Random Purge on Paper

This morning I woke up. I went for a jog and forgot my Yankees cap which is rare for me. It is my staple clothing item. I am not real girly. I wear makeup only when I have to these days. I have been busy prepping for my book talk and such. I am turning more and more into a female writer. Yes it is happening. Female writers cease to care how they look sometimes. Make that always. Either we are buttoned up like Carrie Bradshaw or look like they are about to gas themselves like Sylvia Plath. Right now I look more like SP.

I am at the time of year where it is always the weird time of year for me. My attitude gets weird. People get weird. Everything just gets weird. I have had some weird run ins with people from my past. I don't know how I feel about them and don't care. It's just blah.

On the other hand it is starting to get warmer and I want to take more classes at my gym. I kickbox and might pick up pilates again. I also might do this other dance class. Oh and I want to go to the climbing wall. Whenever I take an extreme exercise class my nutrition is usually pretty good. I eat well and rest. When I am just not as physically active I tend to eat junk and treat my body like a dumpster. Another place around the corner offers an adult gymnastics class. I might want to take that. I am not sure.

My audiobook will be finished next week. I am excited, nervous, and the works. This was my big winter project. That is pretty cool. YIPEE! My book is finally available as a paperback at Barnes and Noble. Praised be to God/Jesus/Allah/Frank the Pink Bunny and every other deity. My signing is at Brown this weekend with my guests Dr. Brenna Brucker and Dr. William J Brucker III. Okay, as of Sunday it will be official but they will be there Saturday with their books. The whole thing sort of came together in a cosmic kind of way that not only brought me up there but brought us together to be signing.

As for performing, that has been coming and going. I do spots in only places I want to. These days I am sort of past mics. I have been onstage long enough to know my way around, how to do a joke, and not to mention on TV more than most of the room let alone most of the scene. I did them for a bit as a way to stay sharp but they just sharpened my annoyance. I pop into some here and there that I like, but I shouldnt have to pay for stage time. Paid that due thank you. Of course this never stops male headliners from talking down to me when I do shows let alone bullying junior producers into bumping me but we won't talk about their tactics. When I go into it I get a chip on my shoulder and it grows into a cinderblock. Being angry isn't good for me and it makes me forget I like to make people laugh. That is why I initially started doing comedy.

I have been blogging an awful lot about gender and women's issues lately. Maybe it is because in the past eighteen months they have touched me so completely. Maybe in my entire time on the scene I have seen the best and worst in men depending on the coin depending on the way. Maybe it is because I have been boxed in by both men and women-unable to breathe-so I can fit some dying standard. I hate labels. I feel they confine people and it is a way to crack down and make them behave.

What annoys me are women who think they need a man, and can't shut up about having one. No one likes you or your idiot boyfriend. Your boyfriend probably sucks in bed. Your boyfriend probably has no job. Your boyfriend, your boyfriend, your boyfriend. It's like these airheads can't do anything without the permission of their prison guard with a penis. So many times they have an opinion but change it for the boyfriend. Or then they need their boyfriends okay even to change their underwear it seems. You come in this world alone. You leave alone. That is, unless you are a follower of Jim Jones.

This morning I hung out with a crossing guard friend of mine. We talked and ended up hanging out in the community gardens. She has a key. I want a key. I think hanging out at the community gardens as well as my fitness classes will make me happy. Actually it will make me less of a bitch.

I have a zit on my chin. Maybe I will watch Co-Ed Call Girl again. Tori Spelling accidentally becomes a hooker. Not as good as the time she did that fall down the stairs followed by the lackluster scream bouncing off her fake ta tas. But it was still pretty good.

Love

April

I Came, I Saw, I Sang: Memoirs of a Singing Telegram Delivery Girl
Paperback available on Amazon and 877-Buy-Book
E-Book available on Kindle and Nook
Audiobook available on itunes and Audible this Spring
www.youtube.com/aprilthestarr
Portion of proceeds go to Greenpeace

PS. Book signing at Brown Bookstore Saturday May 25 from 4-6. Be there or be square

RIP Twinkie

This is my eulogy to the Twinkie, my forbidden friend and lover. I come today not to praise Twinkie but to bury him. He has lived a good long life. It has been quite a love affair. There were other women, there were other men. It sounds so salacious but it really is love plain and simple. Everyone loved Twinkie. Actually, his full name is Twinkie Hostess. He had a lesser known but equally as loved sister Little Debbie who has passed on too, but she is not significant enough to have a eulogy.

I first met Twinkie when I was but a lass. Growing up outside of Pittsburgh we were forbidden to eat you. My mother was a gym teacher/exercise nut and she said you were bad. But you know how I tend to like men who are bad for me, men who have issues. Maybe you started this craze. When I was seven I tasted you for the first time, every creamy layer. I liked you. You gave me comfort. You said you were never going to put fat on my thighs. Like all men you lie, but I liked the lies you told. I was hooked on you Twinkie.

My father made fun of you after my piano teacher- a mentally unstable woman-stayed in bed after a break up and cancelled our lesson. He joked that she ate an entire box of you. I know I would have. Twinkie, you understood our feelings. You were the comforter, friend, and destroyer of all heart broken women. You were there to listen, there to relieve, and there to pack on the extra pounds so we would never have a man again. It didn't matter though, we had you as well as your sister Lifetime.

There were good times. There was sixth grade when someone brought in a box for their birthday. You helped us celebrate the special day and made it so much brighter. There was seventh grade when I split one of you at a forensics match and made a new friend. You were always helping me to make new friends. You were a bit of a man whore because you didnt care that women shared you. But Twinkie, you were unselfish that way and that's why we loved you.

There were also the times you saved my life. Yes, it was true. At seventeen I was working at a supermarket and feeling lightheaded. You were the first thing I grabbed and gave me a nice energy boost. Then at nineteen I got really drunk with my college friends and was falling over. I didn't know alcohol could act that fast. I needed to eat something to sober me up so I had three of you. I know it sounds shameful but it's true. You were delicious and perhaps it should have been on some Triple X super lovers sight, but who couldn't love a man who came in a whole box the way I loved you?


As I got older and more of you equaled more trips to the gym, I stopped buying boxes. I just got the two pack. You made me laugh again after a bad night of standup. You were the man to rescue me and ruin my waistline after a breakup. You were the only man in the world who could sit there and watch Lifetime Movies and let me eat him and let me tell you it sounds so dirty but there are so many women in my same damn boat.

I sit in my cold, damp apartment. I am writing this blog late into the night naked. I am watching reruns of Soul Food seasons 1-5. I cleaned my house and ate real food, food that fits on the Food Pyramid in health class under categories that are not other. Life is not the same as you can see. I am a wreck without you.

Some called you a simple carbohydrate, meaning you gave a spike in energy and then it faded. But your charm was eternal. Professionals who made their lives making people physically fit like my mother condemned you outright as a bad food, but you were a bad food with a good heart. Then there were men like my brother who ate boxes of you and wouldn't share, selfishly hogging your goodness because they needed to put the weight on to play football. And people like my sister, a runner and academic who viewed you as a snack, a slam to what you really were. Of course there were those who OD'ed on your lovin and had to go to OA and count days off of your sweetness. But all of this and more don't even begin to explain what you were to me and so many others. Twinkie, you were a man of many layers.

I am distraught without you, distraught.

In the background I play the old R and B song, "How Am I Supposed to Live Without You?"

I am a shell of a woman. Hostess murdered you! TWINKIE I LOVE YOU AND MISS YOU!

But then I remember all Twinkies go to heaven and you will always be my special star. The man who was misunderstood. The one who got me through breakups, makeups, drunken nights, made me friends, and was the best to watch Lifetime with.

RIP Twinkie. It has been a good run

Check out my book
I Came, I Saw, I Sang: Memoirs of a Singing Telegram Delivery Girl
877-Buy-Book
www.buybooksontheweb.com

Available on Amazon