EastGirlsWest

I’m checking in from Dublin right now - where I just arrived and am so delirious and desperate for sleep I should NOT be blogging. And with the new “no liquids” rule, 13 hours on planes has left my eyeballs so dry and red I think they might disintegrate. In fact, I can feel it happening.

Here for three days to shoot a PBS pledge special with Celtic Woman at this castle. There’s more to tell, but…can’t. form. sentences. More soon.

In other news, my sister has moved in! On Day One she wore a huge studded belt with a skull and crossbones buckle. Although, she did give the nod of approval to a few things in my closet, and I found many items in hers that can make the crossover.

Okay, time for me to sleep. With any luck I’ll be on schedule with this time zone just as I pack up to leave on Friday.

So last night, post-elliptical, Angela and I were lying on mats in the stretch area of the gym. She’s come up with a new combination of sit-ups that make me deeply unhappy. And as I’m panting through them, wondering if I might die right there and then in the middle of 24-Hour Fitness, she starts counting our reps out loud in an unusually perky tone.

Angela is many things: brilliant, gorgeous, funny, graceful. But perky? It’s not the Angela I know.

So anyway, she’s counting. And in our many, many months of going to the gym together I’ve never heard her do this. At least not in such a loud, happy voice. As I’m trying to reconcile all this in my mind, I suddenly hear her say, “Wow. All this counting is bringing me back to my aerobics days.”

I stop. Because I’m stunned, and also because I can’t possibly use my abdominal muscles to hold my legs and torso away from the floor for another second.

Thud. “What?”

“The counting. It’s reminding me of my aerobics days.”

I consider what this might mean. And then understand exactly what it DOES mean. “Oh my god. Were you an aerobics instructor?”

If you don’t know Angela, trust me on this one: it’s a shocking and hilarious piece of information. Not to mention that all this time, when I thought I was going to the gym with someone as equally exercise-challenged as myself, I’ve been panting on the elliptical next to a former aerobics instructor! I’m horrified.

So after another ab workout - which consists of me laughing so hard that is hurts - we resume our sit-ups. And now she’s really laying it on thick, barking counts at me like she’s Jamie Lee Curtis in “Perfect”. And even though I know she taught in the 90’s, and she swears she only wore shorts and a t-shirt, I now cannot stop picturing Angela in leg warmers.

And finally, I have one. It arrived today, packed in ice, with some fun accessories to boot.

I’m still too afraid to take off the cap and look at the needle, but I go to the doctor tomorrow for my first injection/training session, so that will happen soon enough. Hopefully, my rheumatoid arthritis won’t know what hit it!

Have to keep this medication in the fridge. The Betrothed says, “Gee, I hope I don’t accidentally put it on my sandwich.”

Angela and I decided that the three sweetest words in the English language are “begin cool down.”

Also, we both have a HBO problem. There are three episodes of Deadwood left, and I’m already feeling the pain of withdrawl. Meanwhile, the only thing that got Angela through our workout was the promise of starting season two of The Wire last night. When I left her in the parking garage she was twitching in anticipation of her trip to the video store to rent the DVD’s. All this because she couldn’t possibly wait another 24 hours for it to show up On Demand. Season Four premieres on September 10th, and it can’t come soon enough.

And finally, according to Vanity Fair, Sofia Coppola is out there living the life we’d like to have. BFF with Wes Andersen? We’d like that. Fashion muse to Marc Jacobs? We volunteer. Then we’d have much more exciting weekends to discuss during Monday’s elliptical time, making the whole ordeal go by faster.

Begin cool down.

Okay, this may be the best iPod accessory yet.

While there are many, many things going on in the current administration that qualify as “obscene” in my book (let’s start with the war in Iraq, and go from there), my wrath has been focused lately on the FCC, who seems to want to be everyone’s Mommy and Daddy. They will protect our innocent ears and eyes from anything resembling a profane word or exposed flesh! Soldiers at war shall say “heck”. Blues musicians are not an “appropriate artistic context” for swear words. And there will be no glimpses of nudity, which as well all know leads to sex, which is very, very dirty and wrong.

Have you noticed that even John Stewart is being bleeped on the air now? What the fuck is going on???

Violence, however, is fine with the FCC. Bring it on - the more graphic the better. Beat someone’s skull in, remove limbs with a blunt object while wading in a pool of blood, set fire to the corpse and bomb the shit out of the building where it all took place. Shoot a couple of bad guys at point blank range with an automatic weapon on your way out the door and put it all in prime time. Now THAT’S family viewing.

I mean, there’s just a teensy, weensy bit of hypocrisy in all this. Plus unknowable rules that remain a moving target. And some frighteningly emboldened media “watchdog” groups.

Now that I’ve used both the “F-word” and the “S-word” in this post, I may as well go for broke and share this video. It was sent to me by a fellow public broadcasting colleague.

Enjoy!