Let's Play The Glad Game

Didn't we all grow up watching Hayley Mills movies? This is the part where Steve says, "When I was a kid, we only had two channels, and one of them came in real fuzzy." Then I feel guilty for growing up in a home with a VCR. Anyways, Hayley Mills was a childhood favorite of mine, and I fondly remember her classic, Pollyanna. If you also grew up without Disney movies in your VCR, or if your memory has been wiped out by recreational drug use, Pollyanna was a high spirited orphan from the early 1900's. She goes from living a modest lifestyle as the child of missionaries to living with her aunt, the richest woman in town. Also, her aunt is a frigid bitch. Some people in Pollyanna's position would have a case of the sads, but Pollyanna is unfailingly optimistic and cheerful. She likes to play a game she calls "The Glad Game", where she lists all the things she has to be happy about. This really pisses off the bitter old hags in her town. Spoiler: Pollyanna falls out of a tree, everybody realizes what assholes they've been, and the whole town plays The Glad Game. The End.

Well, in the final month of pregnancy, I've had moments of misery and self-pity, but as I'm entering my 39th week of pregnancy, I seem to have adjusted and learned how to accomodate the physical changes in my body. While I am at many times uncomfortable, I can't help but think of all the things I have to be glad about. After all, I've had an uncomplicated pregnancy and am merely days away from delivering a full term baby. A boy, no less. Just what I always wanted! And I didn't even have to log my basal temperature, use ovulation test strips, or consult a fertility specialist to get to this point. If that doesn't put a smile on my face or a bounce in my step, I'm in need of a stern talking-to.

Steve says, "The Glad Game sounds super-gay". Fair enough, it's a little more negative and perhaps mean spirited, but we could flip this game around and call it "It Sucks To Be Them". That's where we point out other people who have it worse than us and say to ourselves, "It sucks to be them!" I've been doing a lot of that lately, too. It helps to keep me from complaining. Here are some examples of people who, in the last month, have led me to think: "It sucks to be them!":

1. Lindsay Lohan

This is Lindsay, learning that she'll be serving 90 days in a jail that prohibits makeup, hair extensions, booze, and cigarettes. Oh, and Twitter. Why don't you prohibit water and oxygen too, Lynwood Correctional Facility?! Everyone knows Lindsay can't survive without all that stuff. If I were in prison, I'd need cigarettes. I'd probably get a tattoo denoting my membership in a prison gang that I joined for my protection. Then my lawyer would be like, "Uh, Samantha, you were only sentenced to 90 days, of which you'll only serve 23. You really didn't have to take such drastic measures." Boy, would I feel dumb! I'm not cut out for life behind bars. It sucks to be Lindsay!

2. Mel Gibson

First he called a female police officer "sugar tits". After being stopped for driving under the influence. Then, while on a drunken tirade, he blamed the Jews for all the wars in the world. Then he left his wife of nearly 30 years, the mother of his 7 children, to be with a Russian woman he knocked up. I know that karma is a vengeful slut, but even I didn't know that Mel would knock the teeth out of said Russian baby mama, tell her she deserved it, use the N-word, hurl racial slurs at Latinos, let's see...am I forgetting anything? Mel is nothing if not consistent. Consistently hateful. His venomous words know no bounds, and I think he's pretty much insulted every gender, religion, race and ethnicity, insuring he will have no friends or supporters...except for maybe the KKK. Oh, and it's all on tape! All I can say is, it sucks to be Mel!

3. Jeremy London

At first I thought it sucked to be Jeremy London when I read that he was kidnapped from Palm Springs and forced to smoke crack and buy booze for gang members. What a nightmare! Turns out it was all lies. Lies! Jeremy is a crazy crackhead [allegedly]. Forcing a crackhead to smoke crack isn't torture at all! Note: if my Facebook status ever says that I was kidnapped in Cabo and forced to have a pedicure and eat hot fudge sundaes and drink apple martinis, call Dr. Drew. Time to ship my crazy ass to rehab. Anycrackhead, then I learned that Jeremy and his wife (the ventriloquist dummy photographed above) lost custody of their child, and that Jeremy ran away to a Ramada Inn and tried to shimmy up a palm tree. I can safely say: It sucks to be Jeremy!

4. Tammy Lynn Michaels

When I first saw Tammy Lynn, she was on a sitcom. You know, the kind that gets cancelled after a few episodes and you quickly forget the title of it. But I remember Tammy. She was funny! She gave up her career to be Melissa Etheridge's wife and give birth to and raise their twins. And what does she get? She gets unceremoniously dumped and left with nothing.  That's cold, Melissa. Come to my window, and let me give you a piece of my mind: You wanna marry a woman? You wanna give her your name and call her your wife? You wanna leave that woman? You better be prepared to leave half of everything. It's how they roll in California. Unless you holla, "We want prenup! We want prenup!" Perhaps justice will prevail, but either way: It sucks to be Tammy!

5. Ed O'Neil

Ed was the biggest star to join the ensemble cast of ABC's hit sitcom, Modern Family. I agree with critics that it's one of the best new shows of the year. In the spirit of being part of an ensemble, Ed opted not to submit his name for consideration to Emmy voters in the category of Best Actor, but instead submitted his name for Best Supporting Actor. Come nomination day, Ed was the only member of the Modern Family cast not to be nominated. It's possibly the biggest snub of this year's Emmys. In many ways, it's great to be Ed O'Neil, but in this way, it sucks to be Ed O'Neil!

6. Jessica Simpson

Oh, Jessica. Poor, poor Jessica. Jessica wants to be an icon. Jessica wants to be a legend. Jessica wants to rule the world. Instead, she gets no respect. No respect at all. She's mocked for her music. Mocked for her films. Mocked for her television shows. Mocked for her endorsements. Her ex-boyfriends kiss and tell and nickname her "Sexual Napalm" (I'm referring of course to one ex-boyfriend: John Mayer). Guys she casually hooks up with pretend they barely know her (I'm referring of course to one Jeremy Renner). She's dying to be in magazines, but when she is in magazines, it's because they're reporting on how fat she is, or how nobody wants to marry her, or how Dallas Cowboys fans hate her, or how a coyote ate her dog, or how her new boyfriend is technically still married. I dunno. She's rich and all, but I still say: It sucks to be Jessica!

7. Tori Spelling

Tori begged her husband Dean to give up his juvenile, unnecessarily dangerous midlife crisis pastimes, and old squinty eyes refused to listen to her. Where did he end up? He ended up getting thrown off his dirt bike and puncturing a lung, landed in Intensive Care, and got a catheter stuck in his junk. And who's left worrying that she narrowly missed being a dirt bike widow? Tori. Also, Tori has wasted away to nothing, which makes her boobs look really weird. She blamed it on swine flu, but I'm beginning to suspect there's more to it. It's none of my business, but I think she looks really frail. Whatever the reason, for right now I'd say that it sucks to be Tori!

8. Lady Gaga

Lady Gaga is a highly celebrated, world famous pop sensation! How could I possibly think it's better to be a chubby preggo melting like an M&M in the hot Texas sun than to be her? Let me count the ways: 1. She lives in disguises--hiding behind costumes and an alter ego. That would exhaust me. 2. She constantly craves attention (if you attend a baseball game in your underwear and attend your sister's graduation dressed like a crazy beekeeper, something is wrong with you), 3. Half of America thinks she has a penis (the other half jokes that she has a penis), 4. Jerry Seinfeld thinks she's an asshole. 5. She was recently photographed falling on her face in an airport while wearing yet another ridiculous outfit and impractical shoes. The public consensus was "HAHAHA!" I think it sucks to be Lady Gaga, but it must have sucked even more to be Stefani Germanotta. Why else would she reinvent herself so dramatically? I'd love for Dr. Phil to get to the bottom of this. For those who think it's perfectly fine for her to be so eccentric, imagine this: What would happen if one day Steve began dressing in spandex and declared he wanted to be called "Lord GooGoo". He'd say, "What? I'm simply expressing my theatricallity". I would have my boo on a 5150 psychiatric hold so fast, Jamie Spears would say, "Atta girl!" That is absolutely insane. It sucks to be Lady Gaga!