Maggie Mason's blog Mighty Girl was the inspiration for my own. She's also the founder of Mighty Goods, a contributing writer for The Morning News, and an all-around swell gal. (I know the latter for a fact, because I had the good fortune to meet her last year -- nyeah nyeah). Her first book was just published, and you should buy four copies. -- MB

Hi, I'm Maggie, and No One Cares What You Had for Lunch: 100 Ideas for Your Blog is my very first book. Around the time it was published, I found out I was pregnant. The baby is scheduled to arrive any minute now, which means that I'm in an advanced stage of exhausted stupidity.

I tried to think of something witty to say about the book, something that would make Matt feel justified in sharing his terrifyingly intense high school photos with the Internet. Here's what I came up with:

Buy book. Book good.

So, as you can see, my signature wit is still intact.

In the absence of astute literary commentary, I figured the least I can do is stand beside Matt in his shame. Baldwin, you owe me a beer:

Josh Davis and I both worked at Amazon.com during the zenith of Dotcom Mania. While most of us, upon escaping the clutches of the World's Largest Bookstore, just staggered into similar careers elsewhere -- customer service, IT support, website design, and the like -- Josh had Big Dreams, and set out to pursue them. He studied mixology, became a bartender, worked his way up from dives to cocktail lounges, and, less than a decade after starting down this road, purchased his first bar, lovely lovely Lottie's Lounge. Oh, and along the way he also married one of my best friends. NICE WORK JOSH! P.S. The pesto linguine kicks ass. -- MB

Okay, so my first attempt at writing something about Lottie's Lounge sounded like a plug for a Ronco product or maybe a nice-smelling perfume. And while our food is delicious and the smells of Lottie's are typically pleasant, Lottie's is neither a rotisserie nor is it something quite as chic as Paris Hilton's latest fragrance. So, like the coffee shop that became a bar, and then the bar that became a coffee shop and a bar, I'm making an effort to redo the first perception and talk about Lottie's Lounge for what it is.

The thing is that I don't know what Lottie's Lounge is. You would think that a place where I have spent the last two years of my life--the last year roughly 75 hours a week--I would have some idea of what the place is. I could say it's my lover but that just isn't a very welcoming way to describe a building. I could say it's my wife, but my real wife would probably not like that. I could say it's my job or my child or some other metaphor, but those don't do it justice. It's not that Lottie's doesn't have an identity (it almost literally oozes an identity) it's just that it can't really be described. It has history. It makes people happy. It's family, not just for me but for everyone who walks through the door. That's all I know. People come to drink coffee, to eat food and to drink booze (sometimes in large quantities). People come to see their friends and to gather. People come to hear music and to laugh and to sometimes cry if necessary.

So even without knowing exactly what Lottie's Lounge is, I know it is a good place for good people. It's a good place for good food and it's a good place for good drinks. It's not a place that is fancy like the Dial-O-Matic nor is it a place that wants you to smell pretty like Britney Spears (or at least like her perfumes, because she probably smells like a bucket of fried chicken and a spent Marlboro 100), but I digress. Lottie's is just a place where you end up and find that that is where you wanted to be.

Lottie's Lounge is located in historic Columbia City on the corner of Rainier and Ferdinand in Seattle, Washington.

4900 Rainier Ave S
Seattle, WA 98118
lottieslounge.com

The following post was inspired by the eighty-second suggestion in No One Cares What You Had for Lunch: 100 Ideas for Your Blog, which was randomly selected by Tom Fakes of CRAZ8.

I bought some frozen hashbrowns. The cooking directions say "Microwave for 90 seconds, if desired."

I'm glad they specified that they should only be cooked when desired. I can't tell you how many times I've taken a plate of streaming hot hashbrowns out of the microwave and thought, "Man, I wish I was hungry. What the fuck am I going to do with these?"

I was a party for John Moe the other night, celebrating his new job, when someone asked how he and I had become friends.

John recently took some time away from his blog (Monkey Disaster) and his band (Chicken Starship) to watch the movie Red Dawn and write a book about the experience. -- MB

I wrote this book called Conservatize Me, right? I tried to switch from liberal to conservative through a variety of experiences, some quasi-serious and some -- most -- not so much. The research took place over the course of a month in the summer of 2005 when the nation had recently re-elected Bush (or, depending how Kos you are, Bush stole Ohio) but the horror the horror the horror of Iraq was becoming evident. As the book came to fruition, I was struck by the idea of routines. The research phase was not routine at all: it was full of diverse adventure like having tea with man-whore/reporter Jeff Gannon, shooting guns, getting high on jellybeans at the Reagan museum, crashing the college Republican convention, and shopping for Escalades. The writing phase was completely filled with sameness (6am at West Seattle Uptown Espresso, get handed my 12oz coffee before even ordering it, fire up Postal Service on iTunes, and I was writing before Ben Gibbard could even point out that something seems so out of context in this gaudy apartment complex).

The promotional phase of it, though, was a dizzying blend of tedium and new experiences. HarperCollins shipped me around the country, putting me up in swell hotels and hiring folks whose only job was to tend to me. Though every radio interview I did was somewhat different, they all asked pretty much the same questions, making me realize I ask the same questions of guests I interview (or did at my old job). Stops on the tour were exciting and getting to see your book on the shelves at Harvard's bookstore is bonkers exciting, as is finding yourself in Austin. But the bookstore events are always -- ALWAYS -- just a smattering of folks (8 to 60 on my tour) and you read the same stuff and answer the same questions. So diversity and routine all at once. Except the Glenn Beck show on CNN Headline News.

See, we had struck out on most national media. Nothing ever came of NPR's national shows, the Today Show nibbled but didn't bite, same with Olbermann and Hannity. Then, weeks later, we get a call from the Glenn Beck show. Radio guy gone to TV, conservative, Mormon, from Everett.

Here's how it worked on the day of the show:

• I get picked on the heroin dealer intensive street outside my (old) office in a car that is somewhere between a luxury car in a limo driver.
• The driver has lots of stories about Axl Rose (nice guy and very reasonable until they get to the Tacoma Dome when he gets out and puts on the jerk act) and about drunk driving (in 1965 Seattle, it was okay to do it but cops encouraged you to have some coffee.)
• I arrive at the KOMO studios down by the Space Needle. I'm hustled up to a studio where I'm seated in front of a bookcase full of books that aren't real. They're hollow. Not even props, just part of a set. To my other side is a potted plant. Around me, but out of camera range, are people's desks and cubicles. So to the camera, it is as if you're joining me in my author's study.
• I am slathered in makeup. Quickly and efficiently.
• I'm given an ear piece and my choice of what ear to use. I pick my right forgetting that that's the ear that's oddly shaped making earbud headphones impossible and shutting me out of part of the iPod revolution.
• I'm told to talk into the camera as if I could see Glenn Beck but, crucially, I cannot. WHEN YOU WATCH TV, THE PERSON BEING INTERVIEWED PROBABLY CANNOT SEE THE INTERVIEWER. KNOW THIS FOREVER.
• The interview starts and Beck asks almost none of the questions his producer posed during our hour of pre-interview. I make jokes and try to smile. But all the while, I feel that earbud slipping out.
• From my other ear, I hear the guest in a nearby studio. He's there to talk on a different show about fantasy football. "Make sure to play Travis Henry! And the Buffalo defense! THIS WEEKEND!" he bellows as I try to recall my conversations with William Kristol of 15 months before.
• With each question, Glenn Beck gets fainter and fainter due to that earpiece. If you happen upon footage of this interview, you can see me get increasingly baffled and worried. Finally, I can hear him no longer and am forced to say "I'm sorry, Glenn, I can't hear you any more."
• An engineer comes in to tell me the interview ended 60 seconds ago.
• Quasi-limo driver takes me back to KUOW.

I might never be more famous than this day. How would it have been different had I picked the left ear?

The following post was inspired by the thirty-sixth suggestion in No One Cares What You Had for Lunch: 100 Ideas for Your Blog, which was randomly selected by Jan Ives of Dr Jan's Tips From The Top.

To: Ma Baldwin
From: Matthew Baldwin
Date: Jan 26, 2007 11:58 AM
Subject: Embarrassing photo

Hi, mom. This week my defective yeti posts are based on a book of blog suggestion. I had my readers randomly select the topics, and today I'm supposed to post an embarrassing photo from when I was younger. I sure you have a few laying around the house. Can you pick one, scan it, and send it my way?

Love,
Matthew

* * *

To: Matthew Baldwin
From: Ma Baldwin
Date: Jan 26, 2007 1:57 PM
Subject: Re: Embarrassing photo

Here you go. I love this photo, but I bet you are probably embarrassed by it.

Love,
Mom

* * *

To: Ma Baldwin
From: Matthew Baldwin
Date: Jan 26, 2007 3:10 PM
Subject: Re: Embarrassing photo

Oh, god. You win that bet.

Thanks,
Sort of,
Matthew

On my top ten list of Internet Crushes, Sarah Brown's name appears three or four times. For years she has been revealing funny and embarrassing details about herself via Que Sera Sera; now she's letting the whole NetarWeb in on the action with Cringe, which she describes as "A monthly reading series ... [in which] brave souls come forward and read aloud from their teenage diaries, journals, notes, letters, poems, abandoned rock operas, and other general representations of the crushing misery of their humiliating adolescence." -- MB

I wish I'd never made the joke that Cringe was "better and cheaper than therapy," because every interviewer since then has really tried to grab onto that and make it their "hook," which is funny to me, because why can't the hook be that this thing is really funny? Because it is; it's really, really funny. That's the best part about hosting it, and reading all these book submissions. They make me laugh that kind of laugh where you sort of bark really loudly in surprise and then your stomach hurts and you say, "Oh... ohhhhhh. Oh no." That's probably my second favorite kind of laugh. Definitely beats the accidental fart while being mercilessly tickled laugh.

The entries that kill me the most are the ones where people simultaneously exaggerate or embellish the truth, to their own diary, and then, in the next sentence, lay all their hopes and dreams bare. There was a great reader named Roslyn, who at seventeen was determined to stay a virgin until marriage, but she was also "dying for some play." She then launched into this elaborate fantasy about her dream boyfriend, and what they'd do if her parents went out of town. It jumped back and forth between the sweet and clueless, like them having cookies and watching a movie and ordering a pizza, to the unflinchingly raunchy, all handjobs and oral references (apparently her definition of sex was the Clinton one), but lingered mostly on these heartbreakingly small details, like how her hair would be "perfectly blow-dryed," and how she hoped he'd come into her bedroom and ask questions about each little thing she had on display, every picture on the bulletin board.

That kills me most of all, because at that age, you spent so much time assembling your room because you couldn't really assemble the personality you wanted any other way, and to have someone pick up each and every thing and ask you about them probably would have made most of us happier than actually getting in on. Most of us. And the honest truth is, a part of you still wants that. You want someone you like to come into your room and ask you if you've read all those books and which was your favorite and who is this in this photo and when was it taken, blah blah blah, you want that tractor beam of attention, that teenage feeling. And that, to me, is the best part of Cringe: you laugh off your most unbearable moments and everyone laughs with you, but there's the unspoken understand that we're all still pretty much just like that, clueless and horny and full of hope and dread.

Also, handjobs.

Submissions are open for the Cringe book until February 14 at cringebook.com.

I don't actually know Neal Pollack, and even calling him an "Internet friend" would be a stretch, but I am nonetheless indebted to him for his unwitting contribution to this site. A few months after I started defective yeti I wrote about an event I attended, in which Neal was interviewed by John Hodgman. The post gained me some measure of notoriety as it was linked from all over the web, increasing my daily hit count by a dozen or more, and catapulting me into the rarefied ranks of E-list bloggers where I remain to this very day.

Neal Pollack's newest book, Alternadad, is a sobering look at what happens when a baby enters the life of a man incapable of remaining sober. -- MB

On Monday night (Tuesday morning?) at 1 AM, I found myself in the studios of WOR Radio, in New York. I was to be a guest on The Joey Reynolds Show. I didn't know much about Joey Reynolds, other than that he used to be Wayne Newton's manager, sometimes serves his guests homemade cheesecake, and wrote a memoir titled Let Your Smile Be Your Umbrella, But Don't Get a Mouthful of Rain. Also, his real name is Joey Pinto.

I arrived at the studio baked out of my mind, which was the only way I could make it to 1 AM with any semblance of coherence or humor. There, I found a woman named Ronnie Koenig sitting on a white leather couch. Ronnie is the former editor of Playgirl Magazine. She has written, and is performing in, a play based on that experience. We wondered what we were doing on AM radio at one in the morning. Meanwhile, Joey Reynolds was talking on air to a guy with a German accent.

Joey's producer came to get Ronnie, which left me alone in the foyer to do nothing but pace and do easy yoga stretches. A panel discussion was in progress on the radio. In addition to Ronnie Koenig, Joey's guests were Kenny Kramer (the "original" Kramer), and an Albert Einstein impersonator. They spent much of their time talking about the high personal cost of fame. Meanwhile, I waited to get into the cocktail party.

When it was finally my time, I entered an empty studio. Everyone else had been ushered out the back door while I was taking a piss. I met Joey Reynolds, who was aging, but in a good Tony Bennett kind of way. Reynolds, who had not yet seen my book, took a look at my readers' copy, said, "Alternadad? What the hell is this?" and then launched into another on-air monologue about the high price of fame, and also about how he doesn't like upper-level radio station management. Fifteen minutes later, he cut to commercial.

"You have to connect with the people," he said.

I hadn't yet said a word.

Eventually, we talked at length about my book, an interview that, I'm sure, led to thousands of sales. During commercial breaks, he told me about his friends Charles Grodin and Dan Parcells, the brother of Bill Parcells. And then it was over. Before I left, I had to pee again. Joey was in the handicapped stall, smoking.

"Nothing to see here," he said.

"I saw nothing," I said.

He looked at me kindly.

"You'll do fine," he said. "Just don't get addicted to fame."

Somehow, I felt like he understood.

And then he was off to interview the former manager of The Smithereens.

All this week (and next!) I will be making posts based Mighty Girl's book No One Cares What You Had for Lunch: 100 Ideas for Your Blog. In preparation for the event I asked readers to send me numbers from 1 to 100; I am now writing entries based on the corresponding suggestions from the book.

Today's randomly selected writing prompt, #27, reads, in part:

The people around you are doing worthy things ... write little profiles of your friends.

That said, I'd be remiss not to mention that today's suggestion was chosen by Felix Helix of Ipecac Aperitif.

I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Bolivia, reading GAMES Magazine, when I first learned of a board game publication called The Game Report, which hailed from my hometown of Seattle and was written entirely by one man, Peter Sarrett. I looked Peter up upon my return to the states, joined his game group, and even started writing game reviews for TGR.

Not content to just play games, Peter eventually started to design them as well; his first, in fact, is my all-time favorite party game, Time's Up. And a few years back he joined forces with veteran game designer Michael Adams (who created many of the game in the Cranium line) to form Sarrett-Adams Games. He also, incidentally, writes the weblog Static Zombie. -- MB

Someday, one of our games will come with a duck.

When we develop new party games, we'll often think of really cool high-tech gadgetry that would enable some terrific game experiences. But we face two problems. We have no electronics background, so we can't MacGyver a doorbell and a hair dryer into a Jeopardy! lock-out buzzer. And even if we could, we'd face the problem of how to bring that technology to a Wal-Mart price point. So when we're prototyping a new game, we have to resort to simpler, mechanical solutions.

For our latest party game, a clue-giving communication game similar to $25,000 Pyramid, we envisioned a train theme with a timer that was actually a mechanical train chugging along a railroad track. Each section of track remaining when players stopped the clock would earn them bonus points. We couldn't find any suitable trains at local shops, but we did find other wind-up toys of appropriate size. So instead of a train, our early prototype featured a wind-up duck that waddled down the track. Playtesters were immediately drawn to the cute little duck, and asked to play the "duck game," but ultimately we streamlined the game design and eliminated the mechanism altogether. When Hasbro bought the game they changed the theme completely so trains weren't even involved.

The lesson to us is clear, and sometime soon we'll design a game involving fowl play.

That party game, minus the train theme, became Tie One On and was published this fall by Hasbro. It is currently only available at Wal-Mart.

If you have young children (3-6 years old), you might like our other new game this year: The Crazy Mixed Up Zoo Game from Simply Fun. This is a game with beautiful components that scales in difficulty as children get older. And since it's a memory game, kids will often win against adults.

Finally, coming in March from Rio Grande Games is our latest game, If Wishes Were Fishes. This one's a family game where players can catch fish and sell them later at market, or throw them back and be granted a wish that may give them an edge over the opposition.

The following post was inspired by the fourteenth suggestion in No One Cares What You Had for Lunch: 100 Ideas for Your Blog, which was randomly selected by Jon Deal of Ransom-Note-Typography. Jon posted a video today in honor of the occasion, so you should definitely check it out.

Despite crotchety old men like me carping about acronyms like "LOL" and "IMHO," we've always had literary shortcuts that allow us to get our point across economically. They are called "cliches," and they are an essential element of our language. Just think how many words you'd have to write or say to communicate the same idea that "caught with his pants down" expresses so succinctly.

Of course, the problem with cliches is that they are just so darned ... you know. Cliche.

That's why I am initiating the Cliche Rotation Project, to replace our current set of cliches with new ones of equivalent meaning. For example:

Old & Busted	New Hotness
Made a mountain out of a molehill	Saw a duck and shouted "dragon!"
Quiet as a church mouse	Silent as a shadow's whisper
Ready and willing	On it like a bonnet
Wore his heart on his sleeve	Flew his feelings from a flagpole

And so forth.

Come, join me in the CRP. If drop me an email at matthew@defectiveyeti.com with the following information:

• The old cliche
• Your replacement cliche
• Your name
• URL of your blog, or where ever you'd like me to link to when I publish these

If you needs some cliches to get started, go here, browse here, or pick one off this list.

The following post was inspired by the thirty-seventh suggestion in No One Cares What You Had for Lunch: 100 Ideas for Your Blog, which was randomly selected by Virginia Culler of I Absolutely Hate The Word "Blog".

Once, as a child, a grown-up asked me what I would save if my house were burning down. I answered without hesitation: "My bike."

The adult seemed a little flustered by the speed of my response. "Your bike?" she asked, incredulous. "You could always buy a bike, you know. Isn't there something personal you'd want to save?"

She, like most adults, didn't understand. It wasn't important to have "a bike" after the fire; it was important to have my bike. Back then, certain possessions were practically an extension of my identity.

For a while there, around the time I was seven, my prized possession was a stick. It was a length of birch, maybe a yard in length and an inch in diameter, that I'd stripped of bark, and employed as a lightsaber in my backyard reenactment of pivotal Star Wars scenes. Plastic lightsabers were selling for a dime a dozen at the time, but I was happy with my stick -- after all, we'd shared so many adventures together.

One day we both broke -- it in half, I into tears -- and I knew it could never be replaced. Sticks like that don't grow on trees, you know.

So what would I save now, if my house were burning down and my family were already safe? Man, I don't know. Nothing leaps to mind.

In a way I'm proud of this -- attachment to stuff is such a drag, you know? But, still, I can't help but romanticize the days when my Dapper Dan or my Mickey Mouse wristwatch meant the world to me.

Maybe, if my house were burned down tomorrow, I'd use it as an opportunity to reclaim some of that lost innocence. I'd break into my garage, save my bike, and then ride up and down the block to share the news with my neighbors. "Come look," I'll cry excitedly, "A house is burning down! Oh boy: I bet the fire engines will be here any minute!"

I first met Ariel Meadow Stallings virtually via Metafilter, and later in person when she moved (back) to Seattle. She writes the weblog Electrolicious, hosts the Salon of Shame, and is one of the founders of hooping.org. -- MB

My first book hit bookstores this month, and somehow it's about weddings. How does a woman who's wedding was a massive freakfest with hula hoops, a vegan buffet, and guests pooping in buckets become a wedding writer?

The theory is that even freaks get married sometimes, and in a world of 300-page glossy bridal magazines catering to people with princess fantasies, freaks need all the wedding advice they can get. That's where Offbeat Bride: Tafetta-Free Alternatives for Independent Brides comes in.

While the title suggests that the book is only for women, there are more than a few offbeat grooms quoted in the book, including Mr. Defective Yeti himself:

Blogger Matthew Baldwin, from Seattle, Washington, was married at the Seattle Aquarium. He explained that "During the planning process we discovered that a lot of places that seem 'exotic,' like the aquarium, are actually a bargain, because they are considered city or state parks and therefore rent for cheaper than you would get a corresponding hall. We loved getting married there — the best part was that whenever we had a 'transition' (such as from wedding to reception or whatever), there were otters to look at for the guests." Matthew went so far as to say, "We went to a traditional church wedding about a month after our aquarium wedding, and all we could think was, Booooooooring." He has a point: When was the last time you saw otters at a church wedding?

So yes: while I somehow wrote a book about weddings, it uses otters to mock church nuptials — and I pride myself on having written the only wedding guide offering advice for dealing with stoners at receptions:

While traditional brides may worry about Uncle Joey getting drunk and lecherous, many offbeat brides have, well, other concerns. Debra Hanson from Iowa City, Iowa recounted, "Most of our friends are stoners, and we had different groups of smoker-friends coming together and knew that would be a big part of their bonding together. I requested ahead of time for people to please keep it discreet, and they did, for the most part. That was probably my biggest stress surrounding the wedding. I didn't want my conservative relatives to see my friends smoking and have there be drama. Most brides worry about flowers and food, but I was consumed with worry about this! I wish I hadn't fretted so much though, as everyone was very discreet and respectful of my wishes."

We had similar concerns with our fun-loving friends, and I sent out a big email to this subsect of guests before the wedding, advising them to be careful. The email began: "The wedding's coming right up, and I wanted to check in with all of you about one very important wedding topic: Gettin' fucked up!" and continued to advise friends to "… be aware of who's around you when you're preparing to smoke — step into a tent or wander into the woods a bit, and perhaps avoid shouting things like 'Oh my god I feel so great holy shit it's like a roller coaster here I go whoosh!' in places where you could be overheard." Like Debra, we found that our friends who chose to partake were exceptionally discreet — way more discreet than your average lecherous old drunk.

For more information, head to www.offbeatbride.com.

If you have a blog you'd like to promote, send me an email with:

• Your name
• The name of your weblog
• The URL of the your weblog
• A number from to 1 and 100, inclusive

Update: I got all I need. Thanks for playing!