Quick Plug

For my pals Mike Gerber & Jon Schwarz, whose blogs you should be reading.

Mike & Jon are smart and quite funny. One of their New Yorker pieces, a mock crossword puzzle, made my wife laugh for days -- which made me laugh for days, since I wanna stay on my wife's good side, and there's nothing like supportive laughter to maintain domestic tranquility.

The boys also used to write for SNL's Weekend Update, a forum that once boasted the talents of Chevy Chase, Michael O'Donoghue, Jim Downey, Herb Sargent, Al Franken, and the blunt Norm MacDonald, who (along with Downey), trimmed & polished his fake news pieces until they were haiku-like darts. This naturally doomed MacDonald, since NBC suits prefer broad Leno-type yuks. Since his departure, Update was become more big bass drum than silent flute, and I'm amazed (but not totally surprised) that Mike & Jon's fine material found its way through vessels like Jimmy Fallon.

So check Mike & Jon out. They've been posting some of their unused Update material lately, which has inspired me to thumb through my old "Politically Incorrect" file for jokes I tapped out for Bill Maher. Here's one I could never get on, even though the producers told me it was a great joke. It had to do with the Susan Smith child drowning case and the media circus surrounding it. Seems it was too incorrect for "Incorrect":

"Lawyers for Susan Smith say they will proceed with an insanity defense. But you have to wonder: Is a mother truly insane when she insists that her children wear seatbelts?"