Thirteen guilty pleasures

As you might imagine, many of these are food. I guess I never made it out of my Oral Stage.

1. Candy: Take Five candy bars being my current fave (chocolate, caramel, and omigod PRETZELS inside!) but I still have a soft spot for Cup O’ Gold and those chocolate-covered cherries with all the pink goop inside. Oh, and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups — can’t forget those.

2. Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles, an L.A. phenomenon. Fried chicken and waffles . . . why not? You put honey on your buttermilk biscuits, don’t you?

3. Kung Pow: Enter the Fist. Even my son endlessly repeating lines from this film can’t ruin it for me. Steve Oederkerk (Frankenthumb; The Godthumb; Thumbtanic) plays the Chosen One, recognizable by the little face (named “Toungie”) that erupts from his tongue when he’s upset. Spoof chop-saki at its best. I can even forgive Oederkerk for writing the screenplay to Patch Adams, although I cannot forgive anyone ever who compares me to Patch Adams.

4. The Breath Bomb. I don’t know what else to call it: a combination of Claussen Kosher dill pickles, kim chee, and a bottled Chinese item ominously called “odor frying fish”. The latter is a combination of dried anchovies, red pepper, garlic, and black bean. If I eat this stuff, Karen won’t come near me for hours.

5. Chinese massage place in Rosemead. If I hate L.A., why are there so many things I miss about it? Not only the food, but Venice Beach, and Melrose Ave., and all the twisted little live comedy theaters, and the awesome bookstores (like Amok). Anyway, down in Rosemead there’s a massage place where you pop fifty bucks (or whatever it is by now) and you get to hang out in the hot tubs and saunas, then get a massage, then hang out in the hot tubs all over again. It’s heavenly.

6. Driving like a maniac. Hey, man, that’s why our Camry is a V6.

7. Critter-feeding gladiatorial sports. Some animals seem to take an almost human degree of pleasure in stalking and killing their prey. Our best critter in this regard was Julia, an Eastern Indigo snake who had a serious jones for live mice. Centipedes are thrilling hunters, too.

8. Tight jeans. Because I can, dammit. There has to be some payback for all those hours in the gym. Now, if only some attractive women would stare . . .

9. PC games. What a complete, utter waste of time! Thank heavens my son bogarts our gaming computer, otherwise I would live out my life playing World of Warcraft, Dungeon Siege II, or Civilization IV. As it is, I probably spend less than four hours a week gaming. Could be worse — much worse.

10. Chick tracts. Whenever I see these lying around, I have to pick them up, dust them off (or disinfect them — they end up in some of the weirdest places) and chortle myself silly over them. Biblical literalists are funny!

11. Deep fried pork rinds because they taste like bacon, and they’re crunchy, and they have zero carbs. I love ’em to death, even if they tend to put my esophagus into spasm if I eat them too fast.

12. Ethnic porn. I keep trying to get Karen to cry out “Ay Poppy!” at appropriate times, but she just won’t play along.

13. Autoerotic strangulation. But since I’m a coward, I omit the leather belt and hold my breath. Safer that way.

Okay, those last two? Kidding! Jeez!

D.

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Yatta yatta yatta. Boy, am I sick of that paragraph.