FORMED A BLOG.

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Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Gastric bypass ain't nothin' to f*ck wit

Ha ha, fat people are easy to make fun of! They're slow and they're big, easy targets! Ha ha! Aren't I just a card, with my clever jokes about Charlie Weis' gastric bypass lawsuit?

I have to be serious here for a moment. The truth is that gastric bypass is not just kind of a big deal, it's a HUGE deal. It's really, really serious surgery, and you have to be at an absolute nadir (or zenith, if you want to think about it another way) to even contemplate having it.

My dad had gastric bypass a few years ago. He looks and feels great now. He lost a lot of weight with relatively few side effects but I know people who've had it done who've had life-threatening sepsis, become addicted to painkillers afterward, or people for whom the surgery just didn't work. About six months after his surgery, he told me that when he was in the hospital, the night after his surgery, he was lying in bed thinking, "What the hell have I gotten myself into?" My dad spent four days in the hospital; I'm shocked that Weis would even consider sneaking in and out of the hospital for his procedure.

My dad will maintain a healthy weight for the rest of his life--which he's probably lengthened by about 25-30 years--but there are a shitload of drawbacks, too. The pre-op testing was intense: All kinds of scans, examinations, tests, even psychological evaluations. It was a full year between his first appointment with his surgeon and the actual day of surgery. He has to take handful of pills every morning to make up for the nutritional deficiencies caused by the rejiggering of his plumbing. He can't tolerate certain foods anymore. And on a superficial note, he looks kind of like a shar-pei puppy now.

But he and the rest of my family are happy--no, ecstatic--with the results. As much of a pain in the ass as he is, I'm glad he'll be around a lot longer to torment me.

It really pisses me off that fat people are the last bastion of scorn in this country. You can't make fun of, say, black people or Jews or the gays, without Jesse Jackson getting all up in your biz, but if you're fat, it's open season. Well, it's not cool or funny, and we're tired of hearing it. Of all the things you could make fun of Charlie Weis for--bad haircut, pleated khakis, his degree from Notre Dame is in DRAMA, for God's sake--the fact that he's fat should be the last thing on that list.

Thursday, February 15, 2007

Aloha oe; farewell to thee, mainland

I know a lot of you come over from Deadspin and Gawker in general to read my self-indulgent little blog, and I haven't updated for some time. I'm trying to remedy that, but I haven't really had anything exciting to write about since I saw that photo of Antonio Bryant's tuchis. (Was that really almost four months ago?)

Now that Valentine's Day has mercifully ended, everyone in my immediate family can breathe a sigh of relief and look forward to vacations--for my parents, a trip to Myrtle Beach, and for me, only three weeks until I visit H-bomb and Kyle in beautiful, sunny Hawaii! So very excited. Ten days of sun, black sand, orchids and fruity, twee drinks full of rum.

This was the scene in Hilo earlier this week.


DowntownHiloMaunaKea
Originally uploaded by richardsullivan.












And here's a shot from my bedroom before I left work this morning.




Sad, isn't it? You can see why I'm so excited to get the hell out of dodge.

Now I want to solicit the Gawker brain trust for their advice:
I need ideas for what to do in Hawaii. Big Island in particular. I've got a AAA book (too like my dad), and I've perused Lonely Planet (too crunchy). What's fun? What's overrated? Kyle kindly offered to come to Oahu to escort me back to the Big Island, but he's not too interested in some of the touristy things on Honolulu. I am not spending 14 hours on a plane NOT to go to Pearl Harbor and the USS Arizona.

So comment away with recommendations for things to do, places to visit, places to eat and drink, and anything else you think I need to know.

(And thanks for reading!)