Ah, the post-holiday period, where everyone is 15 pounds heavier than the fatties we were before the holidays. And trust me, we're fatties.

Don't be suprised, either. Of course America is getting fatter. We start early. How many of you grew up hearing, "You can't eat desert until you finish your meal." Not only is there an incentive for over-eating, but it's pie? Your kid is three forkfuls away from his own episode of Maury Povich and you're rewarding him with pie.

I saw one kid on that show who was five-years-old and weighed 230 pounds. That's ten pounds heavier than the fighting weight of Mike Tyson. How does that happen? This kid didn't gain 200 pounds overnight.

He had to be about 3-foot-2, 180, and his mother is going, "You know, he's looking a little chunky. Maybe I should call the people from Maury Povich." I'm no Dr. Spock, but let me tell you something, mother of the year, when you're husband is getting hand-me-downs from your five-year-old something is amiss in the kitchen.

They interview this woman, and she says, "You know, I notice he always eats more chocolate pudding than he should." Here's an idea - stop serving the kid pudding! He's five - he doesn't know how to make pudding. I'm 25 and I can't make pudding.

Too much pudding? He weighs 230 pounds! At this point, any pudding is too much pudding! Look at him! He's practically made of pudding. And I know you're the one serving it to him because his stubby meatball arms can't even reach his fat mouth.

But why do we over-eat as a country? A lot of reasons to over-eat are emotional, like anger, or rejection, or shame. But we're America! What do we have to be ashamed about? Well, the slavery thing, sure.

Segregation in general. Viet Nam. Watergate, prohibition, internment camps, the civil war, stealing land from the Indians, Iran Contra, unequal pay for men and women, and a culture that produced Snap Bracelets, Color Me Badd, and Paris Hilton. Maybe we should have another piece of pie.

Think you're funnier than Steve? Good. We're recruiting new CH writers for '05. Send samples of your stuff to us in word document format (collegehumor @ yahoo). Word.

A friend recently asked me if I would have sex with Paris Hilton. Not in the same kind of way my friend would ask me if I wanted to grab coffee, because I actually have a shot at grabbing coffee. She asked me hypothetically - because that's the only way I could ever have the opportunity to have sex with Paris Hilton.

So, hypothetically, I have to think about it. I don't want to give my friend an answer that is half-baked. I want to analyze the question carefully just in case I actually had to face this choice - you know, if the laws of the universe ever collapsed.

Obviously Paris Hilton is hot - if another woman who looked like her wanted to sleep with me, the answer would probably be yes. But that is not the question. The question is Paris Hilton.

First, there's the money issue. Most guys want to sleep with her because they think they can somehow come down with a case of wealth - they may come down with something else, but we'll discuss that later. When rich women sleep with regular guys, they don't also give them a million dollars. And my friend's question is not if I'd be willing to be her paid man-slave, it is if I'd be willing to have sex with her once. So money can not factor into my decision.

Maybe the parties are a reason why. If you sleep with Paris Hilton, you get to go to cool parties, right? Not necessarily. The people that sleep with her and go to cool parties would go to cool parties anyway. Rick Solomon was famous before he starred in their movie, and Nick Carter is a Backstreet Boy. Sleeping with Paris Hilton will not automatically get me into any cool parties. Though it may get me into some clinics - but we'll discuss that later.

What about the bragging rights - those have got to be worth it, right? What a story to tell! I'd be the hit of every party, even though they wouldn't be especially cool parties. What's a better story than having sex with Paris Hilton? Well, turning down Paris Hilton makes a good story, too. Plenty of guys have had sex with her. But how many have honestly turned her down?

And then, there's her pure hotness. The woman oozes sex appeal - among other things, but we'll discuss that later. No matter how much you dislike her personality, her past, or her public relations, you'd be blind to admit she's not sexy. Her hotness was confirmed when a tape of her naked became the most watched thing ever. I don't have stats to back that up, but I'm pretty sure it blew the last episode of Mash clear out of the water. For those who say that tape was spread around just because she was famous, I say "balderdash!" And then I'll explain that what balderdash means is that her fame helped the tape spread, but her hotness made it spread farther and faster. No one would have been file-sharing a greenish bootleg of Bea Arthur. Though, much like a car-wreck, I'd probably glance at it before speeding away, happy I wasn't involved.

Yes, Paris is hot - in theory. Hotness is directly tied in to how many guys a girl has already slept with. And, I'm still just speculating, but I think she's taken more hits than her website (oh, snap!).

What about her personality? I don't know her, so I just have to answer based on what she looks like in the media - which is a self-aggrandizing conceited un-feeling racist, and that makes her kind of ugly. While many people don't have to like a girl's personality to sleep with her, I only like girls who I don't want to strangle in the morning. I am, of course, just speculating.

I also promised I'd get to the possible issue of disease. While Paris probably has PR people reminding her to use protection before and while she's having sex, I'd be scared that anyone that promiscuous could be, well, oozing something other than sex appeal. Yes, I know it's gross, but so is Chlamydia.

That brings me to my well thought out answer. Having sex with Paris Hilton wouldn't lead to money or cool parties, she's not as hot as she looks, her personality seems abhorrent, she might give me the clap, and I'd have more bragging rights if I turned her down.

So, in closing, yes, I would have sex with Paris Hilton.

Steve Hofstetter is the author of Student Body Shots, which is available at SteveHofstetter.com. He can be e-mailed at steve@stevehofstetter.com.

Yesterday I was speaking to a soldier in Iraq. He said that despite the recent announcement that more than 1300 US troops have been killed in the last 18 months, morale has been really high lately, thanks to all those magnets on cars he's been seeing.

Well he didn't really see them. He's in Iraq, and the cars are in America. But he heard about them in a letter he received several weeks after his mother sent it. You know how tricky the mail can be, what with the holidays and the 1300 dead people.

Well that soldier doesn't really exist. I invented him up to illustrate how ridiculous those magnets are. If you don't know what I'm talking about, you haven't been in a car in the last three months. If you've been reading my column, you know I've been in several cars, many of them now smushed.

Anyway, I'm talking about the magnets tacked to people's trunks that say "Support our Troops" or "God Bless America" or some similar sentiment. They're great, except they're useless.

Let's examine "Support Our Troops" for a moment. Though I'm against the war, I do support our troops - even more than normal because I know many of them are against the war as well, yet they're still fighting because that's how much they support our country. So, when I am in the mood to send $2 to the war effort, I do not give a portion of it to a magnet retailer. And neither should you.

But buying the "Support The Troops" magnet and putting it on the back of your sedan is still better than doing nothing. It is also better than buying one for your SUV.

The SUV is the quintessential example of American excess. It is a vehicle that is terrible for the environment, causes a higher percentage of accidents than any other consumer vehicle, and costs thousands more than other similarly sized means of transportation. And don't try to tell me people are buying them for their off-road capabilities. I live in Los Angeles and SUVs are everywhere. And the only off-roading done in Los Angeles is when people park in garages.

People buy SUVs for style, to the detriment of their health, safety, and money. It's a classic example of why many other countries disapprove of American culture. In addition, SUVs guzzle gas, giving more power to companies like Mobil who profit off the resources of the Middle East while crying poverty so they can profit even more (se column, previous). And the more you contribute to other countries disapproving of us, the less you're supporting the troops. Thus, when you drive a big non-supporting SUV with a little "Support the Troops" magnet, you're metaphorically ordering a double bacon cheeseburger and a diet coke.

Even worse is the "God Bless America" magnet. In previous columns, I've discussed the ridiculousness of trying to influence an all-powerful deity's scheme of things with a printed sign. The more I think about that sentiment, the more the practice angers me. God HAS blessed America. We're one of the youngest countries in the world, but the most economically viable. We control much of global culture, we force our political views down the rest of the world's proverbial throat, and we've never lost a war (though in fairness, we've lost several "conflicts"). We're so powerful we can even live through electing Mr. Magoo's stunt double as our president.

I love America - but how selfish are we to ask God for any more blessings than we already receive? I just picture some guy in Tanzania, sitting on a boulder and contemplating how to spend the 560 dollars he made last year before saying, "Thank you, God, for all you've done for us, but when you get a chance could you bless America? We've had it too good here for too long." The only time I'm okay with someone asking God to bless me any more than he already has is when I sneeze. We're so self-centered in America, we even believe that someone in Tanzania would be speaking English.

Our support of the troops isn't going to keep some kid safe in Fallujah. And God blessing America isn't going to bring him back to his family any quicker. So how about a magnet that says "God Bless Our Troops"? I'm selling them for just $50 each, with at ten cents from every sale going directly towards someone who knows someone who may or may not be involved in the war effort. Sorry, the "conflict" effort.

But maybe you're not the religious type, and are not happy with a god blessing anything. Maybe you are like the 60% of American adults who don't regularly attend any sort of religious institution. For you, I have a second magnet: "America keeps saying we believe in separation of church and state, so I, unlike the majority of our government, am going to take God out of the equation and just say that, regardless of your religious beliefs, I wish for a safe return for all of our troops."

I know it will be a big magnet, but it will fit if you have an SUV.

Steve Hofstetter is the author of Student Body Shots, which is available at SteveHofstetter.com. He can be e-mailed at steve@stevehofstetter.com.

I'm often asked why I became a comedian. People want to know what happened when I was a kid to give me a sense of humor, to create a need to tell jokes. And I respond that when I was eight, my parents took me to a gay dance club on New Year's Eve.

Neither of my parents are gay. Nor is my brother or either of my two sisters. And I don't have a problem with anyone else being gay. I just don't think that the best parenting maneuver is to take your eight-year-old to a gay dance club on New Year's Eve.

I think I was eight. I may have been six, I may have been ten. That doesn't change things. I may get a few of the facts of this story wrong. But I recall a number of still images, and a few short mind-movie clips of the event. I know that I was a kid, and so were my siblings. And I know my parents took me to a gay dance club on New Year's Eve.

We were called into my parents' bedroom that afternoon while they were looking for plans. "What do you think of the Barefoot Boogie?"� my mother asked. She was reading a newspaper and going through the event listings, looking for something inexpensive for the whole family. The listing advertised a free dance in Manhattan, and anything free in Manhattan on New Year's Eve has GOT to be good.

We uttered many pleas of "lame!"� or "not!"� or whatever the word for "thing parents like but kids hate"� was at the time. But my mother called and asked if the place was family friendly. The voice on the other end of the phone said yes and told her there'd be food, probably thinking to himself, "you're asking if a gay dance club is family friendly? You have got to be the most clueless parents ever."� I'm sure he hung up and had many laughs and figured that any family would have to realize that he was joking before they actually arrived. Meet the Hofstetters.

I don't remember the car ride - I'm sure it was fairly uneventful. I had countless New Year's Eve car rides with my family, the tradition being to drive into terrible traffic in Manhattan around dinner time to see the crowds that gathered around us as if to say, "who are the morons driving in Manhattan on New Year's Eve?"� But burned in my mind is that particular New Year's Eve, once we got out of the car.

To get to the dance floor, we had to walk through the co-ed locker room. I'd never seen a co-ed locker room, let alone imagined that there'd be a locker room at a dance club. Dance clubs on TV didn't have locker rooms, but hey, I was eight, and maybe I didn't know everything. Maybe people needed to change into their dancing clothes. Which, in this case, was a sequin top and stretch pants. He looked great though.

After the locker room, we walked through a short hallway with a ledge. I remember the ledge because on it there was a giant bag of pretzels and a two liter bottle of Pepsi. That was the food they discussed. I didn't know what it was yet, but something was definitely wrong.

I'm sure my older siblings had more of an idea of what was up than I did. But even I knew that what happened next was ridiculous.

The dance floor opened up in front of us, like a scene from, well, nothing because know one has ever written about anything like this before. The floor had the wood paneling of a high school gym. There was a woman with a large Adam's apple dancing frantically with castanets. There was a solitary white balloon in the corner closest too us. And that was it. Stretch Pants walked by us and even he turned around to leave (after he invested all that time changing!). At which point my mother actually said, "let's give it a chance, it's early."�

For the next few minutes, my sister and I batted the balloon back and forth while I can only believe that my other sister and my brother cried inside. We finally left soon after, wondering what we'd just been part of. My parents didn't say much - I don't think they wanted to admit what happened.

If you enjoy comedy but never got the chance to pursue it as a career, I don't recommend starting very late in life. The road is tough on you, it can destroy a marriage, and a lot of TV producers won't look at anyone over a certain age. But perhaps you could give your children a start in the field. When they are eight or six or ten, take them to a gay dance club on New Year's Eve.

Therapy bills are cheaper than comedy classes.

Steve Hofstetter is the author of Student Body Shots, which is available at www.SteveHofstetter.com. He can be e-mailed at steve@observationalhumor.com.

I used to have insanely good luck. I find money, I guess numbers that you're thinking of, and I spent a childhood in New York City without ever getting mugged, jumped, or even looked at funny. But my luck may have finally run out. Quick, think of a number. Seven! No? Damn.

I always imaged if someone told me that my luck just ran out, it'd be a guy in pinstripes mowing me down with a tommy gun. Instead, it's everyone I tell about my car trouble. The world seems to agree that I'm insanely lucky when it comes to everything but cars.

I was first hit from behind after braking to avoid another guy a week after I bought a car - I wrote about that. A few months later, I totaled my car swerving to avoid a police officer parked on the interstate - I wrote about that, too. But since then, two incidents so mind-boggling have happened that I wanted to save them for a special "I shouldn't ever touch a car again" edition of Observational Humor.

I'll write about the easier one first. While at a full stop on the customs line on the way into Canada last week, I was hit from behind by a guy on a cell phone. He was somehow angry at me - that I had the nerve to interrupt his call by asking him for his insurance information. I'm currently in the middle of filing a claim.

The other one is a bit more insane. I flew home for a week in November and rented a car, leaving mine with a mechanic to get checked out. I was driving home at 2AM one night and stopped before making a right turn at a red light - perfectly legal in LA. Before I completed the turn, a guy on a bike drove into the side of my car.

How ridiculous is that? It gets worse. The guy grabbed at his shoulder and said it he slammed it on the hood. Which would have been impressive because he never fell off his bike. Just incase he did fall off his bike and got back on while I blinked, he was also holding the wrong shoulder - he hit me with his right side facing the car, and he was holding his left shoulder.

I suggested we call the police and get him immediate medical attention, and he backed off a bit, which made me follow through with the call. EMS said he was fine and the cops cited him for riding a bike on the sidewalk and riding at night without a light. They also listed him at fault for the accident. But somehow I got a call this week saying he still insists it was me.

The rental company assured me I had nothing to worry about. But they're wrong. I have something to worry about every time I start the engine - I have to worry that the guy behind me has no brakes or that there's a cop parked in the interstate or I might get attacked by a scam artist with a bike. I have to worry that the insanely good luck I've had my entire life isn't there when I'm behind a wheel. And I have to worry about coming up with a column idea that doesn't involve steel being crumpled.

One the plus side, none of these incidents happened when another person was in the car - but maybe that's just someone up there screwing with me. These accidents don't hurt anyone - reporting them just embarrasses me to death.

Only once have I demonstrated actual skill behind the wheel. When I rented a car in Baltimore, they forgot to give me one with brakes. So while turning off the interstate going 50, I turned off the interstate going 50. I somehow found a space between two pylons and I coasted to a stop on the dirt. I was okay, and the company didn't make me pay for the rental, unless you count almost soiling myself as payment.

I've avoided one accident and gotten into four others. And it's only been four months since I started driving. Sure, I drive five thousand miles a month. But this is still ridiculous.

At least I have not yet gotten a speeding ticket - that luck is holding up. I was pulled over once, and I told the officer that it was the first time I'd used cruise control, and I didn't realize it made you go faster on hills. He told me that I should be careful using cruise, as it could go anywhere from one to ten miles faster than I originally set it.

I guess seven.

Steve Hofstetter is the author of Student Body Shots, which is available at www.SteveHofstetter.com. He can be e-mailed at steve@observationalhumor.com.