I’m currently taking a course with The Onion and each week we learn a few more of their “funny filters” and then are sent home to write ten headlines and one article. This is difficult for me.
My Third Week With The Onion – Another Bad Week
Tag: writing
My Second Week With The Onion – Sophomore Slump
See, because Camel cigarettes have a Camel as their spokesperson, but he prefers the compet...
A few weeks ago I started a humor writing class with The Onion.
In this course we are taught about satire and how The Onion approaches comedy. The publication is known for its sharp, pithy headlines and these headlines are the primary focus of the class. Headlines, in fact, are so important, it’s how The Onion selects articles for publication. Every week hundreds of headlines are submitted by editors and five or so articles emerge from that list. Their very best writers only have about a 1 in 50 chance of their headline becoming an article. We are asked each week to bring our ten best headlines and one article to be evaluated by classmates and instructor.
Hits (And Misses) From My Writing Class With The Onion
In April 1992 I fell in love with National Lampoon Magazine.
I bought my first issue at a local drugstore and raced home, excited to find out if this would be a worthy successor to my Mad Magazine fascination as a child. I had matured, albeit slightly, and was seeking a more sophisticated type of funny. I found it in National Lampoon. I decided after reading the issue that I would make it a life’s goal to write something worthy of the magazine’s inclusion. The problem was that as a sophomore in high school, I had never written anything. Plus, I was unfunny. Oh, and the National Lampoon quit publishing about a year later. I shelved the dream of being a writer and re-focused my efforts on trying to bone senior Ashley Ripley who once smiled at me in homeroom, to which I assumed meant she wanted this (note – pointing currently at self). She didn’t.
D.J. Reviews Bic for Her • Originally Published at InThePowderRoom
This is an essay originally published at InThePowderRoom and is reprinted with permission. Also, these words were made funnier by the editorial goodness of Sarah del Rio.
In 2012, Bic released a line of pens designed exclusively for women. They were called Bic for Her™ and they were just like their regular pens except that they came in pink and purple. This made sense because women like pretty colors.
The Sticker Incident – Behind the Scenes at Allison and D.J. Fix Your Stupid Problems
Hmm... maybe I should run this by Allison first.
She hated the idea from the beginning.
“I’m going to have something made to send out to all the people that write in questions for our column!” Allison responded with, “Uh huh. Have fun.” Okay, she wasn’t into it. In fact, I’ve witnessed more excitement in line at a salad bar. Now, to be fair, Allison’s and my communication mostly consist of me writing stupid things on email or instant message and then waiting for her to get annoyed. Just yesterday I was drawing up the graphic for our newest column. As a goof I created an additional one which I emailed over with, “Next month, I have our topic.” This was attached.
Bloggers are Weird Podcast – Allison Arnone
Humor blogger (and my writing partner) Allison Arnone joins us for a discussion about online dating, social media, politics, and why her parents bought her at age 8 a ventriloquist dummy named Lester, an African American male-puppet dressed in a leisure suit.
R.I.P InThePowderRoom and Leslie Marinelli (she’s not dead, though)
The happy couple post-coitus.
Women terrified me until I was twenty-two.
Without hyperbole I had a full, blown-out phobia of the fairer sex. Also bees. I can remember in first grade there was a girl who I wanted to date, or whatever we called it back then. I knew that I wasn’t good looking enough, however. That horrible self-image lasted until (in college) my first girlfriend told me that I was handsome. And she was beautiful. With her validation I realized that all those years I had been lying to myself. It’s not like after that moment I walked around campus believing I was chiseled from stone. But I no longer thought of myself as ugly. All it took was one person’s compliment and my lifetime of thinking I was gross-looking went away. I’d love to tell you that I came to an acceptance of my attractiveness through intense self-exploration and maturity. Nope. It just took the prettiest girl I knew to tell me I was hot. Sometimes that’s all you need.
Introducing Allison and D.J. Fix Your Stupid Problems – About Work
I always wanted a writing partner. One with boobs, preferably.
Well, let me back that up. Actually I have never wanted a writing partner. I’m far too controlling and I believe my creative ideas are superior to others. Or, if someone was more talented than me and I knew it, the unconscious jealousy would cause me to undermine our efforts until the whole thing imploded. Plus, I just do not play well with others when it comes to comedy. Now, that being said, I’ve always still wanted to be around people as funny as me. Or funnier. Years ago I started writing for Aiming Low, when that was still a thing. I was hired on their JV squad with two other humorists. One is a syndicated columnist in 400 newspapers. The other received an “A” from Entertainment Weekly on her recent book. Both are insanely funny. When it was announced I’d be on the team, I became very scared. This is a good thing. It caused me to up my game and compete at their level. Someone thought I had enough potential with literally zero writing credits to my name. That meant something to me. And I wasn’t going to let them down.
A Lost Interview with D.J. Paris of ThoughtsFromParis
I had to get one for my dog, of course.
I don’t know why I’d never thought of this before.
Over the years I’ve been asked to do interviews. Most of the time they go live (like this one on InThePowderRoom). But other times, for reasons not disclosed to me, the interview never surfaces. Which is fine, of course. This has happened about a dozen times. I never take it personally aside from setting up a fake Twitter account to troll the publication incessantly with tweets about how the head editor sleeps with livestock and may be involved in terrorist sleeper cell recruitment.
