I like to bake. I guess that’s obvious if you’ve been reading for a while now, but it’s not necessarily because I love sweets (and don’t get me wrong, I do).

It is truly the best form of therapy, especially if you do late in the evening, watching The Nanny while trying to mix your batter and then subsequently fill the house with intoxicating baking smells at 2 a.m.

It’s glorious and I will tell you why.

Because you can go through the worst day in the world, a day that doesn’t make sense, a day that makes you cry, makes you wish you could dig your head in a hole because nothing is going right and people are annoying and you wish you could transport them all to a barren island so they can just revel in their annoying-ness and then hopefully die off and then you can come home, get together a few ingredients, mix them together and know at the end of the day, that if you follow the directions and put some love into it, you will have made something good, and that’s enough to make everything in the world seem better.

Honest.

That’s the same reason why I love to write, although I would compare journalism more to making macarons or boston cream pie than to your regular muffin.  It’s grueling, you’ll want to give up, but if you keep pushing on you realize that when it’s finished, you are beaming from ear to ear. And that’s the type of fire you need to have, whether you’re reporting or baking, or just even living really.

Creating new things to eat or read is all I need to melt away all the stress in my life. At least until it appears again, anyway.

“I get satisfaction of three kinds. One is creating something, one is being paid for it and one is the feeling that I haven’t just been sitting on my ass all afternoon.” – William F. Buckley, Jr.

Despite my penchant for foreign and independent films, my piano training and love of listening to opera while cleaning, I have a special place in my heart for mediocrity. What I mean by that is when things are so bad that they spontaneously combust and switch sides to become INCREDIBLY AWESOME.

This is the reason that I recommend you go watch the masterpiece that is “Blame it On Rio.” I’m still mad at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for not giving credit where credit is due – Blame it On Rio is  cinematic gold. This is also the reason that I have spent many a Saturday night watching “Cheaters” with Joey Greco and his soul patch beckoning at me through the television screen. And also why I recognize the existent of Arsenium – Moldovan popstar and dreamboat.

These are the reasons that there’s something wrong with me.

My love of mediocre arts and entertainment is precisely one of the reasons why I indulge myself in the kitsch and camp world of Bollywood. If you thought the Western world was cheesy enough, you have absolutely nothing until you’ve seen an Indian film. Preferably with Abhishek Bachchan.

I am not a fan of people who don’t “get” mediocrity or cringe at the thought of watching “Real Housewives of Atlanta” (Who gonna check me boo?) or renting a too bad for its own good 80s flick. It’s nice to be low brow once in a while. It’s nice to indulge in guilty pleasures and watch the crappiest television show that’s on at the moment.

I have to mention though, that this special category that of awesomely bad or badly awesome pop culture does not apply to phenomenons like “The Hills” or “The Bachelor” or the Keenen Ivory Wayans movie franchise. The aforementioned are not awesomely bad, they are just plain bad, mostly because they either fail at being awesomely bad or they think they’re some kind of classy institution. Anything that shoots Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt straight to fame and into our houses is nothing but evil. And I didn’t even have to look up how to spell the names of that overexposed fame-whoring couple, that’s how bad they’ve permeated by brain.

So skip the really bad MTV shows and watch something like COPS. Oh COPS. I can’t get enough of it. Another personal favorite of mine? The Nanny.

I am probably one of five people on Earth that relishes in Fran Drescher’s excruciatingly annoying cackle. Mistahhhh Shefieeeeeeeeeeeeeeld. Love it.

The bottom line is, embrace the cheese. You can do it. Embrace it, love it, knit a sweater for it. You wont regret your choice, because really, life doesn’t need to be taken so seriously, mediocrity, while bad, is a good thing.