Optimizing a Query to Blog

[tsptom]

Hi all -

On the homepage of my website (non-VB) I created links to the latest 2 blog entries. The query which finds the latest post does not seem to have a problem, but the query that grabs the second to last post seems to be sluggish.

This one seems OK...

SELECT *
FROM vb_blog
where state = 'visible' and
           blogid in (select max(blogid) from vb_blog
                          where state = 'visible');

This one seems to slow things down...

SELECT *
FROM vb_blog
where state = 'visible' and
           blogid in (select max(blogid) -1 from vb_blog
                          where state = 'visible');

# Query_time: 4 Lock_time: 0 Rows_sent: 1 Rows_examined: 254528


Any suggestions to speed this up?

Thanks!