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Fact: "New" Plus "Jack Handey" Often Equals Laughter
Filed under: The Squib Report Tagged: books, comedy, design, humor, Jack Handey, Paul Simms, Shouts & Murmurs, Steve Martin, Woody Allen
Jack Handey has a book coming out! I just learned this, and it made me happy. Pub date is April 8! The title story, "What I'd Say to the Martians," might be the funniest thing I've read in the past five years; you can read it here. How much "Shouts & Murmurs" stuff has made it to book form? I reckon Woody Allen and Steve Martin have pulled it off. Anyone else?
I love the cover, too:
New York's Upright Citizens Brigade has been hosting a series of highly entertaining reading events to promote Ben Karlin's new anthology, Things I've Learned From Women Who've Dumped Me. I went to the one last Thursday, and fellow "Shouts and Murmurs" alum Paul Simms read part of his very funny chapter.
At one point Brooke Shields showed up and told a great story about dating the not-yet-outed frontman for a very popular 1980s singing duo that must, alas, remain nameless.
Fun fact: Brooke Shields has never written a "Shouts & Murmurs" item!
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A few clips
- Report: Learning to read with comic books edited by Françoise Mouly (for Print)
- Interview: Designer Eleanor Grosch (for Print)
- Review: Charles Addams: A Cartoonist's Life by Linda H. Davis (for Newsday)
- Review: The King's Gambit: A Son, a Father, and the World's Most Dangerous Game by Paul Hoffman (for Newsday)
- Review: Does The New Republic's recent redesign mean a change of tune? (for Print)
- Proposal: A more attractive MetroCard (for A Brief Message)
- Interview: James Surowiecki on what's next for the wisdom of crowds (for Assignment Zero)
- Report: Eustace Tilley spruces up for The New Yorker's website redesign (for Print)
- Feature: Muslim immigration iconography in the Netherlands (for Print)
- Review: books about various New Yorker cartoonists by Liza Donnelly and Iain Topliss (for Newsday)
- Profile: screenwriter and novelist Joe Keenan (for Newsday)
- Review: The Complete New Yorker (for Print)
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Comments
I can't believe I missed that UCB show! I wanted to go, but somehow got the Rejection Show and that show mixed up in my brain!
But I sat next to Brooke Shields and her husband, Chris, at Fanelli's the other night, and she didn't tell me any of this! Hmph! Oh, well! But her husband did tell me about a remake of The Land of the Lost he's working on, which I was very pleased to hear of!
Was it George Michael? That was the talk of my middle-school corridors! Plus, of course, Michael Jackson. I always liked Brooke Shields, in part because for a while we had the same eyebrows.
Let's see, don't forget phenom Simon Rich, most of whose clever confections in Ant Farm were originally Shouts; who else? Remember when that piece by Andy Borowitz, "Pavlov's Brother," was made into a Toronto Fringe Festival play?
I bet we'd get some clues from those end-of-year roundups the magazine does of Books From Our Pages.
My favorite Jack Handey piece? "Ideas for Paintings."