Book #7 - It Looked Different on the Model: Epic Tales of Impending Shame and Infamy

God bless Laurie Notaro.  No one makes me laugh harder.  Reading the hilarious essays in her newest collection, It Looked Different on the Model: Epic Tales of Impending Shame and Infamy, I laughed out loud till I cried, and I tried breathlessly to explain to the strangers in the lunch room what on earth was so funny.  Here are some examples:

On trying on clothes at fancy stores:
",,,During my most recent visit to Anthropologie, the lights were so audacious I wanted to ask the dressing-room girl if she could turn the setting down from its current 'Cruel' to the next level, 'Barbaric.' ... In the Anthropologie mirror, I saw wrinkles, dents, flaps, bumps and something that caused me to say to myself, 'I hope that's a tumor and not a horn.'"

On kids:
"...[my nephew] Nicholas had just gotten into honors math, which was exciting because now someone in our family besides my father could do fractions, and having an understudy would come in very handy when cutting a birthday cake.  [My sister] told me that he had also joined band and had taken up the clarinet, which we were less excited about.  Not that playing a clarinet is a bad thing, but in a year, when the kid got braces, if he was walking down the street wearing a Mathletes shirt and carrying a clarinet, even I would have to beat him up."

On vans:
"On the way out to the parking lot, my mother pointed to an Econoline three spaces away from our station wagon.  'Don't ever walk next to a van, unless being kidnapped is your goal for the day,' she said, as she dragged my sister by her arm beyond a fifteen-foot radius of the vehicle.  'Only weirdos drive vans.  It's not normal.'"

On coming from a family of non-huggers:
"My father staged a coup in 2000 and started to kiss people hello and goodbye on the cheek, a move that I could only assume was generated on a trip to Italy.  We all just tried to take it very lightly and not get too worked up about it, since they were basically air kisses; he also put up a red, white and green sign in his garage that said, PARKING FOR ITALIANS ONLY.  He was clearly feeling for the Motherland.  We sort of brushed it off when he started incorporating he Psych Hug, which was putting his hand on our shoulder right before leaning in for the kids.s  Not a full hug, but just enough of a wrestling move that you couldn't get easily away without collapsing or igniting a jet-pack."

Man, she's funny.