Many of you may remember Jack Handey from the old Saturday Night Live days. He was the guy who did ‘Deep Thoughts,’ which were hyper-wierd observations that were offered with the innocent patois of a Hallmark Greeting Card. You never got to see Jack Handey. You only heard his soothing voice as he said something like:
"If trees could scream, would we be so cavalier about cutting them down? We might, if they screamed all the time, for no good reason."
Every once in awhile I would wonder what happend to Jack Handey. Then just the other day I came across this article he wrote for the New Yorker about his First Day in Hell. The opening paragraph immediately drew me in:
My first day in Hell is drawing to a close. They don’t really have a sunset here, but the fires seem to dim a bit, and the screaming gets more subdued. Most of the demons are asleep now, their pointy tails curled up around them. They look so innocent, it’s hard to believe that just a few hours ago they were raping and torturing us.
Go on, read the whole thing. Maybe it will motivate you to start looking for salvation.
P.S. If you want a better practice, check out this Ultimate Guide.
Sometime the truth hurts…because its so funny, my side aches.
A master of deadpan.
I just finished reading a compilation book of humor articles from the New Yorker over the years, some of them date back to the 30’s. The book is called “Fierce Pajamas” and includes a fair number of Jack Handey pieces, as well as classic Thurber, Woody Allen, and Garrison Keillor articles from the New Yorker over the years. Available at any fine bookseller.
Funny! I always assumed Jack Handey was the work of a SNL staff writer. My favorite Jack Handey quote …
If you ever drop your keys into a river of molten lava, let ‘em go, because, man, they’re gone.