Swiney River (The Update)

For whatever reason -- either the Tamiflu or the fact that this virus has simply run its course very quickly -- I feel markedly better today. My thanks to all the many, many readers who expressed their concern. And by that I mean, Robin, Sam, Walt and Rebecca. To the rest of you, I say: "Really? Nothing? Hmm. OK."

For reasons too graphic to go into here, I've lost about 8 lbs in the last two days, and so am treating myself this morning to my very first San Diego bagel (from a place that has the audacity to call itself Big City Bagels, natch). Not surprisingly, it's terrible.


They ought to call it Small Shitty Bagels & Deli.


A brief update on the whole Melissa Rivers/Apprentice controversy, courtesy of Entertainment Weekly's Dalton Ross:

Thanks to the exit tirade by Melissa Rivers, NBC's The Celebrity Apprentice continues to cement its reputation as the best bad show in TV history. After being fired by Donald Trump on April 26, Melissa described teammates Annie Duke and Brande Roderick as ''whore pit vipers'' while yelling expletives at stunned producers. Mother Joan also joined in the fun, once again dubbing Duke a Nazi and walking off the show. For her part, Melissa tells EW that the outburst was a result of a ''personal attack'' that we didn't see. ''Something was said about me in the boardroom that was a total fabrication.... It became this huge debacle.'' (She declined to elaborate.) So will Joan be back? Trump says we'll have to tune in to find out. As if we wouldn't.

Oh, I see. The ol' "I was edited to look like a bitch" defense. I'm not buying it.

Also from EW.com:

Celebrity Apprentice Finalist Annie Duke visited Ellen today to discuss last week's epic Rivers rant, in which Joan compared Annie to Hitler, Melissa coined the term ''whore pit vipers,'' and everybody else wondered what the hell was going on. Annie mentioned how she stayed pretty classy throughout the tirade, defended poker players as being ''awesome people'' (hands down my favorite lame comeback ever), and how she, just like the rest of us, is now attempting to work ''whore pit vipers'' into her daily vocabulary.

(Only the first part of the following clip is worth watching; you can switch it off when they start talking about poker strategy.



And here are the classy Rivers ladies themselves, defending their behavior on Ellen:



I don't feel like they justified a thing. But I do like Melissa's new bangs.

So BW has become fascinated of late by a widget on my blog known as Who's Amung Us. It appears to my readers as Number of People Visiting Now (to the right of what you're reading), but if you click on it, you'll see a map of the world which pinpoints where every one of my visitors is located. And it turns out I've had people log on to Sanktastic from New Delhi, India, Quezon City, Philippines, Sudan (no specific locality), Campinas, Brazil, and, most intriguingly, a ship off the coast of Africa (perhaps filled with Somali pirates). I have no doubt many of these hits were accidental one-timers. (Like someone was trying to learn about rivers and they wound up reading about Melissa Rivers).

But it does make me wonder: Who are my most far-flung regular readers? If you're, say, the person reading me from the Northern Mariana Islands, please leave me a comment or email me. I'd love to know who you are and how you found me.

That's all for now. Oh, except to tell you I'm returning to the comedy stage for the first time in two months next Saturday. So if you're in the San Diego area (as opposed to the Northern Mariana Islands), come see me:

Saturday, May 9 at 8 p.m.
Dirtbag Comedy Night
1135 Garnet Avenue (Pacific Beach)
Click here for details

Homo recovering. ♥