Yeah baby, my gym’s got it ALL.  It’s my pleasure dome, the hub of earthly delights.

And it’s starting to weird me out.

Stick with this one, it delivers.

First, I must explain that I like gyms that are mainly spas.  I’m no jock and I need a good reason to spend an hour of my oh so busy day trying to make my body look good rather than spend three hours disguising my figure flaws.  Therefore, I find it economical to join fairly expensive gyms.  That way I won’t waste money because I’ll actually want to visit the gym and maybe even squeeze a little exercise between the  aromatherapeutic sauna and the whirlpool.

Which brings me to todays topic:  My gym’s naughty Venus de Milos.

My gym’s recently enjoyed an influx of 18 to 25 year olds, college students on summer break and residents of the local apartment complexes.  I’ve recently started using the gym’s pool and whirlpool.  Now, being the old proper lady that I am, I wear my up-to-my-neck, down-to-my-knees swimdress in the 10-person whirlpool, even though it’s in the ladies’ only area and really, can wear as much or as little as I choose.  The Venuses?  OY.  They go starkers.

I’ve discovered two things:  (1) Over 25 years, the female body changes from Venus di Milo to the Venus of Willendorf and (2) This crazy Generation Y views whirlpools not as therapeutic muscle relaxers but as sex toys.

Seriously, every time I enter the whirlpool in my you-don’t-want-to-see-what’s-under-this granny suit, I come across at least one of the two situations:  Two stunningly hot nakie young women sitting too closely together and giggling an awful lot or a lone goddess positioning the water jets to her no no (or yes yes, depending on your mindset) spot.  And clearly enjoying herself.  And she knows I’m right freaking there!

How do I feel about all this?  Jealous as hell.  See, plastic sugery can suck fat from your nether regions and stick bowling balls on your chest but it can’t give you that perfect, supple, eye-poppingly gorgeous young skin.  Sigh.  There’s no competing with youth.

So I’ve bucked up and altered my attitude a bit.  I figure, I’m far from stunning but I’m not ancient and totally repulsive yet, and I’ll look a LOT worse 20 years on. It’s now or never.  Now I enter the whirlpool in my swim bottoms because COME ON PEOPLE, but wearing only a strategically draped towel over my still reasonably funbags.

And hey, if my Willendorfian presence clears the whirlpool of the di Milo girls, all the better.  I can use the extra hip room.

I just finished this Facebook list of 50 concerts I’ve attended (not including my kids’ school/band concerts) and wow, I can’t believe I’m the same person that lived for rock music.  Oh, if you want to be my Facebook friend, email me!  My email address is on the sidebar.

**NOTE**  This is a long post.  If you’re strapped for time, skip to the bottom for the info you really want.

I got into most of my literally hundreds of concerts absolutely FREE.  And I got to meet lots and lots of rock stars.  Without sleaziness!  OK, maybe I had to occasionally tease a bit.

It was a different time.  Back then, parents in general didn’t obsess over their kids’ safety and gave us a crazy amount of freedom.  My mother (no dad) especially:  She was quite the incompetent parent, but that’s a whole other story.  This worked though, because I very actively exercised my too-ample independence yet still managed to get into some pretty awesome colleges.  Again, that’s another story.

SO.  Especially during the summer rock concert season, I’d dress in my cute roadie uniform, black high-necked leotard top and tight jeans,  my waist-length dark hair and  no makeup.  I was in high school and like all high schoolers, still looked beautiful without the help of cosmetics. Not too sexy but damn, I WAS cute.  I’d take the trolley to downtown Pittsburgh and stake out a spot at the Chatham Center Hotel’s coffee shop counter, order a Coke and wait for a real roadie to show up and hit on me.  See, the hotel was across the street from the Civic Arena, where the big concerts played, and the bands always, always stayed there.  The hotel housed two types of boarders;  Business people and rockers.  You could kind of tell the difference.

The roadie would invariably offer me a backstage pass, no doubt expecting payback later.  They never got it:  Roadies worked setting up gear before the shows and packing up the band’s gear afterwards, so they never noticed that I was long gone by the time they finished.  Roadies tend to be half a bubble off plumb, if you know what I mean.

I’d stroll backstage, pass stuck on my leotard (no coded plastic badges on lanyards back then) and acted like I knew what I was doing.  I’m with the band!  Incredibly, it worked.  Again, it was a different time, security was loose and my validity was rarely questioned.  When it was, I simply hid for a while behind a gigantic theatre curtain or equipment crate.  It was TOO easy.

When the concert started, I’d divide my time between backstage, where I’d be ultra close but could barely see the band and the audience, where I could see but have to mingle with the pot-smoking and rather grubby masses.  I’d scoot backstage before the end of the show and stake my place at the back of the stage.

This is where and when I’d meet the band members.  Contrary to popular legend, rockers usually weren’t in the mood to party after shows.  They were exhausted, drunk, stoned and just wanted to get back to their rooms, watch The Tonight Show and pass out.

Anyhoo, some of them chatted me up.  Some of them invited me – and other assorted people – back to their rooms to relax and not be lonely.  One very big star pulled his pants down and requested servicing.  I laughed.  He got mad.

Years later, I shared an apartment with a wonderful friend who worked at Chicago’s ultra-cool radio station and got free tickets to every, and I mean every concert that came to town.  No joke, we went to the coolest rock shows every night.  It was nuts and incredibly cool.

Oh, and to sound cultured, I managed to wrangle free tickets to The Chicago Symphony every week for Friday matinee.  Once I ran into my then boyfriend’s father, who was with another woman.  Awkward.

Notable rock star encounters:

The Monkees.  I didn’t meet them backstage, I saw them at the hotel before the show.  Micky squinted a lot because of his poor eyesight and Peter panicked for no apparent reason.

Eric Clapton.  He was extremely drunk.  He could hardly play his guitar, leaving most of the playing to a session guitarist.  He could barely stand, if at all:  Two roadies had to carry him off the stage.  His eyes were rolling:  He was barely, barely conscious.  See, he had a very large, full stocked bar on the stage, behind a curtain.  He visited it often during the show.

Frank Zappa.  I expected him to be vile but he was SWEET.  In fact, he was the nicest rock star I ever met.  He was totally sober.  He chatted with me for probably 20 minutes, asking me intelligent questions about what teens thought about rock music and politics.  Just before he left, he tweaked my nose.

Lynyrd Skynyrd.  A bunch of of went to guitarist Gary Rossington’s room after the show.  Gary watched TV from his bed, smoked pot and drank – I am not making this up – drank Manischewitz Kosher Creme Sherry from the bottle.  Singer Ronnie Van Zandt arrived, chatted with a gay guy friend of mine for a while, put his arm around his shoulder and drawled, “When you get those things (braces) off your teeth, you’ll be a real good lookin’ fella”.

Weirdly, I ran into Lynyrd Skynyrd twice the next day.  The first time, their limo was stopped at the red light where I was waiting to cross on foot.  They saw me, pointed and said Hi.  A couple of hours later, I was at the Pittsburgh airport, seeing my visiting sister off, and we ran into them at a virtually empty airport restaurant.  It was very odd.

This reminds me of the time my family ran into The Lovin’ Spoonful (they had a bunch of hits in the 60’s notably “Do You Believe in Magic”) at a Pittsburgh airport restaurant.  Band member Joe Butler walked up to the table of stewardesses next to us, smiled and said, “Do you believe in magic?”  I was 10 years old and heard my first cheesy pick up line.  Oy.

Yes:  I wanted to get legit and interview them briefly with the hopes of publication.  The members just looked at each other for someone to say yes or no until guitarist Steve Howe flipped his long hair, flashed his eyes down his nose and admonished me “The problem with people like you is that you don’t realize how busy a band like us is”.  Oh, how I wish I’d been quicker with my comeback:  ”The problem with people like YOU is that you don’t realize that people like me made you rock stars”.

There are more, many more but I really should acknowledge that my kids do need the occasional meal.  Motherly duties call.

Click on the Deal o’ The Day tab at the top of the page for today’s bargains!

You’ve seen me as a Simpsons character, now you can see me as a Mad Men character, just like Badger.  That’s me in the stylish plum charmeuse shift with the dead-with-a-head fox stole slinking around my triple string o’ pearls.  Note the jaunty red handbag and the ladylike white wrist-length gloves, fashion musts for the overdressed housewife on the go.

So, you may ask, how can I look that fabulous?  Keep reading for Fashionista Recessionista tips on how to get the Mad Men look on a budget!

You can get this lovely Cole Haan handbag at Saks, 30% off.  It’s pricier than my usual recessionista picks but it’s a classic investment and pretty damn hot at  $243.60, regularly $348.00.

Now for something a little more affordable!  As much as I loved playing with my mother’s dead headed fox stole, complete with beady glass eyes, I now gravitate towards somewhat updated neckwear.  I actually own this $28 Urban Outfitters silk scarf in the color shown below and I LOVE IT.  It goes with everything.  It’s cool and hip without making a woman of a certain age look ridiculous.  And it’s one of the few Urban Outfitters items that fits a woman of a certain size!  Imagine that.

Also affordable and in a glorious range of sizes – misses, petites and plus – is this perfect basic (read: accesorizable for different looks!) dress from JC Penney.   It’s on sale from $49.99 to $59.99.  You can dress it up or down – I think it would look faboosh with the funky scarf above or with a simple strand of pearls.

Finally, SHOES!  I’m all about foot comfort.  In fact, I’ve permanently given up on any shoe that’s not in the “comfort” category.  Sorry, Christian Louboutin.  The Naturalizers below, the Tres Chic model, sell regular price at Zappos for $69.99, about $850 less than your standard Louboutin pump.  If you feel the need, go ahead and paint the soles red.

That’s my Mad Men on a Budget fashionista recessionista advice du jour.  Be sure to click on the Deals o’ the Day tab at the top o’ the page for other timely bargains!

The photo above nicely illustrates the high point (Pun!  Unintentional!) of my trip to the 2009 BlogHer conference in Chicago.  Well, that and the stories of wild BlogHer debauchery.

Long story short, I decided to go at the very last minute.  BlogHer was long sold out, I hadn’t properly planned my party schedule and I learned that, if you don’t go to the BlogHer events, you’re banished from the In Crowd and no one will take your picture licking the life-sized Robert Pattinson cutout.

I learned that SWAG bags are like those little bags o’ cheesy crap that we give to our kids’ birthday party guests:  They’re SO COOL for a minute and a half, then you realize that they’re full of weird random stuff like a strange little unmarked cereal bowl and ads for a Harley dealership in Montana.

On the two nights I didn’t drink a solitary drop, I felt horrible for hours until I blessedly threw up the bitter bile of disappointment and social angst.  The first time, I hurled into a flower bed in front of, oh,  100 people by the 100-story Hancock Building.  I was 100% horrified and humiliated but it was better than the time back in the 80’s, in almost the exact same spot, when a freakishly strong gust of wind blew my big 80’s skirt COMPLETELY OVER MY HEAD in front of hundreds of commuters and I couldn’t get the damn thing down to save my life.

Oh, did I mention that two of my BlogHer roomies wanted me dead?

C’est la vie.  The real tragedy was that I missed the bad-naked lady hanging around BlogHer’s swanky hotel lobby.  Fortunately or not, I did find her photo (below) here.

Good thing I flew home FIRST FREAKING CLASS (thank you, frequet flyer miles), bringing justice to my poor woeful life.  The plane sat on the tarmac for an eon because it was overbooked, all the passengers showed up and no one took American Airlines up on their generous offer to put them up for the night at the airport Hilton that’s not only a bit shabby, its air consists primarily of jet fuel.  A few hours later, we circled over eastern Colorado for another eon or two due to storms over Denver.  The great thing about first class?  The leg room?  The airline magazine that’s EXCLUSIVELY available to The Select Few?   Oh my, no.  It’s the flight attendants who kept filling my glass with wine that grew more potable with each glass from before takeoff until touchdown.  I arrived home with a grin as wide as a jumbo jet.

Although I did enjoy meeting some of my fave bloggie buddies, and I cannot thank my awesomest hostess with the mostest enough, I was starving not only for real food (four days of crackers and cheese left me feeling like I’d been stranded on a desert island for a month).  Mostly,  I was starving for my family, dog included.  Never, ever, did I appreciate hugs and hamburgers more.  And I hardly even minded the mounds of laundry and unvacuumed dog hair awaiting me.

Am I crazy for considering attending next summer’s BlogHer?

OH, AND CLICK THE DEALS O’ THE DAY TAB AT THE TOP OF THIS PAGE!

I’m back and I’m fabulous.  Rather than tell you what I ate for lunch, I’ll tell you about my dirty laundry.  Literally, sometimes, because that’s my lot in life.  I’ll tell you how to live better for less without telling you how to make your own soap or how to make family-pleasin’ meals out of entrails.

Oh please, I loathe that kind of blog and frankly, I wonder about their writers’ sanity.

Click on the Deal o’ The Day tab for tips about bargains you can buy.  You know, good stuff that you like but cheaper than you may have expected.  Like soap made by a factory, the way it should be.

Oh, and be sure to check on my Juicy Backstory tab for the basics of why the hell I’m preaching about taking advantage of the recession and buying good stuff cheap.

Yeah, I may be cutting back but I still love to shop and I’m still a material girl.

Which reminds me, YES, I’m still writing for Mamarazzi.  Check us out!

Gotta go to a BlogHer party and be goofy, but in my fabulous on-the-cheap way.

More tomorrow!