Today I’m in Phoenix doing a reading and a signing. Come? And while I’m on tour I’m reposting a few of my older posts. This one was from 2008:
Hey, did you know that if you get bored enough you can use postage stamps to make yourself fake nails?
Because you totally can:
One would have thought that my husband would have been all kinds of excited about my new marvelous manicure but he was just pissed off that I’d depleted his dorky superhero stamp collection to make my fake nails. My talents are totally wasted on this guy. At this point I don’t even want to show him the awesome découpage job I did on the guest bathroom toilet tank with his Wolverine collection. Jerk.
And on a surpringly related note, I can’t stop watching the trailer for “Italian Spiderman”: Un super festi puncho puncho ram ram. Un fantastico voyage de spidermafication!!! Italian Spiderman totally kicks regular Spiderman’s ass.
You seriously need your own reality TV show. I just don’t know if it should be on MTV, TLC, or DIY Network.
You should open up a superhero nail salon. You can call it Marvel-ous Super Salon.
See what I did there?
Genius.
postage stamps as manicures?! i think you were on to something BIG!
Since my comics are too banged up to ever be worth anything, I use them to make hairbands, picture frames, switch plates and coaster. I’m going to add nail art to that list!
That looks totally better than any manicure I’ve ever given myself. Or the only one I ever paid for. And my son, who’s currently obsessed with superheroes, would dig it.
I imagine the Walmart clerk was insanely jealous when she saw your superhero nails. Seriously awesome!
Oh. Em. Gee. Is that Daredevil on your thumb? That is beyond awesome! My husband has been collecting Daredevil comics longer than I’ve been alive.
Marrying someone 16 years older leads to some scary / creepy discussions. He can talk about stuff he was doing in high school and I can remind him that I was an infant.
Keep doing what you’re doing and I’ll keep reminding you that You ARE good at it.
PS. Would you be interested at all in having Rachael Rossman come to your house and paint you with Hailey or some of your favorite critters? If so, there’s an option on her new Kickstarter for that and I can lead the fundraising efforts.
All right, MY nails wouldn’t look like that with stamps on them. You have extremely impressive stamp-trimming skills – kudos 🙂
They are probably cheaper than a nail salon. He should be thanking you.
And here I was just thinking about what to do with my nails of increasingly-inappropriate length.
I don’t know if my six year old grand daughter would like this, as he is always doing her nails but I think her twin brother would think ‘Sooooo Coooooool’ he loves all superhero’s
Stop! Oh please wait a minute Mr. Postman…
Oddly enough, that is like watching Italian television. It’s totally the stuff my nonna watches whenever they put some dated movie on RAI.
And the nails are great. Victor just doesn’t know how to appreciate your artistic abilities.
Have fun in Phoenix!
Oh my God, I know, right? One time, when I was a teenager? I did my nails with our Foodstamps. My Mom was pissssssssed! No appreciation at all for creativity.
So, if you flipped someone off, you were “giving them the Spidey”?
Phoenix loves you! Go get ‘em!
I put the picture of us from your New York visit here: http://www.executiveseverance.blogspot.com/2012/04/too-much-humor-writing-talent-in-one.html
Best wishes,
Bob Blechman
Wish I could be in Phoenix to witness whatever awkward moments will happen there in person. We who’ve read LPTNH all expect a tweetpic of the bathroom now, just sayin’ 😉
ROFL
That has Pinterest written all over it!!
Word of advice, never use that nail glue on those fake Halloween nails. They may never come off. You might have some explaining to do at work. Mistakes were made.
If you were married to my husband, your entire fabric and yarn collection would just have been given to the household pets to do with as they please.
PS If you want to come to Scotland on your book tour you can totally sleep on my sofa and have my children stare at you.
Italian Dawson’s Creek is the way to go, I learned this summer. Highly amusing.
Where’s the LIKE button? I’m into Kristen’s comment about your own tv show. I’d watch it. Obsessively. So I could take notes on how to deal with my jerk husband.
I love your nails. You may single-handedly–or double-handedly–keep the U.S. Post Office afloat, Super Bloggess!
Yes, Phoenix! Woot! Can’t wait….have been looking forward to this all week!
Those nails ROCK!!!! Now you just gave me an idea of what to do with my leftover Christmas stamps from 2008.
My little French three-year old calls Spiderman “Le Man.”
I just checked the stamps I have – my manicure would be Old Dead White Guys – which would be a Major Manicure Fail
That seems like a lot of work. it’s a good day if i remember to cut my nails.
I seriously CANNOT wait to meet you tonight, and I would totally stalk you all day if I didn’t have to get my car fixed but I kinda need it to get to the store later.
Enjoy our hot as balls weather though!
Love, love, love! Unfortunately I have geek-chick nails – chipped, broken, and ripped in lightsaber duels and zombie face-offs.
My daughter and I will see you tonight! Don’t melt from the heat!
You are a genius.
True genius is never appreciated in it’s time.
If I had decent nails I’d totally find all the old Harry Potter stamps to do this with! How great would that be! Snape would have to be the middle finger. Mouldy farts can go on my big toe.
Ps, if you come to Scotland and sleep on Vonnie’s sofa, which you really should (because mine is only a 2 seater and even I can’t sleep on it), come over to Edinburgh and we’ll show you some of the odder parts of the city. Or just listen to you read your book. 🙂
Love the nails. I wish you would have linked to the instructions. Good luck in Phoenix. Not that you need luck when you have talent.
Look out Sally Hansen!
I could just imagine the wolverine découpage on the toilet. There you’d be, taking a tinkle with like 1000 creepy wolverines peering at you.
Victor ought to be happy. You’re probably saving more money on manicures than he’d ever make on his stamp collection. Excellent repurposing!
I will see you tonight! 🙂 Enjoy our heat in the meantime.
I will be there tonight at Changing Hands! I’m excited to meet you, but I already have my pre-ordered book with the signed name-plate, so hopefully they’ll still let me in;)) Love the nails and see you tonight!
“One would have thought that my husband would have been all kinds of excited about my new marvelous manicure but he was just pissed off that I’d depleted his dorky superhero stamp collection to make my fake nails.”
Seriously? Were you high from nail polish fumes at the time?
I sincerely hope you bent over backwards – literally – to appease his wounded fanboy ego! That was one ballsy move for a “ballless” wife!
My Bestie gave me your book for my birthday a few months back, telling me you and I were separated at birth. As I read on, I realized she may be correct! We flew out to Denver and just picked up our copies at Tattered Cover. I HOPE we get to see you Monday, you’re kind of a big deal and I couldn’t bring my unicorn on the plane.
Do they last longer than those regular press on nails? Might be worth a shot, especially at Christmas.
So freaking stoked for tonight. I wish I had a well-preserved dead animal to offer you as a gift though.
Never in my life would I have thought I would get the chance to say something like that..
If you like Italian Spiderman you should check out the creator’s latest endevour: Danger 5
It’s completely funny.
Here’s the first part of a mini episode they released before the first season: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZK0OQk_vShg
Welcome to Phoenix.
“But it’s a dry dehydration.”
As a guy who is in complete (and sad) commiseration with your husband, I’d recommend giving him a back scratch while humming the Spiderman theme. Might soothe his ruffled feathers. If not, upgrade to handjob and Superman.
This is perfect. Also? Who collects superhero stamps? Oh right…your husband.
Never mind.
Okay, so I’m wondering how you manage to handle depression…and STILL have nails. I don’t get it. How do you DO that? I’ve been biting my nails since the womb and it has never ever stopped and although I sometimes manage to get 5-7 nails to extend about 1/16th of an inch beyond my finger, to get all 10 of them to look remotely female seems fucking impossible because I am always crying and then biting them. And then THAT gets me depressed because if I’m going to be depressed and psychotic I would at least like to look sexy doing it, and it’s hard to feel sexy when my nails are bitten to shreds. Why is my life so HARD?
My brother had the same reaction when I showed him what I did to his limited edition Spiderman comic books!! Men have no sense of appreciation.
Welcome to Phoenix!!! Drink plenty of water so you don’t get heat stroke! I want to meet you first!
It’s really true, you do have fabulous nail beds. I’d attempt this decoupage project but I save money by biting my nails down to the quick instead of buying anti-anxiety meds. I could probably just fit Iron Man’s free floating head or groin area on my nails. It would make no sense. Colorful yes, but senseless.
Not sure how I lived without Italian Spiderman. Thank you.
Maybe I’ll stop biting my nails and try.
My life has been a little crazy lately (or always, but I’ll say lately to make myself feel better) so I may have missed it, but my favorite post of all time was the angry mustache lego people… if I missed the repost, sorry… I’ve also birthed a child recently and been out of the loop, but if it hasn’t been reposted recently, it’s time 🙂 I peed myself reading that before I even had a child to f up my lady parts, shit now I’ll probably crap myself too!
OHmyGAWD! I don’t know I missed this before! I am TOTALLY going to do this! Or -umm. Are you just *really* talented? Can you write a primer on how to do this?
OH! AND I AM TOTALLY GOING TO SEE YOU IN LIKE 3HOURS!!!
Ok. Again, don’t be scared. I’m not *that* scary. Or, that’s at least what the voices in my head tell me.
You didn’t deplete his stamp collection, you were just showing it off!
‘Jerk’ is right.
Jerk.
I can’t believe there’s not a tutorial here on how to do these nails.
So excited! I’m actually writing this sitting in a chair waiting for you to come out for the signing. So glad you made your way here!
Hmmm…I like this. I have some old Disney stamps burning a hole in the drawer… 😉
Sitting waiting for the signing to start, hope you got to enjoy our crazy freaking dust storm from hell!
You could totally set up a booth at comic con! You know, if you didn’t have the best book ever that is just living it up on the bestsellers list… If you ever need to quit your day job, you could make fake comic postage stamp nails for all the fashion conscious ladies at comic con.
ITALIAN SPIDERMAN for the win! I’m with Jobie check out Danger 5. These kids are genius.
Happy to share a city with them.
You’re awesome, like a Martha Stewart on drugs.
Ok. So yeah I totally just completely freaked out seeing you. Totally spaced. I was nervous. And I kept thinking don’t say your nervous, don’t say your nervous. And that’s exactly what I said. You were very gracious and tools me that was sweet. And then you complemented my hair. I stumped over my thank you because I was trying to figure out how to give you a card so I didn’t come of as weird about it. I failed that stuttering over, “Can we give you… Do you take cards?” You said you wouldI live the card that you’ll read it in the hotel. I was so nervous about getting the nerve to give to the card I forgot about the picture I wanted. Then I almost walked away from the book. Embarrassed I turned around for it and you said it happens all the time with a big smile. I was halfway across the when it dawned on me… You complimented my hair! And suddenly I was wishing I hadn’t been so nervous so I could have appreciated that and been more eloquent with you.
And look at that I’m still nervous because I made two errors in the above entry. And if you connect this comment to my card you can kind of tell that would bother me. So you told me it was sweet not tools me it was sweet. And you said that you would love the card not live the card. And there was an extra I in the last one. Anyways thanks for an amazing reading and Q/A. And I hope you liked the card… Thank you for reaching past your anxiety to do the tour. It inspired me to try and push past mine.
+1 for Vonnie.
The thought going through my mind was “So, where did he hide the body?” and then I remembered that this was an old post, and then I realized she’d gotten away with vandalizing her hubby’s collection, and then my head exploded.
And then I was grateful that my Tiger and I have the same hobbies, so that I would never find that she’d done something like this to one of my collections and then *I* would never have to hide the body.
I hope you’re enjoying your book tour! What a wonderful experience.
It’s a bit sad that in spite of how much stamps cost, that’s still cheaper than most press-on nail kits. I should look into whether my husband has a stamp collection.
Does Italian Spider-Man shoot spaghetti from his wrists? Because I would totally marry him.
Superhero stamps into nails?
You are history’s greatest monster.
If I’ve learned anything about men in the past 45 years, it’s this: Don’t mess with their stamp collections, don’t mess with their comic books. Ever. I guess it would kinda be like coming home to find your guy using your best perfume, which is now out of production, to deodorize his gym sneakers. Also – never use his beer glass to drink milk out of. Hoo-boy!
Your Phoenix (Tempe) visit was wonderful! My daughter and I thank you. I made a blog post with pictures so everyone can see how happy we were to be there. And how wonderful you were to stay until everyone got a chance to meet you and get their book signed. You are the nicest famous person (yes, even if you think you aren’t famous) EVER!!!
Sometimes I worry that Victor just doesn’t appreciate your creative energy.
It’s way too long until you come home. I miss you. Nothing weird here, it’s just that my best freind and I kind of coordinate our lives (conversations) around your blog, and while the old ones kick-ass and we enjoy them enormously, I can’t help but sense a lot of deja vu in our chats.
Those nails rock. I wonder if you could do almost the same thing by reducing comic book pages? Travel safe kiddo.
You know usually I am on your side, but being a Marvel fan I’m pretty sure that he should put Jefferson Peabody through the garbage disposal. I know it was like 4 yrs. ago, but apparently there is no statute of limitations on comic book stamp mutilations, I know because I checked, Sorry. Unlike the other people commenting I won’t be distracted by your fabulous nail beds.
Damn I missed you in Phoenix, I was too sick to go to Changing Hands that night. If you can stand it I really hope you do another tour, I would love to get my book signed and meet you.
Yours and Victors conversations sound oddly familiar to my girlfriend and I.
I want to see the toilet tank! PLEASE!!
Someone made an Italian Spiderman in LEGO… http://www.flickr.com/photos/reasonablyclever/4189479987/
Wow. I want to know how to make these!
awesome…I’ll have to try this:) Enjoy your trip..
Shouldn’t that pinky finger be saying, “I am Iron Mani?”
I’m so glad you’re re-posting some classics! Blogs are new to me, circa 2012. Btw, you are an inspiration! Can’t wait to find a use for my husband’s ham radio hobby. Prob won’t involve a toilet seat (antennae-ouch!).
Marvel-ous.
My heart just orgasmed.
I’m glad you got to come visit Phoenix. I wanted to attend the signing but I had to go to a marriage retreat that weekend with my wife. I really don’t want to be murdered by her in my sleep. That would suck to wake up to not waking up…
Anyway, I was the guy that made the 3′ tall metal chicken you signed. You inspire us in more ways than you realize! Thanks for all the laughs you give us. Being funny is easy. Being funny despite fighting depression is an awesome thing and you do it well. You give us hope to move on to the next day and I hope we do the same for you.
Much giant metal chicken love to you.
Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
This is what I get for falling behind on important shit like blog-reading. I moved to a big city so I could go to kickass events like this but totally missed yours.
Oh my god, I LOVE Marvel!! This is such a good idea!