"Lenny and Karyn are dating, and thinking of marriage. He wants the million bucks to buy her a ring (some ring!), even though she says she's 'very difficult.'"

Karyn and I spoke very briefly at the party Thursday night, but more extensively on Friday. What she says in person is basically what she's said on the boards -- I think she felt misrepresented, in the sense that it shocked her how people saw her as picking on Lenny, when I think she feels like she was just trying to be successful at what she was doing. (She also says that he was throwing up constantly throughout the race, not just the time we saw, which makes her look a little less nasty for asking him whether he could make it to the flag. Hee.) She's also quite tall and pretty in person -- I'd say that generally, the women were taller and the men were shorter than I'd thought they'd be from seeing them on television.

"Frank and Margarita are separated, with a baby daughter. They hope to reconcile, and Frank says the race is 'the crossroads of [their] relationship.'"

"Frank is looking for you."

You can imagine my concern.

I think it was Poptart who spoke these fateful words to me. She pulled me through what was, by this time, a very tightly packed crowd. I caught chatterbox's eye. "I'm going to go get killed now," I said to him matter-of-factly. Suddenly, it was upon me. The looming form of the one and only Loud Pushy Frank, all dressed in white. And this is what he said: "I got a bone to pick with you! We're gonna go outside and have a brawl!"

It was at this point that my life flashed before my eyes. It's been a nice life, incidentally, although seventh grade was a little slow and I don't remember very much of my first year of college.

And then he grinned. "Thank you, sweetie! Thank you for all that fucked-up shit you said about me." Now, you'd think there would have to be some kind of slight edge to these words, but that's only because you did not see the nine thousand teeth of Grinning Toothy Frank. No edge at all. Totally warm and sincere, or so it appeared to me. Furthermore, you did not experience the hug of Crushingly Iron-like Frank. Being hugged by Loud Pushy Frank is like being flattened against a major appliance, and I am not kidding. And it happened to me a lot. It's not that I didn't expect him to be a good sport (okay, it's that a little bit); I just didn't expect him to be enthused to this degree. We had a very entertaining discussion about the fact that I was sort of all over the place about him -- one week he was Loud and Pushy, the next week he was Funny and Flirty…it was terribly confusing. I also will tell you quite honestly that at one point, when he was leaning over to talk to me (you wound up in very close quarters with everyone on this particular evening because it was so crowded), I had my hand resting on his arm, and I went right ahead and poked. It was a rock. "Man," I said, poking his bicep. "This whole time, I coulda been picking on you." He shook his head innocently. "I don't have Stompers. I don't have Stompers." Frank? Has Stompers. Be very afraid.