11:53 a.m. - 2007-10-14
Weeds, fast food, and a possible con artist
If you haven't seen the show Weeds, you should go and rent the first and second seasons on DVD ASAP. It is almost as good as Six Feet Under. It's not quite as good, but I am telling you, it's up there with the best - hovering somewhere below The Sopranos but definitely above Grey's Anatomy (which I enjoy). It's most comparable to Six Feet Under, in that it's about a family that is both normal and totally dysfunctional and you totally wish you were their neighbor and could just come over and be a part of all of the dyfunction but also all of the beauty and love and the funny. There is lot's of funny, which is nice.
Also, I finally saw Supersize Me. It definitely makes one re-tink hitting the drive-through. I probably eat fast food, once or maybe twice a month, and it is almost always for 2 Egg McMuffins or 2 regular cheeseburgers. I'm not really into those giant double decker burgers - I like the itty bitty ones because they are not overwhelmingly beefy and because there is no sauce to deal with - just ketchup and mustard. And I skip the hash browns and the fries because they are pretty much the worst thing in the world for you - pretend potatoes, fried in transfat, then tossed in sugar and salt. Yes, they are oh so yummy but that just crosses a line for me. I'm not saying I won't eat them - on road trips, all bets are off - but I justify my occasional fast food stop by avoiding the worst of the worst.
That movie is pretty crazy though. It seemed fairly authentic - he nearly ruined himself in just 30 days by eating that crap for every meal. He was in great shape - 6 feet tall 185 pounds, muscular, etc. In 30 days, he gained 25 pounds and reported, in his updates throughout his experiment, having head aches, no energy and feeling like crap. His cholesterol jumped about 70 points, from a very healthy level, to a dangerously high one. His liver basically began to shut down. Both he and his live-in girlfriend who works as a vegan chef, reported that their sex life went down the tubes. After the experiment, it took him over a year to lose all of the weight (most of it, he lost in 5 months, but the last 5 pounds took the res of the year) although his cholesterol and liver enzyme levels went back to normal in fairly short order. It really makes you think...what the hell is in that stuff? I mean, we know what is in it - trans fats, saturated fat, refined carbohydrates, insane amounts of sugar (in stuff that isn't even sweet, like the salad dressing) the worst, most unsavory parts of the cow, corn syrup. But the crazy thing is that we willingly put it into our bodies. Because it tastes amazingly good. Most of the stuff on those menus hoenstly don't appeal to me, but an Egg McMuffin on a chilly morning. Holy crap - that sounds sooooo good. Oh, side note - if you, like me, are a sucker for the Breakfast Sandwich, try Jimmy Dean De-Lights - the turkey sausage one is fantastic and it's considerably lower in fat and calories than other similar breakfast sandwiches. I know such food items are not good for you - they are made of all kinds of fake ingredients. I'm just saying, if you have that urge for microwavable cheesy sausagey breakfast goodness, this is a slightly better way to go.
Moving on...so i met this guy with my friends haley a few months ago. He bought Haley a drink and we started talking - he had an accent and said he was fron New Zealand. He said his name was Corbin and asked us ours and we were soon really involved in conversation with him. His job - by day, parking attendant. By night and weekend - Spiderman impersonator. He had pictures of himself dressed up a Spidey saved on his phone which he showed us after I begged to see them. He is also an actor and trying to get some work in that vein. We had a lovely time chatting with him - we had two drinks at the bar we met him at ad then we, another casual acquaintance we ran into and Corbin moved along to another bar. We all exchanged numbers at that point, becuase we were getting along so well and having so much fun. Things started to get a little weird as we said we'd be leaving after the drink we were currently enjoying. We clearly said we needed to leave because we had to work in the morning. As we were paying our bills, he went up to the bar, got 4 beers and 4 shots. We both felt a little annoyed because it was so obviously manipulative, but we stayed a little longer, because we really were having fun. Corbin began entertaining us with his Matthew McCaughnahey impressions, which really were quite dreamy. And it became obvious after a little while that he wanted to get Haley into bed, like that night. When I gently informed him that Haley was my ride, he got annoyed and started being pouty-pants. This man was young, maybe 24, but extremely good looking. Very charming and someone you'd just like to be friends with. How cool that he was here from new Zealand and doing such odd work. I kind of got a bad vibe from him toward the end of the evening, but I still thought he was cool and would have enjoyed his company again.
The next day Haley called him to see if he wanted to join us and some other friends at Sandcastle. The number he gave her was wrong. We had both put the number in our phones at the same time so we tried mine - same number. Hmmmm.
Then I realized that I had asked him to send Kevin a picture of him from his phone. So I called Kevin and we got the number that the picture had come from. Totally different number. Haley text messaged him and his response was "How did you get this number?" We couldn't beleive it - how weird. He was the one who approached us, hung out with us all night. We texted back "Aqua Man told us." And laughed about it. THat was the end of that. Until yesterday.
Kevin and I took Brandon, Kevin's Little from Big Brothers, Big Sisters to the science center to see this new exhibit called "Bodies." It is actual human cadavors preserved with the skin removed so you can see th muscles and organs and everything. Very interesting. So we're going through the exhibit, and I see this guy and recognise him. Corbin. He was with a woman in her 40s in a wheel chair and a guy about our age and a man in his 40s. I casually got closer. Within 10 seconds I heard 1. the woman call him "Wendall" and 2. him speak in a normal mid-western American accent. My mind started racing. Obviously he is a total liar. But was he lying to us and just trying ot get Haley into bed by being cute foreign New Zealand actor guy. Or was he scamming this rich disabled woman? I was dying to know what the heck was going on. I was so tempted to just go up to him nd say hi, but if this was his family and they were having a nice day out together, I didn't want to upset those people or have them think I was some scorned woman or something. So i just waited until he noticed me. He did and quickly looked away. He went over to his friend or whoever the younger guy was and was whispering to him. suggenly I got a little nervous, like what if they had some big scam going and I could potentially ruin it. It was actually a little scary, wandering around the grotesque, dark, quiet but crowded exhibit, wondering if he was going to approach me with a gun pressed to my back or something. Of course, nothing of the sort happened. But as we were leaving, he and I made eye contact one last time and I just shook my head at him so he knew that I knew....something.
