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12/08/00
The most perfect edible thing on God's Green Earth...

You win. I'm getting LASIK done. Don't know how, don't know when, and don't know exactly how I'm going to pay for it, but I got some very nice e-mails from some very concerned readers and they ranged from, "Hell yeah, my husband had it done and now he doesn't miss!" to "Hey, can you videotape the surgery or do it over a Web cam?"

Some of my friends that have known me for years e-mailed to share memories of my bad eyesight, as if it were a Mr. Magoo retrospective. In fact, my friends are pretty fucking wordy, so I made a separate page with their LASIK responses. I didn't even remember that thing with the football game until Jeremy brought it up.

I'm blind, but I'm not limbless. Next time I see you guys, there will be a smack coming at you. And I may even connect on one of those swings.

I didn't know what I was gonna write about and then I went and ate it.

Andy, Rebecca and I went to see a sneak of Finding Forrester, this new Gus Van Sant movie with Sean Connery. I've learned to avoid Connery movies because I get annoyed with his bullshit slurring and his choice of scalpwear. But he was pretty good in this and the movie itself was great (although I liked it better when it was called Wonder Boys. Oh, no I didn't. I didn't even see Wonder Boys. It just sounds like something snarky to say. I apologize). It was about writers, so Andy and I were rockin' out. I'll have more to say next week: I need to let this movie percolate a little.

After the movie, we made a pilgrimage to the new Krispy Kreme that just opened in Austin. You have to understand, this is a huge deal. Our paper wrote several stories detailing the countdown to its arrival and then did a huge spread when it opened on Tuesday. There are even more stories planned, including one where one of our top feature writers takes a group of cops to get donuts. Cute, huh?

Pamie and Wing have mentioned it before, but Rebecca is pretty obsessed with Krispy Kreme. The things I've managed to hide from them, through a wall of deceit and chicanery, is that I think I may be even more addicted to the donuts than she. For months now, I've been giving her updates about when the store would open and when that blessed day arrived, I'd already tasted Krispy Kremes brought into the newsroom last week by our food writer. This week, everybody in the newsroom started bringing them in, to the point where I'd had like two donuts a day for the last three days. (And I haven't gone to the gym. Yeah, I'm a little doughy this week.)

So, I promised Rebecca we'd go after the movie, and we finally make it way up North, on the exact opposite side of town from where I live. And, behold, there it lay, with its Christmas-y lights and the cute little donut car parked in the front. And it was packed. There were cars lined up around the block. People were standing in line outside. At 10:15 on a Thursday night. Crazy.

So we got in line, we had our donuts, and it was just special. Just a great moment. Customers inside were wearing the little Krispy Kreme hats and laughing, drinking milk. It was just so goddamn fucking wholesome. I wanted to cry. This simple little pleasure, and everyone was just having great clean fun. It was like Norman Rockwell came to town and just dumped a little piece of his soul into a barren parking lot. Only not as corny.

We stood in line next to where you can see them make the donuts, and like we have everytime we've been to a Krispy Kreme (in L.A. where we had our first taste of this Nectar of the Gods, and then in Vegas at the Luxor), we stood there silently, watching the conveyor system. We watched the donuts roll along the grease, then flip over and get a hot licking of more grease on the backside. We watched them roll along the frosting conveyor and get a liquid layer of frosting poured on. We watched them get packed and ordered in boxes by cheery employees.

It was beautiful. I should have had my camera.

We got two dozen donuts, knowing there was no possible way we could eat them all.

And miracle of miracles: the only table free was with a cop sitting there. We sat with the officer (There were police outside directing traffic to the donuts. I'm totally serious.) and he was friendly and great. He'd already had two donuts that morning and said that was his limit (he was lying, I'm sure, but he seemed like a nice guy).

We sat and ate and talked and ate and it was beautiful. The donuts, the glazed ones, were hot and soft and the Kreme is indeed Krispy when you bite into it. It is stiff, but yielding. It melts against you, flakes off and gets all over your shirt and expands out to your lips to where you have to rub them against a napkin or just lick the stiffness away. They taste like heaven. They are perfect little creatures with holes in them. Like elves with only a single bodily orifice.

I'm going to Oklahoma City this weekend to visit old friends, so I came home to try to get some writing done and go to bed. I went to the bathroom to pee, as I'm wont to do late at night and...

Look, I'll understand if you want to stop reading right there. But...

I was peeing. And the pee... it smelled like KRISPY KREME! I've been eating donuts all week and this was my body trying to tell me that my bloodstream is full of yeast and sugar.

This guy we worshipped in college, Rod Lott, has a ‘zine called Hitch and he wrote a long time ago about how Sugar Smacks cereal makes your urine smell like honey and wheat. This was the same damn thing! I was amazed. I was grossed out. I was craving a donut.

Help me. Somebody. Please.

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