You see, it’s not that I don’t update this site very often, it’s just that I never seem to get around to posting the official news concerning said updates. I think I did manage to figure this one out, though – if you hadn’t noticed, I’m not the type of person that can simply post a few words or even just a few sentences, so these posts tend to become quite verbose. The odd thing is that I have been writing a lot lately in the last two weeks and it’s this intense, bury myself under mountains of work-ethic that I’ve got going that prevents me from actually announcing my progress…“Well, I could just do the post now, or if I wait until tomorrow I can include this piece, too…” And so on, but now I’ve finally reached a breaking point, so let’s see if I can even remember everything that’s gone down…
The first project that was completed actually went up back near the beginning of the month and although I’m certainly glad to have it over with by now, it was very possibly the best feature that I’ve ever put together for Just Laugh. Appropriately titled A Tale of Two Summers…, this piece combined the talents of twenty-five writers from around the world to produce one of the most bizarre (and hilarious) stories you’ll ever read! The original concept stems back to days spent in various creative writing classes where we would work on a dozen or so pieces at a time by passing notebooks around the room and adding our own ideas to each respective plotline within a predetermined time – usually five minutes or something. Well, we changed things around just a little bit, lengthening the writing period a bit and only involving people who were actually funny, along with a new rule which really twisted things up – each writer was only allowed to read the chapter which came directly before their own during the writing process. Needless to say, it got extremely confusing and I will admit that we did need to do a bit of prodding from time to time to lead the story back in the general direction we were shooting for, but no matter how wacky some of the chapters got, the end product was more than we had ever expected and definitely worth your time if you’ve got a lazy afternoon to kill…
Our next stop along this journey takes a stab at everyone’s favorite holiday for dressing up in ridiculous outfits and gorging themselves with sweets, Halloween! The following column was actually originally intended to be included in Just Laugh’s Halloween issue itself, but instead we opted to throw it in with our big feature of the season, Just Laugh’s (Belatedly) Complete Guide to Halloween. This really turned out to be a complex project, as we didn’t want to simply throw together a list of our Halloween tributes from the year before…and I’m assuming that it would’ve been even funnier had we actually gotten it online somewhere in the general vicinity of Halloween rather than Thanksgiving, but hey, what can you do? Nonetheless, the column is still a good read and come to think of it, so is the entire feature in general, so you just might want to check both of them out…just in case!
- Freaks on Parade
- Just Laugh’s (Belatedly) Complete Guide to Halloween
Next in line is Humor Columnist Survivor! Honestly, I don’t have any idea how I’ve managed to make it this far because the other five contestants are all amazing writers, but hey, who’s gonna argue? We’re on something like the 14th week by now, so I suppose we might as well just take this thing right to the end! My next two columns actually somehow got dedicated to the competition, although I sure as hell didn’t plan it that way! It seems that not days after I had written the first column, I got notice from Greg (the main man behind HCS) that automatic immunity would be granted to anyone who wrote a new column within the next week pertaining to the topic of…grilled cheese. I was a bit confused, too, but I certainly wasn’t about to risk getting kicked out of the tribe over a freakin’ sandwich, so I did come up with a little something – it’s very 5 AM-ish, if you will, but honestly – grilled cheese?!
And so this brings us nearly up to speed, with the exception of one final column. As many of you may be aware of already, firearm season here in Northern Michigan has been open now for about a week. I have never been, nor will I ever be, a hunting person, and after seeing one too many carcasses while driving down the road, I finally snapped…
So for those of you feeling out of the loop, there’s your bloody update! With Thanksgiving only days away, and a new issue coming up with Just Laugh to boot, I’m not completely sure of how much will get done around here, but I do know that I’ve got some doosies sitting here on the idea notepad, so maybe if you’re really good, Santa will come just a tad early this year… Happy Holidays!!!