White Chicks was robbed!

This weekend I watched Bravo's four-hour countdown of the 100 funniest movies of all time. For the record Animal House and Caddyshack were the top two, neither of which I have ever seen. After you see Ben Stiller movies pop up six times you tend to question the experts who compiled this list. Plus Ace Ventura and The Wedding Singer both in the top ten? And which person over the age of nine would rank Shrek as the third funniest movie ever? Granted there are comedies that for some reason or another I love that critics and the general public loath. So here I go with my top 25 comedies. Sorry Tom Green, Freddy Got Fingered just missed out.

1. Annie Hall
2. Ferris Beuller's Day Off
3. Swingers
4. When Harry Met Sally
5. Uncle Buck
6. National Lampoon's Vacation
7. Raising Arizona
8. Rushmore
9. Dumb and Dumber
10. Pretty Woman
11. Tommy Boy
12. Some Like It Hot
13. Austin Powers
14. Broadcast News
15. Monty Python and the Holy Grail
16. Good Morning Vietnam
17. Groundhog Day
18. Planes, Trains, and Automobiles
19. Napoleon Dynamite
20. Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle
21. Elf
22. Hitch
23. Waking Ned Devine
24. Parenthood
25. Bruce Almighty

An awfully smelly insect

In Science we're doing a unit on insects and today we were talking about butterflies. So the lesson is going along nicely. The students are actually listening and not goofing off for a change. As we move on to discuss the life cycle of a butterfly I simply write the word "butterfly" on the board, or so I thought. As I walk away from the board after jotting down the final letter my students go back to their normal giggling and talking out. Frustrated, I ask them to quiet down when one brave girl raises her hand and says "Mr. Ritchason, I think you made a mistake." She points to the board and I immediately realize I had forgotten two very important letters. Instead of butterfly I had written the ever popular insect known as the butt fly. I'd better be careful to not leave off the first two letters when we discuss the grasshopper next week.

Something you don't see every day

So Ella and I were just sitting on the front porch after a stroller ride around the neighborhood. Out of the corner of my eye I notice a junior high age girl across the street on a unicycle. The best part was that she was arguing with herself. "No you don't like me because I don't have pretty hair like Becca. I hate her!" When she discovered that both Ella and I were staring at her transfixed the girl jumped off and reached into her Full House backpack. She whips out a flip phone, opens it up, and immediately begins yelling into it as though she just received a frantic call from Homeland Security. In her best Jack Bauer voice she bellows "We don't have time for this! It can't wait any longer! Something has to be done!" She snapped the phone shut in fury and threw it back into the knapsack with a picture of Candace Cameron. Before heading off she pulled a Twizzler from her pocket, popped it into her mouth, and contined on her journey. Anyway, I've gotta go because Ella just cleared a shelf of about 25 CD's which are now scattered on the floor. If she destroys my 98 Degrees albums I'll be irate.