Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me_ (And Other Concerns) - Mindy Kaling [68]
They get Jon Hamm to host a very somber Saturday Night Live that night. I can barely do the cameo I was going to do on Weekend Update. Yes, I still do the cameo. I’m sad, but come on—SNL cameo. Seth Meyers can’t muster up the cheerfulness he usually has, either. The day’s horrible events have marred everything.
After my husband’s murder, I spend a lot of time doing push-ups and sit-ups, and I cut my hair very short while staring at myself in the mirror with dead eyes. I look like Mia Farrow at her height, but Indian and crazy toned. I stop enjoying my creature comforts, like junk food and hanging out with my friends, because nothing brings me pleasure but thoughts of revenge. My best friends give me the hurtful nickname “Count of Monte Cristo, But Boring,” because I am bent on vengeance and it is getting tedious. However, because of my alienation and obsession, I am able to get in shape pretty fast, because all food tastes the same to me (like nothing), so I eat skinless chicken breasts and broccoli for every meal without complaint.
Scalia is in Miami. I find this out from a PI I hired who looks like Kris Kristofferson, but more grizzled. I go down there, hit the Kardashians’ Dash boutique for a hot outfit, then infiltrate the South Beach club where I know Scalia hangs out. I am pretending to be a lesbian trainer. (Pretty easy to believe: my body is ripped and I have no interest in men anymore.) I find Scalia snorting coke in the back room, a lair of sorts. He has framed pictures of all the people he’s murdered. I choke him to death with his own mask. When his body goes lifeless in my arms, I’m tempted to pull off the mask to see who it was. But I stop just before I do it. I don’t even care anymore.
Total time taken up by this fantasy: 12 minutes
Total calories burned while having this fantasy: 90
THEY KIDNAP AND MURDER MY HUSBAND ON OUR HONEYMOON
My new husband and I are vacationing in Buenos Aires. Some kind of terrorists who focus on interracial marriage (rare, I know, but terrible) want to make an example of me and my husband. They kidnap him and hold him for ransom, only to shoot him on live television the next day. At that moment, I stop speaking forever. I am a mute. But a mute who goes to the gym, for I run and do lunges and squats until I have no body fat anymore and can do fifty chin-ups and twenty-five pull-ups. Even in my revenge fantasy where all I do is exercise, I can still do only twenty-five pull-ups. Pull-ups are tough, no joke.
I race around Buenos Aires pretending to be a mute Indian tango dancer. But really, I’m trying to find the terrorists who killed my husband, which I do one late summer night. I stab them through the heart with a knife I keep hidden inside my massive hairdo.
When caught and put on trial in Argentina, I decide to represent myself. In my closing argument, I say, “In the country that saw so many disappearances in the 1970s, I’m surprised anyone cares about some terrorists disappearing from existence in the present day.” Then, I disappear.
Total time taken up by this fantasy: 8 minutes
Total calories burned while having this fantasy: 65
I GET THAT WOMAN WHO WAS RUDE TO ME AT SAKS IN TROUBLE
I’m in the Saks Fifth Avenue shoe department. I keep trying to get the attention of a snooty old-school Saks saleslady to try on a pair of Miu Miu pumps. I make the classic mistake of wearing my gym clothes to Saks, so she doesn’t pay any attention to me. I finally approach her and flat-out ask for help, and she says she’ll be right back. I sit down and wait for almost ten minutes and then find out she’s helping a rich-looking white woman who is better dressed than me around the corner in the Louboutin section. I am so pissed I go to Customer Service, on the third floor,