Category Archives: it’s fun to be fat

The Great Hot Dog Cookoff 2011

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The best thing about summer, of course, is hot dogs. And the best thing you can do with hot dogs, of course, is eat 13 of them.

Great Hot Dog Cookoff 2011

Check out my review of this year’s Great Hot Dog Cookoff! It’s pretty incredible food porn, ifIdosaysomyself.

Like a Dog, I Only Love You When You Feed Me

Filed under creepy boyfriend obsession, it's fun to be fat, living in new york is neat
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Sometimes, I get upset that Kamran really can’t hang with me when it comes to guiltless gluttony. I have wild fantasies about consuming entire Ritter Sport bars in one sitting, of sitting down with a bag of Doritos (Cool Ranch, of course) and just going to town. Meanwhile, Kamran has wild fantasies about lightly-dressed raw greens and filling up on soup so he can just pee it out later and not gain anything. The times I love him least are when he’s denying my request for pizza for the 27th weekend in a row.

And the times I love him the most are when he comes home and asks, “Do you think we could get a reservation for Momofuku Ko tomorrow?” It’s easily his favourite meal we’ve ever had and also easily in my top two. It’s also one of the hardest restaurants to get into; its reservations system comes online at 10 a.m. every morning, and all of the spots are taken ten seconds later.

But I managed to snag one thanks to hundreds of website-refreshings Friday morning, and we went for an amazing 18-part lunch on Saturday. And then we went to the all-French-fry place again and got Vietnamese pineapple mayo topping:

More Food After Momofuku Ko

Then we went to 16 Handles, a frozen yogurt place where you fill you cup with any combination of–wait for it–16 flavors and then cover that with any of about 40 toppings and then pay by the pound. UH-MAZE-ING.

More Food After Momofuku Ko

There are totally two strawberry slices in there, which makes the mini Reese’s cups, crumbled regular-sized Reese’s cups, sprinkles, Cap’n Crunch, caramel sauce, cookie dough, and gummy bears totally fine.

Look how jealous that blurry guy behind us is. (Also, is that Ward Williams or what?)

Point is: if I ever loved Kamran, it was last weekend.

Cover Up That Caesarean Scar, Fatty

Filed under good times at everyone else's expense, it's fun to be fat, my uber-confrontational personality, stuff i hate, why i'm better than everyone else
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I’ve never worn a bikini. I burst forth from my mother’s womb at 145 pounds, already wearing footie pajamas to hide my shame, so my beach attire has always included one-pieces and t-shirts. Well, my friends and I are soon going back to the Hamptons beach house we rented last year, and I’ve been actively searching again for the perfect swimsuit after last year’s tankini disaster at Laguna Beach.

I think I finally did find a suit that I’ll like, but more importantly, I was reminded that everyone else likes the wrong suit. For reference, here is the only person who should be wearing a bikini:

I don’t mean to be anti-feminist here, but seriously, if you don’t look like that, why are you wearing one?

Do you just looooove the way the water feels on your stomach? Hey, guess what; water actually soaks through swimsuits right to your skin!

Were you hoping for some awesome bikini tan lines? TAN LINES ARE NOT SEXY.

I imagine you’re not doing it to show off your love handles or the fact that no amount of padding will give you sideboobs.

And I kind of doubt you want people noticing that your midsection’s shaped less like an hourglass and more like one of those fat pencils we used to use in kindergarten.

You know what hides love handles, weird foam padding, and your giant potbelly that sort of reminds one of a poisonous growth on a treetrunk?

ONE-PIECES! For me, even models look better in them:

I guess I’d just rather see less and imagine perfection than to be assaulted by how imperfect everything is. And don’t try to tell me that imperfections are beautiful, you bikini-wearing sap.

The Very Worst Book I’ve Ever Read

Filed under it's fun to be fat, readin' and writin'
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I need to rant about the book I’m reading right now. I originally noticed it years ago while working at the bookstore and was taken by the luscious legs on the front cover. The book was a great seller and was always faced out on the shelf to attract attention, so I would often happen upon the legs and give them a quick admiration while putting other books away.

It’s called Jemima J, although I used to accidentally call it Jemina J in my head, pronounced JEM-inna, because my brain evidently blocked me from thinking a woman could be named after a brand of maple syrup. Anyway, I suddenly remembered the book the other day, procured a copy, and finally read it after all these years.

And it turns out it’s horrible. Not just horribly written, although it is that, despite the main character claiming in the first few pages that she has a real way with words. But mostly, it’s just written by what must be a horrible person. Author Jane Green’s anti-heroine hates herself, calls herself disgusting, talks about how much others pity her, has no social life, can’t get ahead at her job, avoids the mirror, and can barely speak to her beautiful roommates. All because she’s fat.

And that’s fine. Maybe some overweight people actually do feel that way. Maybe some overweight people actually consider backing out of rooms just so their hunky co-workers can’t see their humongous backsides. And Jemima does have a humongous backside. She eats bacon sandwiches for breakfast, mayonnaisey salads for lunch, and entire sleeves of cookies after dinner to deal with her emotions, and every time she steps into a room, people stare at her, because she’s so freaking massive. Or so we’re led to believe.

At one point, after we’ve listened to this superficial, spectacularly boring narrator go on and on about how her life would be perfect if she was a size 8–apparently this was the model-thin in the year 2000–the author finally reveals her weight: 204 pounds. Which is a size–what? 14? 12?! I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t seem like the end of the world to me. But according to the author, Jemima has a double or triple chin (Can someone explain to me how a triple chin would look?), can’t walk down the street without having to stop to pound down a thousand calories or so, and can barely be contained in clothing. And she’s never had a boyfriend, because who could date someone that fat?!

Oh, oh, and here’s the better part: when Jemima finally decides she wants to get “healthy”, she joins a gym and stops eating. And gets down to 120 pounds in a couple of months! Yaaaaay, Jemima! Yaaaaay, eating disorders!

I’m sure there’s some really important lesson at the end of the book about being happy with yourself and not meeting creepy guys on the Internet and sending them Photoshopped pictures of your head on a magazine model’s body, but I’ll never know, ’cause I ain’t finishing this crap. My only consolation is that I didn’t pay for it.

Adventure Time with Kat and Kam: The Ten-Mile Walk Around Manhattan

Filed under adventure time, creepy boyfriend obsession, it's fun to be fat, living in new york is neat
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Months ago, my best friend, Tracey and her husband, Dan, introduced me to “Adventure Time”, the most imaginative little 15-minute program on the Cartoon Network. Kam and I started watching it together, and while we were out walking and uncovering unknown parts of the city a couple of weeks ago, we talked about how “Adventure Time with Jake and Fin” should really be “Adventure Time with Kat and Kam”. And at the same moment, we said, “We should probably start a blog for that.” Well, I can’t even keep up with the blogs I have now, so I’ll just try to make it a feature here.

So I present the very first:

The night before our walk, I submitted a plan to trek down 2nd Avenue to Meatball Shop, since Kam had never been there. He objected, citing the fact that we’re trying to live healthier, non-sandwich-oriented lives and blahblahblah. So instead I found us the health food restaurant Natureworks, where he would get something dumb like a Super Salad, and I would attempt to pass a meat lover’s pizza (with low-sodium cheese, Dishy!) off as something one might eat when one is not trying to slowly kill one’s self. And then we would go to my favourite pay-by-the-pound frozen yogurt joint, where I promised I would only get fruit toppings instead of my usual cookie-dough-gummy-bears-Cap’n-Crunch combo. (But I was lying.)

Fortunately for me, Natureworks is closed on Sundays. So instead, we decided to play it casual and look for something delicious on our way to the fro-yo. Thanks to Tasting Menu, Kam’s favourite food blog (other than donuts4dinner, of course), we knew to stop into Kalustyan’s for a falafel sandwich when we came across it, only we were never actually able to locate the falafel counter.

What we did find were rows upon rows of shelves upon shelves stocked with every single spice you have and haven’t heard of. We’re talking twenty kind of cinnamon, beet powder, granulated garlic, five kinds of mustard seed, tomato flour. We saw pickled wild cucumbers, every flavor of honey, canned ghee, every color of salt, nut mixes like you wouldn’t believe, fifty kinds of sugar. Kam was in I-haven’t-seen-this-since-the-last-time-I-was-in-Iran heaven, and I just enjoyed listening to Indian music while I perused.

NYC 10 Mile Walk

Next, we made our way down to Gramercy Park to admire the fine architecture (which still isn’t as pretty as Kamran’s building) and watch a squirrel dig a nut out of the ground (we don’t see a lot of wildlife around these parts, if that isn’t obvious):

NYC 10 Mile Walk

Kam informed me that Gramercy Park is actually private and requires a key for entry. Indeed, we saw tourists leering at locals through the iron bars and watched as one man flounced his coveted key about before unlocking the gate and settling down among the manicured greenery to read his Sunday paper.

We continued downtown and resolutely concluded that it was finally the day that we were to try Artichoke Basille’s famed pizza. Since its launch in 2008, Artichoke has been lauded as one of the best–if not the best–pizza in NYC. You have your Lombardi’s holdouts and your Grimaldi’s hangers-on, but I can tell you definitively and unquestionably that Artichoke is ten times better than either of those.

Let me state for the record that I like a thick crust. I would say that I like Sicilian-style pizza, but that’s not even true, because in New York, they always overbake the crust. The point of thick crust is that it’s bready. So what I’ll actually say I like is an underbaked crust. I don’t even mind if it’s straight up dough in the very middle.

Artichoke is not a thick crust. It’s a thin crust, and it’s a crusty crust, and I should not, therefore, like it. But it was delicious. It was perfect. It could convert me. It was done but not overdone. It wasn’t burnt! DO YOU HEAR THAT, OTHER NYC PIZZERIAS?! IT IS POSSIBLE TO BAKE A PIZZA AND NOT BURN IT.

NYC 10 Mile Walk

We got a crab slice and an artichoke slice, and although you’ll have to wait for the full review on donuts4dinner, I will tell you that the artichoke slice was like eating a piece of crusty bread coated in the Alfredo sauce they serve in the little cup with the pizzas at Olive Garden. I know that won’t seem like a big deal to you snobs who refuse to like chain restaurants, but those of you who have tried the Alfredo will understand, I know.

We also saw what we think might be the tiniest apartment building in NYC. Do you see how thin that thing is? Even if each apartment takes up the entire length of the building, that’s still only . . . 200 square feet? Less?

Next, we went to Porchetta, a tiny storefront where the pig is given top billing, both with the giant stencil on the wall and with the display case full of the most succulent scored pork:

NYC 10 Mile Walk

We took our sandwich to Tompkins Square Park and sat at one of the chessboards to chow down and throw back some ginger soda.

NYC 10 Mile Walk

The sandwich was–to put it lightly–very, very good. The pork juices soaked into the crusty bread and dribbled out onto our fingers, and the moments where we bit into those suuuuuuuuper-crispy bits of skin were truly blissful.

So blissful, in fact, that I guess I sort of audibly expressed my joy. Without realizing that a makeshift soup kitchen had been set up behind me. I had thought it was just a large family enjoying Sunday lunch in the park until Kam told me I might want to keep it down. “Soooooogooooood,” I was murmuring in a porkdrunk stupor as the homeless people behind me were eating what was probably their only meal of the day.

So what did we do to repent for our gluttony? EAT MORE! This time, we went to Pommes Frites, which literally only serves French fries with a bazillion different sauces of your choosing.

NYC 10 Mile Walk

We went with the black truffle mayo, which was delicious but probably too heavy to follow a slice of pizza and half a pork sandwich. Their wasabi mayo or peanut sauce is what you need when you’re already ten pounds heavier than normal due to pig and cheese grease. But we dutifully finished our cone of fries, dutifully scooped the strays out of the bag, and dutifully threw what we couldn’t eat onto the sidewalk for the homeless. And then Kam kicked them around a little accidentally, inciting a deep conversation about how much sidewalk flavor is too much sidewalk flavor for a homeless person.

Are we bad people?

Next, we casually walked through the Lower East Side and realized we were near our very favourite store for discount sweets, Economy Candy. But, you know, since we were eating healthy that day, we popped in for two tiny Cadbury Creme Eggs and popped right back out, no chocolate-covered s’mores in hand. And they were only 50 cents each! Why, that’s what they cost in places like Ohio! Kamran pocketed them for later and proceeded to make incessant testicle jokes.

NYC 10 Mile Walk

I was trying to push Kam to take me to a riverfront park, but the farther we got from the center of town, the shadier things started getting. There were parking lots and people playing Latin music from boomboxes in front of bodegas and . . . OH!

You guys, there was this one dude on the street who was literally just stopped dead in his tracks on the sidewalk with his feet at weird angles and his head lolling to one side. He was clearly unwashed and clearly on a bender, all stooped over with his arms hanging limply at his sides. I swore he was going to reach out and grab me as we passed, but he seemed to be asleep. Moments later, though, we turned back to stare some more, and he was hobbling along the sidewalk. SO CREEPY.

Needless to say, by the time we came upon this GANG GRAFFITI, we knew it was time to hightail it out of there.

NYC 10 Mile Walk

Just kidding! Nice mural, PS 140! Oh, yeah, have I mentioned that the public schools are named by number here? Pretty creative stuff, guys.

While we were down there, we figured, “What the hey, let’s cross the Willamsburg Bridge.” Because Kamran, believe it or not, has never set foot on a bridge in his five years here.

The Williamsburg Bridge is actually quite nice, despite what I’d heard. Everyone says it’s too loud for good walking, and it’s true that you walk alongside traffic for a quarter of it, but at that point, the traffic has continued on straight the whole time, but you’ve been steadily climbing higher and higher above it on the sloped platform in the center of the bridge. Then you run into this lovely sign that I think pretty much embodies NYC as a whole:

NYC 10 Mile Walk

It’s kind of pretty, but it’s also kind of super jacked up, and nobody cares to keep it nice, including the people who are paid to, so the sign ends up reading WI LIAMS U GH BRIDGE. But the nice thing about the bridge is that at the sign, the platform splits into two so that pedestrians get the lane to the right, and bicyclists get the lane to the left. If you’ve ever been almost run over a zillion times by bicyclists on the Brooklyn Bridge (not that I blame them, because pedestrians are always inconsiderate and hog the whole thing), you’ll understand what a good idea this was. Plus, the bridge was sooooooo much less crowded than the Brooklyn Bridge.

And had better graffiti, too.


mouseover this photo for hilarity

The one thing the Brooklyn Bridge has going for it is that it’s not entirely encased by fencing like the Williamsburg is. This isn’t really the best place to get pictures of the city from afar, youknow. But I kinda like ’em, anyway.

NYC 10 Mile Walk

We went halfway across the bridge and then started back, just in time to catch the J train whizzing between us and the cyclists, to find someone’s dropped keys but not do a damned thing about it, and to learn that Vomito loves NY.

NYC 10 Mile Walk

Just off the bridge, we found ourselves on Attorney Street, which was an excellent reminder for Kam that his New York State Bar results won’t come for another month and a half. But look how happy he is still!

NYC 10 Mile Walk

And look how trashy those girls behind him are. Is that a leather jacket you’re wearing backward over your denim jacket, ma’am?

We had been out for more than five hours, and our grocery shopping duties were calling, so we started back toward Kam’s apartment in Midtown. We walked up Avenue B past Luca Lounge, the bar he took me on our first date, lo those four and a half years ago, which has been closed for years but still sits abandoned.

At 23rd Street, we started to feel a little weak in the knees.

At 29th Street, we started talking about how much pain we were in. “But good pain!” we exclaimed, trying to fake our way into fitness.

At 34th Street, we had to sit down on a bench for five minutes.

By the time we got home, it hurt to lower ourselves onto the couch.

By the next day, we couldn’t stand without wincing. Five days later, we’re just now feeling normal again. So maybe we weren’t quite ready for a ten-mile walk. But we sure did have an adventure.


If you’re curious about our path, here’s a glorious map version with all the stops:

NYC 10 Mile Walk