sometimes I'll click on a thread just knowing my pasta will be here waiting. but then sometimes it isn't. and I think, am I not relevant anymore? Has the Aaron Judge version taken over the original version? At first I didn't like everyone posting my pasta and getting karma and gold for it, but like an aging woman walking past a construction site, I'm sad not to find the thing that once annoyed me. Anyways. Here it is.

Natalie Portman is the reason I work out. I have this fantasy where we start talking at the Vanity Fair Oscars party bar. We exchange a few pleasantries. She asks what I do. I say I loved her in New Girl. She laughs. I get my drink.

"Well, see ya," I say and walk away. I've got her attention now. How many guys voluntarily leave a conversation with Natalie Portman? She touches her neck as she watches me leave.

Later, as the night's dragged on and the coterie of gorgeous narcissists grows increasingly loose, she finds me on the balcony, my bowtie undone, smoking a cigarette.

"Got a spare?" she asks.

"What's in it for me?" I say as I hand her one of my little white ladies. She smiles.

"Conversation with me, duh."

I laugh.

"What's so funny?" she protests.

"Nothing, nothing... It's just... don't you grow tired of the egos?" I extend my lighter towards her, shielding it from the wind, then sparking it with a snap.

"You get used to it," she says, daintily blowing her first puff over her shoulder.

"What would you do if you weren't an actress?" I ask.

"Teaching, I think."

"And if I was your student, what would I be learning?"

"Discipline," she says quickly, looking up into my eyes, before changing the subject. "Where are you from?"

"Bermuda," I say.

"Oh wow. That's lovely."

"It's ok," I admit. "Not everything is to my liking."

"What could possibly be not to your liking in Bermuda?" she inquires.

"I don't like sand," I tell her. "It's coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere."