, and B) when the gays have office birthdays, they do it in -- of course -- STYLE!

Yesterday was Matthew's birthday, and he came to work with TWO gorgeous cakes, sent to him by his mother. Both were decorated beautifully; unlike most cakes, all of the frosting was a color that you'd expect to find in nature -- brown, cream, beige, ecru. Not a drop of Red Lake #40. One was a mocha layer cake with chopped almonds and generous frosting, and the other was a chocolate layer cake with no crunchy texture, but a subtle raspberry ribbon.

The difference, though, between this office birthday and the others I've experienced didn't stop at the cakes: Matthew had actual PLATES, and the plates were actually BIRTHDAY-SPECIFIC. Also, he was able to cut the cake with an appropriate KNIFE, not a plastic SHIV that is the ruin of most cakes. And he was able to find this KNIFE immediately -- it wasn't like, "Where's a knife? Who has a knife? Here, let's just spoon some of this garish crapola onto paper towels and eat it with our hands," which, honestly, is what I'm accustomed to, and didn't really have a problem with, until Matthew showed me another way.

The other difference between Gay Birthday Cake and Hetero Birthday Cake is that nobody eats it. At least not at LOGO. Matthew was offering up perfectly proportional slices, easily avoiding getting any onto his vintage Gucci tie, but almost everyone begged off. And then I looked at the people saying no: the two gorgeous male interns who work for free but manage to dress in designer clothes every day and have really great haircuts, and Anthony, the other writer-producer who is basically the Most Handsome Man In Cable, and I realized that they had BEAUTIFUL BODIES and that those BEAUTIFUL BODIES are definitely NOT the result of mainlining buttercream frosting. I was THE ONLY person who said yes immediately and the ONLY person who had not one, but TWO slices of each cake.

I didn't realize I was eating them with my hands until Matthew asked, "would you like a fork? We have plenty." STYLE!

DOS COME-ON-OS!

Pardon the pun, but COME ON! Dos Caminos is EXASPERATING! I went tonight for their Restaurant Week $35 three-course dinner and lost $60, my appetite for overpriced "Mexican" food, and three hours of my life. The only good thing about the meal was the company; it was a "funny ladies" night organized by my friend who I very affectionately call Coach Tony, and the "funny ladies" were in fact funny and delightful. The food was, in the Yiddish words of my maternal grandmother, a shande!

I know restaurants don't put their best yummies on the prix fixe -- why should they? Some places LOSE money during Restaurant Week, but believe me, Dos Caminos does not. First, we got three bowls of guacamole. On the menu, guacamole is priced at $12 per bowl. When our check came, we were charged SEVENTY TWO DOLLARS!!! WHAT. THE. FUCK? WHAT THE MOTHERFUCKING FUCK?! SEVENTY TWO DOLLARS WORTH OF GUACAMOLE?! ARE YOU FOR REAL DOS CAMINOS?! Turns out our waitress "brought enough for the table to share," which translates to "double bowls" of guacamole. Double bowls means $24 per bowl. Hey waitress? Yeah you, the one who REFUSED TO REMOVE THE MENUS FROM OUR TABLE AND NEVER CLEARED OUR PLATES AND MADE US WAIT 35 MINUTES TO TAKE OUR ORDER: I have a message for you: I WILL NEVER FORGIVE YOU. YOU ARE A BAD LADY AND I HOPE YOUR NOT-SO-SECRET AMBITION OF BEING A MOVIE PRODUCER IS AS STUNTED AND FRUSTRATED AS I WAS DURING THIS MEAL. SERIOUSLY: YOU'RE TERRIBLE. I WANT TO BECOME THE MANAGER OF DOS CAMINOS JUST SO I CAN FIRE YOU.

But okay, a lot of places gouge you. Fine. At least it's fine when the food is good. NOT THE CASE with DOS CA-SHIT-SMEAR.

First course: Shrimp Ceviche. I would describe it as being pine-nutty. Which is alarming, because ceviche shouldn't be nutty, pine or otherwise. It should be limey and citrusy and redolent of cilantro. PINE NUTS? Booooo. F-

Second course: Hangar Steak. Steak was alright. Requested medium and cooked just right. I think I just don't like hangar steak, but that's not the restaurant's fault. What is the restaurant's fault? The SALTY TATER TOT ODDITIES served on the side. What was the deal with the insides of these fried dingle-berries? I. Don't. Know. It wasn't mashed potatoes, and it wasn't cheese, but it was white, and soft, and SALTY. And the other side dish was so fucking stupid that I almost winged it like a frisbee back into the kitchen. It was a cold, folded flour tortilla that tasted as if it came from one of those plastic supermarket packets. Really, Dos Caminos? That's part of the entree? A cold tortilla? Boooooo. D+

Third course: Chocolate Empanadas with Espresso Ice Cream. Hi, I'm your dessert, are you ready for me to disappoint you? I'm basically a fried Hot-Pocket stuffed with lukewarm Nutella, and melting next to me is a pat of ice-cream that's supposed to taste like espresso, but instead tastes like liquor. Bad liquor. F+

I am never going back to this restaurant.

GATORADE AND RICE

I've got the flu something awful. When I'm really sick, as I have been for the last two days, the first thing to go is my appetite; I completely lose any desire or taste for food. And this just adds to the bummer of being sick, because I do love eating so much and if I can't take pleasure in it, well -- let's face it -- I've got NOTHING!

I'm an adult now, and there's nothing sadder than being an adult when you're really really sick. It's not like my mom is going to make me my favorite sick-meal: toast with jam, English Breakfast tea, and, as I start to develop more of an appetite, some chicken soup. And even though I could, with little effort, stick some bread in the toaster, put a kettle on the burner, and open a can of Campbell's Chunky, I just know this self-made sick-meal would be only a disappointing approximation of the kind my mother used to make for me. And it is, for this reason, that I don't bother.

Instead I call my older brother at 10pm, and ask him to bring over Orange Gatorade and a seventy-five cent packet of gas-station Tylenol. He's very sweet: when he arrives he's brought me TWO Gatorades, and TWO packets of gas-station Tylenol, which entitles him to the RAIDING of my pantry and refrigerator. "There's NOTHING to eat!" he says, with food in his mouth. He very quickly leaves, and I very quickly order chicken baked in rice from the only Chinese restaurant I trust for delivery. That Chinese restaurant is called Yummy House, and while it may not be my mother's house, it certainly deserves its name.

NOW THAT'S WHAT I CALL DINNER!

My lips are very much burning right now, and the inside of my mouth is both numb and throbbing. That's because I just ate what will be my last meal of the day. I am reluctant to call this last meal dinner, because it most certainly didn't involve soup nor salad, nor was there an appetizer, a main-and-two-sides, and neither dessert nor coffee did pass through my nutrition portal. But I suppose, semantically, what I just ate was dinner, and it certainly was an appropriately inappropriate end to the last 20 hours of eating.

I just ate Bumble Bee Canned Sardines in Hot Sauce. Plain.
At least I was enough of a lady to empty the can onto a plate.
Now the plate is next to me.
There is a small lake of bright orange sauce pooling on its edge.
It smells like sardines.
I am not bothered.
But my mouth hurts!

Before this, at around 9:30pm, I demolished a Twix candy bar. Earlier, at 7pm, I inhaled a Mixed Fruit Yo-Crunch in less than thirty seconds, standing up, in an elevator. About a minute before that I super-chomped a Trail Mix granola bar.

Five hours before THAT, I ate a single Chocolate Chip Pop Tart, which had been abandoned on somebody's desk. Finder's keeper's and all that hooey.

I'll never know how it came to this. The shame is deep and scarring. I mean, I started my day with good enough intentions. Upon waking I had Jasmine Green Tea and TRIED to eat a Stonyfield Farm Strawberry Yogurt but it was, alas, EXPIRED. Expired yogurt is not breakfast. It is garbage.

So I had no choice but to PROCURE my breakfast OUT OF HOUSE, and here's where I set off a domino effect that was to be my body's downfall. I went to COSI, but only because it was literally on the ground floor of my office and I was running late. I ordered their SQUAGEL OMELETTE SANDWICH, which is evidence--in the squareness of the bagel and its name--of the dangers of over-branding. And I should have run for the motherfucking hills right there, but I didn't. I didn't even when I saw that the omelette in said Squagel Sandwich was PRE-MADE and PRE-SHAPED and LYING COLDLY IN A BLAND YELLOW PILE ON THE COUNTER. Apparently, Cosi can make fresh "bread," but cooking up a goddamn EGG is TOO MUCH!

I ordered it anyway:
EGG-PRODUCT RECTANGLE, SPINACH, TOMATO, on an ASIAGO SQUAGEL that tasted VAGUELY SWEET. I am no rocket surgeon, but since when does Asiago taste SWEET? EW!

I ate the whole thing and was, as is my way, immediately starved and revolted.

And that's how I come to this. Alone, my lips burning and fishy, my stomach full but its soul empty. Desperate, craving, wanting what it can never have: to undo this day and ingest something actually pleasurable, and with more than good enough intentions...Not to be FULL, but to be SATISFIED. Now that's what I call eating.