Candieland

..I would like to say "nyah nyah nyah."

I heard they were hard to find, so last summer I called around until I found a Wii at a Wal-Mart in Lancaster. I gave it to my daughter then, figuring she can buy herself more games with her Christmas money.

If you need me, I'll be wearing my coconut bra and sipping rum out of a hollowed pineapple in my jacuzzi, laughing at how smart I am. Only crying on the inside because I look terrible in coconut, rum gives me a headache, and I'm really just sitting in a dirty bathtub and the water is making me pruney.

When I listen to people bitch about petty shit, I can't help but feel a little envious.

I wish my life was so simple and uncomplicated that I could get worked up because somebody got my order wrong, instead of being too preoccupied to care since it doesn't really matter, in the grand scheme of things. I know someone who will share a blow-by-blow account that I pay attention to, at first, only because it MUST have an interesting pay off because otherwise why would she bother frothing at the mouth, only to learn that the person I'm listening to obviously has no concept of what an actual problem is.

Good for her.

I hope we can all achieve a life that is so perfect that a misplaced candy bar is the end of the world, because surely that will mean the end of poverty, war, murder, and unkindness in general.

I didn't grow up celebrating Christmas, but, for the past nine years, I have been living with a guy who gets into it, so I went along, and had fun. Now that I'm on my own again, I just don't care. Maybe it's because I'm getting divorced and this is my first solo holiday in many years, or maybe it's because I'm reverting back to my pre-Steve state in many other ways as well, but I really have no desire to go through all the holiday shopping bullshit.

I haven't put up the tree, gone shopping, made cookies, or cut a single snow flake. I don't miss it. I asked my daughter if I should put up the tree and her response was, "Why? It's just a stupid tree." That's my girl. This year, she gets money. I think trees should be outdoors where they are happy. I used a fake tree when I was with Steve because I don't like the idea of bringing a living thing into my house, decorating it, then watching it die. Where is the dignity in that?

My life is very busy and interesting right now and I just don't feel like I have time for all of this holiday hoohaw. Was I only amusing myself with the Christmas preparations in the past because I was looking for something different to lift me from my ennui?

I have no sentimental attachment to Christmas whatsoever. I was taught at a young age that Christmas was a pagan holiday made over by Christianity (look it up, you can find the info in any encyclopedia) and, not being into lies, I never allowed an image of Santa Claus or Jesus ("Praise Jeebus!") into my house, and I just viewed it all as a cultural holiday. Not that Jesus is a lie, it's just there is no way he could have been born in the winter, and what does a Christmas tree and mistletoe and the Yule log and Holly berries (cough*pagan*cough) have to do with his birthday anyway?

Honestly, I don't care. I think Christmas is nice, people can act nice and do sometimes do nice things this time of year, and holidays can ease the winter doldurms. Let's not forget all of the Christmas parties. I'm not going to get into the rude behavior at the malls, because I think that would happen any time there are a lot of stressed out people condensed into one spot. I'll not explore how depressed some people get around the holidays, either.

Let's just think about the fun that Christmas can provide. If people want to have fun, then, by all means, have fun! I just get my dander up at the self-righteous hypocrisy that pops up every now and then, people mindlessly parroting phrases and going through the rituals with no thought to the meaning, and no self-examination. How can people go through their lives, automatically following tradition, without thinking? That always baffles me. And lying to their kids, ensuring the irrational behavior for future generations. Maybe people do it for the security. I don't know. Now and then if I tell someone I'm not into Christmas, I'll get a quivering lip and a teary eye, "B-b-but, it's Jesus's birthday!" Those people scare me. They are the ones who have the idea that celebrating Christmas equals being a good person that if you don't celebrate Christmas, then you must be bad.

There is the argument that, who cares about the origins of Christmas, as long as people are spending a day to celebrate Jesus? That quickly goes down the pooper when you consider the marketing, stress, billions of dollars, and commercialism. Not too many people are really thinking about Jesus through all of this. The ones who are thinking about Jesus in the middle of all of these distractions don't need Christmas to do it because they are probably thinking about Jesus every day anyway.

I wonder how many people would give up Christmas if they could do so without being pestered?

I enjoy observing the Christmas celebrations, but am very relieved that I don't feel pressured to participate this year. I love you, but don't expect a present. If you want to come over on the 21st for a Yule ritual in my back yard, drop me a line. I figure, if we're going to go pagan, why not go pagan, but let's not drag a Bible guy into it.

Labels: alternative, Christmas, cynical, holidays, pagan

How often are you disappointed by something that is actually bad, or is it just that it didn't meet your expectations?

That happens a lot when you're a kid, before you learn about the world of marketing. You expect to be as happy as the kid on the commercial, all you need is that toy. Once you get it, you realize it doesn't come with a producer and an animator and a set designer and a soundtrack and really it's just a sucky piece of plastic and no, it doesn't make you happy.

The first time I vividly remember experiencing unmet expectations was when Crocodile Dundee came out in 1986. Everyone I knew was going on about what an amazingly hilarious movie it was and talked about it endlessly. By the time I saw it, I had this movie so built up in my head that I was let down. That is what everyone was going on about? I've since learned my lesson and make an effort not to saturate myself with a movie before I see it.

Can the same thing go in other parts of your life, such as relationships? I've found that people can build up expectations about others that always end in disappointment. The fewer expectations you have, the better, really. Okay, some expectations are good, little nuggets like, don't hit me, don't have sex with my friends, don't fart at the dinnertable, but then again, those are more like hard-and-fast-rules.

Some people go into relationships with huge expectations. They are usually easy to spot because they come off as a little needy and seem a little too "bonded" early on, when they are in that dizzying state of belief that their expectations have FINALLY been met. I had a boyfriend who always finished my sentences for me and then agreed with me before I even had a chance to say anything. He had built me up as the perfect girlfriend and so desperately wanted someone he could see eye-to-eye with, that he assumed naturally everything I said would be in perfect congruence with everything that he felt. I should have been wary when he told me he was in love with me on our second date. One morning he stomped out of my house in a huff because I said "Hi" instead of "Good morning." A simple hi did not fit into his expectations and he was bitterly disappointed.

A few years ago I met a nice woman who immediately started calling me her best friend. She often agreed with whatever I said, not even waiting for me to finish speaking, so she didn't really know what she was agreeing with anyway. This made me feel uncomfortable, because NO ONE should agree with whatever I say; not only do I talk out the side of my ass a lot, I also like to play Devil's Advocate, and I'm often just plain old wrong. I look at voicing a statement as a way of starting a conversation, not as laying down the rules.

I could see many times when I wasn't meeting her expectations as Best Friend. She would show irritation by turning bright red and shaking her foot and insisting that nothing was wrong. Once I invited a group of friends over on Saturday night and she said she would be there but didn't show up. The next day, when I called to see if she was okay, she told me that she told her husband, "If Candie really wanted me there, she would have called me last night." She built up that expectation on some rule that I wasn't even aware of.

Eventually, I was blind-sided by an angry phone call while I was shopping, and judging by the things she said, and continued to say over and over, you would think that I had slept with her husband, not made a change of plans. She had a sense of entitlement over my time, activities, and friends that frightened me. Later, when I reread an old email and finally discovered where the misunderstanding arose, I didn't bother explaining. What was the point? I had felt a huge sense of relief from being emotionally freed that I didn't see the need to go back to walking on eggshells again. It's better that she demonizes me and finds reasons to validate telling me she never wants to see me again, because, let me tell you, I will never meet her expectations as a friend.

We've all heard different people voicing disappointment over meeting a celebrity, and I sure know where that one is coming from. You see this person playing characters in movies, wearing glamorous clothes in magazines, making pithy statements on TV interviews, and then when you see them in their sweats standing in line at Del Taco it's a completely different picture. When you see how short your favorite stud muffin is or your favorite hot babe looks like when she's not taped and painted, your expectations don't just go unmet, they get thrown in the dirt and stomped on.

I've learned to never go out on a limb in recommending a restaurant. My favorite restaurants aren't just about the food, part of it is the wonderful experiences I've had there, the memories, the associations I hold to that particular spot. If I send a friend there telling her about this amazing wonderful delightful perfect enchanting restaurant, of course she is going to hate it. Not because it's bad, but because I built it up so much that they could only be disappointed. On top of that, they could go on a bad day, they could get a bad waiter, they could have different point of view of what amazing wonderful delightful perfect enchanting is, or they could just really hate feta cheese.

One restaurant that left my expectations unmet was The Olive Garden. People love that place, but why? I'm pretty sure if you went in the kitchen you would find an assembly line of "chefs" heating up TV dinners and sliding them onto plates.

I was 19 the first time I went to Disneyland, and boy was I disappointed. It was small, and I don't know, somehow less than what I imagined. Not as shiny. Too much plywood. After seeing this fabulous place on TV for my entire life, how could my expectations have been met? Eventually I got over it and look forward to my trips, but that's only after having some fun times to grow on.

Then there is meeting people from online. When I was dating, I would give an honest description of myself starting with, "I'm 5'8", long blonde hair..." and I'm certain some guys would immediately get an image of Pamela Anderson in their head. I could tell them I had a wart on my nose and they wouldn't even see that part. On a good day, I'm about as pretty as Owen Wilson in drag, so what can I say? Don't look at me, man, I didn't say I'm Pamela, you did that to yourself yourself.

We hear people say, "It was good, but just not what I was expecting." We sound like a nation of control freaks, like we have to exert our own power over the activities and appearance of other people, and if they don't fit our mental picture, we get pissed off. Don't look to another person to fulfill your need, because if you can't do it for yourself, no one can do it for you. Wouldn't we all be happy if, instead of trying to mash other people into our preconceived mold, sentencing them to doom, we suspended judgement and let people be who they really are? Fewer people would get discarded and, if you let the world be as it really is, you are in for a lot happy surprises, not bad ones.

A long time ago, a teacher told me that every time we breath, we are inhaling a molecule that had previously been exhaled by every person who has ever lived on Earth. We are inhaling Shakespeare, Hitler, Jesus, Doris Day, Jim Morrison -- anyone you can think of -- every few seconds. It's really fun to think about this when I'm in the presence of a celebrity I love. After two nights of Live concerts, Kat and I kept exclaiming, "We breathed air with Ed!" Once, an actor who was in not one but TWO movies with Tommy Lee Jones, kissed me (in a social-setting kind of way) and I'm still going on about it. A guy who breathed air with Tommy Lee Jones KISSED ME

I guess it would also stand to reason that we are drinking water passed from person to person as well. Water isn't created or destroyed, it just flows around the world in the form of rivers, oceans, rain, clouds, coffee, sits in bottles at 7-11 and pours out of our tap and swirls around in our toilets. If we're going by the whole inhaling-others-molecules-thing, it would make sense that every drop of water we are drinking was at some point inside someone else's body. You could be sipping recycled dinosaur piss as you read this.

How much of other people are we really absorbing? We know that dust is made up of mostly dead skin, think of how much of that gets breathed in every day. It probably falls in our food and we eat it. Not to mention sweat, sneezed-out-nose-droplets, skin oil, and hair. I saw a dentist, just once, who had a skin problem; his face was red and coverd with giant yellowing flakes. I thought about this as I was laying back in the chair with my mouth open, praying that a piece of his face wouldn't fall off and land in my mouth.

We have all heard about how every time you have sex with someone, you are, in essence, having sex with everyone they have ever had sex with. And everyone they have ever had sex with, and so on, and so on. Think of the Breck Girl commercials from the 70s and you get the basic idea. And I guess it's feasible, if you think about the microscope people-fragments that get left around all the time. So, if takes the human body seven years to regenerate its cells, you could have bits of millions of people floating around inside of you.

My friends and I used to play the "in essence" game, which is just another form of You've Got Cooties. Since Frieda kissed Nathan, and Nathan kissed Julie, in essence, Frieda has kissed Julie. We would keep going until it got really gross. Like the time that Ted took in a stray dog that had been hanging out in his yard.

"I let the dog sleep with me because it was cold, right?" He said as he sipped his beer over a game of darts. "I wake up in the middle of the night and he's licking my balls," and when everyone went "eeewww!" he added, "Don't worry, I made him stop, I wasn't sure if he bites."

While we were all wondering how far it would have gone if Ted had been sure the dog didn't bite, Nathan pointed out that Ted's dog had licked me on the mouth earlier that day. So, in essence...

"SHUT UP!" Having an ill-mannered dog jump up on me and lick my face is one thing; implying that, in essence, I had Tedsticle on my lips was quite another. We quit playing that game that night and many of us distanced ourselves from Ted.

Dogs are interesting creatures, they are too curious to worry about germs and DNA. A dog will drink out of the toilet, not even concerned with actual pee, much less imagined dinosaur excrement. They lick their own balls, no in essence about it; they'll lick their friend's balls, and in the case of Ted's dog, they will lick an strange man's balls. If they want to get to know you, they just take a sniff of your crotch and BINGO you have a new pal.

My dad learned this the hard way when he got out of the shower and realized he didn't have any clean underwear. My parents live up in the mountains, and with no close neighbors to worry about, Dad nonchalantly walked out into the back yard to yank a pair of boxers off the clothesline. It was then that a dog from up the road wandered onto the property and came back to introduce himself to my father.

Between shakes of laughter, my mom told me that my dad's screams of "Get back!" caused her to look out the back window. Dad was running around the back yard, flicking his underpants at a nice, sociable German Shepherd. The dog got in his final cold goose as Dad flew up the steps to the back porch.

I've come to learn that nudity and pets just don't mix. My parents live alone with a couple of dogs that stay outdoors. They have spent their entire lives outdside, running the property and hanging out in their house with automatic feeder/waterer, and you cannot force either dog indoors. I know this because sometimes, when it's late at night and kind of spooky, I try to get Gordo to come in the house and watch movies with us and he just stands on the porch and wags his tail, not putting one giant paw across the threshold.

The other night my mom opened the back door to let out some of the stifling heat -- there is no thermostat on the wood stove and the house sometimes heats up quickly-- and to listen to the relaxing patter of the rain. Gordo came flying into the house, soaking wet, only stopping for a brief hello. Mom was fairly surprised but went back to listening to the rain and watching the outline of the trees against the lightning. A few minutes later she heard my dad scream. Dad had been asleep in bed, too hot to get under the covers, in fact too hot to wear clothes. Gordo wandered into the dark bedroom to say hi to Dad by giving him a lick on the butt. At first, for some reason I didn't ask about, my dad thought it was my mom. What else could it be? It's not like the dogs ever come in the house. Well, imagine his surprise.

My own dog, Snake, is very jealous when anyone gets affectionate around him. If I hug my daughter, Snake jumps up on his hind legs and barks at us. More than once, when Steve leans over to kiss me, I'll have a confused moment until I realize that Snake has suddenly jumped up to lick my ear. I push Snake away and think, in essence, a molecule of everything that Snake has ever had in his mouth is now in my ear. I get up to find the peroxide when I make the decision: Gordo is never licking my face again.

I think Steve and I got married because we both write down things we just did, then cross them off, making a retroactive list as we go along. It gives us a sense of accomplishment, with none of that nagging guilt of writing something down that never gets crossed off.

There are few mundane activities quite so celebrated as The Making of the List. We don't always just write on whatever, we actually buy list paper to keep track of stuff we gotta buy and things we gotta do.

When Steve goes to the store without me, there's no worry involved because I share the blame when I make the list. The other day I added "shiitake mushrooms" to his grocery list, but before he left the house he came back to me to clarify.

"I know what a SPIT take is, but what exactly is a--"

"Remember that time that Snake chewed the cord to the fan?"

"Oh."

Not all of shopping lists are for the grocery store, we always have Target and a Trader Joe's lists going too, and then combine them all on one big list with subcategories for easier shopping. I regularly go to the hardware store, the fabric district downtown, and the art supply store so my lists sometimes look a little funky. Before I left to a go on a splurge fest, Steve asked me what I was after so I read my Master List out loud:

Self-leveling acrylic medium
Sanford 314
Copper tape
2 x 4s
solder wire
eye pins
alginate
Dupioni (root beer or green)
Liquid latex
sandpaper
rope
Vaseline
Rubber gloves

Steve looked concerned for a moment, then excited, then puzzled, until his face finally settled on serious.

"No dear, you are supposed to make your own list, not to pick up someone else's list you find on the ground."

Smart ass.

Every now and then I find one of Steve's lists and am equally perplexed. Why did he write:

Imposters
The Thing
Goldfinger
Top Secret
Die Hard
The Thing
Rope
American Graffiti?

Why do these particular movies belong on a list together? I know it's not his Christmas list because we already have them all. What is the common link? Why is The Thing on there twice? Is one of them the original The Thing and one is the later John Carpenter version? Then why are they not differentiated by dates or directors? How does he know which is which? What if these aren't the titles of movies at all but a list of chores he wanted to accomplish over the weekend? Good thing I've got my rubber gloves.

Often I wake up with lists and other little nuggets written on scraps of paper next to the bed, sometimes in my handwriting and sometimes in Steve's. I have a nice piece of paper with duckies all over it and scrawled in Steve's handwriting: "Featherduster." Steve said I asked him to write it down for me at 3am, but I don't remember doing that.

I do believe him: he has been taking my sleep-talking dictation for years. On January 2nd of 1999 at 6:47am I said, "You take airplanes and twist them into balloon animals. I want a doggie with the people still in it." I know this because Steve carefully recorded it for me on the back of an envelope. Since that day, I've tried several times to explain to him what I meant, but he still doesn't get it. Another morning, I told our cat, Jones, who had lost the use of one eye to cancer, "If you shaved your head, you would look just like a one-eyed Kojak."

Not everything comes from just sleep talking, drinking is also a good way to come across that "WTF was I thinking?" paper the next day. A few years ago, on Thanksgiving, my parents, Steve, and Cathy and I shared a suite in Vegas. Steve and I went to bed early, as is our habit (even in Vegas we're old) but my mom and Cathy stayed in the Casino until late into the night. I woke up sometime in the morning when my mom came bursting into our room, "QUICK! HELP ME FIND A PIECE OF PAPER! Cathy kept saying the funniest stuff and I have to write it down!" Mom tore the room apart until she found the obligatory notepad and pen next to the phone and furiously wrote for about three minutes.

The next day at lunch, as Cathy and Mom sat there holding their heads and gulping coffee, I asked my mom what was so gosh-darn funny that she had to write it down in the middle of the night.

"Oh yeah! Let me find that." She was already laughing as she started excitedly digging through her purse to find the papers from the night before. After glancing over them, she turned them over and looked on the back, her brows furrowed.

"That wasn't really all that funny," she said and threw them back in her purse.

Sometimes I get story ideas that I jot down on the nearest available paper, only to have no idea what it means later. Recently, an old yellow piece of paper surfaced on my desk:

V8
Tampons
2 electric toothbrushes
Brain transplant organic material for old "self" to absorb into

I might have brain transplants figured out, but it would take too long to explain. It has nothing to do with the two electric toothbrushes, that was a separate thought.

My friend Jennie sent me a book called "Found" for Christmas last year. Found is a really fun collection of just such things: lists and letters that people have found and sent in to be published. Everything is in its original form so you can appreciate the medium used, handwriting, and doodles. It's a completely fascinating read because it raises so many questions and gives you a scary look into the lives of our fellow Earthlings.

Scraps of paper everywhere, and I can't throw one of them away, because what if some day I can use them to crack the code? I don't know what code, but I'm sure I have it written down here somewhere.

I remember being able to read a Mad magazine and watch music videos at the same time, my eyes could just dart back and forth to the pages on my lap and the images on the screen. Now it takes about 30 seconds for my eyes to focus from something close to something faraway, so darting is out of the question. Today I couldn't even see the little tiny cartoons drawn in the margins of the Mad from 1989 I found with my stuff in the garage. Even more frightening, what am I doing watching VH-1?

I remember when I wouldn't have been caught dead watching VH-1, yet, here I am, soaking in all of the old videos that I used to live for. I quit watching Music Television when they stopped showing music, I think I got out right about the same time Real World showed up. Oh well, if it wasn't for the MTV Music Famine of the 90s, I wouldn't have the same appreciation for the Golden Age of Music Videos today.

In the 80s, we would watch MTV about 18 hours a day, which gave us plenty to talk about at school. I was one of the few girls in my 8th grade class who wasn't in love with Prince, and yet they had the nerve to rib me about liking Culture Club. I ask you now, why are Eddie Izzard and Boy George considered transvestites and Prince is not?

Over the past 25 or so years of watching 80s music videos, I've noticed a few things some of the most popular videos had in common. I can't believe none of the people on the old nostalgia flashback shows have mentioned these important video elements, maybe they are too busy blowing smoke and making intelligent, pithy comments like, "It is a timeless classic, even now."

The essentials of a popular 80s music video:

1. Special effects. You may not recognize the cutouts, mirrored screens, the camera zooms, stop motion, and starlight lens filters as special effects, but, c'mon, it was all we had back then. The face-morphing in "Cry" was absolutely the cutting edge.

2. A segment showing the Rock Star hanging with regular folks. This is the part of the video where our Rock Star gets to show his down-to-earth side. Laughing and smiling, the amused Rock Star is clapping and swaying with people just like you and me that unwittingly wandered onto the set, who just happen to be professional dancers. Singing with a group featuring children and/or minorities gets you extra points. Tears For Fears suddenly seems so approachable.

3. A segment showing the Rock Star as a regular folk. Sometimes, our Rock Star would just show himself in every day situations, like fondling models, standing back stage while waiting to perform to a stadium of screaming fans, and and looking perplexed while driving a Ferrari, usually filmed in black-and-white, and then cut back to himself in a studio, singing a narration to his own troubled life. Or he might be working as a welder wearing designer jeans and sporting a $500 haircut and eyeliner, then suddenly bursts into song as he's walking down the street. See? Axl Rose has the same woes as you and me. We share your pain.

4. A touching/ackward/vulnerable moment. Peter Garrett's sheepish grin, or any time Phil Collins tried to dance, is a good example of the Rock Star's expression of raw humanity. Even when it's obvious that our Rock Star obviously spends 40 hours a week practicing expressions in front of the mirror.

5. The band performing. No matter what story arc, there have to be some intercuts of the band just playing their instruments, showing that they are still just musicians. Even if they are casually playing on the top of a mountain or in the middle of the desert. They're still just musicians.

6. Boobs

Did sombody sit down and write out this formula? Or did it evolve over time? Were there copycats or was it some sort of Campbellian cosmic consciousness thing?

Steve was interviewed for Showtime talking about the Wilhelm Scream AND he was wearing a shirt I made for him. Just think, if I never got tired of his movie stories he never would have created that site and got on TV...so really, this is allllll Candie. :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PxALy22utc



This Wilhelm Scream documentary is on Showtime Video on Demand in the Masters of Horror section until December 31. You know, if you want to see it all big and clear.

I know this is a really stupid use of time and money for someone who is allergic to wheat, but my daughter's birthday is coming up, and we wanted to have cupcakes rather than deal with cutting and serving a cake. I'm not really familiar with any of the bakeries in town, so I thought we should drive around and do a little taste test.

The only bakery I could think of off the top of my head was Martinos, which is near the corner of Magnolia and Victory, next door to the Valero, here in Burbank. I've never been in there before but my daughter had visited once with her Girl Scout troop when Martinos was over on Olive.

We bought two cupcakes for eighty cents each. One was vanilla with chocolate frosting and one was vanilla with lemon icing and cute little sprinkles. They had a lot of different pastries to chose from, and coffee and drinks and gelato and places to sit and scarf.

Next, we went to Yummy Cupcakes on Magnolia. I had never been in there either but I've noticed them before since they are next door to the Yoga place that I keep thinking about going to.

Yummy Cupcakes looked like a factory assembly line inside. Lots of employees dashing around, mixers going, concrete everything, and a display line of cupcakes behind glass. They had pumpkin seed cupcakes and black forrest cupcakes and all kinds of fancy flavors, and you could buy a spoon of frosting for fifty cents and they were selling tubes of sprinkles but I didn't see how much they were. I was a little surprised because I was expecting a little more effort in the decoration department, not cheesey piped clam shells or anything, but maybe some fondant shapes or something.

Since Yummy Cupcakes was so bare-bones and sold nothing but fairly plain-looking cupcakes, I figured, well, they're not doing anything else so they must really be focusing on making awesome-tasting cupcakes. I bought a red velvet cupcake with cream cheese frosting and a vanilla cupcake with plain green frosting for $2.50 each. I thought that was a little steep for a cupcake, but I don't mind paying for something that tastes good, so I gave them five bucks and left.

Next we went to Cindy's dad's house and the four of us cut the cupcakes into fourths and all tasted each flavor together, discussing the merits of each as we went along.

I rarely eat sugar, so sweets usually just knock me off my ass when I taste them. Sadly, the Yummy Cupcakes would have disappointed me even if they were free. The cream cheese frosting was good, otherwise the cake was bland and dry. The regular frosting was just regular frosting, there was nothing wonderful and magical about it that made it worth a dollar, much less two dollars and fifty cents for one freakin' cupcake.

The Martinos bakery cupcakes were CUPCAKES. The cake was especially good, very moist with a nice texture, not crumby at all. Not that a little crumb would have been bad, but they were so happy being cupcakes that all of the cupcake molecules wanted to stay together.

Almost anyone can make a chocolate cupcake taste good, but if you can make a really good vanilla cupcake, then, well, you are a GOD. I'm not just talking out the side of my ass, I'm a supertaster and vanilla flavoring is something that I'm especially sensitive to.

If you're not familiar with supertasters, our tongues are about as sensitive as a dog's nose. I taste the way a dog smells. No, that doesn't sound right. I mean, I can taste things that are outside the range of the normal human taste bud. I'm not making this up, you can look it up in an encyclopedia or, I don't know, the Internet or something. I cannot stand Hagen Dazs ice cream because it has a horrible chemical taste, brussels sprouts make me weep with pain when they touch my tongue, and coffee is unbearably bitter unless you dump so much sweetener in it that it's not coffee anymore.

So, if you like a good moist cupcake, go to Martinos. I think Yummy Cupcakes is cruel, serving mummified cupcakes without even a decent drink to wash it down.

This isn't over yet, however, I'm going to have to try other cupcakes around LA now, I want to see if overpriced crapcakes are the norm, if for no other reason, I want to see how long Yummy Cupcakes could possibly stay in business.