It’s been 6 months since I posted Books I Didn’t Write Volume 1 and Volume 2. I’ve been meaning to do this again…and I probably will in the next week or two. In the meantime, here’s a few of the best from the past.

(all I did for these was load a random flickr image and then come up with a book title and cover design. unfortunately i didn’t save photo credits to the photographers from volume 1.)

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World renowned makeup artist Bryan Allain walks you through the dos and don’ts of the art of makeup. Using everyday objects like sidewalk chalk and charcoal briquettes, Bryan paints on the palette of the female face with the grace of Van Gogh and the edginess of an angry Alec Baldwin.

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photo credit

Journalist Bryan Allain makes a compelling case for the silver lining to the nuclear war mushroom cloud.

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A collection of Bryan Allain’s shortest stories. Some are only 40 syllables long. Others are wordless.

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The harrowing tale of a young man raised by russian con artists in an ethyl alcohol distillery.

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What’s in that girl’s belly? Is it an 8-month old fetus or a whole lot of Amstel Light? In this visually stunning masterpiece, author/photographer Bryan Allain provides 125 pictures of round female guts for which you must answer the question: Is she pregnant…or is that a beer belly? Great as a party game! (answer key provided in the back of the book!)

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photo credit

With the passion and determination of John Stossel, investigative reporter Bryan Allain rips the wings off of the bird obesity epidemic to find the truth. Are oversized birdfeeders creating a culture of gluttony in the bird kingdom? Are birdfeed manufacturers spiking their product with addictive substances? Are owls really just fat and lazy? Deadly Buffet chirps relvancy from cover to cover as the truth flies off every page and poops on your brain.

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Are spoons getting smaller these days, or are our liquids just taking up more volume? In the spirit of Malcolm Gladwell, Eric Carle, and Henry David Thoreau, author Bryan Allain takes an in-depth look into the curved eating implement named after a form of snuggling.

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Time for another brief installment of Living With the Amish…

Is it windy or are you just happy to see me?

Like a pack of zebras, innumerable because of the confusing illusion of their stripes.

So too is a pack of Amish – a slow-moving mass of black garments.

On clear mornings, passing an Amish buggy is done with caution.

On foggy mornings, you sit behind the buggy for a long time, muttering mean things about them and their disdain of modern transportation under your breath.

This has been another brief installment of Living With the Amish…

Last week I spoke at our first Wednesday service at church and had a great time. The handful of positive comments I’ve received about it in the past week makes me think it went over well enough, so that’s been encouraging.

I had Chad burn me a DVD of the message so I could put it online in case anyone wanted to check it out. I’m in the process of doing that now, so if you’re interested in viewing it, let me know and I can give you a heads up when it’s online.

One thing I did notice as I was watching the DVD was the great faces I was making while I was speaking. Seemed like I could smack the pause button like a “Press Your Luck” contestant at any point in the message and my face would come up whammies. (80s game show reference anyone? and if you don’t think I just spent 20 minutes reading the Press Your Luck Wikipedia page, you don’t know me.)

Some of my faces and poses were too good not to share…so I’m sharing.

(with captions, of course…)

Believe me, I could have done this for a hundred more frames. But since making fun of myself doesn’t pay the bills, those 6 will have to do … for now.

OK, you all correctly guessed that those were Derek Webb’s knees. The white t-shirted one was catching a nap on a drive from Austin to Dallas last August on the Overdressed Release Week Extravaganza.

So it’s time for a tougher game called, “Guess the Photographer”.

Who was sitting in the front of the van, noticed how ridiculous I looked sitting all by myself in the backseat, and snapped this picture with my camera?

I’ll give you a hint, it was one of these 7 folks from this picture at the equator (and obviously not the doofus in the white shirt).