I’m having trouble deciding between the Fat Muffin and Fat Pound Cake. What’s a girl to do? Stop eating all her meals at delis? Surely you jest.

The menu at right is from a deli on 52nd and Broadway. (I don’t know the name of it even though I’ve eaten about 10,000 of their paninis. I ask for a little cup of Russian dressing on the side and dip the entire sandwich into it. It’s revolting. I love it.)

I’m guessing the inclusion of “fat” in the description is short for “fat-free.” Right? There are fat-free muffins everywhere. I can’t turn around without sinking my teeth into one and then spitting it out because it’s so ridiculously nasty. I feel like one of those kids with the eating disorder called pica, which causes one to eat dirt and rocks as if they were food. Apparently kids with pica can’t make the distinction. So basically I’m equating anyone who eats fat-free muffins… to a child afflicted with pica, stuffing twigs and bits of clay down her throat because she thinks it’s what she’s supposed to do. Just stop! It’s not worth it. Moral of the day:No letting pica/fat-free muffins get the better of you!

Fat-free pound cake is significantly less likely, though, largely because it’s called “pound cake.” There’s no way to make it un-fat. People who eat pound cake are either fat already or well on their way… at least in their minds. And they kind of love it.

I’m usually in the latter category. I like to buy pound cake just for the thriling, momentary recognition that I’m being a complete idiot… who’s about to really live it up for like three minutes. Pound cake is the worst and best thing you can do for yourself in a deli. They’re all delicious, but horrible for you, which is tragic, as a specimen such as myself can typically eat two or three in a sitting. (Sometimes I get up and walk around just so I can sit back down and tackle another.) Lemon poppyseed and cranberry walnut fat pound cakes do it for me sometimes, but I especially like the carrot cake variety with the cream-cheesy icing lining the top. (Why can’t it line the whole thing? Life would be so much more fulfilling.)

As a not-yet-fat person, when I buy pound cake, I’m semi-aware that in doing so I’m making a small pledge to become fat in the future. It’s like putting useless change you don’t want clinking in your jacket pockets into the plastic cancer box at McDonald’s. You don’t know it yet, Annie but you’re making a difference! I’m investing money, time, and a generous chunk of my thoughts for the day on pound cake and how the eating of it will likely backfire in the long run. But none of that matters at the time of purchase. Especially if I also just bought coffee and feel zany enough to do some dunking.

It could be that the deli is simply really proud of their muffins and pound cake. Perhaps they think that “plumping them up,” so to speak, will attract people. Maybe the muffin really is fat, round, and plentiful, just like you will be after you eat it. And maybe the pound cake is just that large and robust… and buttery… and delicious. Also just like you.

In that case, it might have helped to substitute the ph version of the letter f, for maximum cool factor. You know, get the kids involved. I bet any urban youth would feel pretty groovy both ordering and carrying around a “phat pound cake.” He could brag to his friends about it. “Aw, man, you just got standard pound cake. That shit’s over.'’

I don’t usually enjoy or even bother to examine subway ads, but this one was pretty well-done. Allow me to translate as it’s a touch blurry: “Everyone has to grow up. It is a fact of life. Don’t be scared of it. Just make sure your apartment grows up with you.”

Even though the design made me chuckle, I call bullshit on both ideas: That people’s friends look down at them because their apartments are too cluttered, and that people should care even if their friends do think that. It’s New York. No one’s surprised to walk inside a studio and see piles of crap (left), mine especially. Yes, visitor, my extra-large-for-some-reason futon does happen to puncture your thigh as you step through the door. So what? It likes you. There’s a place for you to sit and a toilet. Get over it. I don’t need to hear that it’s small, or that you “really like the exposed brick.” People usually tell me both things — the latter purely out of pity. It’s oddly reassuring.

Note to Manhattan Mini Storage: No one in Manhattan whose apartment looks “scary” has too much stuff. They just don’t have any space to put their normal amounts of stuff because evil powers much like yourselves charge them inordinate amounts of money to occupy indoor space in Manhattan. I ride the subway because sometimes it’s fun to roam around such a huge space with more than one partition. I do it to forget the low-lit troll cave I just minutes ago escaped. A reminder that I live in a freaky dungeon is simply uncalled for.

I really need to move to Brooklyn.

I wrote this recap of last night’s Apprentice for EW.com. Most of it is about my newfound love for Ivanka Trump, to whom I have assigned the pet name iTrump.

I had composed a certain regrettable paragraph comparing Ivanka to a baby chick that had just hatched. Being a baby chick would explain why Ivanka always seems so uncertain of her surroundings and why the skin on her bobblehead looks so shiny… baby chicks have that sort of clear post-birth glaze all over them, right? And we wouldn’t blame baby chicks for being out of it all the time — I mean, they’re baby chicks. And Ivanka is Donald Trump’s daughter, so the lenience factor is similarly high. High, like I sound right now. I bet iTrump gets high and listens to her iPod all the time.

Fortunately, I realized the baby chick thing made me sound like a complete psycho and removed the entire paragraph before turning in the story. Thank god, because it would have been really embarrassing to have that up on the ‘net.

Sometimes I say “‘net.”

I could never do a pull-up in elementary school. This meant I could never get the Presidential Fitness Award, because in order to get that, you had to do at least one pull-up (if you were a girl. Boys had to do more than one. Boys are way impressive).

Girls who couldn’t do a pull-up had to settle for the flexed-arm hang, which involved a gym teacher hoisting you up over a metal bar as if you were doing your own pull-up, simulating the experience for you to remind you of how unsatisfactory you are on your own. Then you just hung there with your arms “flexed” until they felt like they were about to fall off, at which point you let go and plummeted towards doom. To make things worse, the gym teacher would be counting out loud from all the way down on the ground, so that you knew exactly at which point you had earned the stupid, lesser, no-good National Fitness Award and could finally let go. My arms always started shaking well before this point, but I refused to quit. I’d end up earning the second-rate, Dan Quayle version of the esteemed George H. W. Bush honor. “She’s kind of a fighter, that Annie Barrett,” the gym teacher would say when we all left to change. I’m sure he said that. He had to.

So many things about the flexed-arm hang were uncomforable, the most obvious one being that another person had to lift you above the bar — all of you — because you couldn’t lift all of yourself by yourself. That’s gross. I dreaded the lift, not just because of the shame game, but because why should a gym teacher get to grasp a little kid like that? Looking back, I’m surrpsied no one ever yelled “bad touch!” during the lifts. I should have, just to see the looks on people’s faces. But I wasn’t that edgy yet. It would have been out of character for the Young AB to make any sort of outburst.

The shame I felt during the lift itself was astronomical. (What a lame word, astronomical. Do I mean to suggest the shame was from outer space? No.) The gym teacher had to undeservedly bear the brunt of my excessive existence — the random long limbs I couldn’t muster up the strength to deal with by myself. And my weight wasn’t even excessive. I was skinny! I realize today that this was never fair. I was too tall. There’s no way an 11-year-old girl who was my height could have lifted herself up without some serious weight training or ‘roid use on the side. (And you know how I feel about the ‘roids. I feel weird even accepting an immunity or protein booster from the smoothie place. Seeing as my diet consists mainly of pad thai and cookies, I should probably get over this for the sake of “health”.)

But that’s not what I told myself back then. The entire time I hung up there over the bar, flailing, I imagined a voice informing me what a disgusting slob with no upper body strength I was. I’d also be wondering why I bothered to break a sweat during the mile run.

This should not have happened! I’m telling you, gym class in Illinois public schools was evil. I’m sure everyone in every state had to take gym, but Illinois people have to take it for an HOUR each day,all throughout high schoo l. I could probably write an entire book based on traumatic gym-class episodes from the Land of Lincoln. Okay, great! Nobody steal my idea.

So when I’m trying to fall asleep, I often lament about the blue Presidential Fitness patch, or what I call “the one that got away.” I think of those little feisty girls who could do pull-ups, and I hate them all over again. When we got to high school, I’d kick their asses in all areas, including obvious ones such as sports but also others like intelligence, metabolism, stealth while ditching class to drive to Applebee’s, and general coolness. But in fifth grade, they were still the stars. They could lift their wiry bodies above a metal bar. It was awesome.

To better convey how I feel about forcing little girls to attempt pull-ups, here’s a homemade animated graphic (Huh? Annie can do that? YES.) of Madonna flipping the bird to the camera during a special-edition cut of her video for “Sorry.” Apparently the kiddies at home would have been too tormented by Madonna’s obscene, shriveled-up middle finger, so they cut the gesture out for the official release. A good move, if only because she knew the original cut would leak and keep people talking about her. Madonna is really funny. I often realize I’m simply glad she exists.

I’m tired. I clearly don’t care a lot about today’s holiday, even though I’m obsessed with green. Instead — to keep in theme with the winter that despite last week’s tease will apparently never end — here’s a camera pic of a tap shaped like a snowman. It’s appropriately called “Snow Man Ale.” The bartender promised it would taste like burnt marshmallows. I’m promising you it tastes like crap.

There.

Now I’m going to do something I never thought I’d do and invite readers to “have a good weekend.” At least it’s in quotes to convey possible disingenuity. Keep it challenging.

How adorable is that tap though? Come on.

Yes! Dee just sent a box containing three Reese’s Eggs. (I don’t see what would have been wrong with four.)

I’ve been meaning to do a thorough comparison of all of the Reese’s holiday variations on the traditional Cup. I now have an Egg, a Heart, and a Tree (I think the tree is from 2004, ew), so I just need to wait until this October so I can pick up the Pumpkin. There’ll be a photo shoot and everything. (Tyra Banks voiceover: “Come on, Tree, I wanna see fierce! Show me your wild side. Show me who Tree really is.”)

Right now, the Egg is my favorite. I suppose the Egg is my favorite right now because it’s what I’m eating… right now. That has to be a conflict of interest. A huge chunk of it is literally melting on my tonuge. My lazy teeth have sort of sunk into the top of it, but I’m just going to go with it. It’s heavenly.

Here’s photographic evidence of how heavenly I think the Egg is. Before eating, I placed it right at the most important area of my apartment (the trackpad), and the flash has produced an eerie, almost outer-space effect. The Egg is like that wondrous black monolith in the move 2001: A Space Odyssey. (Roll over the pic for a visual.)

But I think I’ve always actually favored the Egg. It’s the closest in shape to the original Cup, and yet due to its impressive surface area, you feel like you’re getting a ton more out of it than you do during a usual Cup experience. So size alone matters, and then there’s also the element of shape/contour. This may sound blasphemous to Reese’s purists, but I actually prefer the holiday Reese’s over the Reese’s Cups* because I’m not totally wowed by the crinkled edges on the Cups. If anything, I find them slightly burdensome. All those sharp angles make for a somewhat jarring job for the teeth and tongue. The pointy sections don’t melt on their own very quickly, like the peanut buttery part does. You have to break all those ridges up with your teeth. It’s not like I don’t have the time for it (this post serves as evidence to the contrary) but why should I have to go through the routine if there’s a specialty Shape around? The Shapes, on the other hand, have smooth and softer edges. Bites of Shapes are already at a near-perfect consistency right when they enter the endless black hole that is Annie Barrett’s human mouth. The procedure ends up being so seamless. Sometimes I finish an Egg and think, “That was nothing. I think I’ll have another. If only Dee had sent four.” Then I cry.

This is why there need to be more occasions throughout the year to which the Reese’s corporation responds by manufacturing seasonal shapes. That way, we’ll always have the option of Cup vs. Shape. Fans of either genre will be constantly happy!

Timely example: I’m not one of those people who get obsessed with St. Patrick’s Day, but I certainly wouldn’t kick a Reese’s Four Leaf Clover to the curb right now if one knocked on my door. I could definitely have more fun with one of those than I could with a beer.

They could also have a default Reese’s per month, just in case there’s no major holiday in sight. Here are some ideas:

January: Snowman

February: Snowwoman (extra hair = extra Reese’s)

November: Turkey OR Indian Feather (Is that racist? Go with it. Or add Pilgrim Belt Buckle to even it out.)

December: Me (it’s my birthday, plus I harbor a secret fantasy about being sculpted into a Reese’s) Fine, or a Dreidel.

Despite my obsession with the Shapes, I’ll still be forever impressed by the Cup. If not for the Cup, the Egg would never be. And there you have your answer to the rhetorical quandary posited in this (possibly regrettable) post’s title.

What’s your dream Reese’s shape?!

*I wanted to put that declaration in bold orange with an asterisk because I feel so strongly about this. It is one of my strongest opinions about anything.

I wrote this article about last night’s Desperate Housewives. The only good part about this show or my story is that I quoted Madonna’s “Sorry” out of (and in order to reflect) sheer desperation.

I won’t do what y’all think I’m gonna do and just FREAK OUT about The Sopranos. Last night’s season premiere was absolutely amazing, but you can read about its plot points at literally any other domain on the grand old Internet. I’d like to comment at length on something most critics wouldn’t deign to mention, and that is how hilarious it is that Tony and Carmela have become obsessed with a local sushi restaurant! They ate there twice together in the same episode, and Tony even went once by himself. (Carm was totally jealous — she said it was because she thought the restaurant was “their place,'’ but I know better: she just wanted the food!)

This is just brilliant. Aside from being generally humorous (haha, look at the hardcore Italians eating raw fish instead of prosciutto) I think their sudden sushi habit is a self-aware nod to how long the show has been on hiatus. I don’t have facts or figures on this, but America at large was much less obsessed with sushi twenty months ago than it is now. I personally didn’t even have sushi on my radar in 2004. It’s not that I hated it, it’s just that it never occurred to me to really dedicate myself to the cause. Sushi seemed kind of trendy back then, even though I live in the city and as a serious eater, should have been all over it.

But even I’m a bad example because I’m so tragically hip. My parents, also serious eaters, still don’t eat sushi, and it’s not because they refuse — it’s just that there’s always so much other fabulous shit to eat. Those Chicago-style deep dish pizzas surround my parents, floating around in beautiful orbits before sweeping in for the kill. The Sopranos, too, had always eaten like royalty. They had no reason to migrate towards sushi. It just happened over time.

So the fact that Tony and Carmela have just discovered the little place called “Nori” in their ‘burb probably rings true for a lot of Americans. And the scenes were spot-on, complete with all-you-can-eat platters (”Keep ‘em coming,” said Tony, before “Can I get another sake?”) and sweet, impossibly trim waitresses who you just know go back to the kitchen and laugh with the rollmasters about how obnoxious all the fat Americans are. (To cap it off, Tony has actually gained a ton of weight — due in part, we’re to assume, from his recent sushi craze. SODIUM.)

One final note about The Sopranos — the new baby daughter Janice wishes was dead is named Domenica. This means “Sunday” in Italian, which I know because it is one of the four or so words I bothered learning in the little book Dee brought along when we went to Italy. I liked the sound of it, so I kept shouting it out at random places and times, along with “Prego!” and “Melanzane!” Hey, Meghan! DOMENICA! Hahaha.

I don’t know if it was random timing, an implicit order sent from the O.C. gods, or me being a tool, but the only thing I ate all day was pad thai. I ate my friend Leno’s paltry leftovers from Wednesday night first, around noon. This took like twenty seconds. I ate a few bites of my own generous helping of leftovers at 5. I then went to Rebecca’s and proceeded to order a spicier version of pad thai with chicken AND shrimp. It was really intense and large, so there were leftovers from that too. Then I came home, festered, and generally blanked out in front of my computer screen for seven hours whilst intermittently sneaking bites of all of the remaining pad thai in the apartment. (The bites were mouth-swished with regular Pepsi. For your records.)

Only looking back on this experience one day wiser do I realize that the entire endeavour was sick. Now, 32 hours after the initial ingestion of pad thai (Wednesday night, circa 8 pm) I feel absolutely disgusting. And yet all day and night Thursday, I walked around feeling awesome about getting to eat so much pad thai, and only that. I thought this was not only cool but a quirky little diet plan that just might work! I realize now that it was neither, and that the entire pad thai-like mass in my system is going to probably rebel against me on the way out. Somehow.

Can I not be gross?

No.

The Office was amazing tonight, once again. I’m basically only writing this to weasel my parents into taping it. They claim they have “too many shows going on” in their lives right now, which everyone with a DVR knows is bogus. Start taping it, dudes. Next week.

For some reason, the news on Channel 1 (that’s New York 1 to those of us “in the loop, but not that Loop”) was on my TV at 10:17 p.m. tonight, just moments before I pressed play on my cool DVR recording of the Project Runway finale.

I generally hate NY1 because it’s the channel that always just starts playing when my DVR/life partner decides it’s been paused too long. (Because it obviously has the power to decide things. It’s tough being in a relationship with an inanimate object, but we manage to “make it work.”)

NY1 also starts playing when I roll over my remote control and accidentally turn my cable box on and off in the middle of the night. It’s really annoying.

Okay fine. I turn it on and off myself, deliberately, because I’m wide awake in the middle of the night and think the black hole that is the news will serve as a lullaby. I seem to be a little unclear on the definition of “lullaby”. As an added bonus to this TV habit, I also get to torture my neighbors with noise compositions as inexplicable as the saxophone-solo opening song for the NY1 news. The NY1 news plays every 10 minutes. I am begging NY1 to get a new song. That one is OBNOXIOUS.

I did get to see this, though, and somehow NY1’s entire loathsome existence was suddenly all worth it.

I’m glad they were considerate enough to wait until the fifth bullet to mention “mentally challenged.” It’s probably only a minor detail.

Come to think of it, they should add a sixth bullet: “Occasionally guests on Desperate Housewives“

New O.C. tonight, finally. I was beginning to forget what the Cohens’ fake pool looks like. (I remembered: Really fake.)

I need this (right) in my life right now. In the commercial for it, a guy eats one while driving a convertible. Convertibles are impressive and cool, which means so will I be when I rip into one of these on the street. I call it “Big Mess of Crap from Taco Bell” but a simple Google search will tell you it’s actually the Crunchwrap Supreme and that it has returned due to popular demand.

Check out Crunchwrap Supreme’s Diary for proof. Two questions: 1) How did I miss this the first time? 2) Who is in charge of hiring people to write blurbs in the voice of the Crunchwrap Supreme? That needs to be my new job.

Loyal readers such as my parents and that’s about it will remember my aversion to liquid cheese (LC) and wonder, “Annie, why would you or your really popular website endorse a product filled with ‘’Warm Nacho Cheese Sauce?'’ This is a good question, and to be honest the idea of WNCS still definitely freaks me out. But the WNCS constitutes such a small percentage of the Crunchwrap that its existence is mildly acceptable. (After I actually eat one, the WNCS’s rating will likely jump from “mildly acceptable” to “so very necessary” because I’m a traitor like that.) As evidenced by the animated text pockets on Taco Bell’s website, there is so much else the Crunchwrap Supreme has to offer, like “Seasoned Beef,” “Cool Sour Cream,” and every health nut’s favorite, “Fresh Lettuce and Tomatoes.” Health nuts will love the Crunchwrap Supreme!!!

Mine all-time fave Taco Bell item is the Mexican Pizza, which I also call “Big Mess of Crap from Taco Bell.”

It’s occurred to me that LOL (laughing out loud — get it?) is usually a misnomer. People rarely make any actual noise before they type “LOL.” So they’re lying. And since most users don’t use caps anyway, they end up just typing an even more lazy-looking “lol” and waiting for the other person to respond, as if their last IM was a worthy enough contribution to the flow. Hey, buddy: It wasn’t.

So I’ve adopted a new acronym, called AL. It stands for “audibly laughing.” Use this when you really want someone to believe that noise is coming out. Be selective about using it, but be honest. If your body is spontaenously emitting random and awkward sounds resembling some version of glee, the person on the other end deserves to know.

Quick review:

LOL = “That was funny, but I wouldn’t go so far as to suggest I’m completely losing it over here. Great try though. I am loving your effort.”

AL = “I am audibly laughing. You’re hilarious, a genius, and really attractive.”

Happy Ash Wednesday.

(AL!)