Oldie but goodie - a big laugh

I'm fully aware that lately I am angry and more than a little shrill. I wake up with my jaw clenched and my shoulders hunched forward as if curled to protect my soft nougaty insides. I am drive-by eating and not exercising or sleeping enough. I'm certainly not getting laid enough.

From the important -- a failing economy (along with my own bank auguring in), the scary specter of Dubya in a skirt being one malignant melanoma away from the presidency, my dear old pet coming back from the brink of death, the upcoming first anniversary of my father's death, learning that an eternally young at heart old New York friend passed away tragically in Malibu in August -- to the relatively mundane -- a project going south in a spectacular crash and burn way -- these things have all mixed together to make me anxious and fearful for the past several weeks.

I believe this is a tad bit evident in some of the posts that I have written.

This week I'm in California again on business, and maybe it's the distance from my everyday life, or maybe it's the mood-enhancing, Vitamin D-laden southern California sunshine, but today I feel like a little air has gotten in.

I realized that in the last month I haven't had any really big laughs in a while; recognizing that laughter will oxygenate things even more, I went looking for videos that delight and amuse me, that quite simply, crack me up.

So I Googled something guaranteed to delight me:

Models Falling Down.

Now, the video itself is hilarious. Not only does the model fall TWICE, but when she goes down for the second time, her ankles do this crazy wobble as if suddenly they are cooked spaghetti. And pay attention! Both times, she never lets go of the watering can! But the best part of the video is the news anchor wraparound. After the video finishes, they cut back to the studio, where the anchor is laughing so hard he is unable to speak.

I swear, this made me laugh as hard as the clip of Frasier Crane singing "Buttons and Bows."

And I can breathe again.

And totally unrelated to anything else in this post, how frickin' adorable is Rachel Maddow?