Happy Birthday Moms!

Today, the winter solstice, is the shortest day of the year. It’s also my mom’s birthday. Happy Birthday ma! I bet my grandmother didn’t think it was the shortest day of the year forty-seven years ago (wink, wink mom). I guarantee every single mother who’s given birth on December 21st has made that awful joke countless times. That’s almost as funny as asking a person born on Leap Year if they’re technically only 6 when they’re turning 24. The hilarity is only surpassed by the originality. I’m dedicating today’s post to my mom. Thanks to her egg’s accepting nature I am now able to elicit the occasional amused smile of over several dozen people bored at work! As a small token of appreciation for my dear mother, I’m going to make a list of reasons she’s terrific. I think top ten lists are too much. It’s almost impossible for the joke to stay funny through ten reincarnations. That’s why I’m going to start doing top five lists. Here are five reasons my mom is terrific (not necessarily the top five, but five nonetheless):

5. She’s a self-proclaimed bagan, a vegetarian except for bacon.

4. She’s incredibly generous about sharing can’t miss Saturday Night Live sketch ideas with me.

3. No matter the song, no matter the attempted copying of my sister’s or my hand gestures, she does the jitterbug every single time she dances.

2. She’s silly enough that over Thanksgiving, crying from laughter she had to sprint to the bathroom to narrowly avoid wetting her pants after a tussle with her older brother led him to make her hit herself while asking her “why are you hitting yourself? Stop hitting yourself.” (Just like back in the day.)

1. She never hesitates to offer unbiased, constructive criticism of my writing. For example: (from a recent phone call) “I think your stuff is funnier than Jay Leno, Conan and Letterman all combined. I’m serious. I’m not just saying that because I’m your mom. I just wish that somebody important could see it so that they’d discover you, I bet they’d be blown away at how good you are.”

Thanks for being so supportive ma. You are the best. Too bad you aren’t a high-powered network executive of development.

In other news, I am telling stand up comedy jokes tomorrow night at the Upright Citizens Brigade theatre at 11pm. The show is called Hump Night. It’s going to be off the comedic hook. Here is a link that gives you the location and tells you how the show is free. http://www.ucbtheatre.com/schedule/showdetails.php?showid=463

If you are in town it would only be in keeping with the holiday spirit for you to come to the show. Enjoy the remainder of this blink of a day. Feel free to post birthday wishes to my mom as comments. Bundle up out there, Jack Frost isn’t playing games.