Alright you fat little bastards. This is it. All participants have until the end of today to send me their current weights for the first checkup of the official Pye In The Face Pork Ass Challenge. Here is how it will work:

– The Challenge will run from now until Wednesday July 5th – 11 Weeks.
– Every Wednesday, participants will email me their current weight and I will post it here on the blog for all to see/encourage/mock.
– Since we’re all of varying sizes and sexes, a’ la Celebrity Fit Club, we’ll set a target weight for ourselves, based on realistic personal experience, and the measure of success will be whether we hit that target in the 11 weeks allotted.
– We need full disclosure for this to work properly, and we’re all on the honor system. No telling porkie pies, mate!
– Prizes and awards are to be determined, but at the very least will include bragging rights and the ability to put on a swimsuit without crying and cutting yourself on the forearm with shards of beach beer bottle glass.

Now who the fuck is with me?! Let’s drop some blubber, buddies! Here is the tale of the tape so far. If you want to get in on this, send me your info by the end of the day, and be prepared to go the distance:

– Monster >> Current: 270 – Target 255 – Lost – 0
– Smash >> Current: 139 – Target 129 – Lost – 0
– Pyeman >> Current: 230- Target 210 – Lost 0
– Greg >> Current: 205 – Target 170 – Lost 0
– DVS >> Current 252 – Target 210 – Lost 0
– Aubz >> Current: 135 – Target 125 – Lost 0
– Ka-Rista >> Current: 160 – Target 140 – Lost 0
– Venditti >> Current: 238 – Target 219 – Lost 0
– Sly >> Current: 218 – Target 205 – Lost 0
– LBN >> Current: 155 – Target 135 – Lost 0
– BDoyle >> Current: 190 – Target 173 – Lost 0
– AllMusicFan >> Current: 185 – Target 170 – Lost 0
– Brick02 >> Current: 154 – Target 144 – Lost 0
– Piglet >> Current: 151 – Target 135 – Lost 0
– Richard >> Current: 185 – Target 170 – Lost 0

I’ll eventually get some sort of graph software to chart this out week to week, but for now – let’s just get the numbers on the board. There is room for many more. Best of luck to us all – this will be quite the reverse-culinary adventure.

Before I go any further, and on a sorta related hippyish note – Neil. My beloved Neil. You’re killing me. OK – I feel a little better now. Back to business.

I’m on a bit of a health kick at the moment, one I hope will last longer than a Tootsie Roll Pop, and I’ve purchased a whackload of Green Tea to sip at the office. A great guy who used to play for the Revolution once interned here for me, and he swore by it. I think I saw him drink 8 cups in one day, and I’m not exaggerating. I asked him if he was trying to ward off some sort of mystical Chinese dragon that maybe I couldn’t see, and he said that “It is the best anti-oxidant you can get”. I then wondered if he perhaps drank Crisco all day at home and this was his way of countering that bad habit. Regardless, he had a jawline like Marv and must have been doing something right.

Gosh knows, if anyone needs a little anti-oxidizing it’s probably me. A winter’s worth of beer, questionable red meat, french onion dip and Reverse the Curse has left me feeling like one giant arterial clog with shoes on. Other efforts include – walking to and from work (50 minutes a day roughly), oceans of water, salad, fruit and veggies followed by a health shake thingy for dinner. So it’s a crash, boom pow system shocker for a couple of weeks, and then back to the gym every day once the metabolism is back up and the lion’s share of the winter weight is gone.

Why do I write about this potentially embarassing stuff on my blog? First of all, I could use some opinions and advice. Smash said it best on her site a week or so ago while running down a very simple list: “3) If you do more and eat less, you’ll probably lose weight.” That’s really all there is to it. However any words of wisdom for myself and others may be left in the comments. Second of all, when one makes obnoxious public declarations about their sveltness like anyone actually cares, people will hold you to them. “Glad to see you went right ahead and didn’t get back into shape the way you said you were going to, male Sally Struthers“. That always feels great.

The only way to get rid of this turkey gobbler, which is making me look extremely old and decrepit, is to get myself back down to fighting weight (210 lbs.) – and that’s not going to be easy. So I’m putting my sloppy, poulty-esque neck out there on the chopping block and calling my shot – I will weigh 210 and look studly by Independence Day. Or I will shave my head. Who’s in? Any other chubbies want to get in on this and set up a similar wager? And shaving pubes doesn’t count, because I do that already. Let’s fuckin’ go, eh?

For the love of all that’s holy. Please get me off this demented carousel that is Roach Brooch. Now even the Boston Globe is writing about Hissy and I. T’was good timing, because I just added a Carmen Electra category featuring pictures of the real deal which I took myself last week. The real deal being Hissy – not Carmen. I photoshopped the Hisster smack onto her right funbag. A good job, if I do say so myself.

I also built a related Cockroach Jewelry Squidoo lens, as I am prone to do about absolutely anything, and it actually has a great feature. The Technorati module pulls in RSS feeds of bloggers around the world talking about Roach Brooches. And there are a lot of them! Take a peek, courtesy of your favorite bug geek!

Since I’m already re-exposing myself as a tremendous toolshed today, why don’t I mention some other recently created lenses that I’d like to see spidered? Fantastic then. You know, nothing gets me more excited than a sizeable collection of diabetes supplies. Except maybe for pre-paid calling cards – how could I forget those? I also think it’s a good idea to keep a healthy dose of Guelph, Ontario in your life at all times. And I can’t say enough good things about mesothelioma, either.

I saw the little girl I gave Hissy to Friday and you’ll all be happy to know he’s doing just fine. As she was leaving the restaurant I’d met her parents at for dinner, she turned to me, made little antennas on her head with her fingers and shouted “Hissy’s in the hizzy!” I’m sure her Dad is to credit for that imparting. Across the street and down the road from simple ‘cuteness’, at any rate.

I saw them again Saturday morning, when they dropped by my apartment to give me a copy of the New York Post. As the munchkin was chasing Boss around, I noticed the front page:

“This really reinforces my theory that society is imploding,” cracked Pete Donelan of Princeton, whose meal at a tony wine bar was interrupted by the sight of our live cockroach – Kafka – scurrying up its wearer’s arm. Kafka is a fucking pussy, man. Hissy should have been the covergirl, and you bloody well know it. Hissy’s jewels are tri-colored and this embarrassment of a Brooch has only two, for a start. Plus, Hissy owns his own home, has a human girlfriend and made out with Andy Dick at a party last weekend.

Thanks also to Allie from upstairs who sent me the photo and link. Can I please be snapped back into reality now? I’ve spent more time talking about friggin’ roaches in the last two weeks than an entomologist. Let’s wrap this saga up – because at this rate, they’re going to start infesting the North End, looking for me. I am the Roach King. I can do anything.