The easy way out.

Blogging advice: When in need of an update but with little time to do anything lengthy one can occasionally turn to the trusty "Top 10" list (or "Top 5" if you're really pressed for time). You don't want to do this too often (unless your blog concept is, in fact, all about Top 10 lists, in which case yeah, it would be a good idea to do Top 10 lists often). In any event, I am short on time today and am thus relying on my own advice with this little cheat. Plus, Top 10's are usually fun and kind of interesting (and if the one you post happens to not be fun or interesting you still come out ahead because they're generally so brief that people forget about how not fun or not interesting they were as soon as they leave your blog). Actually, I just thought of another good bit of blogging advice (I know it's good advice because I'm going to start doing it from now on): Do a Top 10 or Top 5 list once a week, on the same day each week. What a great idea! (I'm sure some blogging expert somewhere has said the same thing before I just thought of it, but so what! It's coming from me now, so you know it's sound wisdom).


Today's TOP 5 (because I am, in fact, pressed for time):

My Top 5 List of Things that Lately Crack Me Up

1.The butts on Tina Kugler's self portraits. They're all monstrously big and gelatinous and dimply and totally hilarious. This morning Kim looked at Tina's latest drawing of herself on her illustration site (Tina Kugler Illustration) and was giggling, I swear, for 20 minutes. But if you want to take the full-on $3 tour of big buttdom you need to go to her post-it theatre site (The Tina Show), where the drawings appear more spontaneous, urgent and frenzied.

2. Flight of the Conchords. Google and find any YouTube video of these guys and you'll end up "wasting" at least an hour watching every short video of them on the list. "When I'm down to my socks you know it's time for business... They're business socks..." Have to thank my pal, Don, for pointing me to these cats (see Don's own weird stream of consciousness at Mind of Seiler).

3. Our friend Amy doing a slightly drunken impersonation (not that she was giving an impersonation of being slightly drunk, but rather that she was actually slightly drunk when giving the impersonation) of her 5 year old boy, Brady, who, when taking his bath, pretends he is Buzz Lightyear by standing, naked, at the edge of the bathtub, arms extended like Superman, and shouts a misunderstood version of Buzz's tagline as only children can misunderstand things, before jumping into the bath water. In Brady's translation, Buzz's "To infinity...and beyond!" has become "Into me! And beyond!"

The other night we went out with Amy and Adam, and Brady's pre-launch pose and declaration became Amy's repeated battlecry with each succeeding chocolate martini.

4. Steve Wolfhard's Monstro-Draw! journal. Wolfhard's drawing is great and his sense of humor is on precisely the same wavelength as my own. Great stuff.

5. Graham Roumieu's Bigfoot books: Me Write Book: It Bigfoot Memoir and In Me Own Words: The Autobiography of Bigfoot. Saw these at B&N on Sunday and had to share with my daughters while in the store. We were all laughing so hard that we made a scene and I think one of us might have pee'd her pants a little. The funniest books I've seen in some time...do yourself a favor and see if your library has copies. Just don't read them while actually in the library or they may ask you to leave for making too much noise.