Happy Birthday, Bob.

The genius, the magician, the one and only Bob Dylan turns 66 today. I’m afraid there’s only left overs for dinner tonight, Bob. But you never show up, so I didn’t make anything special. Still, if you do manage to come by my house tonight, I could throw together a cake. (The RLA is out tonight, too. It’s Boys’ Night Out at the Casita des Zapatos.)

My door is always open, if you’re in the neighborhood.

Love you forever, Miz Shoes.

Broke the pinkie toe on my right foot Saturday, opening the gate to the driveway on my way to run a day full of errands. True to my family of origin, I just shoved my foot into my clog and went around town for the next 5 hours in pain, and ignoring it.

Now my toe looks like a miniature eggplant. I’ve gotten very, very good at athletic wrapping. At least my feet match again, since it was two years ago that the RLA rearranged the furniture in the bedroom and in the middle of the night, when I jumped up to let the cat in out of the rain, I swung around the end of the bed and right into a chair leg, snapping the pinkie toe on my left foot.

So many thoughts on so many subjects.

Item the first: Something has been bothering me about ANTM since Wednesday night. Jaslene didn’t pass the psych test last season, and that’s why she wasn’t on, but she went to therapy and tried out again. Uh, maybe I read Sun Tzu, Musashi and Machievelli too many times* but if you’re giving these hamsters psych tests, then you (meaning the producers et al) have a pretty good idea how they are going to decompensate during the series. This means that they ARE casting for the psycho bitch (NeNe Vibrato), the crying girl (Brittney), the gently bewildered (Natasha and Kathleen) and all the other stereotypes we know, love and have come to expect. Creepy or no?

Item the second: I keep having dreams about my old college chum Pati. I went so far as to look her up on various people-finders and she may or may not be living a couple miles down the road. The last I’d heard, she was living in Georgia with her parents.

Pati was bi-polar, and never diagnosed, until later in life, like when we were in our mid-twenties and by then, she was happy with being bi-polar and didn’t want to/simply didn’t take her meds. I loved being around her when she was manic, but she got vicious when she was depressed. We quit being friends when I was going through my divorce and she was in a down cycle and it didn’t work too well, friendshipwise.

I’d love to see her again, but I’m afraid to call. Yes or no?

Item the third: I’ve come to realize that I am a tad borderline bi-polar myownself. Maybe not. Maybe I’m just prone to severe mood swings. You know, like suicidal downs and Top of the World, Ma ups.

I’ve been on Prozac for years, and while it shaves the peaks and valleys, the ups and downs are still there. I just don’t crawl in the closet, turn off the lights and curl up in the fetal position anymore.

But. I don’t know quite how to express this, the ups are still hard to manage. I am currently in the middle of one that, were I not on meds, would be dangerous. I am so full of creative energy, and have so many ideas that I want to pursue, that I don’t know where to begin.

Because I’m on the drugs, I can almost prioritize and get things done, but in my bones, I feel the fire and the spin. This would be a very bad cycle, were I not damped down.

Pati hated the damping down, and that’s why she wouldn’t take her meds. Because I’m in this part of the cycle, I think that’s why I want to make contact with her again. But that would be bad, maybe. Fuel to the fire, maybe. Or she might just hang up on me, still pissed off or whatever.

I don’t know. I’m writing. I’m designing t-shirts. I’m entering photos in contests. I’ve got a pile of fabric on my sewing table, and another pile of patterns and a project list that I want to finish by tomorrow night.

The energy blast is good, but I know that there will be a crash after. Maybe this is the bounce back from the depression I was in for two months prior to this, though. Maybe I need to up my meds. Maybe I just need a vacation.

In any event, I have work that I set for myself today, so you’ll excuse me if I leave you now.

*OK, I only read “The Prince” once, and maybe not even all the way through, but I got the gist of it.

Ah, another season of ANTM slogs to a close. In the words of my beloved husband, as the credits rolled and I groaned over the winner: “Why do you even watch this?”

Because it’s a train wreck, honey. A train wreck and a morality play all in one. Where else can I see people so delusional, and yet allowed to roam free? Where else can I watch drag queens without paying a cover charge? And where else but Greek tragedy does hubris get rewarded so generously?

Ahhhh. So here it is, the final three are Natasha the Mail-Order Russian Bride, Jaslene of Dubious Gender, and NeNe Vibrato, she of the beach-living husband, floppy baby and nonstop bitchiness.

There is some recapping, and we finally(!) see Natasha’s husband and baby in one photo. Let me just say that he doesn’t look twenty years older and the three of them make one gorgeous family. Whoo-hoo.

Then it’s off to their final photo shoot: the Cover Girl cover slash beauty shot. They are on their own here, since Mr. Jay will be off with the tv spot shoot, where the girls have to ad-lib a commercial. So that they shouldn’t be flying solo, last year’s winner, CariDeemented arrives to give them advice. She won, despite asking Nigel about the stick up his ass, so yeah, I guess you might consider taking her advice. Or not, like if you wanted to win.

Jaslene has a hard time looking soft, commercial and pretty (and you know, that is such a cheap shot that even I will forgo the obvious joke). She also interviews that smiling makes her face hurt. OK, now I have to go there? That is totally a line from Rocky Horror and one delivered by my previous favorite tranny, Dr. Frank N. Furter. But whatever.

Natasha is good at smiling, and looking soft, commercial and pretty. But then she gets flustered and embarrassed and is even cuter.

NeNe waltzes in and just carries on like she’s already the winner, perhaps because Carideemented has been giving her advice that starts “after you’ve won”. NeNe, not being the brightest but certainly the most egotistical of the lot, probably took that to mean that she had, in fact, already won. So she preens and smiles and preens some more. Everyone on set jokes with her about acting/looking like she’s already won, and that just adds fuel to her fire.

Then we have the unscripted tv spots. Natasha is backstage at a photo shoot. She has written and memorized a script for herself. The Cover Girl flack and Mr. Jay tell her to scrap the script and just wing it. The resulting commercial is cute and incomprehensible.

NeNe Vibrato is out in Sydney Harbour, and starts her commercial by saying, “Nine months ago I had a baby and I thought my life was over.” The CG flack and Mr. Jay, look at each other and simultaneously shriek CUT!!!! Let’s not go there, sistergirl. Let’s try it again, a little more upbeat and positive, ok? So she gets all cute and happy and waves her arms around and delivers.

Jaslene is in a limo, and gives a sing-song freaky face version, but nails it by talking about how the product matches 97 percent of all skin tones, including hers, y “soy latina”. The CG flack just comes in his chinos. ChaCha Diva does good, in an awful sort of way.

Interviews and confessionals follow, and NeNe Vibrato is full on Cuntie-Pie ala mode. She’s on and on about how she’s got this in the (ho)bag, how she hopes the OTHER finalist isn’t Natasha, because (and I’m pretty much quoting this) she “walks like a pigeon-toed duck with poop coming out of his butt.” And then she smirks and smiles and is so proud of her analogy. She just giggles over what a cute, but oh-so-naughty girl she is.

Judging. Nigel brings it home, and reminds us why he is our favorite male ex-model turned internationally renowned fashion photographer/pervy judge. He takes NeNe Vibrato’s photo betwixt thumb and fore finger, and holding it at arm’s length like the reeking piece of shit she is, says well, she’s beautiful, yes, but she is hardly the freshest face in the box. She photographs old, and her look is old and I’ve seen this face a million times. This is America’s NEXT Top Model,  and we’re looking for something new.

The rest of the judges all nod sagely. The critiques are sharp, and Jaslene is called to task for her appalling delivery of her commercial. They applaud the fact that she managed to hide her Jay Leno jaw long enough to be photographed looking pretty and sort of soft.

Natasha is just Natasha, and Twiggy and Nigel and Tyra all love her to death. So does your viewing audience, peeps.

The girls come back in to face Tyra (wearing a set of false eyelashes that must do double duty as weight training for your eyelids). She gives a photo to Jaslene. She gives her usual wahwahwah, so who goes home. NeNe is holding Natasha’s hand. Who’s two-faced now, you old hag? Natasha gets the picture and NeNe almost drops dead. She was so sure she had it in the bag. See? Morality play. Hubris. Good times.

Back to the house, where NeNe opines about how she’s glad she didn’t win, because she has knowledge and something inside. Yeah. It’s called bitterness. Classy to the end, just like so many other LOSERS. I guess she’s going to have to hock that big-ass pearl after all. HAH!

Then Natasha comes in to find Tyra waiting on the couch. It’s face time. She talks about her years at university in Moscow, where she had nothing. NOTHING. She talks about how she’s an American, now, and how America is a melting pot, and she represents all Americans with accents. Like me? I come from the South, y’all.

Next is Jaslene, and cries and cries and kisses Tyra’s fat ass. Aiee, ju have shanjed mi vida, Tyra. This has been a life-altering experience. Ju know, cuz last season, I dint get nowhere and now here I yam inna top two. Weepy, weepy, snivel.

I turned to the husband, and said: he just won.

And then the fashion show which is lame, but not as lame as the bride of dragula that they did last year, in which Carideemented totally robbed Melrose. As in years past, there is drama on the catwalk, when Natasha’s skirt just slides off her butt. She calmly steps over and out of it and keeps catwalking.

Finally, though, all good things must come to an end, and so after much deliberation, the judges decide that Jaslene will be…. America’s Next Top Tranny.

Really. Did you SEE the size of his wrists? I’m just saying. I can’t wait till next year when they have to use subtitles for his MLAACG commercials. Because, you know, I’ll be on the couch, cosmopolitans in hand, watching the train wreck for another season.

Is it wrong that I am not at all saddened by the sudden death of Jerry Falwell, and, in fact, may even be a little bit hopeful that nobody will pick up the reins (or reign) of his evil empire of neo-con religious zealots?

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.”