I stopped blogging for a little while a few weeks back, and a number of people inquired to make sure I was okay, you know, mentally. My friend Joe, who suspected the presidential election had made me go off the deep end, worried, "I haven't heard from you...you were blogging about turning in to a zombie...I thought, 'Maybe she's taking this really hard.'"

Actually, I was sick, and then I got sick again, only much, much worse. But since you asked--thank you--there is something that has been driving me insane the last few weeks. And now I'm going to tell you about it.

First, if you don't live in Los Angeles, I need to give you a little background information. Because if you live in a small town, for example, a movie opening is not such a big deal. There will be TV ads announcing the movie, yes, but the movie may not even be playing in your town on opening weekend!

Movie openings are not like that here in Los Angeles. Here they are major cultural and news events. Here, it's like the publicity company for every movie being released sets up shop inside your asshole so they can make sure you know their movie is coming--that's how invasive it is. It's constant non-stop hype for weeks prior to the event.

So it is that I began to see this billboard for the forthcoming Fat Albert movie on my daily drive to work some--I don't know--six weeks ago. The location is the entrance to the Fox Studio. For a sense of scale, notice the SUV at the bottom of the picture, and the regular sized billboard advertising Kinsey next to it. I can see it from three long blocks away.

This abomination was burrowing its way into my skull for weeks when, all of a sudden, there were more of them.

One day I left my house and drove onto Venice Blvd., a major cross street near me, and started to turn right: huge Fat Albert billboard. I abruptly decide to turn left: another Fat Albert billboard. Beneath the enormous Fox Studio billboard, there is now also a Fat Albert poster on the side of a bus stop.

It reminds me of the time I visited Moscow before the fall of the Soviet Union, and everywhere I looked there were billboards and posters of Lenin staring back at me. Except here, in the country that won the Cold War, it's Fat Albert that gazes down on us workers like an overstuffed Big Brother.

That is not even the worst of it. What bothered me so much about the Fat Albert billboard was the terrible moment I knew would have to come. And come it did, while I was innocently watching a bit of Entertainment Tonight. I was hoping for a word or two about the Michael Jackson trial, only to be sucked in further with the promise of news about Ellen DeGeneres's recent breakup with her girlfriend in an upcoming segment.

Then the moment I had dreaded came: the appearance of Bill Cosby, offering his sentimental perspective on the movie. Please, please, please let this not be a comeback. A girl can only take so much.