The cereal that I eat most days has a big blurb on the back of the box that says, "Just two bowls a day for two weeks and you can lose six pounds!" and I am struck, first, by the sheer lack of ambition in that statement. Maybe it’s because I read too much spam, but who the hell is setting his sights so low that he only wants to lose six pounds? I want to lose 180 pounds fast like the guy in my inbox promised, without having to make any changes to my breakfast or lunch, you filthy, lazy, under-promising purveyors of sugared grain! And if that means I have to get my weight up to 180 to do it, then cue up the Michael Sembello ’cause I’m a weight-losing Maniac.

But the other thing is, and I know this comes as a surprise, this weight-loss claim is a lie. I know this from having conducted extensive scientific studies on the subject. You see, I always eat two bowls, and many days, I eat five or six, first thing in the morning. And I haven’t lost a single pound. They’re damned liars, I say.

But there’s something even more important than lying cereal boxes that I need to get off my chest. (Help! I’m being crushed by cereal boxes lying on my chest!) In 1993, Carmen Electra (you remember her? Fake boobs, Baywatch, Playboy, married Rodman or Navarro or one of those androgynous tattooed guys…) put out an album.

As is typical for me, I have the burden of owning this execrable excuse for an album, in addition to all of the remix-laden maxi-singles for the songs that were released from it. And as if the shame of these confessions is not enough, I also had the misfortune, during the brief period when it amused me to listen to this abysmal thing, to memorize a few of the lines that she rapped (!) on the disc. Oh, did I fail to mention that Carmen Electra’s CD was a rap album? Yea, verily, the soon-to-be Baywatch Beauty kicked the verses. But I digress. The point is, I can spit mad Electra rhymes, from memory. To wit:

Can I get a witness

With this funk with the quickness?

Microphone swiftness, is my business

Checkin’ out the brothers with a funky stride,

If you don’t wanna dance, honey-drip step aside

As I move to the left can I get a little?

As I move to the right can I get a little?

Two times in the center as I kick a riddle

My name is Carmen Electra and I ain’t in the middle.

Yes, I am available for weddings and bar mitzvahs.

The sad part about this lyric, though, is not merely that I can recite it, but that it too is a lie. Carmen’s says "My name is Carmen Electra" but her real name isn’t Carmen Electra. It’s Tara Patrick. But the thing is, she’s clearly set new lows in pure hoochieness, because, as I understand it, her given name was adopted by a porn star.

With apologies to Jeff Foxworthy’s trademark schtick, if your real name is so uncannily effective at conjuring up images of whorishness that it’s been adopted as a porn star’s nom de screw, You Might Be A Ho.

But I don’t begrudge Ms. Patrick Electra her specious sobriquet or her mellifluous mendacity. In fact, I support her decision a decade ago to stick with her story. When I look up from my fourth or fifth bowl of cereal and think to myself, "Ya know, she’s a white girl named Tara Patrick from Cleveland who put out a rap album, and then used her willingness to bare her prosthetic breasts to turn herself into a millionaire," I’m actually somewhat moved. There’s only one thing that I can say when confronted with evidence such unrelentingly impressive accomplishments: God bless America.