The Top 5 Valiums of 2015

Scott Weiland died on a tour bus in a sad parking lot in an even sadder state (Minnesota), a strange Polish blogger discovered that despite years of copious drug usage and multiple fence-jumping accidents he somehow wasn't sterile, and I had the opportunity to tour strange and foreign lands like Italy and Clarks Summit. Yes, 2015 was quite an action-packed year. Despite all that was going on, I somehow managed to churn out more than 10 posts over the course of the year (a total of 11). That's an average of nearly a post per month! At this breakneck pace, I'll have all the material I need to put out a book of personal essays or prank emails by as early as 2052.

As is customary each year, I list the five most popular posts, which is about as ridiculous as a radio station doing a Best of the Best Today segment. Normally, this post would've come at the tail end of last year or the early part of this one, but my wife had to go and have our first child and that threw off the normally unbending editorial deadlines that have become a hallmark of this institution. As always, thanks for reading -- especially if you're reading this from Russia (Russia's readership really stepped it up this year). Now on to the list ...

5. The History of Kim Davis' Meteoric Rise to Fame. Before 2015, nobody knew who Kim Davis' was -- except for the fine folks of Rowan County, Kentucky. Now she's so recognizable that when a camera pans to her briefly during the State of the Union she's trending on Twitter instantly. What most people don't know is how Davis got to where she is now. Thanks to hours (1) of research (Google searches and outright lies) I was able to piece together Davis' back story.

4. (Tie) Italy through the eyes of an Ignorant Comedian: Introduction and Melatonin: It's Natural, So It Can't be Bad for me ... Right? For the first time in Valium Vickie's storied history, there was a tie in the top five. The post about Italy got the exact same number of clicks (1,327,485) as the post about my sleep disorder. If you read both back to back, you'll actually find they're very similar.

3. 4 Places my Boston Terrier Has Been that My Grandmother Hasn't.  When all is said and done, my grandmother will probably have lived six or seven times longer than my beautiful Boston Terrier, Judith Weiland. Despite her unfairly short lifespan, Judith is determined to see as much of the world as possible (last year she swam in both the Pacific and the Atlantic oceans) while my grandmother continues to waste away in the bowels of Pennsylvania's once booming coal region. Which book would you rather read: "I've been going to the same hairdresser at the same time for 49 years" by Jared B's grandmother or "I f#cked a billionaire's Rottweiler, Curtis, on a yacht in Cabo" by Judith Weiland Bilski?

2. 11 Things that Got Me Through the Most Difficult Valentine's Day of my Life. Ostensibly, this post is a transcript of prank text messages I sent on Valentine's Day, but it's really a post about the OCD tendencies that manifested themselves after my wife left me for a brief period early on in 2015. As fate would have it, we bumped into each other on our separately planned Italy trips, conceived a child in the Roman Colosseum and decided to give our marriage another shot for the sake of our child.

And the winner is ...

1. The Manayunk Bike Race and the Girl in the Pink Pants. This is the 100% true story of how I met my wife, Liz. Granted, it's nowhere near as romantic as my parents' story: They met a key party in the Poconos in 1979. Serendipity helped my mom pull the keys to my dad's Dodge Dart out of the bucket, but a poorly manufactured product prevented the engine to my dad's prized automobile from turning over. Luckily, my mom's first husband and the owner of an impressive mustache was a sport and agreed to drive my parents to a rent-by-hour hotel if my dad could get him some coke. Since my dad rarely left the house without a little of "Uncle Eddie's Gum-nummer" in those days, this wasn't an issue -- and the rest is history.