Match.com...and so it begins...

This is Shaharyan.
He is one of the many nice men who have written to me since last week when I joined Match.com.
Shaharyan is 44 years old, the divorced father of more than 3 children, and he lives in Kuwait.
In his own words Shaharyan is,

"LOOKING FOR NICE LADY SHARE MY LIFE AND LOVE AND I AM SEXY MAN AND KNOW HOW I CARE LADY AND I LIKE TO BE WITH MY NICE LADY ALL MY LIFE IN NICE LIFE ."

The title of Shaharyan's post reads,

"LIKE TO HAVE NICE LAY IN MY LIFE."

Wouldn't we all my friend? Wouldn't we all?


This is Rock Guy.
Doesn't he look sweet?
Rock Guy sent me a wink on Match because he was smitten with my profile.
I was so flattered! What a mensch!
So I checked out his page and indeed he looked like a really nice guy.
Rock Guy is a musician, a gemini, a vegetarian, and a witch.
Yup, that's right...a witch.
You know like brooms and cauldrons and I live in my Mom's Garage and D&D rocks?
Rock Guy ends his post by saying, "Freaky Chicks Welcome! LOL!"
Somehow I don't think attracting freaks is going to be a problem.


Radiogeek611 is 47 years old but he is only seeking women between the ages of 25 and 40.
I mean come on!
The guy has way too much to offer to give it away to some old hag of 45!
Radiogeek611 had two pictures that were both so appealing that I really couldn't decide which one to post.
So here I am presenting you with both in the hopes that you can help me to narrow this field down a little bit.
God, I feel like The Bachelorette at the Rose Ceremony!
How ever do I choose?!


And this brings me to my absolute favorite prospect thus far.
This is Hotcake555 and if you take one glance at his passport picture here I am sure that you will agree no other screen name could have done this man justice.
Hotcake555 is 54 years old, still married, has 3 children, and lives in Western Australia.
No worries though mates.
Hotcake makes almost $25,000 a year!
That seems like more than enough dough to buy the kids some tetanus shots, and fly new mommy to the outback in style!


Can I take a moment here to ask you guys some serious questions?
Is there some sort of growth protruding out the back of my head that none of you have alerted me to as of yet?
Do I have a persistent odor of street meat that lingers around my being?
If you put me in a tent in the town square, do you think people would pay a nickel to stare at me and point me with sticks?


Yes I have joined Match.com.
Yes things have gotten that bad, thanks for asking.
The last guy I met in a bar turned out to be an Orthodox Jewish father of four who "wasn't quite divorced yet."
Here's the deal kids.
I have all of my teeth.
I don't have leprosy.
There are no kids in my house, just the world's greatest dog.
Oh, and I'm a kick ass Broadway actress who just happens to be sexy, funny, smart, and modest.
Should this really be so difficult?
I am not renewing my passport just so I can go on a first date.
Fortunately Radiogeek611 lives in Maryland.
Hope springs eternal.
I'll keep you posted.

Just a Broadway Baby

My show is undergoing a major overhaul. Beginning Monday the entire original cast except for myself and two others will be gone. It's weird but also really exciting. I am looking forward to seeing the show infused with some fresh blood, and I am really happy for all of my old castmates who doubtless have wonderful career milestones ahead of them.

It's strange this world that I live in. When I was a child I always dreamt of performing on Broadway. The first Broadway show I ever went to see was Gypsy starring the amazing Tyne Daly. I was completely hooked. I became obsessed with all things Broadway, and in particular the show Aspects of Love by Andrew Lloyd Weber. I would sneak my Walkman into class and hide it under my clothes, spending the entire biology period lost in the "View of the Pyrenees."

I had it all planned out. I was going to move to New York and room with my best friend ala Bette Midler and Barbara Hershey in Beaches. (P.S. If you have never seen Beaches then we are not friends.) We would eat Chinese food out of takeout containers, and drink coffee from those blue Greek coffee cups. Then on one of my many Broadway auditions I would meet Michael Ball and he would instantly fall madly in love with me. We would marry by the boathouse in Central Park, and then Michael would serenade me with "Love Changes Everything" while rowing me across the lake. So at least trust me on this point ladies and gentlemen... I can empathize with your John Groff fantasies. I have been there.

My life didn't turn out exactly as I planned. Starbucks pretty much killed the NY coffee cup of the 80's, and I am fairly certain that Michael Ball LOVES Beaches if you know what I am saying. Still I made it to Broadway. I do wish that I got to perform more often. Being an understudy is sort of like winning the silver at the Olympics. Yeah, you made it to the big race and you did pretty well, but no one is putting you on a box of Wheaties anytime soon. Jesus I am showing my age here. Do they even make Wheaties anymore? Whatever, you get the idea. But no complaints. I am well aware of how many actors would leap at the chance to trade places with me, and I am exceedingly thankful for the job that I have. So keep your headshots at home kids. I'm not going anywhere yet.

I never wanted to become an actor so that I could be famous. Back when I was a kid before everyone could go online and compare signature collages of their favorite celebs, only die hard theatre geeks really knew who these people were. Geeks like me. That picture above is Times Square in 1989 the year that Gypsy with Tyne Daly opened on Broadway and the occasion of my very first trip to the Big Apple. That one below is Times Square now almost twenty years later. Broadway theatre was taken back from the criminals and the degenerates and turned into the degenerate criminal enterprise that it is today.
I kid! I kid! Don't fire me!
Not all of it is degenerate, although the ticket prices are what many would call "criminal".
But with Broadway firmly ensconced as a huge moneymaking industry the art of the stage took a backseat to putting butts in the seats.

Look I'm not naive. The theatre is an industry just like any other. It's a capitalist enterprise. But where it once seemed that parts on the stage were given to those actors who were the most deserving, or perhaps the most accommodating if we are to believe the tales of the "casting couches", now it seems that any one with even the faintest whiff of name recognition is given the advantage bar none, and talent or merit be damned. Hence we have arrived in the present era where exists the bus ad I passed today advertising,
"Spamalot now featuring Steven Collins from Seventh Heaven and Drew Lachey from Dancing With the Stars!"

"Good gravy Helen! Real celebrities from the picture tube! Well that makes it a must-see!"

Pandering to the lowest common denominator has become business as usual for Broadway. Steven Collins and Drew Lachey may well be excellent choices for Spamalot. I don't know them or their abilities, and I do not mean them any disrespect professionally. But the attempt to bolster ticket sales by parading out every Tom, Joe and Jane who ever scrubbed in on an episode of Grey's has gotten a little ridiculous. It feels like we are just minutes away from these marquees,

"The Flavor of Love girls as the Merry Mistresses of Murderers Row!"

"Supernanny is the original Mary Poppins!"

"The third runner up from The Bachelor is TEVYE!"

I fear for the future of the American theatre my friends.

Who's Hungry?

Well crap.
Crap, crap, crap.
I wish I could give you all some really amazing excuse for my absence from these pages.
It would be awesome if I could say that I was sold into white slavery in Chinatown, or that I was hit over the head and woke up in Guantanamo.
Plus that would make for some really juicy blog material.
But the truth is that I have no such yarn to weave friends. I've just been lazy about sharing my fantastic adventures with the free world and for that I do apologize. I will make a concerted effort to rant here more often.
I went on an amazing retreat over my birthday in June, and after that I sort of felt the need to keep on retreating. I spent time with friends, hung out with my dog, and with myself, and just did a lot of letting go and a lot of just "being". It's harder to do than it sounds, trust me. But I guess it was time away that I needed because these days I feel really beautiful and truly, truly blessed.
And now on to fun the business at hand for today!
I thought that as a welcome back exercise I would do a little examination of some of the products for sale out there on the grocery store shelves that Americans are consuming as "food". Please take notice of the quotes around that last word. They are essential for your understanding of what I am about to present to you.
When I go home to my parents house in New Jersey they shop at a store called Wegman's. It's a MAMMOTH supermarket chain that contains everything that you could ever want to eat, and everything that you should never eat if you ever intend to collect on your 401 K.
Look I am no dietary saint. I could stand to lose say half an eight year old's body weight give or take, and lord knows that I have given into the lure of the Entenmann's more than once in my lifetime (see sidebar). However I do make a conscious effort to consume whole foods on a daily basis. Basically if a packaged food contains any ingredients that I can't spell, pronounce, or pick out of a lineup, then I am not eating it.
However I am continually fascinated at what your average American will eat when the dinner bell sounds. I'm not even going to get into the fast food industry here. Any person who would intentionally consume something like say the Hardee's "Monster Biscuit" which contains three strips of bacon, four slices of ham, a sausage patty, and...wait for it...51 grams of fat, clearly has no interest in seeing their children graduate from grade school. So today I just want to look at a couple of items that really stuck out for me on my list visit to your average suburban grocery store.
Let the fun begin!

Let's talk breakfast!
-Who wants eggs?
-Oh yum! I love eggs thanks.
-Great! How about some bacon?
-Well sure why not?
-Some cheese on that maybe?
-Well, I really shouldn't but what the heck!
-Terrific! Let me just get out the toaster.
-Oh toast too, wow thanks. I'll have whole wheat.
-No, no, I need the toaster to cook the eggs and the bacon.
-Wait...what?
-I need to toast the eggs, the bacon, and the cheese.
-Wait...what? Hold on a second I'm confused.

As well you should be!
The Pillsbury dough boy has once again made all of our breakfast dreams come true by placing eggs, bacon and cheese in one handy pastry wrapped package!
I don't know about you but I am so tired of eating all of my foods separately on a plate, and with utensils. Who has time for that nonsense? I am a busy woman, and I want my food combined into one congealed paste and forever entombed in a pocket of dough.
I want to be able to hold my breakfast in one hand, drive my car with the other, and scream at my ungrateful children all at the same time, and now thanks to that charming little dough boy I truly can have the American dream.
My favorite part of this particular package incidentally is in the upper right hand corner where it boasts "Made with REAL eggs and bacon!" No doubt about it folks! Those are real chicken embryos flecked with genuine slaughterhouse scrapings. Yum! Can't you just taste the freedom our forefathers fought for?

Keeping in line with our breakfast theme allow me to introduce you to these delectable nibbles. Smucker's Uncrustables and Kraft's newest taste sensation Bagel-fuls. My first thought here is that our children are barely literate as it is. Uncrustables and Bagel-fuls are not words. These are pieces of words that have been forced together shotgun wedding style by ad executives on a lot of cocaine. Can we please all put a halt to this madness now before I have to go to my gynecologist and request a "Papa-Smearo." I'm sorry but it's fucking stupid.

Now let's talk bagels shall we? I am a New Yorker and therefore a lover of all things bagel. So I know all to well the absolute drudgery of having to slice open a bagel, toast it and THEN smear it with cream cheese all by my lonesome, miserable self. Frankly this is the 21st century, and it's just bullshit people. Where are we Russia? I want my bagel in tube form, and I want it pre-pumped full of delicious dairy goodness! The good news is that these also come in the cinnamon and chive variety. If anyone has eaten one of these and lived please let me know.

As for the Uncrustables I believe we have been over this already. If I have to de-crust my own PB&J then the terrorists have already won.




Now that we are done raping the toaster I have a quick question for you. Who out there hates their kids? Want to give them a jump start on adult-onset diabetes?
Or maybe you are just sick of shopping for kids clothes, and you figure it would be easier if you could all just wear Lane Bryant sizes.
Well man have I got the stuff for you!
Check out that appealing package! It just screams nutrition doesn't it?
I am old enough to remember when Lunchables (again, not a word) first came on the market. It took much begging and pleading for my mother to buy me a package of these bad boys, and this was before they had such appealing varieties as "Pizza" or Jesus help us "Nachos".
There was no Capri-Sun that came with, no Starburst included for "dessert", just an incredibly sad stack of meat and cheese by-product covered by a thin veneer of hopelessness. Now if I had been able to partake of something as enticing as say, "Pepperoni Flavored Sausage" I am certain that my lunchtime could have been a far less morose occurrence.
Seriously, if you intentionally feed your child this product you should either be sent to jail, or be force fed a vintage Lunchables from 1986. I think my parents may still have one in the back of their fridge.

And on a final note, could someone please tell me where the "Cool Cotton Candy" trees grow? That's not a folk song, I'm really asking the question. You see way back in the 1980's when I was a tot yogurt came in flavors such as strawberry, blueberry, lemon...you know, actual fruit like items. But this alas I suppose is GoGurt (again, not an actual word assholes) and it is a far, far cry from my beloved yogurt of yore.
First off it comes in a tube!
What great fun!
When I was a child if you attempted to squeeze your yogurt container straight into your mouth they made you spend your afternoons in the green rug room with the boy who ate hair, and the girl who started fires. But today we are encouraging such short-bus like behavior by actually marketing products which encourage a complete lack of social graces in our children. Look I'm not expecting everyone to behave like they just came out of Miss Porter's here gang, but the kids who suck down this garbage make the boy who ate hair look like a goddamn Rhodes Scholar.

Well that's all for this visit. I hope you have enjoyed this little journey down the supermarket aisle with me. Please, at your next meal take some time to remember those who have no GoGurt, those who will never know the joy of a Bagel-ful, and those who God willing will never, ever have to endure a meal time consisting of something called a Lunchable. Until next time y'all. Happy eating!