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John Swartzwelder is the funniest writer in the world. I don’t know that I could write about him and do him justice, but he was a longtime Simpsons writer and then started self-publishing books that are so incredibly joke dense it will blow your mind. Here’s a quote from The Time Machine Did It, one of his many books following a strange detective named Frank Burly: “When I first became a detective I had tried solving crimes the way mystery writers do: coming up with the solution to the crime first, then working back to the point where you don't know what the hell is going on. But for some reason every time I tried that I ended up locked in a closet.”
Feb 24, 2022
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if you’re a silly goon that likes watching cartoons all the time but needs a screen break, but still in need of a laugh. you should pick up a book and read John Swartzwelder - he wrote 59 episodes of The Simpsons and is a 100% surreal and absurd…
Oct 29, 2023
He wrote for the Marx Brothers (and looked like one). His short comedy prose was jaw droppingly verbose but also laugh-out-loud funny, even to someone reading them a good seven or eight decades past their sell-by date.
The Library of America is reprinting a couple of his classics. Crazy Like A Fox is the place to start.
Feb 9, 2024
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Not the Jack Black that you’re thinking of. This is the autobiography of a burglar at the turn of the 20th century who feels like someone ripped out of a cartoon or something. I love stories with unreliable narrators, and this one takes the cake. Full of safe-cracking and train-hopping, it’s one of my favorite books. At one point, he buries a bunch of stolen cash in the ground, and returns years later to retrieve it only to find the stash trapped beneath a house that was built on top of it.
Mar 15, 2022
Top Recs from @broti-gupta
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My dog is the coolest guy around. I highly recommend him. He is a Siberian Husky named Niko, we think he’s roughly a little over 3 years old, he has a really human sense of shame, and he loves babies and kids. He loves holding hands and when you pet his belly he literally pets you back (another human thing… unable to just accept love without paying it back…). Any time he walks into a room or sits down or lies down or buries his head anywhere I clap like he’s a stunt cast guest star of a TV show.
Feb 24, 2022
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By the end of 2020, I was incredibly depressed (which is a unique experience I went through), and I found Wallace Shawn’s essays after I read this piece in NYRB. I devoured Night Thoughts and Essays probably in one sitting and I’m obsessed with the Designated Mourner (which is now in podcast form, directed by Andre Gregory). I think he acknowledges the world as it is and has a very empathetic approach to humans and that kind of simple, readable humanity was something I really needed. Because, again, I was going through a personally tough time due to a crazy global pandemic.
Feb 24, 2022
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I started playing piano when I was a kid and I got an electric keyboard when I moved out to LA. I like to sing and play so that’s mainly why I got it. Last year, I decided it would be nice to get back into classical piano again – like Debussy, Bach, whatever other classical composers are probably in the public domain so I could get sheet music for free (a life hack of mine personally is to get stuff for free). Practicing an instrument has been actively the most meditative I can ever get. Focusing on something else with my hands that I have to engage with in a tactile and focused capacity has done wonders for me to not think the dumb thoughts I think all the time, like “does my dog know what the TV is, or does he think it’s just a crazy window”.
Feb 24, 2022