Jack Handey (born 25 February 1949) is an American humorist. He is best known for his Deep Thoughts, a large body of surrealistic one-liner jokes, as well as his "Fuzzy Memories" and "My Big Thick Novel" shorts.
Early years
Handey was born in San Antonio, Texas in 1949. His family later moved to El Paso, Texas, where Handey attended Eastwood High School and the University of Texas at El Paso.
Handey's earliest writing job was for a newspaper, the San Antonio Express-News. He lost the job, in his words, after writing "an article that offended local car dealerships".[1] His first comic writing was with comedian and fellow Texan Steve Martin. According to Martin, Handey got a job writing for Saturday Night Live in 1975 after Martin introduced Handey to the show's creator, Lorne Michaels.[2] For several years Handey worked on other television projects: the Canadian sketch series Bizarre in 1980; the 1980 TV special Steve Martin: Comedy is Not Pretty; and The New Show in 1984. Handey returned to Saturday Night Live in 1985 as a writer and co-producer.[3]
Deep Thoughts
In April 1984, National Lampoon published the first of Jack Handey's Deep Thoughts. Additional Deep Thoughts appeared in the October and November 1984 editions as well as in the short-lived comedy magazine Army Man, while more appeared in 1988 in The New Mexican. The one-liners were to become Handey's signature work, notable for their concise humor, their bizarre hypothetical situations, and their unexpected garden path twists:
- "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." (Delivered on SNL 12 October 1991)
- "The crows seemed to be calling his name, thought Caw." (Delivered on SNL 21 November 1993)[4]
Handey's work next showed up in the Mike Nesmith film, Doctor Duck's Super Secret All-Purpose Sauce, in the format which would later become famous on Saturday Night Live (though narrated by Nesmith).
Between 1991 and 1998, and again from 2001 to 2003, Saturday Night Live included Deep Thoughts on the show. Read live by Handey (who never appeared onscreen), the one-liners proved to be extremely popular. They became an enduring feature of SNL and made Handey a well-known name.
Today the Deep Thoughts can be found copied on numerous websites (although his name is often misspelled as "Handy" or "Handley"). A Deep Thought is also featured in the Nirvana song "I Hate Myself and I Want To Die."
Recent whereabouts
As of 2002, Jack Handey lives with his wife Marta in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City.[5]
Recently, several short humor pieces of his have appeared in The New Yorker's "Shouts & Murmurs" section: "What I'd Say To The Martians," in the issue of August 8 & 15, 2005; "This Is No Game," in the issue of January 9, 2006; and "Ideas For Paintings," in the issue of March 20, 2006. [6]
Books
- Deep Thoughts (1992). Berkley Publishing Group, ISBN 0425133656
- Deeper Thoughts: All New, All Crispy (1993). Hyperion, ISBN 1562828401
- Deepest Thoughts: So Deep they Squeak (1994). Hyperion, ISBN 0786880449
- Fuzzy Memories (1996). Andrews McMeel Publishing, ISBN 0836210409 – a collection of "stories from Handey's childhood"
- The Lost Deep Thoughts: Don't Fight the Deepness (1998). Hyperion, ISBN 0786883057
Notes
- ^ Handey, Jack: "Deep Thoughts about Me: Questions I am Often Asked (and My Answers)", Texas Monthly, January 2002.
- ^ "Martin Writes Off Fried Shrimp Days," New York Post, 1 October 1999.
- ^ "Jack Handey," Internet Movie Database, [1].
- ^ "Deep Thoughts," The SNL Archives, [2].
- ^ Handey, Jack: "Deep Thoughts about Me: Questions I am Often Asked (and My Answers)", Texas Monthly, January 2002.
- ^ Handey, Jack: "Ideas for Paintings," New Yorker, 20 March 2006, [3].
External links
- entry on Handey from the Internet Movie Database
- The SNL Archives' collection of Deep Thoughts
- Copy of "Ideas for Paintings", 2006 short piece in The New Yorker by Handey