Gulander

I've spent most of the weekend questioning the existence of God, in a way that didn't happen during during the darkest periods of my life.

Even when all the tragic personal life stuff went down in recent years, I was always able to cling to a core belief in a Higher Power who may not have hooked me up when I wanted, but who was always right on time, somehow. All that changed yesterday morning, when I opened a local paper and read about Ben Stiller spending a week in Gulu, Uganda recently, hanging out with kids in a Save the Children project.

Fate can be a really lackadaisically random BITCH most times! I mean, it's hard enough to even admit you're a fan of movies like "The Cable Guy," and "Zoolander," and "Meet the Parents" after a certain point in life (And did you see how buff Ben was in "Tropic Thunder'?? Me likey...). People want you to be all serious and deep when you get to be my age, but that maturity stuff never completely gelled for me. I just like to laugh 'til I choke most times, usually at really asinine stuff. I can appreciate nuanced satire, too, but generally speaking, I enjoy a rip-snorting, juvenile comedy like the ones Ben Stiller directs and stars in. (I've drawn the line at "Night at the Museum 1 and 2" so far, but figure I'll eventually catch 'em on cable.)

Anyway, suffice it to say I'm a really ginormous fan of Ben Stiller. So to sit there and read that he had spent a week in Gulu...TWO YEARS AFTER I LEFT.... was just too breathtakingly cruel. My closest brushes with stardom during my Northern Uganda stint were having lunch at the Boma Hotel while Ewan McGregor was staying there doing research for a movie, and talking to a guy who had rounded up SUV's for one of the Google founders to travel to an IDP camp.

If I were still living in Gulu, I'd have found a way to hang out with Ben Stiller. I'd have tried not to stalk him, or anything, but we would have met. And I'm pretty sure I could have wrested him away from that bony Marcia Brady look-alike wife of his, too. We'd have definitely clicked.

But NOOOOOOOO, I have to read about him spending a week in the hell-hole I lived in for seven months!! And if I'm really honest with myself, I'm also pissed because he'll probably make a movie about it, based on that week's visit, and film part of it on a Hollywood sound set and the rest in rural Mississippi (the closest thing to Gulu America has to offer.)

Yo, Big Guy in the Sky, dude, throw a sister a bone down here......