Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey

[WorthyStevens]

One thing kids like is to be tricked. For instance, I was going to take my nephew to Disneyland, but instead I drove him to an old burned-out warehouse. "Oh no," I said, "Disneyland burned down." He cried and cried, but I think that deep down he thought it was a pretty good joke. I started to drive over to the real Disneyland, but it was getting pretty late.

To me, clowns aren't funny. In fact, they're kinda scary. I've wondered where this started and I think it goes back to the time I went to the circus and a clown killed my dad.

If you define cowardice as running away at the first sign of danger, screaming and tripping and begging for mercy, then yes, Mr. Brave man, I guess I'm a coward.

[chaseter]

Ahhh I remember this from SNL!

[bullets]

those are great , i used to own a series of jack handey books . it was great when they were read on snl it added another dimension to the funny

[WorthyStevens]

To me, boxing is like a ballet, except there's no music, no choreography and the dancers hit each other.

[Addendum]

Consider the daffodil. And while you're doing that, I'll be over here, looking through your stuff.

When I was a kid my favorite relative was Uncle Caveman. After school we'd all go play in his cave, and every once in a while he would eat one of us. It wasn't until later that I found out that Uncle Caveman was a bear.

[Lighthouse]

My personal favorite.

"If a kid asks where rain comes from, I think a cute thing to tell him is, "God is crying." And if he asks why God is crying, another cute thing to tell him is, "Probably because of something you did.""

[chaseter]

Contrary to what most people say, the most dangerous animal in the world is not the lion or the tiger or even the elephant. It's a shark riding on an elephant's back, just trampling and eating everything they see.

[Addendum]

If you ever crawl inside an old hollow log and go to sleep, and while you're in there some guys come and seal up both ends and then put it on a truck and take it to another city, boy, I don't know what to tell you.

[chaseter]

A funny thing to do is, if you're out hiking and your friend gets bitten by a poisonous snake, tell him you're going to go for help, then go about ten feet and pretend that *you* got bit by a snake. Then start an argument with him about who's going to go get help. A lot of guys will start crying. That's why it makes you feel good when you tell them it was just a joke.

[Addendum]

I wish I lived on a planet that had two suns---regular sun and "rogue" sun. That way, when somebody asked me what time it was, I'd say, "Regular time?" And they'd say, "Yeah." And I'd say, "Sorry, all I have is rogue time." It'd be fun to be a stuck-up rogue-time guy.

[hammy]

[Whiskey Tango]

It's sad that a family can be torn apart by something as simple as a pack of wild dogs.

Was always my favorite^^

[bored]

Whether or not we find life there, I think Jupiter should be considered an enemy planet.

[Joker]

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.

As I bit into the nectarine, it had a crisp juiciness about it that was very pleasurable - until I realized it wasn't a nectarine at all, but a HUMAN HEAD!!

Anytime I see something screech across a room and latch onto someone's neck, and the guy screams and tries to get it off, I have to laugh, because what is that thing?!

[WorthyStevens]

Sometimes I think I’d be better off dead. No wait, not me, you.

Higher beings from outer space may not want to tell us the secrets of life, because we’re not ready. But maybe they’ll change their tune after a little torture.

[Deep Thinkin'!]

How was this kid you took to this warehouse?

[Joker]

When the age of the Vikings came to a close, they must have sensed it. Probably, they gathered together one evening, slapped each other on the back and said, "Hey, good job."

Sometimes when I feel like killing someone, I do a little trick to calm myself down. I'll go over to the person's house and ring the doorbell. When the person comes to the door, I'm gone, but you know what I've left on the porch? A jack-o'-lantern with a knife in the side of its head with a note that says "You."
After that, I usually feel a lot better, and no harm done.

I wish I had a kryptonite cross, because then you could keep both Dracula and Superman away.

[Halcohol]

I love to go to the schoolyard and watch the children jump and scream, but they don't know I'm using blanks.

[fu manchu]

"I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate. And I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd never expect it."

[fu manchu]

I liked when SNL did this. I hope they bring it back in the future.

[BatMatt]

Jack Handey is hilarious, they make for great away messages

[SWAT]

Originally Posted by fu manchu

"I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate. And I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd never expect it."

Hahaha!!

[K.B.]

"The crows were calling his name, thought Kaw."


This one was awesome because my cub leaders name was Kaw (after the jungle book, all the cub leaders had names fro mthat like baloo etc)

[K.B.]

Anyone watch the SNL in the 90's special last night?

[WorthyStevens]

NEW YORK - Jack Handey thinks dinosaurs are overrated.
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"A world ruled by dinosaurs? It didn't make any sense! I could understand a world where dinosaurs had some say — but not rule," he says.
With absurdist musings such as these, Handey has established himself as the strangest of birds: a famous comedian whose platform is not the stage or screen, but the page.
It's been years since his "Deep Thoughts" was a staple on "Saturday Night Live." Since then, longer but equally surreal works by Handey have become commonplace in the pages of The New Yorker and other magazines.
After a series of "Deep Thoughts" paperback collections (a 1994 edition was titled "Deepest Thoughts: So Deep They Squeak") and a "Fuzzy Memories" compilation, which collectively have sold more than 1 million copies, Handey is releasing his first book of longer form material.
"It does feel like an accomplishment, kind of going to the adults table with a hardback cover," Handey said in a recent interview. "It does feel like, OK, this is playing with the big boys."
"What I'd Say to the Martians and Other Veiled Threats," published by Hyperion with a first print run of 25,000 copies, contains a few of his favorite "Deep Thoughts" and a handful of "little tiny stories," such as the dinosaur tale. But the meat of the book is shaped by short pieces such as the title story in which a caged narrator rants to his alien captors.
"So are we so different? Of course, we are, and you will be even more different if I ever finish my homemade flame thrower," he says.
Handey, 59, lives in Santa Fe, N.M., with his wife, Marta, who is also his editor. But that is a much too specific existence for many to accept. For years, some fans assumed he was only a character, a disembodied voice that soothingly read "Deep Thoughts" in the guise of the implausibly named "Jack Handey."
Handey, though, hasn't exactly discouraged this perception. In one of his "Martians" pieces — "How I Want to Be Remembered" — he eulogizes himself: "Jack was an expert in so many fields, it's hard to say what he was best at: the arts, the sciences, or the businesses."
"SNL" is generally reluctant to use a writer's name, preferring to keep the focus on the performers. Handey, though, eventually won the honor, thanks to the strength of his work on penning such sketches as "Unfrozen Cave Man Lawyer."
"The irony is that people think Jack Handey is a made-up name," says Handey. "You can't win is the lesson."
On his Web site, http://www.deepthoughtsbyjackhandey.com, you can vote on whether Handey is a real person or not. One of the choices is that he's Steve Martin, which isn't a coincidence — the two comedians have a connection that goes back decades.
Handey, who was born in San Antonio and went to the University of Texas at El Paso, began as a newspaper reporter, often writing a humor column when he could. He still recalls the possibly influential headlines of one paper's tabloid evening edition: "Boy, 14, Sold for Chickens."
In the 1970s, Martin and Handey were at one point neighbors in Santa Fe. Martin took notice of Handey's articles and invited him to write jokes for his standup act and, eventually, for a comedy special. Handey calls it his proverbial big break.
A frequent guest on "SNL," Martin recommended to creator Lorne Michaels that Handey be hired because he could simply "write funny."
"Instead of going one leap forward, he goes about three leaps forward," says Martin of Handey's humor. Martin happily recalls jokes Handey wrote for him, like for one bit called "What I Believe" that was rattled off as a list. One entry: "I believe that robots are stealing my luggage."
Martin is also a frequent contributor to The New Yorker, and Handey jokes about their intertwining paths: "So now he can never die because then I would die, too.
"Our minds kind of work a lot in the same way," Handey says. "It's sort of jerk humor, where the character is sort of a jerk."
In "Martians," the characteristics of that character — a kind of alter ego of Handey's that shares his name — are evident in the essays. He often likes to do his "funny cowboy dance" and refers repeatedly to his "friend Don." But above all, he is oblivious to just how disturbing his assumptions are.
"That character is a psychotic person who thinks he's normal and tries to explain away his psychoses as normal," says Handey. "He's sort of a dangerous person who has this facade of normality."
With wavy gray hair, dark-framed glasses and toothy grin, Handey appears to be normal, but by all accounts it's not a facade. His friends call him unpretentious, sweet and bearing no obvious bloodlust for Martians.
His more bizarre pieces include shot-by-shot instructions for a nature documentary (including having a monkey ride atop a giraffe), a pseudo history of a friendship between Al Capone and Albert Einstein (Capone: "With your brains and my muscle, we'll be unstoppable") and the essay "This Is No Game," a list of warnings that includes: "It's as real as a mummy who still thinks he's inside a pyramid, but he's actually in a museum in Ohio."
His jokes often begin with a cliche before diverting in an unpredictable, often demented direction. For example, he writes, "Eventually, I believe, everything evens out. Long ago an asteroid hit our planet and killed our dinosaurs. But in the future, maybe we'll go to another planet and kill their dinosaurs."
Susan Morrison, editor of the "Shouts & Murmurs" section in The New Yorker, says his writing is a feat of control and sustained tone.
"In each of these pieces, he conjures this perfect, seamless world, almost in the way that a really expert fiction writer does," she says. "There's not a false note. Within the first sentence, you're in Jack Handey world."
The brevity is no doubt a result of years of writing "Deep Thoughts."
"Why write a line of exposition when you can write a joke?" Handey says. "Writing `Deep Thoughts,' it almost reaches a point of, 'How few words can I write to get a laugh?'"
Handey is currently on hiatus from "Deep Thoughts" but believes he'll return to composing his signature material for another book, the title of which he's already chosen: "Please Stop the Deep Thoughts."
He also has a screenplay ("Harv the Barbarian") that's been floating around for years with occasional interest. He counts Monty Python as a major influence, but says that other than his readings on "SNL," he was never tempted to perform.
"I've always enjoyed print more than anything," Handey says. "It doesn't pay a whole lot but you control it and your name's on it."

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