"Cathy" is getting better these days too

I'm embarrassed to admit it, but the other day, Sally Forth made me laugh.

I harbor a longstanding hatred toward this comic strip, which I read every day. For one thing, it's poorly drawn. The illustrations rarely include action or add to the humor. It runs three panels of talking heads each day. Heads that are always in profile for some reason.

The jokes are even worse than the art. The primary source of humor in Sally Forth is that the eponymous character is better than the people around her--her childlike husband, her strangly adult child, and her coworkers. A typical strip will have a secondary character saying something stupid followed by the punch line: Sally pointing out that what he/she said was stupid.

Well in the last week or so, the SF writers (yes, there are two of them, in addition to the illustrator) have hit on an unlikely inspiration for some pretty good dark humor, Sally's mother. The mom is visiting for Thanksgiving, and she isn't stupid like most of the other characters. Instead, she is mean and evil. Sally's response to her mom is realistic and actually results in occasional funniness.

We can only expect continued improvement from Sally Forth, because I found this online, which I am assuming is some sort of prototype for future strips.

Flat heads and tiny eyes

All 16 of the washers and dryers in my apartment building were broken yesterday, so I had to lug every item of clothing I've worn during the last two weeks to a laundromat in Mt. Pleasant. I walked the whole way with the basket balanced on my head, proving that I have a finely tuned inner ear or a flat head.

While I could potentially make it as a Vegas showgirl or an African villager, I would be fired from my first day on the job as a professional launderer. I know this because I accidentally poured my last remaining cup of laundry detergent into the bin that was clearly marked "fabric softener." This caused the machine to save the soap through the wash cycles, and then dump it in during a spin cycle. The result: Dirty clothes with a thin film of detergent well distributed among them.

Laundry didn't go so well yesterday, but a major accomplishment later made up for it: I successfully stuck my finger into my eye. Several times! I can now put in contact lenses with relative ease, at least as compared to the other person at the training session. While I nonchalantly slid the lens into my eye after just 200 tries, with the help of two people enthusiastically shouting instructions (Look up! Stick your finger in your eye!), the poor lug sitting next to me took nearly twice as long.

Unfortunately, for the second part of the process (taking the lens out) he had a secret weapon: small eyes. Apparently such people can just flip contacts right out of their beady little eyes. Me? Tears were running down my face and my eyeballs were bruised and red by the time I got the damn contacts out.

I was going to wear my new contacts out last night, but decided against it when I imagined myself drunk and in tears, sitting in front of the mirror, futilely poking at my eyes. Not that most nights don't end that way.

Fun with disabilities

This morning, on the way to work, I pretended to be deaf.

I was walking up 16th Street, on a crowded sidewalk, and this church lady who was about two yards away from me started yelling, "Excuse me! Excuse me!"

I assumed that she was just a belligerent tourist, so I stopped in front of her and looked at her quizzically, expecting her to ask me for directions. But it became clear, due to the frantic sweeping motions she was making with her hands, that she felt I was in her way. I was deeply offended because I pride myself on being a good city pedestrian. I don't just go walking into people. In fact, I can slide right through dense school groups without so much as brushing one of their matching shirts. I had plenty of time to adjust my course this morning--and anyway, if she was so worried about getting touched, she could have adjusted hers.

So I did what any normal person would do. I feigned a disability to make her feel guilty. Drawing on my 6th grade education, where I learned to sign Whitney Houston classics*, I told her, "I believe the children are the future, teach them well and let them lead the way." I also made an angry face at her before stomping off toward the Columbia Heights metro.

Is she a crazy bitch or what?
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* I did not, however, learn multiplication tables, long division, or how to spell anything.

Duff just doesn't do it for me

About two years ago, I joined Washington Sports Club on the basis of there being tiny televisions affixed to every piece of exercise equipment. Since then, I've had the opportunity to watch many tiny teenagers, often famous in some other context, attempt to launch their music careers. (For some reason that is the kind of music video favored by the Sports Club Network.)

Today's featured starlet: Hillary Duff. The girl is utterly average. So naturally what you want to do, for her music video debut, is to try to make her look like some kind of major rock star. The song is "fly" and theme-wise it reprises the sentiment of that Eminem lose yourself-to-the-music song. Music-wise, it attempts to capture Evanescence-style melodrama, with howling female vocals over guttural guitars. Problem is: Duff doesn't howl. Her thin little pitch-corrected voice gets overpowered, not supported, by her backing band.

To make up for it in the video, the backing band is barely visible. There's the occasional shot of some sad little studio guitarist, hopping into the air, wondering where his career went wrong. But mostly, the camera focuses on Hillary. Our girl is on a stage much, much to big for her, singing to a stadium of adoring fans. Does she really sell out stadium shows? Who knew.

So there I was, elliptical-ing along, desperate for some inspiration to pedal on. My little oxygen-deprived brain tried its darndest to believe in the charade. Yes Hillary! Any moment, everything *can* change! It really can! But when the camera panned back to a fully backlit Duff, arms outstretched, and she continued to emit the opposite of rock star magnetism, I knew it was time to change the channel back to the Road Rules Challenge.

Next Up (possibly): Kelly Osbourne. Now that's a *fantastic* video for a starlet of limited talent!