Blah. I am not much in the mood to write, but then again I�m not much in the mood for anything today and there�s still a few hours that this day needs to have burned out of it, so why not. Since I woke up I have been feeling anxious and weepy and especially bad of myself, for no reason I could figure out, and then finally I realized that it�s because I am ashamed that I have a hangover on a day that should be all about Mr. Rogers, and Mr. Rogers would be disappointed in me. This is from Daniel Lewis�s NYT obituary today:

Fred Rogers had a kind of moral authority that was beyond viewership statistics and impossible to quantify. He knew this and occasionally made full use of it.

When he was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame in 1999, he began his formal acceptance speech by saying, "Fame is a four-letter word." And now that he had gotten the attention of a house full of the industry's most powerful and glamorous names, he asked them to think about their responsibilities as people "chosen to help meet the deeper needs of those who watch and listen, day and night." He instructed them to be silent for 10 seconds and think about someone who had had a good influence on them.

And finally he said: "We have only one life to live on earth. And through television, we have the choice of encouraging others to demean this life, or to cherish it in creative, imaginative ways."

Would you like to join me in being silent for ten seconds and thinking about Mr. Rogers now?

OK, and now we resume normal programming, where it�s all about me, me, me and my hangover. As in, why do I even have one when I only had three beers, oh, and before that a glass of wine with dinner? But still, four drinks in four and a half hours on a full stomach. It�s crazy how some nights I can toss back bottom-shelf vodka through all three bands and wake up in the morning bright-eyed and ready for my bacon and other nights half of a six-pack is enough to have made it not cool that I drove home. That fact probably indicates something not good about my metabolism or my liver or something. And now I�m also crabby that since I should take it easy tonight, I will be the soberest person at our table at Linda�s? As if that�s anything to be crabby about, as if it�s sympathy I deserve. I vex myself. Trivia was so much fun, I am absolutely going back, and by the way I think I�m off the fence for good about schoolteachering, because do you want to know what time Jerry gets up every morning for an unrushed breakfast and shower and then the commute to work? 4:55. 4:55! That is so not a constituent element of the good life. We tied for second, after what looks to be the house team � the quizmaster was hanging out with them after the final ballot-counting � and since we had only four to their five, I think this is a fine showing. Twice, though, the thing happened where immediately after the quizmaster had asked a question, an answer popped into my head that I almost immediately rejected, once because it was so obvious that it couldn�t possibly be correct and if I said it then everyone would laugh at me for being so simpleminded and literal and once because I issued myself what amounted to a reprimand, telling myself that it was absurd to think I knew enough about baseball that my answer could be right. Isn�t it a regular laugh riot, the myriad ways in which self-esteem issues can play out? So I missed Dylan Thomas and Heathcliff Slocumb and my swell teammates did not point out that if I�d spoken up we would at least have had second place all to ourselves. After a bonus round failed to break the tie, each team sent a member to the dart board, with free beer going to the better shot, and I lost there too. Though then again with any more beer in me I might have wrapped my car around a lamppost. We want to go back next week with Steve and that trivia hurricane Art, each of whom could have answered at least one of the questions we didn�t get, so with them and with me giving myself a pre-outing pep talk about not pussing out, why, we�ll be unstoppable. Terry is unstoppable already. He guessed Elizabeth Taylor for the quotation in today�s entry title � I had been thinking Cher � and the answer is Amy Fisher, but I like his better.

Yes, Monday-morning-quarterbacking of a bar trivia game is pretty dorky, thank you for noticing. I think I�m still getting my brain around the idea of Steve reading my diary, and that�s why I�m babbling in it today, shying away from anything substantive. This is not a permanent state of affairs. I have found out that Steve hates and despises the Oscar broadcast, it makes him livid, so rather than having some crazy dude frothing at the mouth and punching holes in the wall at my party or else rooted to his chair in a smoldering sulk, I will be dateless. Which kind of sucks, but I don�t want to torture him � I told him that it sounded like he would suffer more there than I would without him � and I can�t really tell him that part of the reason it sucks is that so many of the party guests will have been wanting to check him out. I shouldn�t have typed that but I will leave it in. Maybe I should add to the list of potential boyfriend weed-out questions, the "Do you eat bacon?" and "Do you wear Birkenstocks?" another one about the Oscar broadcast and by extension my Oscar party. Or maybe it�s not a big deal. He ended up going out with some of his friends from work last night and, in a stunning coincidence also acquiring a hangover today, so it was yesterday rather than tonight that I slept with Marcus. Which like the free beer that did not materialize may also have been the fortuitous outcome, because I needed a shower.

(Ha ha, "potential boyfriend weed-out questions": *weed* out, get it? Thank you, I be here all ze veek. And also, LL, is the Dolly Parton song "Potential New Boyfriend" one you are familiar with? I have not heard it in years, but when I was a tyke one of my friends had it, was it the B side of the "9 to 5" single?, and my sister and I loved it, we used to jump up and down on the beds and bellow the chorus.)

Man, I�ve got nothing today. Sorry.

Want to pee your pants from laughing so hard? Try this.

And ladies, what's up for Saturday? Let's plot tomorrow.