More Mirth of a Nation: The Best Contemporary Humor

Front Cover
Harper Collins, Nov 12, 2002 - Humor - 592 pages
More seriously funny writing from American's most trusted humor anthology

Witty, wise, and just plain wonderful, the inaugural volume of this biennial, Mirth of a Nation, ensured a place for the best contemporary humor writing in the country. And with this second treasury, Michael J. Rosen has once again assembled a triumphant salute to one of America's greatest assets: its sense of humor. More than five dozen acclaimed authors showcase their hilariously inventive works, including Paul Rudnick, Henry Alford, Susan McCarthy, Media Person Lewis Grossberger, Ian Frazier, Richard Bausch, Amy Krouse Rosenthal, Nell Scovell, Andy Borowitz, and Ben Greenman -- just to mention a handful so that the other contributors can justify their feelings that the world slights them.

But there's more! More Mirth of a Nation includes scads of Unnatural Histories from Randy Cohen, Will Durst's "Top Top-100 Lists" (including the top 100 colors, foods, and body parts), and three unabridged (albeit rather short) chapbooks:

David Bader's "How to Meditate Faster" (Enlightenment for those who keep asking, "Are we done yet?")

Matt Neuman's "49 Simple Things You Can Do to Save the Earth" (for instance, "Make your own honey" and "Share your shower.")

Francis Heaney's "Holy Tango of Poetry" (which answers the question, "What if poets wrote poems whose titles were anagrams of their names, i.e., 'Toilets,' by T. S. Eliot?")

And there's still more: "The Periodic Table of Rejected Elements," meaningless fables, Van Gogh's Etch A Sketch drawings, a Zagat's survey of existence, an international baby-naming encyclopedia, Aristotle's long-lost treatise "On Baseball," and an unhealthy selection of letters from Dr. Science's mailbag. And that's just for starters! Just remember, as one reviewer wrote of the first volume, "Don't drink milk while reading."

From inside the book

Contents

Because Yahoo Maps Arent for Everybody
249
Our New Password Policies
253
La Bamba Hot Line
256
All Shook Up
260
Terms of Office
263
The Greatest Hastlly Written Short Notes of the Twentieth Century
267
Anchors Weigh In
272
Who Wants to Keep His Job?
276

A Memoir
30
The SelfHelp Hot Line
34
My Own Private IPO
37
Do Svidannya Baby
41
Losers Auction
44
Portrait of the Postmodern Renaissance Man As Quilt Stitcher Filmmaker Deep Thinker and Sculptor of Cubes of Tofu in Vats of Water
48
Packing for the Second Coming
52
AhChoo A Guide to the New Hankie Code
57
My Wife Liz
63
The Final Frontier
68
RealLife Survivor
72
Sixteen Magazine Rates the Presidents
77
Your Y2K Checklist
80
Your Public Radio Station
84
Double DiamondHighest Difficulty
87
Decision 04
89
The Periodic Table of Rejected Elements
91
Happy Holidays from Maria Callas
93
Three Tries at Mocking IKEA
96
Letter to Ken Burns
98
Five Columns from Media Person
104
Carpool Tunnel Syndrome
117
You Fill Out My Census
124
Clarifications
127
Audiobooks for the Deaf
132
If Poets Wrote Poems Whose Titles Were Anagrams of Their Names
135
Drawing Inky
148
For Whom the Tale Blows or The Curtain Also Rises
155
Amenities
159
Vincent at the Knobs
164
A Brush with Greatness
172
Hall of NearFame
176
NearDeathbed Requests
180
The Breakfast Table
183
From The RealLife WorstCaseScenario Survival Handbook
190
A Short Historical Inquiry into Time
194
An Open Letter to the Firefighters of Engine Company 54 Ladder 4 Battalion 9 in the Glass Booth on the Corner of Eighth Avenue and Fortyeighth ...
199
A Fish Story
203
RealLife Giant Construction Equipment for Kids
212
Bubba in Paradise
217
The Deal Memo of Independence
222
Monks Among the Capri Pants
229
Full Disclosure
233
Preface to My Autobiography
237
Studies in the New Causality
240
Disgruntled Former Lexicographer
243
New Roller Coasters Opening This Season
247
You May Already Be a Winner
279
Costuming the Homeless
284
The NanoPet Epoch
287
Subvarsity Smackdown
290
Adventures with Rod and Gumshoe
296
WELLNESS911
299
Bottleneck Realism from Americas Finest Microbrews
304
A Guide to the LesserKnown Movie Ratings
307
Looking for a Supporting Role Willing to Play Vice President
312
The Busmans Portfolio
315
New York Confidential
319
Internet Stocks Too Hot to Ignore
322
49 Simple Things You Can Do to Save the Earth
325
How Im Doing
335
Virtual Friends
338
Ripoff
341
What Happened to My Money?
344
State Dates
348
Your Neighborhood Laundraclean
351
Three Christmas Candies
354
Womenu
359
Alfred Hitchcocks Hamlet
363
Aristotles On Baseball
370
The First Book of Mailer Called Genesis
376
The Granddaddy of Baseball Operas to Make Its Presence Felt
379
Death of the Blues
383
Blues for Beginners
385
Totally Amazing Grace
388
Teen Times
391
Fun with Names
394
Jupiter
396
In the Spirit of Full Disclosure
398
The Solomon Bar Mitzvah
402
Questions Answered and Unanswered
410
Three Meaningless Fables
420
Critique
430
Zagats Surveys Existence
444
In Brief
448
The Party Problem
454
Dismembering Mr Shawns New Yorker
457
International Name Encyclopedia
460
Supplement to the Basic Course Catalog University of Kansas
465
Excerpts from Mens Self
470
The EndoftheWorld Bake Sale
476
Submission Guidance
478
Questions for Reading Groups
490
Copyright

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Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 363 - Your worm is your only emperor for diet: we fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots: your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable service; two dishes, but to one table: that's the end.
Page 185 - ... morality." Because when we start deceiving ourselves into thinking not that we want something or need something, not that it is a pragmatic necessity for us to have it, but that it is a moral imperative that we have it, then is when we join the fashionable madmen, and then is when the thin whine of hysteria is heard in the land, and then is when we are in bad trouble.
Page 342 - The wish to capture evanescent reflections is not only impossible, as has been shown by thorough German investigation, but the mere desire alone, the will to do so, is blasphemy. God created man in His own image, and no man-made machine may fix the image of God...
Page 360 - BERNARDO. Who's there? FRANCISCO. Nay, answer me. Stand and unfold yourself. BERNARDO. Long live the King! FRANCISCO. Bernardo? BERNARDO. He. FRANCISCO. You come most carefully upon your hour. BERNARDO. Tis now struck twelve. Get thee to bed, Francisco. FRANCISCO. For this relief much thanks. Tis bitter cold, And I am sick at heart.
Page 411 - Why is it that when you're driving and looking for an address, you turn down the volume on the radio?
Page 181 - Pacific in lieu of filing for divorce. I tell you this not as aimless revelation but because I want you to know, as you read me, precisely who I am and where I am and what is on my mind. I want you to understand exactly what you are getting...
Page 526 - UMPHREY is Assistant Professor of Law, Jurisprudence, and Social Thought at Amherst College.

About the author (2002)

The editor of More Mirth of a Nation: The Best Contemporary Humor, Michael J. Rosen has been called the unofficial organizer of the National Humor Writer's Union, a pretty good idea for an organization that could offer all kinds of benefits to its struggling members (currently numbering more than 300 who have never been published in The New Yorker or aired on NPR). He has been called other things as well, like in third grade, and then in seventh grade especially, by certain older kids known as "hoods," who made his life miserable, specifically during gym class, lunch period and after school. Later, much later, the Washington Post called him a "fidosopher" because of his extensive publications on dogs, dog training, and dog-besotted people. The New York Times called him an example of creative philanthropy in their special "Giving" section for persuading "writers, artists, photographers and illustrators to contribute their time and talents to books" that benefit Share Our Strength's anti-hunger efforts and animal-welfare causes. As an author of a couple dozen books for children, he's been called...okay, enough with the calling business. For nearly twenty years, he served as literary director at the Thurber House, a cultural center in the restored home of James Thurber. Garrison Keillor, bless his heart, called it (sorry) "the capital of American humor." While there, Rosen helped to create The Thurber Prize for American Humor, a national book award for humor writing, and edited four anthologies of Thurber's previously unpublished and uncollected work, most recently The Dog Department: James Thurber on Hounds, Scotties and Talking Poodles, happily published by HarperCollins as well. In his capacity as editor for this biennial, Rosen reads manuscripts year round, beseeching and beleaguering the nation's most renowned and well-published authors, and fending off the rants and screeds from folks who've discovered the ease of self-publishing on the web. Last summer, Rosen edited a lovely book, 101 Damnations: The Humorists' Tour of Personal Hells; while some critics (all right, one rather outspoken friend) considered this a book of complaints, Rosen has argued that humor, like voting and picketing and returning an appliance that "worked" all of four months before requiring a repair that costs twice the purchase price, humor is about the desire for change. It's responding to the way things are compared to the way you'd like things to be. And it's a much more convivial response than pouting or cornering unsuspecting guests at dinner parties.

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