For the past three days, I have been on a juice fast. That means that I have consumed nothing other than vegetable and fruit juices for 72 whole hours. Along with all manner of grassy and apple-y concoctions, I have also swallowed quite a bit of my pride. More on that later.

My best friend Dave has done this several times and encouraged it. Then again, he’s the kind of guy who could survive a year on gravel milkshakes, if he sets his mind to it.

He didn’t sugarcoat the fast (I wish)—basically, the side effects feel like a low-grade hangover—yet, in retrospect, I think he focused too much upon the result: that I would feel great. But not just great. Like Singing in the Rain great.

I figured: screw it. I’ll try it. I’ve done crazier things. About ten years ago, I lived on fruits, vegetables and milk for three months. So while I knew a juice fast would be a bitch, I thought I could take it. I was confident, arrogant even, that it would be easy.

Not so much. Despite all of the amazing things it has done for my health, like…and…whatever. I’m not really sure. I bought a book, but the blinding headache that has been crippling me for three days prevented me from reading it. Perhaps I was supposed to eat the book.

So, anyhow, there’s a juice spot in the East Village called Liquiteria, and they made me all kinds of concoctions for me that, if they accompanied actual food, would be pretty spectacular. Cucumber with pineapple and mint would be delicious accompanying a bagel and coffee, just not in lieu of it.

But all good things must come to an end. So tonight, I ate a salad with avocado. And then I had a grapefruit. It was some of the best food I have ever eaten. And within minutes of chewing my headache disappeared.

Overall, I’m pretty embarrassed of my lack of fortitude. I feel like I’ve suffered—which is such a terrible word for a non-sick, non-injured person to use. Normally, I’m able to compartmentalize bad stuff, and soldier on, but the lack of…chewing, coupled with the absence of caffeine in my bloodstream made me unhappier than Sarah Palin at a Geography Bee.

And yet, since I’m also a guy, I refused to show any kind of weakness when the any number of friends called or texted to check up on me. Matter of fact, just before I dug into my salad, a friend emailed me to ask how it was going. My response?

“Piece of cake.”

I often look around and feel like I have been airdropped into an alien society that tries incessantly to sell me stuff that will eventually kill me. And then I wonder if maybe I’m in the minority. To me, every morsel of marketing communication is jargon or opaque language, designed specifically for us to ignore the important stuff. Because every time we ignore the confusing fine print, someone wins and we lose.

For example, I watch sports on TV and the commercials barraging me are either for beer or pharmaceuticals. They have become propaganda films of the highest order, filled with idealized images of depressed people riding horses on scenic beaches, kids actually smiling at their parents and older guys backslapping each other in convertibles, while definitely not peeing their pants.

It all seems so ideal—until the last 20 seconds, when some creepy narrator plows through the side effects, which range from “you could develop crap breath” to “you could die, bro (or lady)”. Only, there are so many bad things covered in so little time, that it’s almost as if a coked-up Grim Reaper is reciting his wish list.

Hearing the side effects of today’s meds actually has a side effect on me: it scares me. Recently, my doctor put me on some pill (it’s for my closet arrogance) and told me dramatically, “If you have achy muscles, call me immediately!”

“Immediately?” I responded. “I’m kind of achy all the time. Like, right now. So can you give me an example of what bad-achy feels like, versus normal-achy?”

“You’ll know.”

I’ll know? Not good enough. I live with soreness, but I am referring to the kind of soreness I get from replanting…and tying my shoes: pathetic and chagrined soreness, as opposed to, “Code Blue!” soreness.

We went back and forth, with me trying to pin him down. I began sweating, which is a side effect for virtually all meds. I eventually gave up, and he handed me some printed material, which contained the line: “Certain activities, like standing up quickly, may cause a person to pass out. So try and avoid them.”

I looked at my doctor and said in all seriousness, “Can’t I just, eventually, die in peace?”

Do you know what I mean?

One of my friends posed a rhetorical question this morning: what’s the difference between Coachella and Burning Man? Looking up from my coffee I replied, without thinking: “The rich kids who go to Coachella are richer than the rich kids who go to Burning Man.” And then I went back to focusing on my daily ritual of spreading rainbows wherever I go.

I don’t really think that. A lot of cool people go to those festivals, too. Like, my friends who attend them. They’re super-duper cool. Everyone else? Rich kids and unsophisticated musical gluttons. See? Rainbows.

I’m only half-serious. I think I’ve grown out of festival concerts, a development not altogether welcome. I’ve had some good times, sure, but now the downside—douche-y crowds, lack of shade, water and toilets, to name just a few—has turned me off. And yet, the real, real, real reason that I abstain is the salad-bar aspect of seeing 40 bands in three days. Way too much of any good thing is bad. Don’t dispute me.

In my rigid world, live music should be experienced at night, after you’ve had a couple of drinks and some laughs. To any performers who aren’t famous enough to begin their set after sunset at those festival shows, I say this: stay home and write, or play small clubs. Or both. Too bad no one asked me for my opinion, yet again.

Festival shows aren’t ever stacked in talent order, just fame order, which is why the call it the “music business”. That said, I can only imagine why the smaller acts want to go to the festivals: they can hang out with Dwarf-Prince Thom Yorke and the Kings of Leon guys, while also exposing their music to hundreds of thousands of people. Or their record companies strongly encourage it. Or, like the rest of us with jobs, they need to pay their rent.

The thing is: the crowd isn’t really paying attention. They are drunk, hot and blinking through their $3 retardo, primary colored, phony wayfarers, while otherwise quality music is flattened out by sun and schedule. The attendees are trying to figure out how much longer until the sun goes down. Or whether their hipster-hippie disguises are more nonchalant than their neighbors’ faux-hemian get-ups.

Judging from the photos I have seen, that must take a great deal of energy. Poor rich kids.

Except, of course, for you.

So I was home watching MTV the other day, because I wanted to avoid seeing anything related to music or the music business or even with a tangential relationship to musicians. After all, who cares about that always-vibrant art form? Not Americans. We like shows about one-legged cheerleaders and meth-addicted pregnant teens. Real-life stuff.

It’s bad enough that we get our news from Comedy Central. Now, MTV thinks it has to go all “Dateline” on us and portray how messed up life is out there, beyond the fashion blog world. I had no idea.

So, anyway, if music bums you out and you need to get away from it, American MTV is the hands-down best place to do that. In Europe it’s different. (I can’t speak for the other continents.) They actually promote music and help support musicians along with the other “life” stuff. My God, those Europeans are so naïve.

Okay, back to my point: So I watched a show on called “My Life as Liz”. Actually I watched a few episodes, because a) I couldn’t figure out if I thought it was good or bad; and b) all the troubling stuff that goes along with me critiquing a show meant for teens.

MLAL focuses on the life of some red-haired, tongue-depressor thin high school girl from Texas and her friends, along with the two-third’s of a local beauty-queen bent on destroying Liz’s entire way of life. Her name was Cory. Cory Cooper. Remember that name. Just kidding.

The show was some sort of crossbred version of reality and, you know, the magic of television production. Sometimes it appeared to be excruciatingly real—when Liz was staring all bug-eyed at this guy named Bryson who was either two-thirds gay or two-thirds straight. Or when her Brian-Wilson-circa-’65 lookin’ best friend, Sully, was staring all bug-eyed at her. Other times, though, the set-ups were obvious—with three camera angles on an impromptu hallway conversation. Or a dramatic bathroom confession. Stuff like that.

In any case, it’s certainly well produced and, as I told a friend, “It’s like sour apple ecstasy. For teens.” But I have no interest in finding out what happens next to this gaggle of pimple-faces. No really.

The girl moved to New York, from Texas. She now goes to art school and lives in Brooklyn with her comic books and Star Wars stuff. Her new boyfriend is probably a drummer. In about 18 months, she will be unable to find Texas on a map. She’s probably already on the “only for weddings and funerals” track that many of the rest of us are. She just doesn’t know it yet.

So the critics are beating it up for being part reality and part scripted. Like it’s crossing some boundary. Apparently, purporting something fake to be real is a crime. Which is why professional wrestling is forced to exist on the margins of society.

Howling, they are, and it seems like the kid is forced to defend the show in every interview she does. She’s a smart young lady, but what the hell does she need to defend the network?

Liz keeps saying, “No, that’s really my life.” Yet the viewers don’t give a crap. They grew up with reality television in their lives from the jump. The network executives are old, and feel as if they are protecting the sanctity of a channel that has shows about guys who get calf implants. Indeed, it’s quite a loggerhead the two sides find themselves at.

And I’m thinking: as long as MTV doesn’t play any of the bullshit music and I don’t give a crap what they do.

I generally eat like crap. I’m being honest with you. I also eat sushi and, although I have been known to say “salad’s for chumps,” many evenings I will still have a healthy bowl of cereal or a PB&J sandwich for dinner. (What? Jelly counts as a serving of fruit in school lunches.) Still, given the opportunity, I would add bacon to a communion wafer. Yeah, it’s like that.

Yet even I am repulsed by KFC’s new Double Down sandwich. Not sure if you have heard of it, because you’re a functional human being, but the basic premise is this: fuck you, bread. The colonel’s demon spawn are gonna swap you out for two fried chicken breasts, stuff them with cheese and bacon. Sure they’re quadruple-sizing the amount of fat, calories and artery clogging gunk; and sure the consumer will need to eat the thing with a paper drop cloth, resplendent with the colonel’s beaming visage; but they’re no longer going to be hungry. Until tomorrow. If they live that long. You, bread, are being kicked to the curb. Sorry.

It’s bad enough that, in the face of health hysteria, people are trying to declare pork barbecue a vegetable—oh wait, that was my idea—but this thing is like the Sarah Palin of foodstuff. “So you find conservatives to be reprehensible, rooting-against-America cretins? Well, here’s the worst, stupidest one EVER.”

Now chew on that, America. No, literally.

I used to playa-hate the Hardee’s Monster Thickburger. First of all, “monster” is a terrible word for food. But this bookended chicken sandwich made the beef-hemoth Thickburger its prison bitch, if only because it changes the game. That sound you hear is a combination of weeping bakers and cheering cardiologists.

Tragically, the actual Colonel Sanders, who spent his dying days trying to get his likeness removed from the company, must be rolling over in that vat of oil they probably have his corpse suspended in. He knew what was happening; that the company was waddling down the wrong path. Could he have known that the company’s plan was to make American children closer resemble dwarf manatee? Probably not, but maybe. He seemed like a crafty old bastard, didn’t he?

I wonder how many of these capitulation mounds are consumed by company executives. If this were Saw 9, they would be strapped down and force-fed a Double Down every two hours until they burst or stroked out. Or until they agreed to pull the item before it’s too late.

You know what? I suspect it already is.

Bella, my 7-year-old neighbor, and I had our first fight today. Okay, so it wasn’t actually a fight, but we had a disagreement, a difference of opinion. Still, any dissent is trouble in a January-December friendship.

Here’s how it went down: I was outside planting flowers and grasses—it’s finally time, thankfully—and I heard the window, about 30 feet above my deck, opening slowly.

“Hey, up here, up here!”

“Hey, Bella,” I responded, looking up at her long hair dangling straight down. “How have you been? I haven’t seen you in a few days. “

I could see her mother peeking out another window mouthing, “sorry.” I smiled and nodded. The truth is, I have enjoyed our visits. Bella’s quite a character.

“I know, Tony,” Bella said in her singsong voice. ”I think we’re on different schedules.”

Seriously, different schedules, she says. We spoke for a few minutes about the garden, discussed how I wasn’t in a “grade” but that I worked like her mom and dad. Then she recounted, as dramatically as a Viking skald, how her brother Roman kicked her “right in the spine”. She offered to show me the bruise, but I declined.

Bella wondered why she didn’t see Gina. It seemed like she asked me rhetorically. I explained that Gina was in Las Vegas on business.

“Hmmmm…” was all she said to that and, pretty much, all she needed to say. I wondered if she’d seen the TV commercial. Then she asked me if I wanted to come over and play.

“No thanks,” I replied.

“Why not?”

“Because I’m old,” I said. “And people my age don’t play with people your age. We just don’t.”

“Is it because I’m a girl?” she asked, rather icily.

“No, of course not. It’s just that you should always play with people your own age. That’s important, Bella.”

“Well….are all of your friends your age?”

“Well…no,” I admitted. I felt like I was being herded into the conversation’s corner. Meantime, I’ve begun thinking that maybe she’s a midget and that woman who pretends to be the mother is actually an actress.

She pounced. “Why is that okay? Why is it okay for you?”

“Well….uh…” I began stammering under the withering cross-examination of a person too young for the themes on Hannah Montana. She was working me over like the Jew Hunter from Inglorius Basterds. “When you get to a certain age, then it’s okay.”

“How old?”

“Like….23.” I could’ve just as easily said 13 or 30.

“Okay.” I realized that she was too young to do the math. “That’s a long time, though. Then you’ll be, like, 80.”

I laughed, “No, but I’ll be really old. What, you won’t play with me when I’m 80?”

She thought about it and said, “I can’t promise anything.”

Then she winked. And giggled so much she began coughing. And then she giggled some more.

Over a year ago, I tried to break up with a friend because of someone that she friended on Facebook that I hated. Literally. It was, in my mind, the ultimate indignity. The straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back. I was hurt, furious and dashed off the kind of email (no less) that made it sound like she had shot my dog.

Her response was classic. She acted as if I was underwater and speaking Vulcan. “So let me get this straight,” she began, slowly. “You are throwing our years of friendship away because of someone that I friended on Facebook? Someone who I am not actually friends with?”

I chewed on that for a moment and responded, elegantly: “Errrr…..Okay, never mind.”

Those of us who are old enough to remember speaking to each other on home telephones (no, really) still occasionally have difficulty divining between friendship and friending. I mean, I have about 300 friends on Facebook. As I scan through them today, one-quarter of them I’ve scarcely met, but know through work stuff. Another quarter, I really, really like, don’t see often enough, and keep in touch with them by writing clever things on their walls.

There are some friends of friends in there. People I see out socially. But there are also folks who requested my “friendship” and I didn’t know how to say ‘no.’ The only solace I find in that instance is that I’m not a woman, and don’t have to worry about the “ogle factor” with my photos. Because, let me tell you, if someone is ogling my photos, they should be spending less time on the internet and more time swallowing meds out of little paper cups.

But then, on Facebook, there are also the real friends, the ones you can lean on in times of trouble or even just mishigoss; people who you share secrets, or even your favorite dessert, with. Does grouping them in with that guy from college who you thought to be a tool, but who, apparently, remembers the nature of your friendship differently, somehow devalue the real ones?

In a word: no fucking way. Because Facebook is like that Westworld movie with Yul Brenner, where everything looks real but isn’t. It doesn’t really mean anything. It’s an artificial experience filled with “JFK to LHR” and “Like” mixed with party photos and links to funny stories. I like it…but I like Tiny Sized Chiclets, too.

And so (and I am speaking directly to someone out there) if there’s a person who posts a photo, or friends some jackoff, just let it go. Don’t lose sight of the bigger picture, which is this: you can still say all sorts of mean shit about them on Twitter. Because they are probably too stupid to ‘get’ Twitter. And we’ll all laugh at them. You have my word on that.

I am on jury duty, which is not to say I am on a jury. I’m not, nor will I ever be. No I have not committed a prior felony, and, knock on wood, I have never been the victim of an unsolved crime. I actually like police and am reasonable enough to understand the difference between evidence and conjecture. I will never be selected because my brother is “involved in the [information redacted].”

Last year, I was called to federal jury duty, which is a longer commitment than the state deal I am on now. They had me stand up and asked me a series of questions. Two of affirmative answers to the questions, “Have you ever been to Kabul restaurant on Eighth Avenue?” and “Have you ever been to Dubai?” actually elicited gasps from the jury pool. But when I dropped the line about my brother’s occupation (or, at least, the microscopic details he tells me about) even the heroin kingpin Taliban defendant laughed at the absurdity of me sitting on his jury. Nervously, I might add.

It’s actually kind of depressing to sit amid the people that the courts consider my peers. And I guess, it’s a microcosm of society and why I sometimes hate that everyone’s vote count the same as mine. For example, despite the fact that we were required to be seated by 8:45, about 30% of my fellow prospective jurors arrived more than 45 minutes late. And not the “Holy shit—the subway was delayed!” kind of late. But the “Which one is the big hand again?” kind of late.

Then, nearly half the crowd was unshaven and underdressed for picking up the paper from their stoop. I mean, men in grimy t-shirts and running shorts and women looking all pop tart-y. I find the whole thing to be incredibly disrespectful and I hope that I’m not alone. The judge is in robes, for chrissakes, you can certainly wear some pants.

But the main thing that troubles me is that, as I look around me, many of these people are having trouble following directions like, “The restroom are on the left” and “No cell phone use whatsoever.” One lady raised her hand and asked if she could take her shoes off and an older man was storing a sandwich under his newsboy cap. I know this because he showed me. I smiled weakly and changed seats.

I am not sure how to resolve such a problem. These are, after all, the same people who elected Bush. We couldn’t overturn that. And at least they are here to do their civic duty.

I just know that if I am ever wrongly accused of a crime, like Dr. Richard Kimble, that these will be the types of faces staring back at m from the Jury Box. I can only hope that, on such an occasion, they will be an hour late.