Articles

Some of my sweetest childhood memories involve standing at my bedroom window watching other children file by on their way to school, making faces at them, knowing that I would be staying home all day. Of course, you had to have a good excuse back then. You couldn’t skip school with the sniffles. Whooping cough…

Years ago I bought a book called The Art of the Put Down. In my defense, it was severely discounted, and being part Scottish I couldn’t bring myself to turn away such a bargain. The Art of the Put Down features an astonishing array of clever comebacks and witty one-liners, like one from comedian Will…

I come from a long line of storytellers. My great great-uncle on my father’s side was a horse trader and perhaps the biggest liar ever to set foot on Canadian soil. In fact, I think he claimed to have discovered Canada. He liked to tell stories of how he invented the lightbulb and the printing…

When I was about 10, I learned that an object going faster than the speed of light would travel backward in time. And I thought, Maybe if I travel just a bit slower than the speed of light I can go forward in time. Or something like that. So it was that I constructed my…

Nothing endears you to an audience quite like that moment when things go horribly wrong. When a microphone quits. A cell phone rings. A podium collapses, or you have a wardrobe malfunction. Each of these things has happened to me. To make matters worse, when you stand before audiences, your forgetter can go into hyperdrive.…

Is it possible to make someone smile with three words? I think so. How about “Hot apple pie”? “Come for supper”? “Let’s go eat”? It sounds like I have a bit of a thing for food. Is it possible to tell a three-word joke? Let me try. Bakers knead dough. Get it? Gloves are handy.…

Happy Thanksgiving Day. It’s that time when we crowd around full tables with empty stomachs, eat our weight in turkey, then try to stand up. At some point someone may crack a turkey joke. “How many cooks does it take to stuff a turkey? Just one. The trick is squeezing him in there.” Everyone will…

  I wouldn’t stay employed long if I were one of the operators on the Butterball Turkey hotline. If you haven’t heard of it, this is an actual call-in service for people who need advice when preparing their turkeys for that all important Thanksgiving Day feast. Here are some actual questions that have been asked,…

I believed some crazy things as a child. I believed my mom when she said, “Keep crossing your eyes and they’ll stay that way.” I believed my sister when she said, “You swallow watermelon seeds, you’ll grow watermelons out your ears.” I believed my brother when he said snakes would slither up the pipes. Believed…