My Thirteen Favorite Deeeeep Thoughts...

by Jack Handey

Pretty much my whole life, I've been an avid watcher of Saturday Night Live - even during the dark years when they fired the whole cast after what seemed like every other season. I remember staying up way past my bedtime in elementary school unbeknownst to my parents to watch Mr. Bill (I know this dates me, shut up, I know I'm old) on Saturday nights during the first season and getting much of my cultural education from the sketches.

The show is like a barometer for popular culture and I'm fascinated by what shows up in its annals each week. I think the most interesting thing is how they can do something like the The Festrunk Brothers, The Muppet Bus, or Schweddy Balls and it's blue and juvenile and silly and then in the very next sketch there will be some political commentary in the Weekend Update segment that even the smartest pundit can appreciate. In the 80s, there were a lot of people who thought SNL had lost its relevance and was suffering a slow demise. I was loyal through it all. I don't think I've missed an episode in thirty-four years, with the exception of a couple of years I lived in South America and didn't watch television.

The other day, Beth sent me a link to Zina's post which made me remember the Deep Thoughts series of surrealist one-liners. I remember laughing hysterically at these bumpers while my parents started slack-jawed at the screen and asked, "Why is that funny?" A big fan of off the wall humor, I loved the randomness and unexpected nature of the place where the joke sat. If you weren't privileged to grow up with them, you can read a whole list of them here, but these are my top thirteen:
  1. If a kid asks where rain comes from, I think a cute thing to tell him is "God is crying." And if he asks why God is crying, another cute thing to tell him is "Probably because of something you did."
  2. When I was a kid my favorite relative was Uncle Caveman. After school we'd all go play in his cave, and every once in a while he would eat one of us. It wasn't until later that I found out that Uncle Caveman was a bear.
  3. Dad always thought laughter was the best medicine, which I guess is why several of us died of tuberculosis.
  4. If you ever fall off the Sears Tower, just go real limp, because maybe you'll look like a dummy and people will try to catch you because, hey, free dummy.
  5. We used to laugh at Grandpa when he'd head off and go fishing. But we wouldn't be laughing that evening when he'd come back with some whore he picked up in town.
  6. Sometimes when I feel like killing someone, I do a little trick to calm myself down. I'll go over to the persons house and ring the doorbell. When the person comes to the door, I'm gone, but you now what I've left on the porch? A jack-o-lantern with a knife stuck in the side of it's head with a note that says "You." After that I usually feel a lot better, and no harm done.
  7. To me, clowns aren't funny. In fact, they're kind of scary. I've wondered where this started and I think it goes back to the time I went to the circus, and a clown killed my dad.
  8. As I bit into the nectarine, it had a crisp juiciness about it that was very pleasurable - until I realized it wasn't a nectarine at all, but A HUMAN HEAD!!
  9. To me, boxing is like a ballet, except there's no music, no choreography, and the dancers hit each other.
  10. I bet the main reason the police keep people away from a plane crash is they don't want anybody walking in and lying down in the crash stuff, then, when somebody comes up, act like they just woke up and go, "What was THAT?!"
  11. The face of a child can say it all, especially the mouth part of the face.
  12. It takes a big man to cry, but it takes a bigger man to laugh at that man.
  13. He was a cowboy, mister, and he loved the land. He loved it so much he made a woman out of dirt and married her. But when he kissed her, she disintegrated. Later, at the funeral, when the preacher said, "Dust to dust," some people laughed, and the cowboy shot them. At his hanging, he told the others, "I'll be waiting for you in heaven--with a gun."
What are your favorite Deep Thoughts?