A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY NPR Amy Poehler, Mel Brooks, Adam McKay, George Saunders, Bill Hader, Patton Oswalt, and many more take us deep inside the mysterious world of comedy in this fascinating, laugh-out-loud-funny book. Packed with behind-the-scenes stories—from a day in the writers’ room at The Onion to why a sketch does or doesn’t make it onto Saturday Night Live to how the BBC nearly erased the entire first season of Monty Python’s Flying Circus—Poking a Dead Frog is a must-read for comedy buffs, writers and pop culture junkies alike.

Poking a Dead Frog: Conversations with Today’s Top Comedy Writers

Humor & Entertainment

Sacks, Mike

Humor

Penguin Publishing Group

At long last ... the candid, shocking and previously untold story of Skippy "Batty" Battison, the universe's most radical, free-thinking, and honest comedian, comedy writer, satellite radio and podcasting star! 
This guy isn't afraid to "tell it like it is"! 
Nothing is held back! 
The infamous memoir that was dumped by Viking in June 2021 for being "too controversial" and "against our moral standards" 
Now being published by Sunshine Beam Press! 
Many consider Skippy to be the "Worst Person in Comedy" 
While others feel that Skippy's story deserves to be heard, from his humble beginnings in Bethesda, Maryland, to his graduation from Georgetown Prep (a few years after Brett Kavanaugh), to his performing stand-up in Ocean City, Maryland (once), to his writing for the 1998 Academy Awards (the Titanic parody as sung by Billy Crystal), to his one unproduced Simpsons episode, to his fifteen unproduced movie scripts ("too hot to handle!"), to his being the only white writer on The Wayans Bros., to his "invention" of the phrase "That's what she said!," to his stint in prison over a misunderstanding involving an underage girl, to his conversion to GOP moral values, to his "involvement" in the January 6th "situation"! 
Love him or hate him, more than 5 Million of his daily listeners to his satellite radio show and podcast definitely have an opinion! 
The FIRST memoir from America's Number One Conservative Comedic Persona Who's Always ... RIGHT!\n"Skippy is a [treat]! Everything he says makes me [laugh]. Buy this book!" - Carole Tapp, OAN overnight weekend and holiday anchor 
"The [funniest] book ever written by a true American hero. I can't think of anything that even comes close! He's a conservative gift that keeps on giving!" - Carter Heindle, CEO, American Lodest$r\nBestseller on the Advancing America Freedom Recommended Right Reading List and Runner-Up Winner for The Emphasis on the Family Book Award for All Ages & True Americans Suggested Reading Amer-I-Can Library!

Passing On The Right: My Ups, My Downs, My Lefts, My Rights, My "Wrongs" ... and My Career (So Far) in this Bizarro World of Comedy

Biographies & Memoirs

Leaders & Notable People

Sunshine Beam Publishing

in Pink is the latest book from best-selling author Mike Sacks (And Here's the Kicker, Poking a Dead Frog, Stinker Lets Loose).Passable in Pink deftly sends up the 1980s and John Hughes movies while addressing the vital question: Will Addy Stevenson go to the senior prom?Addy is suffering through her sophomore year at suburban Chicago's Northridge High. She lives on the "wrong" side of the lake with her father, a struggling advertising copywriter ("Where the hell is the goddamn beef?") and her ever-boozy mom ("Get me another drink, baby, and really make it sing."). Addy's younger brother, Spaz, her soon-to-marry older sister, Princess, and a visiting international transfer student add to the mix.Her world is turned upside down when she meets Roland McDough, the "most beautiful Richie boy" at Northridge High. Is he actually interested in Addy, or is he just playing a game?Are you ready to jump back into the cool, neon-glazed, high-topped reality of the 1980s? Do you miss those kick-ass tubular synth-rockin' sounds and delicious phantasma-gaseous smells? When was the last time you put on your Members Only jacket and danced the Safety Dance?A loving send-up of a bygone era, this is one book in which Every Breath You Take will remind you of How You Used to Be.

Passable in Pink

Literature & Fiction

Genre Fiction

Named One of Vulture's Top 5 Humor Books of the Year! The novelization to the 1992 Gen X movie "Slouchers" It is the early 1990s in Seattle ... and the MTV video for Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" has just premiered the previous week. Lethargy is in the air. Grunge fashion is all the logy rage. Something is brewing beneath these moist, overcast Seattle skies. Twenty-two-year-old Willow Montgomery has freshly arrived in town, having just graduated from an elite liberal arts college back east. Willow soon befriends a motley crew of twenty-somethings who live in the parking lot next to the alternative record store where she works for $5 an hour, a store run by a cantankerous, irritable, grouchy older man (he's 29) named Skip. Willow wants to desperately capture the brilliance of her generation on her Fuji DS-100 digicam with 3-power zoom (10-byte, digital flash-memory card, first of its kind), and to have her documentary ultimately broadcast on MTV. What a dream! In the meantime, she's dating Toody, part-time bike messenger, part-time lead singer of the grunge band That's Your Problem. But there's a new man in town, "Mr. Straight," an important businessman who works downtown and who also has eyes for Willow, after having met her while buying a Best Of Aerosmith CD at Skip's store. Whom will Willow choose? The Grunger or the Straight? The man who digs this new music called "grunge" or the one who still listens to classic rock? Will she achieve any semblance of happiness? Will she continue to work a minimum McJob for the rest of her life, or can she somehow achieve her artistic goals, as lofty as they might be? Will the Lost Boys and Girls, as they call themselves, ever leave the parking lot to achieve their own dreams? Moreover, will the famous inventor of the hacky sack ever arrive at the parking lot in a stretch limousine like he's promised? Lastly: Is it true that the world's most famous MTV VJ, Tabitha, is coming to Seattle to host the first Great MTV Grunge Off competition, to be filmed for live TV, for all the world to see?! It's 1992 in Seattle and the world is about to change forever. Or maybe not. Regardless: It's all about the look ... it's all about the collective alienation ... it's all about the deep-seated, delicious apathy ... It's all about ... Slouchers.

Slouchers: The Novelization

Poking a Dead Frog: Conversations with Today's Top Comedy Writers

Penguin??Books

And Here's the Kicker: 21 Top Comedy Writers on Boosting Your Craft to the Highest Level

McKay, Adam

Arts & Literature

Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

“This book is fucking awesome. It’s my life’s story. I’m thirty-four but look twenty-one. Maybe twenty-two at the most. I live in Maryland. Please read it. I’m a writer, a songwriter, an artist. I do it all. I’m an artist of life. I’m an adventurer, I’m the president of my development. Read the memoir. You won’t be disappointed.”\nA self-published memoir of a Maryland thirty-something found by author Mike Sacks at a garage sale in 2019 and re-published here for the first time. The memoir is written by the struggling poet and novelist Noah B., who is embedded in the mind and lifestyle of a perversely unexceptional American asshole named Randy. Like Pale Fire if it were about a Danny McBride-style fuckup, the story is both unmoored from time and eerily prescient of our own—one so stupid and unbelievable that it requires a writer like Sacks to bring it to light.\n“If you don’t know who Mike Sacks is, well, you should. His writing is funnier than just about anyone’s and now he has a podcast that is excellent. I say Hooray for Mike Sacks and everything he stands for.” -David Sedaris\n“He’s the best kind of comedy writer; a bona fide weirdo with virtually no interest in satisfying anything other than his own personal obsessions.” -Andy Richter\n“Randy is a hilariously, unexpectedly poignant and eminently worthy addition to Sacks’ sociological/anthropological exploration of the American Jackass and his curious ways. Audacious and inspired.” -Nathan Rabin\n“The year's best memoir is about a man who shot a porno in a Baskin-Robbins.” -Vice\n“Randy does more to explain certain unexpected turns in this nation's political fate over the last couple of years than a bazillion think-pieces in the New York Times, Atlantic, New Yorker, MSNBC.” -John Colapinto (The New Yorker)\n“As the book’s description alludes, Randy is an experiment in memoir, biography, and, well, sheer insanity.” -Robobutt

Randy: The Full and Complete Unedited Biography and Memoir of the Amazing Life and Times of Randy S.!

Archway Editions

Stinker Lets Loose

DID YOU HEAR THE ONE ABOUT ?Every great joke has a punch line, and every great humor writer has an arsenal of experiences, anecdotes, and obsessions that were the inspiration for that humor. In fact, those who make a career out of entertaining strangers with words are a notoriously intelligent and quirky lot. And boy, do they have some stories.In this entertaining and inspirational book, you'll hear from 21 top humor writers as they discuss the comedy-writing process, their influences, their likes and dislikes, and their experiences in the industry. You'll also learn some less useful but equally amusing things, such as:How screenwriter Buck Henry came up with the famous "plastics" line for "The Graduate."How many times the cops were called on co-writers Sacha Baron Cohen and Dan Mazer during the shooting of "Borat."What David Sedaris thinks of his critics. What crea

And Here's the Kicker: Conversations With 21 Top Humor Writers on Their Craft

Writers' Digest Books

DID YOU HEAR THE ONE ABOUT ? Every great joke has a punch line, and every great humor writer has an arsenal of experiences, anecdotes, and obsessions that were the inspiration for that humor. In fact, those who make a career out of entertaining strangers with words are a notoriously intelligent and quirky lot. And boy, do they have some stories. In this entertaining and inspirational book, you'll hear from 21 top humor writers as they discuss the comedy-writing process, their influences, their likes and dislikes, and their experiences in the industry. You?ll also learn some less useful but equally amusing things, such as: 
<ul>
<li>How screenwriter Buck Henry came up with the famous "plastics" line for The Graduate. </li>
<li>How many times the cops were called on co-writers Sacha Baron Cohen and Dan Mazer during the shooting of Borat. </li>
<li>What David Sedaris thinks of his critics. </li>
<li>What creator Paul Feig thinks would have happened to the Freaks &amp; Geeks crew if the show had had another season. </li>
<li>What Jack Handey considers his favorite Deep Thoughts.? </li>
<li>How Todd Hanson and the staff of The Onion managed to face the aftermath of 9/11 with the perfect dose of humor. </li>
<li>How Stephen Merchant and Ricky Gervais created the original version of The Office. </li>
<li>What it's really like in the writers? room at SNL. </li>
</ul> Funny and informative, And Here's the Kicker is a must-have resource - whether you're an aspiring humor writer, a fan of the genre, or someone who just likes to laugh.

And Here's the Kicker: Conversations with 21 Top Humor Writers--The New Unexpurgated Version!

Reference

Words, Language & Grammar

Writers House

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