My Favorite Weekend

Comedian Paul Rodriguez

A Night Out: On Fridays I go to La Floridita, a Cuban restaurant, and listen to the band. It’s the same guys every week but they change their clothes and call themselves a different name. I eat arroz con pollo and fried bananas. Then I hop in my souped-up Cherokee sport utility vehicle, which is black with tinted windows and barely legal, and I go to the Mayan downtown where I spend the evening looking for Mrs. Right Now.

In Training: Saturday I wake up early. I have a Norwegian trainer from hell who is the embodiment of everything that ever scared me about Anglos. His head and neck are the same size and he has a thicker accent than me, but for $200 an hour he gets me up and runs me around my apartment complex while he drives a golf cart.

Catching Some Zzzzzs: Saturday I call my three friends Jimmy Smits, Cheech Marin and Edward James Olmos. (We call ourselves the Brown Pack.) Usually they aren’t doing anything because they’re married so I ask their wives if they can come out and play. If Poncho Sanchez is performing within driving distance, and usually he is, we listen to hot salsa all night. If nobody whose last name ends in “z” is playing in town, we go to my house.

A Day of Rest: On Sunday I wake up at the crack of noon and eat menudo to recover from the night before. For the rest of the day I am glued to the TV and since L.A. no longer has a professional football team I consider myself a free agent fan. I can root for whoever is leading the division.