The breakroom on my floor vents directly into my office: right over my head, in fact. I smell every cup of oatmeal, every piece of toast, every bit of re-heated anything. Mostly this is fine, or at least acceptable as no one has yet to reheat liver.

But the one thing I hate, that I cannot abide, that causes a visceral revulsion through and through is what is currently wafting through the vent:

Microwave popcorn, with heavy artificial butterlike flavor.

I’m retching. There is something about the smell of microwave popcorn that just makes me heave. I would outlaw the stuff if I could. Or at least ban it from public access microwave ovens. I think it makes for worse air pollution than cigarette smoking.

Don’t misunderstand me, please. I think that popcorn is one of the major food groups, right up there with fried poultry skin, coffee, chocolate and liquor. But I mean real popcorn. Popped in oil over high heat. Personally, I like to use olive oil, and I once used bacon grease after reading in some White Trash Cookbook or another that bacon grease rendered popcorn ineffably delicious. It does, but I will never be able to eat it again. I could hear my arteries seizing up over the crunching.

I also miss the popcorn of my movie-going youth, when it was popped in palm oil, and real butter could be poured over it. I have seen solid coconut oil in the health food store, but can’t quit bring myself to purchase it, having a somewhat hazy memory of the reason movie theaters don’t use it any more is because it’s even worse for you than bacon grease. Probably explains why it tastes so good, too.

ADDED MAY 17, from GOURMET WEEKLY e-newsletter:

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

California Assemblywoman Sally Lieber, author of a bill to ban diacetyl, which gives microwave popcorn a faux buttery flavor but is suspected of causing a life-threatening lung disease in workers who handle it, speaking to The New York Times: “It’s not like we’re talking about a potential flaw in the polio vaccine. We are talking about a potentially devastating disease caused by buttering flavor. And there are alternatives out there. Including butter.”

This is an experiment, sort of, although it didn’t start out that way. See, the RLA, the PDBs* and I all went out for dinner tonight to a sorta kinda sports bar. Except it really isn’t a sports bar. It’s more of a diner, only in a strip mall. And with a lot of rock and roll memorabilia on the walls and a great juke box, kind of like the Hard Rock, if the Hard Rock were owned by a couple of folks who used to own the best used CD store in town, and not by some conglomerate mega-corp, and if the Hard Rock wasn’t just another theme park with food. So, maybe it isn’t like the Hard Rock at all. But I digress. We all went out to dinner at the Rock Fish Grill, and I told the owner we were on a timer, because I had to be home by 8 to watch the hamsters.

Well, not only were we not home by eight, but our food had barely arrived, so I commandeered one of the tvs, and watched ANTM. MOS.

MOS stands for “Mit Out Sound”, and is a hold over (or so my old film teacher told us) from the Very Early Days of Hollywood, when most of the film makers came from Germany, and if you were shooting without a sound track, you were shooting Mit Out Sound, and that became MOS on film clappers to this day.

I watched ANTM MOS, and let me tell you, real-time captioning for the deaf is not real time. And who ever is typing it? Either can’t hear, can’t type or can’t spell. And if it’s computer generated? They need better computers.

So. Here is what happened on ANTM tonight, as best as I can patch it together. First the girls all discuss how much they do or do not miss Sara, and Whitney wahwahwahs some more about being a plus sized model, and how she has to step up her game and whawhawhateverrrrrs.

The hair dresser comes to the house and cuts the rat weave out of Brit’s head (there’s even a sign over her bed, and other hints that those stupid made up “supermodel” names are going to be sticking around till the end of the season. More’s the pity. And there she is, left with the hair she came in with, except a better color.

There may or may not have been some recapping of Renee’s sob session. There was definitely a recapping of Fifty Cent shoving Jael in the pool. Last week RJ and I disagreed about the timing of Jael’s saying to Fitty that she was “half black and half Jewish, so that makes [her] Blewish, and you can’t hang wit dat” and him pushing her into the pool. RJ said Jael was wet when she said it, therefore it happened after. And I said it was one of, if not the last thing she said before she got wet. In the event, according to POTES, I was right.

And then, not a couple of days after the episode aired there was this brouhahah about Fifty calling Jews thugs, and other racist crap. I leave you to connect the dots. I would threaten to boycott Mr. Cent, but since he’s never gotten a dime from me yet, that would be a tad hollow. Sort of like Mr. Cent’s head.

Anyway, back to this week. This week they get their acting lessons from someone or other who “stars” on a show I’ve never seen, and then get further lessons from someone who was in a movie I’ve never seen, but I understand was a hit with some demographic or another: Napoleon Dynamite. But not the star of Napoleon Dynamite, because even I know who he is, and he’s currently tearing up the big screen as the feather-haired sidekick to Will Feral** in Blades of Glory.

With the sound off, and the closed captioning on, it’s hard to tell how bad the girls are, and I can only take the captioning’s word for it when Dionne claims to be speaking in a Jamaican accent. For that matter, I can only take the captioning’s word for it that Renee was totally committed to the role (whatever the role was, because I don’t have a fucking clue what they were supposed to be acting) and deserved to win the prize.

I expect to hear crickets when asked to name a friend to share her prize, since we all know that everyone hates her and she ain’t so keen about anyone. But she pulls a name out of her ass, and nice Dionne gets to share the prize, which seems to be some lame t-shirt that referrences Napoleon Dynomite, which, since I haven’t seen, I also have to take on faith.

Back at the house, there is the usual whining about who won and how they didn’t deserve it, and the usual snickering about how lame the prize was that they won, and probably some trash talking about how nice it was for Dionne to get to be Renee’s friend and take one for the team, ‘cause nobody ELSE was gonna pretend to be. I might be making that up.

But then, OH. MY. GOD. A SURPRISE, surprise, surprise!!!! You’ll never guess! Oh. You guessed. Yeah, this is the week that the winner gets a visit from their family. Dionne’s momma, sister and baby come. Dionne’s momma is in a wheelchair and has a Marilyn piercing in her upper lip. Dionne’s momma is in a wheelchair because some junkie that she was tryin’ to help get straight got all jealous and shit when she was gonna git married, so he shot her and now she’s all paraplegic. See? And you thought there weren’t going to be sob stories this year. Her baby is cute enough, I guess.

The powers that be managed to find Renee’s husband out on the beach where he’s been living and pluck the baby (who looks a little floppy to me, or maybe fetal alchohol syndrome, or just a little, uh, wall eyed?) from the arms of his grandmother (and why won’t she let her son stay with them? Or why won’t he stay with his own mother?)and send them to visit, too. We see the baby crawling down the runway, and I read someone saying to the baby that Miss Jay would just snatch you baldheaded if he saw you crawl down the runway like that. Pretty funny, actually, though I have no idea who said it.

We see Jael being nice and taking pictures, and then poor Natasha just loses it cause she wants to see HER baby and why can’t she? And she talks on the phone to her husband and cries and cries and cries and we see a picture of her baby, and she is really cute. With big eyes.

Oh, well. Party’s over, y’all come back now, hear? And the family members go home and the girls go to their photoshoot and poor Natasha is all red-eyed and weepy and miserable and Renee is all smiling and obnoxious and gloating about having seen her little floppy baby. And yeah, there was some serious face sucking with the husband. Eww. And she still isn’t taking off the Darth Jader head rag.

The shoot? Well, the concept is to re-enact “famous” ANTM moments from the past. They are “The Girl Who Wouldn’t Do Nude” from season one. “The Great Granola Bar Kerfuffle”, “The Siamese Twins”, “The Girl Who Passed Out Cold at Judging”, “Joanie (now Joni) In The Dentist Chair for 12 Hours”, “I Am Bi-Curious Sarah and Kim in the Limo” and “Michelle’s Impetigo”. This is as big a snooze as it sounds, even if they do bring the original girls back to co-star in their own re-enactments.

Among the highlights is Dionne, who is totally freaked having to be in a limo with a lesbian, much less having to pretend to kiss her, discovers that Kim is hot, and that she, Dionne, is liking this. Natasha is great with big old scabs on her face. Brit totally rocks out as one of the twins, now triplets. Renee can’t compete with Joni (ha!) and Whitney totally does not rock it as the girl who won’t do nude. Whitney in a white beach towel is not pretty.

I need to interject here, that the female half of the PDBs is a former art director for SELF, back in New York City. She pegged CariDee as the winner last year, just after looking at the portfolios on-line, three quarters of the way through the season. Tonight she looked at everyone and said Brit, Natasha and Renee are the three finalists, and that it’ll go to Renee. Jael, she said, was too aware of herself and her own look to be the sort of malleable putty a model needs to be. She also said that Jael is a man. I kept telling her that that distinction belongs to Jaslene, but Jaslene wasn’t even on the PDB’s radar.

So. Judging. “Hey, look! The man’s wearing a dress.” That’s Jael, and she’s not a man, dammit. The judges seem to call Jaslene a drag queen, and not in a good way. The judges, well, Nigel, gets all creamy talking about Brit and the twins. They allow as how they didn’t even notice Renee and her ugly face were in the same frame as Joni. Jael, meh. Whitney in a beach towel? Icky. Dionne gets the love from all. They love Natasha and her fierce scabs. The photographer and Jay both say how she came to the shoot all sad and teary and then WORKED IT on the set. So who goes home? Jael and Whitney are the last two called, and Tyra finally has to say goodbye to her pet plus sized girl.

But child? Please don’t show us those thighs/knees of yours again. Christ, if I wanted to see dimples like that I could look in the mirror. Well, after the scabs and bruises heal.

Next week, Jael has to take the marbles out of her mouth and learn to speak before she gets sent home.

*PDB: Persons Dressed in Black


** Yeah, I know, Ferrel. I just don’t find him funny, OK? So feral it is.

I’ve been watching the Alec Baldwin/Kim Bassinger debacle, and remembering how I felt while I was going through the protracted divorce with the Antichrist, and I’ve designed a t-shirt that I think all women who have an ex can appreciate.

I just opened a Cafe Press shop, featuring my new design.

Because, you know, it would just be so much easier that way.

Last night was the penultimate epi of ANTM, wherein we find out who the final three bitches and hos will be… can we stand the excitement?

I know I could.

We are still in the land down under, and this is the week of native dance. The girls (and Jaslene) meet some Aborigines and are treated to a dance by young girls. It is bitter cold in the out back, or so we are told by the women of no discernible body fat, although the Aboriginal girls are bare foot and seem to have no problems. But, then, they have body fat.

So. See a dance, learn the theory, make up your own story dance. And don’t forget the body paint. Renee, who seems to be really happy to keep calling herself NeNe… and may I digress a moment?

Back in the day, there was a girl among the crowd I was in with who went by the party name of Neigh Neigh Vibrato. I’m sure with a little imagination of a sexual nature you can figure out how she came by that. For me, the name NeNe really doesn’t work, although girlfriend does have something of a horse face.

Anyway, NeNe tells the story of how she was an abused child, and she has sisters and she wants to be a role model for getting above and beyond the abuse and win this for her family, because they are poor and living on a beach in Hawaii and like that, that we’ve heard a million times from her already. Fortunately for her, this is all new material to her audience and they eat it up.

Jaslene (who is now Jaz, at least to NeNe Vibrato) tells the story of his life, which isn’t so much the story of his life as it is the story of how he wants nothing in the world so much as to win this season and become America’s Next Top (Not Quite A) Tranny Model and this is his destiny, Luke. OK. Maybe I made that last part up.

Dionne of the eternal puss face opines that she don’t do no dancin’ she don’t tell no stories, and it’s cold and she ain’t happy one little bit so she is gone do a 20 second “dance” and be done wit it. Dionne seems to me to have an awful lot of “I don’t be doin’ thats” in her life. We have already seen that she don’t be kissin. She ain’t no fuckin’ lesbo (but she did like kissing Kim). She don’t dance. She don’t tell stories. She don’t touch other men. She don’t smile. She be one skank ho, is all I’m saying.

Her dance is short. It refers to her momma gettin’ shot, her sisters and their babies, and she has a big yellow blob with a little pink blob in the uterual region of her dress, which she explains is her spirit and her baby. Yeah, what ever. She gets absolutely no applause.

Natasha actually uses props. She tells the story of how she was a weak child who went into the forest for comfort among the trees. It’s a nice story, if a bit far fetched and totally inaudible. Another woman in my past used to do that same thing. She thought if she whispered in a little baby voice while she was running a business meeting that it made people listen harder to what she was saying and made her more powerful. She, like Natasha, was dead wrong. People thought she was a total flake and whack job, which was absolutely correct. In both instances. Natasha gets some polite applause.

NeNe Vibrato wins, and gets to pick a friend. She picks Jaz to share her prize. The prize turns out to be some a-fucking-mazing South Seas pearls, and it grinds me no end that NeNe wins it. Beeyotch. No mention of how she’s going to hock this to help her family. Not like when she DIDN’T win the $40K diamond bracelet that fatty whatsername took home. No, then she was all boohoo, I needed to win that to get my husband off the beach, wahwahwah. Tonight it was all, I’m so beeeyooootiful in my princess pearls and doncha wish yer girlfriend was hott like me.

The girls (and Jaslene, but not Natasha, who is coming down with pneumonia) decide to go out and party and blow off some steam. Unlike past seasons, there is no vomiting, no random acts of sexual nature with random strangers or each other, no embarrassing moments of excess drunkenness. How much fun is that?

Instead of that, they plot how to send Natasha home, and in what must certainly be a total shocker to you, NeNe Vibrato is the ring master of that plan. She goes on in the confessional and interviews about how Natasha is a total phony (oh, yeah? Excuse me, Mrs. Pot, but there is a Mrs. Kettle on the line for you.) and how nobody even knows the name of her husband, or has seen pictures of her alleged baby, and how she doesn’t wear a wedding ring, and a whole other load of self serving crap.

OK? We, the viewing audience know her husband’s name, it’s Stuart, and she’s said it more than once. We’ve also seen pictures of her baby, and as I said then, it was much cuter than NeNe Vibrato’s floppy one, or Dionne’s unremarkable one. So stuff it, Vibrato. And you know what else? You hos have been on about her being a mail order bride since day one. (So have we out here in TV land, but then, we aren’t sharing living space with her, so fuck off). And so what if she has kinky phone sex with him? Honestly, who among us hasn’t?

Anyway. The girls and Jaslene actually come right out and talk about how they need to work a plan to send Natasha home, so that it can be the three of them in the finals. They trash the poor little Russian girl up one side and down the other. When they get back to the apartment and read the Tyra mail, Jaslene, especially is a total ball-cutting snot to sick little Natasha. What do we think will happen tomorrow? We’re going to judging and SOMEONE (meaningful emphasis and daggers) will be going home. Bitches and ho, people, bitches and hos.

The next day is photo shoot day, where there is more body paint and native dancing. Natasha is so sick she is falling over, coughing and with a runny, red and swollen nose. She tries her hardest to pose and can’t. She is awful beyond awful. Little Orange Man tries to give her a pep talk, and it’s sorta, well, other ANTM contestants have been sick and still brung it, and Tyrant has been sick and brung it, and we just can’t milk this story line one more season, so suck it up and bring it. I’m a little sorry that she just doesn’t bring up her breakfast all over him, but she tries and fails to look hot.

Nene Vibrato rocks it again, damn it. She really does. I wish she weren’t so Naomi Campbell though. What a skank ho rat bastard she is.

Jaslene gives the same old same old fierce face and egocentric reportage he always does. And this is duly noted by Little Orange Man.

Dionne is coaxed, pampered and babied into delivering something other than her puss face frown. It’s a little scary and yet bland, but it does resemble a pleasant smile. The fact that she still has no clue how to pose without constant coaching is also duly noted.

Finally, we get to judging. This is the week where the judges ask the girls who has it and who doesn’t. NeNe Vibrato is first, and she says she’s the shit and did you notice that she’s wearing her big-ass pearl prize that she won this week for being the shit? And that, well, quite frankly, Natasha is a ho-bag two-faced phony and we all hate her and she should be getting the boot tonight, thankewverymuch.

Dionne is up and says, oh so graciously, that NeNe is the shit and that Natasha is a fake piece of Russian trash who needs to be taken out. Thankewverymuch.

Jaslene allows as how, no, really HE’S the shit, and that this is the one thing in his life that he wants more than anybody or anything else in the room and he better fucking win or someone is gonna get cut. And, oh yeah, that Natasha? What a loser. Send her home.

Natasha gets up last, and says that while she appreciates what the others have said about her, actually, she must disagree and say that she has the most potential, because, really, have any of you people looked at a runway lately? It’s ALL Eastern European women who look like her. She’s got the look that everyone wants this year. I don’t even remember who she thought should go home. The judges all jump on the “why does everyone else hate you?” question, and my girl says, hell, if Giselle Bundchen was standing in the room she’s dis her, because that’s who would be her biggest competition. Connect the dots, folks.

There is some very interesting debate from the judges, wherein they talk about how hot NeNe Vibrato is, even though she photographs like a hard and ravaged old hag. Jaslene has one look, and they pull up his first S&M death penalty shot to prove it. Yep. Just the same. As are they all. Then they talk about how having one look can get you a lot of bookings, but after one season, you are done, done, done.

Dionne is recognized as being a puss-faced yak who can’t do dick without heavy art direction. And can I digress a moment to say she should have been called on the carpet last week when at every go-see she asked to KEEP THE CLOTHES!!!! What kind of just-out-of-the-backwoods hick is she? CAN I KEEP IT????? One person cracked that he thought she was going to try to steal the dress, and the final designer, very frostily told her she could BUY what ever she liked. But sweet baby Jesus drinking gin from the cat dish, where did she ever learn her manners or professional etiquette?

Well, that leaves Natasha, whose photo was The Worst In ANTM History. Or so the judges said. Worse than the fishy thing that used to be the worst? It doesn’t matter, because at least she takes direction and tries and showed a huge amount of class in the face of everyone talking shit to her face.

The judges decide that she probably was the victim of a plot to get her tossed out, or else why else would all three of the other girls say exactly the same thing, and anyway, she’s a damn sight nicer and prettier than Dionne, so, bottom line?

The last three standing are: NeNe Vibrato, Jaslene the Tranny, and Natasha, the sweet Russian Mail Order Bride.

Yesterday was the third anniversary of my father’s death. Last night I lit a candle. Today I went to temple and sat through an entire, albeit informal and short, service. I said kaddish for him, and I said his name out loud.

I say to myself, this is what he wanted; that this is what he expected of me, expected without hesitation or question. I would go to temple, and I would say kaddish for him.

This, the third year after his death, was the first time that I could. Don’t get me wrong, I sat on my haunches at the back of the room, holding his gold chain with the tablets and the Lions of Judah, and cried the whole time. It was not easy.

But the torah says that this is holy: to honor thy father and mother, to give comfort to the sick, to visit the grieving, to rejoice with the bride and the groom. To honor thy father and thy mother.

The tallis I made for Daddy, the one in which he was buried, has that as its collar prayer. Tomorrow I will continue my quest for holiness and visit my mother.

After shul, I went to a bead show with Star and the Number 1 Surrogate Daughter and indulged in some heavy retail therapy. My grandmother, the mother of my father, always said that I had golden hands, that I had a gift. In doing my retail therapy, I merely honored Grandma Ida, as well.

I’ll make things, and I’ll sell them and the honorable chain of my family of artisans and merchants will go on.

You know, it seems that every time I turn around someone else, someone totally unworthy of the privilege, is getting jiggy with The Bob. Today there was the following article on Page Six.

EASILY SCARED

KINDERGARTEN kids in ritzy L.A. suburb Calabasas have been coming home to their parents and talking about the “weird man” who keeps coming to their class to sing “scary” songs on his guitar. The “weird” one turns out to be Bob Dylan, whose grandson (Jakob Dylan’s son) attends the school. He’s been singing to the kindergarten class just for fun, but the kiddies have no idea they’re being serenaded by a musical legend - to them, he’s just Weird Guitar Guy.

And you just know that they have no appreciation of the finer points of guitar picking or lyrics like “I used to care, but things have changed.”

Miserable rug rats.

And you also know, that, same as it ever was, I’ll be having a nice dinner complete with birthday cake on May 24, and the ungrateful man won’t show up at my door. I don’t get it.

A few years ago MTV had a contest along the lines of explain why you are your favorite artist’s biggest fan and we’ll send you on the road with them. Yeah. I didn’t win.  It’s not like I’m stalking him for pete’s sake. I mean, I never, ever rush the stage and grab him, unlike that 15-year-old emo skank in the Jerry Garcia t-shirt a few tours ago. I’ve never painted Soy Bomb on my naked chest and boogied like a spaz while The Bob edged away and waited for the bouncers to drag the loonie off. I thought about, but did not, rip off my arm sling and scream “I’ve been healed” when he made eye contact with me the year I had shoulder surgery, and I was mashed up against the stage in an open seating venue. I’ve never even dumped an entire serving bowl of potato salad on him, as one of The Coolest Person In The World’s other friends did, when she was in a buffet line and the person behind her asked for some, and she turned around and saw that it was The Bob*.

I’m respectful, dammit, and what does it get me? Bubkes, baby, bubkes.

Never mind. The table will be set for my personal Elijah, and if he wants some home cooking, he knows where to find it.

* Ever cool, he just said, “I didn’t want that much.”