Tonight, my older son came over for dinner and before he left, he decided to check out a reality show called “The Girls Next Door.” I warned him that I saw it once, and it was really depressing.

He insisted on watching it, because he is nothing if not perverse. The show follows the daily lives of three blonde morons who live in the Playboy Mansion with Hugh Hefner. Every other word out of their mouths is “Hef.” In the one episode I saw a few months ago, one of the girls cried about being shut out of a nude shower scene in a Playboy Video. Somehow, Hef learned of her heartbreak and made sure she was in the shower scene.

Tonight, there was more crying. Bridget was upset that the photographer kept picking on her during a photo shoot in which the Bimbo Triad had to look good from the front AND the back at the same time. This had never been done before! It was like sending an astronaut to Neptune! Or curing cancer, only harder, at least for Bridget. In the end, it all worked out.

Of the three women, Holly is the one we all most wanted to see dead. Bridget seemed stupid but harmless, while Kendra looked like a mean Tonya Harding type who would kick you with her ice-skate. Hef seemed mildly senile and very, very old.

There is something so inexplicably tragic about this show, that if you have a shred of humanity you will be saddened by the waste of life it displays. Somewhere, three women once gave birth to daughters who might have grown up to be teachers or salesclerks or bank robbers or radiologists or lawyers or soccer moms or artists. Instead, they all got breast implants and moved into the Playboy Mansion so they could take off their clothes and cry on TV.

When the show was over, my son said he wanted to go kill himself, and I said, “I told you so!” Some of us are just too sensitive for this word, know what I mean?

But if there was a show where you could see Holly getting shot in the head, I would love to watch it.

Today, I had a cup of coffee in a mall, at a Starbucks just opposite a Red Robin Gourmet Burger restaurant. I have actually dined at that restaurant, after shopping myself into a near coma at Nordstrom. The thing I remember most about that meal is how many fat people were crammed into booths all around me.

When I say “fat”,I mean huge enormous whales. I mean really big and fat. I commented on it at the time, and my husband didn’t have much of a response. Today, I watched the huge fat people lined up to eat lunch at Red Robin, while other huge fat people made their exit. This time when I demanded a comment from my husband, he offered the theory that the mall is in a low-income area, and poor people have bad eating habits. I agree that the fat people were dressed in a style one could describe as “ghetto.” But I still don’t quite understand the connection between this restaurant and fat people.

I went to the Red Robin website, which is a whole experience in itself. The phrase “Home of the Bottomless Steak Fries” may be a clue about its core market. Then, I went to a website about “branding” where there was an article about the Red Robin chain of restaurants. I learned that the restaurants are positioned in malls or other areas of high activity. Do malls attract fat people, or do fat people attract restaurants?   I still haven’t figured anything out yet.

But the branding article noted that the staff at Red Robin is encouraged by management to give its patrons “Unbridled Service,” along with a fidelity to the Red Robin “core values”:Honor, Integrity, Seeking Knowledge and Having Fun. These values are supposed to be carried out in “Unbridled Acts.” I went back to the company website, clicked on careers, and ended up feeling incredibly grateful.   I don’t have to work at Red Robin, and I’m not fat!   Yet.

Thank you, Jesus.