Journal 2.21 Hospital Stay - Prognosis

So I figured I'd update everyone. You have all been so cool and supportive and concerned these past 5 days, so here's the news in one mass telling.

I'm all good. As long as I do what I have to do.

My heart is pumping at a slower rate than most. Usual pumping is 60%. Mine is at 40 %. They said it happens to some people and is nothing to worry about. It will be fine on meds and getting healthy.

There will be no heart attack or bypass surgery, unless I go out and do the reverse of what the doctors tell me.

My sleep apnea will be solved by sleeping with this machine and a sleep study.

All of it though, will be solved by healthy living.

This has been awake up call. I am lucky.

I admit, I was scared and it sucked being here, especially for this, but I am out of immediate danger and am being sent home tomorrow with a new game plan to take care of the situation.

Thanks to all you guys, especially the cute nurses. ;)

MP

Journal 2.19.11 - Hospital Stay

I am in the hospital.

I usually end up in one once a year, mainly for some stressed out breakdown. Usually in LA. Again, that is part of the reason I came back to Boston for a few, and where do I end up? The hospital.

All's good for the most part though. This was a legit situation. On Friday afternoon I was feeling some shortness of breath so I went to the ER where they do tests and decided that I needed to stay the night for observation and tests. Fine. Sometimes a one nighter in a hospital isn't so bad, especially when your hot Spanish Nurse, Flora, is super nice to you and sneaks you extra Saltines late night.

I didn't get much sleep last night. Ya never do in these places. I would imagine hospitals and prisons are shitty places to catch some shut eye.

They come in and look at you every hour and this is where they found out the reason I am still here.

My heart stopped for 10 seconds while sleeping. I was clinically dead for a moment. This explains all the fucked up dreams I have. It also explains why I get no sleep. I have sleep apnea. This is when you literally stop breathing while sleeping. It's pretty dangerous, and luckily they caught it here.

They sent me to Tufts Medical in downtown to do the sleep study and stress test. Cuter girls. Better food. Less TV channels.

I had to miss work. 80's dance night.

Friends have been supportive. Love them all.

They will do a few more tests, and I will have to sleep with that fighter pilot mask on my face that pumps air into my lungs so I don't snore or, more importantly, STOP BREATHING.

Now all the girls that wore earplugs in bed with me or all the roommates that lost sleep can rejoice.

Bottom line is this is another issue related to my weight and lifestyle. Yes, I am here and dealing with it, but again, it has to get better. I have to make it better. Keep eating well, and working out.

If I don't I'll be back here with a heart that stops again, for good this time.

Cheap Eats

For me, food has always gone hand and hand with money. I know it's like this for everyone, and that we live in a monetary world, but my experience has always been that little to no money means shitty, unhealthy eating.

Some of my earliest memories of food involve the McDonald's Playland. That towering, colorful maze of shapes and slides gives me a tingle even now. I remember many dinners at McDonald's. Feasts of cheeseburgers and McNuggets, topped off with 2-for-$1.00 apple pie desserts. We ate a lot of fast food then. We also ate a lot of buffets like the one at Sizzler. Sizzler had the best around. They had a huge salad bar that was filled with tons of non-salad items, which is great for a salad-hating kid. They even had cookies and ice cream bars. The quantities of food you could get at fast food joints and buffets was perfect if you were poor, and we were just that. Poor.

Like almost 57% of the families in this country, mine was below the poverty line. My mother was a single mom, working as a waitress, feeding us kids on food stamps and a prayer. She did all this with diabetes on her plate.

For the better part of five years we lived in a motel while my father was in prison. Eventually we received government housing. It was a shit hole, but it was our shit hole.

The eating out fit our lifestyle and budget, but now we had an actual place of our own, even if it was the projects. We could prepare food on a stove, and not the hot plate we had in the motel. Money was still tight though, so it didn't improve the meal situation all that much. Between two jobs and making sure us kids weren't fucking up, she didn't have much time to make a Norman Rockwell home situation. She tried, though. She made veggies. We had fried cauliflower. Fried broccoli. We had liver and fried chicken. We had lots of red meat and desserts galore. We just were not eating all too well. I mean, this was the 70's and 80's, so no one was on the PC health craze they are now, and it was also the east coast, not California with its hippie garden cuisine. We ate hard, cold and rough. Make no mistake, though; my mother worked hard and provided for us. She loved and supported us as best as a depressed, broken woman doing it on her own could.

My bad food habits carried on into my adult life, where I had no excuses. I continued to eat bad and it caught up with me. I moved to LA and became really broke and really hungry.

When you're lonely and looking for a career in Hollywood it can get tough to stay above water. Basic survival becomes an everyday struggle. You work day jobs and spend the rest of the time being broke and auditioning. The things you took for granted at home become little laughing demons following you around, dancing all over your hopes and dreams, while forming your fears. You can come close to or actually sleep in your car out there if you're not careful. Cheap eats become not only a comfort, but a means to survival.

In LA, fast food joints are on every corner. I do mean every corner. It's an epidemic out there. I think more people die of drive-thru than drive-by. The streets of Hollywood are slick with vegetable oil. The list of places is endless, with any kind of cuisine you can imagine. Hot dogs (including fried and chili). Pizza. Mexican. Burgers and Chinese (sometimes in the same place). The burgers are the best, though. LA reigns supreme for burger joints. Carl's Jr. McDonald's. BK, but most importantly, the infamous one-two punch of In 'N Out and Fat Burger.

The menus are undeniable. You can lunch for $3 on these value menus. Dinner can $2 or $3 or $4 if you wanna splurge, and why not? It's a buck! You can get full on this. It's quick, tasty and easy on the wallet. I like my fast food like I like my women. Not to mention, it fits the constant on the go lifestyle. Nowhere else have I experienced such a go-go-go way of life. Work. Auditions. Meetings. Maybe some social life if you're lucky. When you're in traffic, and late for something, a 69-cent burrito sure does the trick to keep you going. It's the kind of fuel you need. The kind you opt for most days.

This isn't just for on the go fast food eating. Even at home, when you're broke, you eat like crap, like we did when I was a kid. Many a night in my small, shitty studio apartment in the middle of smelly Hollywood, did I eat pasta, and pasta and more pasta. I have eaten more pasta than an Italian living in the mountains of Florence, Italy. Pasta = carbs, which = fat. You can get it cheap though, and lots of it. It's like 80 cents a a pound. That one box is your lunch and dinner most days, or if you're me, just lunch. Lunch #1.

You become inventive, too. Take a 10 cent pack of Ramen Noodles, some stolen packs of soy sauce from the Chinese joint, and fry that shit up. Bang - you got welfare Lo Mein.

The Ramen is the best deal. You can eat 2 - 3 packs per meal. You can buy in bulk too. I would hit the Smart and Final every few days for my $6.00 case of sodium.

There's all sorts of cheap eats at the supermarket that will kill your insides. Fifty-nine cent mac & Cheese. Ninety-nine cent two liter bottles of generic sugar-filled soda or shitty-tasting diet.

Notice there's no greens or real protein. That shit is too pricey. That's some Whole Foods country club shit, yo.

While this food is cheap and fueling, it's killing you. Between all the sugar, sodium and chemicals, it's putting on so much weight and handing you every other disease you can imagine. Also, the food makes you so depressed that you don't wanna go on some hike or go to the gym. Gym? If you can't afford good food, you can't afford the gym.

One of the opportunities you have to eat well is at someone else's house. Dinner parties are always good for some healthy, clean foods. Fun foods. Foods that cost more than 99 cents and won't kill you. You go to these parties and eat all you can. You load up and if you're lucky, the hosts send you home with a doggie bag.

I know I can figure out ways to eat better, and maybe I have been eating like shit as some self sabotaging thing or some weird connection to my mother. God knows I have tons of those kinds of issues. The bottom line, like with all these problems and demons, is that I need to figure out ways to do better. To be better. A better me in eating and all things health. As much as I secretly like cheap eats, I like living more.

Fat Guy Gets Girl

WARNING - THIS ESSAY CONTAINS LANGUAGE THAT MAY NOT BE SUITABLE FOR ALL READERS. CONTAINS NUDITY AND SEXUAL SITUATIONS.

I get laid.

I do. Seriously. I get laid. Despite my enormous size I have actually had, and somehow continue to have relations with women.

I'm not bragging. This is in no way a bragging thing that I am doing here, but I have had my share of sex. Most of it was while in relationships. I'm not usually a casual sex guy. I'm rarely a one night stand stud (not by choice. I've tried).

I know what you're thinking. "How does this sloth get laid?" "I mean, look at him. He's gigantic!" All true, but once upon a time I wasn't the lethargic animal laying in his crumb- covered bed writing this now. In my teens and early twenties I was somewhat thin, trim and rather dashing if I say so myself. I had girls around that wanted to hang out and some of them I even managed to bed by using Jedi mind tricks and wine coolers. Mainly wine coolers. I'm not lying; I have pictures to prove it. Not of the hooking up, but of me as a younger, thinner Mark Phinney. I even had a girlfriend at the time that I made mediocre love to for a number of years. Poor girl. She seemed to enjoy it, but then again we were young and she hadn't had many other lovers yet, or proper sex with a real man at that point.

Around age 24, I moved to LA to pursue an acting/writing career and met a cute little firecracker that had just graduated USC. I wound up dating her after some stalking and next thing I knew I was in a relationship and in love. Around this time I was getting bigger due to being broke in Hollywood and living of dollar menus at fast food joints. I wasn't as big I am now. I was chubby. Still cute. I wasn't tipping the scales at the carnival yet.

Sex with USC Stephanie was more of the same Mark Phinney brand of mediocre. I still didn't really know what I was doing. I was young and had only been with a few girls, but I wasn't out hooking up every night like some dudes I knew. They were on the streets plying their trade. On the job training, therefore getting that experience I wasn't.

What I did develop with Stephanie was my oral skills. Earmuffs.

She always wanted me to go down on her and I enjoyed it, and still do (ladies?). I even got to be pretty damn good at it. This became the highlight of our sessions. I was still kind of agile back then. I could perform different sorts of sexual positions and didn't run out of breath as quickly as now. I can go a few times still. It's never my libido. It's my lungs.

Even back then, Stephanie was concerned about my weight. She brought it up several times and I read it in her journal. She had lost her father to an early heart attack and was fearful for me to go down the same road. She took me to her father's grave site. It was an overcast, windy day in Santa Monica. The chill from the beach was only matched by the one I felt as I stood with this person that I loved so much as she wept in my arms. I had yet to feel loss like she had. I do now. To this day it's one of the truest moments I ever shared with another human being.

It's not just about sex though.

This essay is called Fat Guy Gets Girl (or FGGG for the nerd abbreviators), not Fat Guy Fucks Girl.

I've been in my fair share of relationships. I'm a relationship guy. Not only have I managed to have sex with the girls, but managed to get a few to stick around afterward. It's circular. Sex sometimes means relationship and vice versa.

The breakup with Stephanie was tough. It was around Christmas and I was working at The Gap in the mall. She left me for a Latin stud named Javier that she worked with at Paramount Studios. I ate my through that heartbreak and gained even more weight. Trust me, being a fatty in LA is tough and looking for love as one is even tougher. Then one day I fell ass backwards into some loving in the form of my voluptuous Nubian princess upstairs neighbor Rashanda.

Rashanda was big. Massasa was black. Rashanda was big and black and smart, cute and sexy. Rashanda. What a name. Her name reminded me of something queen-like. As if she was the leader of a bountiful tribe of man-eaters.

Like I said, she lived upstairs from me and my roommates. We used to throw big parties and she was always there. One night we were both pretty wasted and I somehow ended up in her apartment at 2AM looking in her freezer for more vodka. She said she had some. I know now that was just to lure her prey up to her cave to go in for the kill. The next thing I knew she had thrown me against her sink and was sliding her tongue down my throat. After she inhaled my soul she pulled back, looked me in the eye and said, "I'm ready for some mad crazy fucking." She said those exact words. No lie. Who was I to disagree?

So that is what we did. Mad crazy fucking. All night long at that. It was one of the most insane, electric, sexual nights of my life. She kept me in that apartment all night long performing acts I didn't know I was capable of. She was a hurricane. A force to be reckoned with. She was Mother Nature meets the Kama Sutra. My brain was bedazzled. She had me speaking in tongues. Her appetite for sex was as big as her one for food. When I wheezed, she cracked the whip. She wouldn't let me let up. I knew I was in for a ride when she looked me in the eye and "Get that black pussy." Fuck.

This went on for the better part of two years. Pretty much every night, too. It was right upstairs. I'm a guy. How could that not be a perfect scenario? I mean, what the fuck, right? I admit that I had it good. It was a built-in booty call. Most dudes dream of such easy access.

Every night was a different adventure. See, Rashanda wasn't ashamed of her size or personality. She was actually much healthier than I was, in every way. She exercised and ate well and was mentally balanced. She was just a big girl. I was the one who was a mess, yet I played it like she was the crazy neighbor chick that wanted me. We played different sexual games like fake rape, slave girl and voodoo princess. Her apartment was a darkly-lit, incense-smelling cave of colorful candles and funky velvet art on the walls. Her bathroom was that type that has 25 different types of soaps from lavender to raspberry. It was all medicine woman sexy from the beads hanging from her bedroom entrance to the bossa nova playing on the stereo when we made love.
It was a good deal... until it wasn't.

I didn't realize it, but Rashanda was starting to like me for more than just sex. She was looking for something deeper, and so did I, just not with her. Rashanda wanted me to be her boyfriend. This was evident when she bought me a pager (1999) for me to keep on me for when she wanted to knock boots. Look, she was a lovely girl. I would have been lucky to have her. Like I said, she was a cool chick, but I'm a fucked-up person. I didn't want to date a big girl. It's funny, though - look at me! Who the fuck am I? Do I think I am some svelte WB teen star?!

I kept having getting these images of the two fatties dating, doing dating things together like squeezing in a rowboat as I serenade her with my ukulele "By the light of the silvery moon." Squeezing into a roller coaster at Disneyland. Having an overstocked picnic at the park. NO! I wasn't having it. I would not be in a heavy relationship so people could look at us and say "Oh, good for them."

Of course this all ended badly.

The sex came to an end and Rashanda ended up hating me. I felt bad. I'm not that asshole that does shit like that. Rashanda eventually moved away. I saw her a few years later on an episode of Entourage.

Last I heard, she lost the weight. I still haven't. Looks like she got the last laugh.

Throughout my twenties and the decade I put on more and more weight, but still somehow managed to score chicks. I maintained having women in my life (not always a good thing). I dated here and there, but mostly and most surprisingly, had sex. It came in all different shapes, sizes, looks and ages. I slept with cougars, virgins and even indigent women. I didn't turn anyone down, really. Some I liked, even loved. Some were just fun, cool sex. There were cool girls. Crazy girls. For around five years straight I got laid and ate my way through it all.

I've had every strange, sexy, loving and fucked up situation you can imagine. From the heights of joy and sexual conquests to the deeply horrifying lows of breakups and tragic betrayals. Some are worthy of mention. Most are not.

The times I actually fell for a girl were the worst. It was always a harsh realization that she didn't want to be with the fatty either. Here I was kicking big girls out of my life, when the thin girls were doing the same exact thing to me that I did to Rashanda. They didn't mind dating fat, but wanted to marry thin. Karma's a bitch. Sex with me was okay, but they didn't want to be seen with the hefty dude either. It was private and no one had to know. No one had to see me with her. Not her friends or co-workers. It could be kept private. Of course the fat guy doesn't complain when he's getting sex from a hot girl.

Whenever I'd be laying in bed after sex with a hot girl I would look at myself and catch sight of how big I am. If I was disgusted, I can't imagine what they were thinking. "Man, this guy is huge." Some would even tell me, in a roundabout way. They would offer diet tips or exercise ideas. Subtle.

Some girls obviously liked the girth. My bigger body on theirs, though as time went on, and I got bigger, I became a lazier lover. Everything I learnt in Rashanda's hedonistic sex den started to fade. Sure I did my work in the pregame, but then I'd let them get on top and take us to the fourth quarter. It's called being a flat-backer.

The bigger girls don't really mind, and I've slept with some big girls. The bigger girls appreciate me and the work I put in as a bigger man. I do try. It's just as I get older and fatter, it makes it more difficult to perform. I still manage to bring the woman to heights of ecstasy, but it's a haul, I tell ya.

It's only going to get harder too. To have sex or even get girls to have sex with me. I have to lose the weight, or even what I been getting away with is going to disappear. Let's face it, this is about more than sex with big or small chicks.

In the end, until I lose this weight and heal, I will never be with the person I want to be with, be it big, small or whatever. In return no one will ever truly want to be with me either, and this isn't crying in my beer. This is true for one reason. The reason I have been writing about this. The subject I been dealing with. The Weight. In the end, the weight means so much more than just the weight itself. It's self-respect and self-love and until I achieve those things, no relationship will work for me in a truly healthy way. No true love will be found or complete. Sure, I can get laid, but until I fix myself, I won't be truly happy with sex (well, yea, I'll be happy with sex) or love or, most importantly, myself.

FULL DISCLOSURE - I HOPE THIS ONE GETS ME LAID.

The List: A List Of Things That Would Be Different If I Wasn't Overweight

1. My confidence would go through the roof.

2. I could wear the clothes I really want to wear instead of XXL. (that are still tight)

3. I wouldn't think people were snickering about me behind my back while eating gigantic amounts of food at the coffee shop.

4. I wouldn't get winded putting on my shoes.

5. I wouldn't wake up with sleep apnea every night.

6. I could get the girls I want.

7. I could walk more than a couple minutes without aching in my knees, feet and ankles.

8. I could face my ex girlfriend after all these years.

9. I would be pleased with photos of myself.

10. I wouldn't be called Michael Moore when I have a beard and wear a baseball hat.

11. I wouldn't feel like the big fatty on the plane, squeezed into my seat, asking for two peanut packs.

12. I wouldn't want to sit down all the time. (Well, maybe I still would.)

13. I wouldn't be jealous of my in shape friends.

14. Gay men might take an interest in me.

15. I would take of my shirt during sex.

16. I wouldn't have two chins and a gigantic gut.

17. I wouldn't have to hear people's dieting advice anymore. (Freely given to me by the way.)

18. I wouldn't hate myself.

19. I would fill the empty voids with something other than food.

20. There would be no more food wrappers in my car or bedroom floor.

21. I wouldn't gently eat salads on dates. (And then hit a drive thru afterwards for Big Macs.)

22. I wouldn't be obsessed with this weight or all this writing about said weight.

23 I could write about being thin and handsome.

24. I could have sex without running out of energy halfway through.

25. I could go hiking with my friend and his 3 year old.

26. Little kids wouldn't call me fat.

27. I wouldn't have to fight myself to drive past Taco Bell.

28. I'd be the handsome leading man.

29. I wouldn't be called "Big Guy."

30. People wouldn't be shocked after not seeing me for a while. Or they would if I lost this weight.

31. I wouldn't feel embarrassed at the gym.

32. I'd go to the gym.

33. I wouldn't stare at myself in the mirror and feel like a disgusting animal.

34. I wouldn't gorge on a large extra cheese pizza after midnight.

35. I wouldn't have Diabetes.

36. I wouldn't have high blood pressure.

37. I wouldn't have gout.

38. I wouldn't have high cholesterol.

39. I wouldn't be in the morbidly obese category.

40. I wouldn't die.

41A. Oh, come on, you didn't think I'd leave ya on such a sad note did ya? Finally, I would turn myself into a hairy werewolf and ravage the Victorian countryside by the moons light, but I wouldn't kill for blood, I would fuck. I would fuck all the fair maidens of the gypsy village and then find my way to the castle (where my true identity lives as Lord Harold Butler) and take the virginity of the beautiful Ms. Jane. I'd be known as The Fuck Wolf. The wolf that fucks when the sun goes down. Make no mistake though, someone would call out from afar, "There goes that fat wolf trying to get laid again." Yep.

Journal - Morbidly Obese?! WTF!

January 2011

So I have decided to make this a more updated site including journal entries and everyday situations related to the subject.

I told myself I had to be honest with this thing. No bullshit, even though I fall into that trap often, I'm going to try, from here on in, not to do that. I hope.

I need to put this stuff out there in it's purest, most real form. The weight and all it relates too.

This is part of the reason I had to get out LA. for a while. I had to deal with my health. The weight. The weight connects all the dots. Most of my shit is rooted in the weight. Since I've been in Boston I have accomplished most of what I set out to do, except for the weight loss. This is the final piece to the puzzle and I have to tackle it. Not just tackle it, but take it down hard, at the 10 yard line. (A friend of mine once told me not to refer to myself in the athletic sense.)

The most recent reminder was a recent conversation with my doctor. She told me I was morbidly obese. MORBIDLY OBESE! WTF! I mean, I knew I was obese, but morbidly? I thought that was reserved for guys stuck in bed, weighing 500lbs. that have to be airlifted out of their homes.

This horrified me. Partly. The other half me wished I was filming the conversation, cause I thought my friends would get a kick out of it, but it's not funny.

See. This is what I mean. This is not cute anymore. I am not the cuddly, chubby cutie anymore. I am the creepy MORBIDLY OBESE guy now. Oh man. I had crossed the line.

Now let me explain. Morbidly obese just means your Body Mass Index is a certain number, so you fall into a certain bracket. It's a title. A number. A category. It doesn't mean your a rhino roaming the fields.

No, I am not subject matter for a Discovery Channel series (yet), but it's a warning sign. Fuck warning sign. It's Code Red. Mach 4. I am at war, with my body. This is Red Dawn time. I'm a Wolverine vs. the Russians (they represent my weight.)

This is the warning sign? Not the gout or Diabetes or being called Michael Moore. How many fucking "warning signs" do I need? Maybe my doctor telling me I was at risk for a heart attack will actually keep me from a steak and cheese later tonight. Maybe.

I am supposed to be home here in Boston, dealing with this. I had the excuse in LA of being broke and living the writer/actor lifestyle, eating when and where you could just to get by.

That doesn't fly here. I have so many healthy options, and though I have cut out the fast food and regular soda, it's other foods here that do me in. A different brand of indulgence. Now it's chicken parm, big Italian family dinners, pizza and cannoli. Still, I don't need to eat it. I admit, when I first got home for this sabbatical, I needed to heal and feel human, so I ate all my favorite foods. It was comforting. I'd say I'm pretty fucking comfortable now. So comfortable I am still eating them.

I also have to get to a gym. Stat. I joined one, and blew it off. There is no reason why I shouldn't be going. How many episodes of Cheers can I watch instead of being on a treadmill? I even bought sneakers, that are sitting in my closet covered in dust. Velcro orthopedic footing. Fat or old man sneakers. The kids are not wearing these. Even the gym I wanna join has Pizza Mondays! Pizza Mondays? Probably not the gym for me. See. Bad decisions.

I have a stress test next week to see what's up with my heart. Not that I need a test to tell me I need to change my rituals, but hey - at least I'll be on a treadmill.

Stay tuned for the results.

Confessions of an FFG

FFG. A friend of mine coined that phrase in regards to me. I used to be an FFG. I may still be one. Who knows at this point in my life. What is an FFG?

FFG - FUNNY FAT GUY. I am still a guy and fat. Funny? I don't know. I may have lost some of my swagger, but FFG still seems to stick in certain circles.

I don't know how I became an FFG. It just happened. I gained weight, continued comedy and BANG - I earned my wings. My chubby wings.

I was an FFG for years in LA and even before that, in NY and Boston. I suppose all my life. An FFG is the fat funny guy that is always the cut-up in school and the crazy dude in college that runs naked across campus. This clown usually goes to NY or LA and tries to become a comedian performing stand up, sketch and/or improv.

That was the road I took. My goals were the same as Belushi (John, not Jim) and Farley. I wanted to be like those big guys. My heroes. They were larger than life on many levels, both good and bad.

After training at Improv Olympic (Farley's alma mater), I performed comedy in Los Angeles for years and eventually started my own sketch troupe that started achieving the goals I had set for it. We started to get heat and were taking off. It was everything I dreamt about.

All the while I was the FFG of these groups. I was the one taking off his clothes, dancing around like a fool and leading the party afterward. I even got laid off this, as big as I was. I mean, I wasn't enormous or anything, but I was definitely obese.

I wasn't famous or anything either, but people knew who I was and who the groups I was in were. We were getting some heat and I was having the time of my life. It was all in the moment. It was a great time. The weight wasn't an issue. It didn't worry me. It was my calling card. People wanted to see the FFG do fucked up funny shit in the show.

Thing is, I wasn't that fat at the time. I was just fat enough to be in the club.

Around that time I wrote and performed a solo stage show - "Fat Broke & Horny." It was a one-man show about my issues with women, weight and work. All true memoir stuff. I crafted it into a humorous piece showcasing how I could laugh at all my demons. Like the sketch, I rode this for a while as well.

Problem was, I was actually getting fatter and way out of shape.

Then the demons got real. I realized (with the help of my therapist) that I was creating my issues. I wasn't putting a stop to them out of fear of losing my FFG moniker. It was all I knew. It was my identity in the comedy world that I was trying to break into. Problem was, everything I made fun in my act or that I laughed at so easily was coming true in my actual life. My actual identity as Mark Phinney, not the FFG from "Fat Broke & Horny" or the sketch shows. I wasn't separating the two.

This was a problem because people now wanted the FFG all the time. Then I felt I had to stay the FFG to please these desires, because - I admit it - I thrive off it. I wanted to make people laugh, so I did what I had to, including staying in this FFG skin. It got old though. I got tired of putting on a show 24 hours a day.

I was getting tired of being cast as that guy. I was just being given those roles. If someone thought of a funny fat guy bit, it was me they came to. If someone had a part in their project for a funny fatty, it was I that would fill the spot. It was depressing. It's not that I wanted to be the cool, lean leading man either. Wasn't that at all. I just didn't wanna be known for funny fat anymore. I started turning down bigger roles that could have elevated my career. I even turned down my own show at one point because I didn't want to be the fat guy on TV. It was a reality show, but still, it could have put some money in my broke ass pockets.

I was putting on weight and getting sick. Gout and diabetes had already taken shape. I had aches and pains and sleep apnea. I couldn't get up and down stairs. I was becoming bad in bed and would lose my breath just standing up. I was fat, and it wasn't funny anymore. My alter ego was taking over and taking aim at my body and mind. I was becoming the guy I laughed at. I created a monster. My own Frankenstein, sewn together from the plump bodies of my FFG forbears.

The FFG had taken over and he was not a happy person. He is secretly trying not to be the FFG by dieting and joining gyms (all of which he never follows through on or tells anyone about). I had a true inner battle going on between mind and body. Again, this is deep-rooted shit. That fear that you will lose all that made you who you were. That was gaining you opportunities. That made people laugh and be friends with you. This is all, of course, bullshit, but when you are a dysfunctional creative type, it's all you know.

I was less the FFG now, and more the DFD (Depressed Fat Dude).

Every day something new would be a large bell tolling for me to wake to this situation: from career halt, to feeling like shit, to friends and family reminding me I'm only human and, more importantly, I didn't need to be the FFG.

Don't get me wrong, I loved the FFG. The history behind it and the fact that I got to be one. Problem is, as I said before, the FFG is usually a mess of melancholy, anxiety and low- to no self- confidence. That is why you keep the FFG mask on. It's your shield against failure. Your force field against having to actually face your reality.

My life was filled with the loss of a relationship, money and career struggles that led to stress and drugs. I was going to be the only un-famous FFG to die like the famous ones, from food, pain meds and a broken heart.

What was next? The Biggest Loser?

There was only one thing to do. Not be the FFG anymore.

I stopped going to the auditions, putting on the stage shows and got down with my writing persona. I began to write about the FFG and it has helped a good deal. I'm still not out of the woods, and still love my inner FFG, and who knows - maybe I will go back to that guy. Just a more balanced, healthier FFG. Belushi and Farley couldn't swing it, but maybe I can.