The In Crowd

I set my alarm for 5 a.m. this morning, figuring if Charlie Sheen can get up that early to work out with a trainer then what’s my excuse?

I don’t smoke cigarettes. I think crack is whack. And I’ve never even met a porn star or prostitute — though I did recently stay up way past my bedtime to watch “Pretty Woman” on TBS. And you know what? Back in the day, $3,000 might have seemed like a lot of money for a week’s worth of a Sunset Boulevard worker’s time. But now it’s like, did Richard Gere have a Groupon or something? Sheen’s girls are supposedly making $30,000 a night — not that they don’t deserve the differential. Julia Roberts got a dreamy Rodeo Drive shopping spree montage out of her deal. Meanwhile, Sheen’s lady pals and their nose straws are lucky if they can make it out alive with an emergency room montage and the clothes they arrived in.

I was about 10 years old when I first heard the phrase “you can’t have your cake and eat it too.”

And it confused me.

Actually, no, it upset me. What kind of jerk came up with that rule? You have a cake. You eat it too. End of story. Why complicate such a simple, beautifully decorated, moist and delicious, possibly triple-layered (definitely triple-layered) equation with a proverb of prohibition? Why have the cake in the first place if you can’t eat it too, you bozos?

The other day I got into it with my husband at the Starbucks drive-thru. He was in the driver’s seat, a role I believe carries great responsibility, primary of which would be handling all external transactions with the purveyors of food and beverage (and all homeless people and window washers and rose sellers and police officers and those pesky friendly wavers).

Sometimes I feel like the Scarecrow in “The Wizard of Oz.” Except instead of straw I am stuffed with Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, gin and tonics and shredded pages from US Weekly.

See, at some point in 2003, my brain began to shrink. Then, in 2004 — and I’m just assuming here because I’m no neurologist — it popped out of my right ear and rolled into a cornfield, where small birds and field mice ate it.

Fine. It’s too late for me to be a pregnant teen, I get it. But where am I supposed to put all of this built-up power of suggestion that’s just sitting in my prefrontal cortex?

This is a serious question.

This column originally ran Oct. 5, 2007:

Last week I made a very difficult decision regarding the future of my cats. It wasn’t easy, but I know in my heart of hearts that I’m doing the best thing for everyone involved.

They will both go as chickens for Halloween.

My mother is a serious marathon runner and, growing up, I trained extensively with her.

Not that it was too difficult, mind you. It came pretty easily to me once I had the appropriate gear — that is to say, a comfy nightgown, a warm cup of tea and a window sill on which to rest my weary chin.

Training was relaxing, really. Like lying on the couch, eating spoonfuls of peanut butter with handfuls of chocolate chips and reading Perez Hilton.

When the Chick-fil-A cows are tweeting about your sartorial decisions, you know you’ve stepped in a big patty.

Not that Lady Gaga cares, I’m sure. Cartoon farm animals from advertising campaigns aren’t exactly the voices of authority when it comes to costume changes at the MTV Video Music Awards. (Not to mention, those cows are huge hypocrites: Wear some culottes made out of chicken thigh and suddenly they’re putting down their misspelled protest signs and washing their hooves of the matter.)

I, myself, am quite fascinated by the meat dress Gaga wore Sunday night. What a fashion statement! What a culinary statement! What a statement against mainstream commercialism and the recording industry!

What a great way to make sure all the attention is squarely on you.

A disturbing thing happened at the Emmys this past weekend, and I don’t just mean Kate Gosselin’s stiff, third-grade Thanksgiving play-esque appearance in the opening act, “Hey. Guys. I. Can. Help. I. Am. A. Great. Dancer.” (Side note: She says she wants to be an actress now — somebody please stop this. We have enough played-out junk floating in the atmosphere as it is. Awkward side note to the previous side note: Um, so that gunman who took hostages at the Discovery Channel on Wednesday and is now dead, that wasn’t about Kate Gosselin, was it? Oh God, I think it was. OK, just leave it. I mean, we could always use another actress, right?)

For the past week, I’ve been thinking about what it must have been like for flight attendant Steven Slater when he reached the bottom of that yellow slide. Did he high-five himself? Did he shout out in victory? Did he consider climbing up the slide and tucking it back into the airplane as if nothing happened? Did he still feel the angry adrenaline he apparently felt on board or did the exhilaration of sliding from a plane erase all that?