Jack Handey appreciation thread

Jack Handey, who used to do the New-Age-pardody “Deep Thoughts” segment on SNL, is one of the comic geniuses of our time. (I don’t know whether “Jack Handey” is his real name or a pen-name.)

From http://www.glug.com/handey/:

When a child asks why it rains, it’s fun to say, “Because God is crying.” If the child asks why God is crying, it’s fun to say, “Probably because of something you did.”

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.

One thing kids like is to be tricked. For instance, I was going to take my little 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.

Guess this is as good a time as any to exercise my sig…

“It’s amazing that one of the world’s most dangerous diseases is carried by one of the smallest animals - the real tiny dog.”

“The face of a child can say it all. Especially the mouth part of the face.”

“The difference between men and boys is that boys want to grow up to be firemen, whereas men want to grow to be giant monster firemen.”

“One thing vampire children are taught is, never run with a wooden stake.”

“Love can sweep you off your feet and carry you along in a way you’ve never known before. But the ride always ends, and you end up feeling lonely and bitter. Wait. It’s not love I’m describing. I’m thinking of a monorail.”

“To me, clowns aren’t funny. In fact, they’re kind of 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.”

Oh, man, there are too many.

“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.”

“Instead of having “answers” on a math test, they should just call them “impressions,” and if you got a different “impression,” so what, can’t we all be brothers?”

“I wish I would have a real tragic love affair and get so bummed out that I’d just quit my job and become a bum for a few years, because I was thinking about doing that anyway.”

“The only thing that makes me believe in UFOs is that, sometimes I lose stuff.”

If I ever get real rich, I hope I’m not real mean to poor people, like now.

Children need encouragement. If a kid gets an answer right, tell him it was a lucky guess. That way he develops a good, lucky feeling.

Somebody told me it was frightening how much topsoil we are losing each year, but I told that story around the campfire and nobody got scared.

I hope life isn’t a big joke, because I don’t get it.

Joe Random. This is probably my all-time favorite, because I can easily see my uncles pulling this on me had it ever occurred to them, or me doing this to my nephew if he were still young enough to fall for it. Thus the circle of uncle/nephew abuse continues.

Instead of trying to build newer and bigger weapons of destruction, we should be thinking about getting more use out of the ones we already have.

It takes a big man to cry. But it takes a bigger man to laugh at that man.

I hope that after I die, people say of me: “That guy sure owed me a lot of money.”

I remember hearing about when Deep Thoughts began being run on SNL, what was it, early-mid nineties? It was good to hear them.

Again.

Omni magazine used to have a back page called The Last Word, which was usually humorous.

These, along with “It’s a shame that whole families have to be torn apart by something as simple as wild dogs” and many others I heard the few times I tuned into SNL, were fondly remembered from a Last Word column my friends and I laughed about for weeks.

In 1983.

On the one hand, I was sort of glad that such classic jokes were gaining a wider audience and getting appreciated. On the other, I could never help thinking: “Has this guy really been coasting for over a decade on the same lines?”

"Instead of burning a guy at the stake, what about burning him at the stilts? It probably lasts longer, plus is moves around. "
Jack Handey

“I believe in making the world safe for our children, but not for our children’s children because I don’t think children should be having sex.”

“Probably the saddest thing you’ll ever see is a mosquito sucking on a mummy. Forget it, little friend.”

“Lori got offended that I used the word “puke.” But to me, that’s what her dinner tasted like.”

“We used to laugh at Grandpa when he’d head off and go fishing. But we wouldn’t be laughing that evening when he’d come back with some whore he picked up in town.”
You could go on for hours with these. What’s he been up to since SNL?

He writes a little, appears in the New Yorker from time to time. Here’s a couple of his humorous essays. . .

http://outside.away.com/outside/adventure/200203/200203respect_men_1.adp

http://thejazzy.tripod.com/voices.html

When I die, I want to go peacefully in my sleep like my Grandfather, not screaming in terror like his passengers.

If you ever fall off the Sears Tower, just go real limp, because maybe you’ll look like a dummy and people will try to catch you because, hey, free dummy.

  • Jack Handey

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!!

  • Jack Handey

I bet it was pretty hard to pick up girls if you had the Black Death.

  • Jack Handey

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

  • Jack Handey

I had this one printed on my checks for a few years:
“I’d rather be rich than stupid”

Have to say that these are all infinitely funnier read right here than via the Deep Thoughts schtick. Maybe it’s me (?)

“I don’t pretend to have all the answers. I don’t pretend to even know what the questions are. Hey, where am I?”

"It’s funny how two simple words, ‘I promise,’ will stall people for a while.’

“When I think of some of the things that have been done in the name of science, I have to cringe. No, wait, not science, vandalism. And not cringe, laugh.”

“You know one thing that will really make a woman mad? Just run up and kick her in the butt. (P.S. This also works with men.)”

'When I was about ten years old, we set up a lemonade stand on the sidewalk in front of our house. But we didn’t sell many glasses, and after a few hours, we took it down. I think that was the first time I realized that the world doesn’t give a damn about you or anything you do."

“The day I met Marta was the happiest day of my life, because that was the day I screwed a friend of mine out of a bunch of money.”

“In weightlifting, I don’t think sudden, uncontrolled urination should automatically disqualify you.”

“When I think of all the hours and hours of my life I have spent watching television, it makes me realize, Man, I am really rich with television.”

“Most people don’t realize that large pieces of coral, which have been painted brown and attached to the skull by common wood screws, can make a child look like a deer.”