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, and then you hanging there with your arms "flexed" until they felt like they were about to fall off. Then 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 a ten-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.)

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 criticizing me. You, Annie, are a disgusting slob with poor upper body strength. As such, you get a red patch instead of the blue Presidential one to put in your room and forget that it exists the day after you receive it. George Bush doesn't think enough of you to associate you with his title. You will never be president, you will never be an athlete, and you probably deserve to fail gym.

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 school. 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. And it was awesome.

Okay, the voice in my head would never have used the phrase "as such." I'm not kidding anyone.

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.

Last night's O.C.: go nuts

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.

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 (and by that, I don't mean lower Manhattan or any part of California) 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, like global warming or people gradually losing interest in those fucking Olsen twins. Some things just make sense.

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. This is DELICIOUS, I say!)

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.

This paragraph is a segue between two others that don't connect in the slightest!

My friend TG started a blog! If he had anything written on it, I'd link you. Anyway, I was urging him in an instant message to write about his unbridled contempt for all the TV shows dedicated to helping the poor and unfortunate (Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, Miracle Workers, Three Wishes, etc.) I share his contempt for the most part: it seems like those shows often end up lampooning the people they're trying to help (not to mention socking them with similarly ''extreme'' electric bills for the unnecessary waterfalls and 24-hour laser light shows in their new homes. In the words of Valerie Cherish, "I don't need to see that!"