Tag: Humor

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Ferdia Lennon Wins Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for ‘Delightful’ Novel

Ferdia Lennon has been awarded the 2024 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse prize for comic fiction, which means a pig will be named after his winning novel, Glorious Exploits. The prize, set up in 2000, seeks to recognise the funniest new novels that best evoke the spirit of PG Wodehouse’s work. As well as the chance to name a gloucestershire old spots pig, the winner receives a jeroboam of Bollinger Special Cuvée, a case of Bollinger La Grande Année and a complete set of the Everyman’s Library PG Wodehouse collection. Read more

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The MAD Files

Before MAD there were the funny papers, with their well-worn jokesters: Dagwood and Blondie, Archie and Jughead, Little Orphan Annie. The funnies were calculated to make you smile or (rarely) crack you up, but not to dangle you upside down and show you the sheer dimwitted lunacy of life itself. For that, comics reader, you had to wait for the advent of MAD, whose Usual Gang of Idiots poked smirking fun at cows both sacred and profane. Proudly unfurling its adolescent gibes, MAD was kin to wild card TV comedy like the Smothers Brothers and Laugh-In. Small visual doodads festooned its pages, and there were tiny, snide jokes strewn about like buried treasure. This was a device to make young readers pore over each panel repeatedly, while picking their noses and ignoring calls to come to the dinner table. MAD’s densely textured comic vibe inspired the Firesign Theatre, along with Dr. Demento, Monty Python, Second City, SNL, the Simpsons, the Onion, and on and on—a comic Valhalla. Read more

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‘Bad Monkey’ Premieres August 14th on Apple TV+

Based on Carl Hiaasen’s New York Times bestselling novel and enduring cult favorite, “Bad Monkey” tells the story of Andrew Yancy (Vince Vaughn), who has been bounced from the Miami Police Department and is now a health inspector in the Keys. But after stumbling upon a case that begins with a human arm fished up by tourists, he realizes that if he can prove murder, he’ll be back in. He just needs to get past a trove of Floridian oddballs and one bad monkey. Watch trailer

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‘Sure, I’ll Join Your Cult’ by Maria Bamford

Some of her misadventures … feel like anything but laughing matters. But it’s a testament to Bamford that she’s able to fill these pages with stories that are relatable and consistently hilarious, even when they’re harrowing. Throughout, she rejects the appeal of tidy solutions, instead embracing messy self-acceptance. Read more

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Quietly Hostile by Samantha Irby

She never wallows in loathing, self- or otherwise. Instead, she lets us all in on the joke. And what a joke it is … Calling Quietly Hostile a collection of essays is a bit limiting. These 17 pieces are more like essays crossed with stand-up bits, and that punchline-driven rhythm serves the book spectacularly well … Irby dexterously plays both sides: the awkward people-pleaser and the snarky cynic. Like a cartoon character in a tennis match against herself, she races back and forth between self-deprecation and scalding humor, never once missing a stroke. People may be shallow, Irby is more than happy to point out, but she’s right down there with them — quietly hostile, sure, but also loudly irresistible. Read more

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Nine Books That Will Actually Make You Laugh

Let’s be honest: What passes for funny in book marketing falls beneath the standard just about everywhere else. The number of published works that say “Hilarious!” on their cover but turn out to be merely quirky—or the dreaded wacky—is enough to make a reader cynical. Read more

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Alexandra Petri’s US History

On Petri’s deranged timeline, John and Abigail Adams try sexting, the March sisters from Little Women are sixty feet tall, and Susan Sontag goes to summer camp. Nearly eighty short, hilarious pieces span centuries of American history and culture. Ayn Rand rewrites The Little Engine That Could. Nikola Tesla’s friends stage an intervention when he falls in love with a pigeon. The characters from Sesame Street invade Normandy. And Mark Twain–who famously said reports of his death had been greatly exaggerated–offers a detailed account of his undeath, in which he becomes a zombie. Read more

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