Short and Stupid #3: The Boast with the Most Bad Jokes

    First day at KBOO today. It was fairly minor, as days of work go — my supervisor was late, and I had to jump out after only three hours to go take care of other things. Mostly what I did was write radio copy that synthesized news stories. It’s as though someone reverse-engineered a job for me. I banged out six of them in a couple of hours and everybody seemed shocked.

    I write quickly. As a rule, I write these blog entries — the longer ones — in about an hour, sometimes a little less. It takes a little longer to proofread and stuff, but the first drafts are fast and feel self-creating. The act of writing, at least when it’s going well, demands more writing.

    This isn’t a humblebrag, it’s a straight up brag. I feel comfortable bragging about this because I have earned this facility through years of hard work. Often people ask, “How can you write that fast?” The truth is that what you’re seeing is the proverbial tip of the iceberg. Underlying this blog entry — which I will wrap up in a few sentences after less than ten minutes of writing — is thousands upon thousands of hours of writing. I have spent at least an hour writing nearly every day since I was in middle school. Some days much, much more.

    Well, that was short and boastful (and therefore stupid). I’m wrapping this up quickly because I have to write the pilot episode of a podcast I’ve been threatening to make for months. Then tomorrow an interview. In order to provide some form of value in this space today, I present to you a joke:

    The other day I was walking through a fancy neighborhood and I met an old friend I hadn’t seen in a couple of years, and there was something super weird about him: he had a huge orange head.

    I was like, “Dude. I know it’s been a while, but what happened to your head?”

    He says, “Well, I found a magic lamp. Like, you know, from Aladdin? Anyway, I rubbed the lamp, and sure enough a genie pops out, and he says, Behold, I am the Genie of the Lamp. I will grant you three wishes. What is your first wish? So I say to him, I’d like a really nice house.”

    “Did it work?”

    “See that house right behind me?” He nodded to a mansion I hadn’t noticed before. “It’s mine.”

    “Wow. So what was your second wish?”

    “I asked for an incredibly beautiful wife. And if you’ll look —” He pointed down the block, to where the most beautiful woman I had ever seen was strolling down the sidewalk with a dog. “That’s my wife.”

    “That’s incredible!”

    “I know, right?”

    And for a minute I was impressed, but then I remembered something. So I said, “But man, I have one more question.”

    “What’s that?”

    “What about the big orange head?”

    “Ah, well, that’s where I made my big mistake,” he said, nodding solemnly.

    “What was your big mistake?”

    “You see, I wished for a really big, orange head.”

BOOM! Thank you, I’ll be here all week.