If you like pina coladas....

This is just somewhat of a random reflection, but have you heard "The Pina Colada" song lately?

Basically, it's not just about someone seeking a companion who likes to drink cocktails that taste like sunscreen and diabetes...it's a cheery tale of thwarted infidelity, and how it brings people together.

There's a guy, our hero, the narrator of the piece. He has a girlfriend - they live together. It seems to be a long-term relationship, but all the verve is gone. Perhaps, even, sexual intimacy is on the wane. There may be other problems, but all our narrator chooses to emphasize is his boredom.

One night, while his girlfriend is asleep in bed next to him, he starts trawling the personals. He reads one ad, promising outdoor sex, syrupy cocktails, and escape - and that's all it takes. Forgetting all about his girlfriend, he writes back. He arranges to meet with this stranger in a local pub, and take off together.

The purported happy ending of the tale is that the woman who walks into the bar is his old, dull girlfriend. Finding out that they were both into alcohol and mild exhibitionism, their relationship is rekindled, despite the fact that they were both prepared to scuttle the entire thing for the first stranger who happened along with a blender and some docksiders.

Somehow, I don't think this is how it would happen in real life. Somehow, I think the real ending to the song would involve "Cheaters"-style screaming and crying, and the sentence "Get out of my sight, you coke-addled whore!"

I suppose, though, "coke-addled whore" probably didn't fit in to the rhyme scheme.

I love chocolate cake.

This is not a metaphor.

I really, really love chocolate cake. Fudgy, rich, with that catch-you-on-the-back-of-your-tongue chocolate bitterness, and that jaw-tightening non-sticky sweetness...something with enough chocolate in it that the cake looks almost black. Velvety, but still...resilient. Frosting slightly under-sweetened, cocoa-scented, almost gritty at the moment you put it in your mouth, melting by the time you withdraw your fork.

But I rarely eat chocolate cake. Most chocolate cakes...are not the above. They are fluffy, black, almost foamy, small-grained, sweeter than yellow cake, sick-dog-brown frosting tasting of nothing but table sugar and fat, or worse, artificial butter...

Loving chocolate cake and eating chocolate cake at every opportunity- these things are incompatible. I'm not immune to cake-disappointment yet. I only recently learned that cake can be what I thought it was. I'm not ready to go out and search for...

-let me pause, again, I reiterate -this is really, and truly, and in all earnest, about cake-

I'm not ready to go out and learn more about cakes that will disappoint, and make the memory of the last crumbs of the last good piece seem false or implausible. I would try to convince myself, after a couple failed slices...that all cake is this way. That the ur-cake, the cake which I had imagined, the cake which I have recently pulled, warm, from strange ovens, and barely managed to resist digging into with both hands...never existed, or, if it did, wasn't nearly as good as I remembered...

-again, seriously, this is truly about cake, not heroin, or sex, or ambition, or politics-

Self-protection almost dictates that I go out, find a stop and shop, find some kind of cake with frosting flowers and a yellow sticker that says "Chocolate!" on its plastic dome, and eat it, like cookie monster, but weeping, so that I can relax, and tell myself that dark sponge-and-corn-syrup IS chocolate cake, and that nothing else is possible.

Because, seriously- I've bought three pounds of butter in as many weeks. Someone should intervene, before I'm found bloated and smiling and chewing frosting from underneath my fingernails, in a bewildered neighbor's kitchen.

Two chicks at the same time...

A very, very important question is posed in this clip. A question I've spent some time considering over the past couple days.

Not - Am I the kind of chick who would double up on Lawrence, if he had a million dollars? I haven't actually considered that.

But I'll give it some thought. Let's see. To be honest, I don't actually KNOW how a man does "two chicks at the same time." So there's, obviously, a flaw in my contemplation. I can figure out how a threesome, in general, would go, but that's not really "doing two chicks at the same time." It's more like the recycling symbol - somebody does something to somebody who is doing something to somebody who happens to be the first somebody mentioned. At least, that's what I imagine. Except, I think, it might be, "something does something to somebody while somebody does something to themselves or waits a bit and then, fortified by the acts of the two somebodies, goes on to act upon either of the first somebodies..." Neither of those situations seem to fit the definition of "two chicks at the same time." I figure what Lawrence really means is that he would do two chicks in a quick succession...

oh. Shit. Never mind. I think I figured it out. Fuckin' mustache.

So, I don't know. I figure that I would double up on Lawrence with a million dollars only to the extent that I would double up on Lawrence without a million dollars. And that requires much further and deeper contemplation, so this whole digression ends here.

But what would I do, if I had a million dollars? (Or, some amount of money that would allow me to not worry about money?)

I think...I'd do very, very close to nothing. I'd dick around, cook elaborate meals and bring them to people, bake far, far too much cake. And pie, jesus christ the pie. And cookies. With butter. Oh, god, butter...

I'd read a lot. Constantly, probably...I'd probably start at about three novels a day until I was able to slow down...which would mean that I would run out of decent books in about three years...and have to start reading grocery-store romances. That's ok. I'm not too intellectual to read about "creamy skin" and "growing stiffness"...

I'd go to the movies a lot - and I think that I would start to go without regard for the merits of the movie, which is one of my dirtiest secrets. Left to my own devices, I would smuggle in those terrible three-pack chocolate chip cookies, and watch whatever movie was playing...often. Three, four times a week.

And when I say..."without regard for the merits"...I'm quite serious about it. I'm not here referring to my bottomless lust for zombie movies. I'm talking about movies that are the products of bad meetings, movies that are the product of ill-conceived multi-picture contracts, movies that all involved would disclaim, if possible.


Two of my favorite movies, which I have never, ever watched in the presence of another human being:

















That's what I mean.


I'd also probably write some. And draw a bit. And, yeah, even if I didn't need the money, I'd probably do a bit of law stuff. Thinking about it - without regard to "Could I get a job doing..." or "Could I live on..." ...I'd try and do appeals. I really, really like appeals. I like the closed record; I like that the arguments are in court, and fully legal - no witnesses, no fucking around with cross-examination, credibility...your law mojo against someone else's law mojo. And I wouldn't even haveto do fancy appeals...I mean, even little dippy property tax shit would be fine...as long as there's a brief to write, and the possibility of an oral argument every now and again.

So I guess this means that I should be a lawyer, but a lawyer so fantastically wealthy...that they don't have to work much. How do you do that before you've tricked some motherfucker into giving you that first job?