I would like to write a movie, I think, about a podium.

A bad, bad podium. An evil podium.

You see, as soon as someone would go to speak behind this podium. it would stab them through the heart with a pencil and then eat their flesh.

This film would, of course, be called Hannibal Lectern.

(I giggled to myself continuously whilst writing this entry. God, I'm a big dork. If big dorks are your thing, perhaps we should have tea sometime. Or muffins. Maybe cake.)

'Twas blizzardy here this weekend so I stayed inside, mostly.

The last time I can remember being stuck inside during a blizzard was in high school.

I was stuck at the house of my friend Meredith Green. We spent the blizzard looking through the phonebook for people she could marry so as to give her an exciting hyphenated name.

Our best option?

Meredith Gang-Green

Well, it started with a toothache….

An extra-specially-painful, makes-you-want-to-stab-yourself-in-the-head, 3 o’clock in the morning toothache.

And with that toothache came a brilliant idea. Not a real-life brilliant idea. A 3 o’clock in the morning brilliant idea. The two have virtually nothing in common.

In my pain-induced delirium, I remembered reading somewhere that if you put ice on your hand then it will make your tooth feel better.

First problem: I don’t own ice. I’m not sure exactly why. It’s just never occurred to me to buy an ice tray. I always assumed that ice trays were something that other people bought. Like mops. Or condoms.

But fear not, at 3am I am especially astute. That’s generally when I come up with my greatest ideas. If they had Think Tanks at 3 o’clock in the morning, and the topic in question was “How Do You Put Ice On Your Hand At 3 a.m. When You Have No Ice,” I would be a very rich woman indeed. Because this idea was no less than fantastic.

I’d use frozen chicken breasts instead of ice.

A novel idea, I think, where nothing could possibly go wrong.

Not wanting to take any chances, I put chicken breasts on BOTH hands and fell asleep. Throughout the night, I would wake up about once every hour in severe pain. This was my signal that the chicken breasts had melted and I would put the melted ones in the freezer and pull out two new frozen ones (no, I no longer had any intention of eating ANY of the chicken breasts.)

At one point, I awoke in the usual excruciating pain, and noted that I only had one chicken breast. Thinking quickly, I decided that in my deliriousness, I had only grabbed one out of the freezer at my 5am chicken-breast-exchange. I then grabbed two more and went back to sleep.

Fast forward two days. In those two days, I managed to get my tooth fixed, throw away the chicken breasts in the freezer, and catch a bad cold. I should have gotten an award for accomplishing such impossible tasks in such a short period of time. Instead I got…..

A knock at the door.

“Is that terrible smell coming from YOUR apartment???”

Hmmmmm….I have a cold. I have smelled nothing for the past two days. I checked the garbage. Nothing smelly. Checked the refrigerator. Smell-less.

THEN I remembered the missing chicken breast (or, as I like to call it, The Missing Chicken Breast OF DOOM.)

I went in my room and tore apart my bed. Yes, in fact, under the very mattress I had been sleeping on for the past two night, one very ucky and smelly (I assume) chicken breast OF DOOM.

Now how do you begin to explain THAT story to your irate neighbors? I usually go with, “Well, it started with a toothache….”

THE END

MORAL: Definitely count your chicken breasts before they hatch. Or after you use them to stop your toothache. Or really, don’t use chicken breasts to stop your toothaches at all.

MORAL II: Now I own ice trays.

My next show:

Friday (tomorrow) January 21st
New York Comedy Club
241 E. 24th Street
9pm show
$12 cover, 2 drink minimum

I'll go on at about 10:30. So you'll be....let's see....about 4 drinks in by then. Perfect.

(Back to writing scripts tonight. Thusly not writing fascinating blog entries. You shall get something from the archives tonight. With a few added bonus tracks from the last time I posted it.)

My friend is having a baby soon. Which is exciting, I think, because although I definitely know where babies come from, I'm still not entirely sure I believe it.

Anyway, said friend is having a dilemma as to whether or not to find out the baby's gender before it's born.

She thinks she wants it to be a "surprise." (Though, in all honesty, how surprising can it be. A boy. Or a girl. If it was a turtle or a chocolate bar or a piano, that would be a surprise.)

On the other hand (to quote her,) "What if I buy all PINK things for the baby and then it turns out to be a BOY?? Then everyone will think he's a GIRL."

Easy to deal with, I think.

When people approach and say, "What a cute little girl!" (Or "What a perfectly hideous little girl" depending upon the attractiveness of the child,) she can simply reply:

"It's not a girl. It's a boy. He's just gay."

Problem solved.

Every time I catch a cold, I lose my voice. This is very frustrating, because I like to talk. I do. Given a choice between talking and eating s'mores, I.....well, it would be a very tough choice.

But I always try to look on the bright side of the situation.

MAYBE while my voice is gone, it's doing something productive.

Like, "Hey, I lost my voice last week and it sucked. But, luckily, while it was gone, it LEARNED CHINESE."

One can always hope.

So the bad news is that I couldn't pick the Guy-Who-Punched-Me-In-The-Face-And-Took-My-Money out of a lineup.

This could be because, for 99.6% of the time that he was in my vicinity, he was on top of me, hitting me on the back of the head with some sharp object.

Just a thought.

I thought about saying, "Hit me on the back of the head with a sharp object while I look. That might make things clearer." but decided against it.

Actually, there wasn't even really a lineup. Just pictures. So I couldn't even ask the pictures to take off their pants and cluck like a chicken like I would have liked to.

Getting robbed is way more fun in the movies.

The good news is that they're 95% sure the guy they caught is the guy who attacked me (same description, and he was attacking someone else in my neighborhood at the time, saying basically the same things he said to me) and he's robbed LOTS of other people and will go to jail for years whether I can identify him or not.

The weird news is that, other than me, Guy-Who-Punched-Me-In-The-Face-And-Took-My-Money only robs and beats elderly people . Which I find a little upsetting for two reasons.

1) Robbing and beating poor defenseless elderly people is just sick.

2) The man obviously took one look at me and said, "Well, she's not elderly. And I usually only attack elderly people. But she looks just as weak as if she were elderly. Elderly? No. Elderly-like?? Possibly."

I better start working out. Or get a bus.

Good news, chums!

The police called today and they think they caught the Guy-Who-Punched-Me-In-The-Face-And-Took-My-Money.

So I get to spend tomorrow at the police station picking people out of a lineup.

And then, if I play my cards right, I suspect I will get to run over him with a bus.

A good time will be had by all.

I wore a tie-dyed t-shirt today. Pretty swirls of color and all. A happy shirt, really.

And this rather pushy man walked up to me at the bank and said, "Is that a Grateful Dead shirt?"

I considered saying, "Yes, it is a Grateful Dead t-shirt. A very special Grateful Dead t-shirt that doesn't say 'Grateful Dead' anywhere on it. That way only the truly devoted fans would recognize it. And since you are CLEARLY a truly devoted fan, you have earned a special prize consisting of a supply of drugs and a black light."

But instead I said "No, it's just a tie-dyed shirt."

To which he glared at me replied, "Well it SHOULD be a Grateful Dead shirt. " And stormed off angrily.

Excuse me. Excuse me for not going to a concert that probably occurred before I was BORN and buying a shirt there.

People give me a headache.

I promised you New Year's Resolutions, and New Year's Resolutions you shall get.

But there's a catch.

You see, I've taken inventory of the past year, and here's what I came up with: I'M NOT THE ONE SCREWING UP MY LIFE

Seriously. I'm actually doing rather a splendid job of living my life. I don't smoke ever and I rarely eat entire boxes of cookies. So it's obviously other people that keep screwing up my life.

Thusly, (and yes I'm going to continue to use the word "thusly" wrong even though someone corrected me in my comments' box. And "Learn to Use 'thusly' correctly" is NOT on my list of New Year's Resolutions) I've decided that this year I'm going to make New Year's Resolutions for other people. So there. I hope they follow them diligently and aren't crappy at keeping New Year's Resolutions like I would be.

You can all feel free to contribute resolutions for other people too. I feel this will be a lovely new New Year's Tradition. Like getting drunk and making out with people you don't know.

NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS FOR:

The-Guy-That-Punched-Me-In-The-Face-And-Took-My-Money:
1) I will not punch Jill in the face this year.
2) Nor will I take Jill's money.
3) Nor will I punch anyone else in the face.
4) Or take their money.
5) Additionally I will get hit by a bus.
6) Writhing in pain, optional.

The-Guy-That-Broke-Into-My-Car-And-Took-
My-Great-Grandfather's-Saxophone:
1) I will not break into Jill's car this year.
2) Nor will I steal her Great Grandfather's saxophone.
3) The second one will be easy because I already have it.

The-Guy-Who-Changed-My-Oil-But-Did-Not-Screw-The-Cap-On-
So-Oil-Spurted-All-Over-My-Car:
1) I will always screw on the cap tightly when replacing Jill's oil.
2) If she were stupid enough to come back here.
3) Which she isn't.

The-Casting-Director-For-Comedy-Central's-Premium-Blend:
1) I will forget that Jill ever auditioned for me.
2) And how much she sucked when she did.
3) Instead I shall see her in a comedy club.
4) And discover her innate genius.

God:
1) No more tsunamis. No seriously.

Anna Nicole Smith
1) I will never appear on TV again.
2) Ever.
3) If, somehow, I magically do appear on TV again, I will not speak.
4) Additionally, I will get hit by a bus.

Wow, I could go on forever making New Year's Resolutions for other people. Just further proof really, that I ought to get a bigger say in running the world.

Happy New Year and such. I've been quite neglectful of my blog.

But maybe I'm just playing hard to get.

In any case, for tonight, just a few highlights from my plane ride home. It wasn't quite as eventful as the ride to South Dakota, but it wasn't far off.

1) The guy that sat next to me used his camera phone to take approximately 73 pictures of himself in his seat. And the flash wasn't annoying at all. No it wasn't. At the end of the flight, I punched him in the nose.

That last sentence was a lie.

2) The woman in front of me, in turn, took approximately 342 pictures out the window. This seems relatively sane, except that we were right over the wing and could see nothing else. So she took 342 pictures of the wing of the plane. I punched her in the nose too.

That last sentence was true.

3) The last thing I heard before we took off was the door re-opening and a voice say over the loudspeaker: "Hey, we almost left without the pilot. Whoa."

Coincidentally, that's EXACTLY what I like to hear right before I take off.

4) My pilot's name was Captain Kirk. No really. Apparently he's the one we almost left without.

5) In totally unrelated news, several airlines are going bankrupt. Can't fathom why.

Kisses. I missed you all dearly. And tomorrow I might just tell you about my New Year's Resolutions.