travsd

How Many Surrealists Does It Take to Screw in a Lightbulb?

How appropriate it that I was given a copy of this particular book just in time for Salvador Dali’s birthday! The full title is — wait for it — How Many Surrealists Does It Take to Screw in a Lightbulb? or Why Did the Intellectual Cross the Road and Walk into a Bar?: A Collection of Over 1000 Cartoons,Jokes and Epigrams for the Over-Educated and Cognitively Curious (yes, that means you!) as Compiled and For the Most Part Understood by John Howard Towsen,Ph.D. 

John Towsen, of course is the gent who wrote the seminal nonfiction book Clowns, a book I’ve drawn from and loved since I was 20 years old, when I was still in my first flush of discovering my lifelong passion for every aspect of comedy.

Don’t let the ten dollar/ 50 word title put you off. This isn’t a philosophical tome but a straight-up joke and cartoon book, pure entertainment, if on the smart side. Towsen collected the material over a period of many years, and it’s all funny. It fact some of the one-liners remind me of ones I was writing when I was doing stand-up…right around the time I discovered Towsen’s book Clowns. So I am just the audience for this book, and if you’re reading this blog, chances are that you are too. (In fact if we are all truly simpatico, you probably already knew the punchline to the main joke in the title, as I did. And the nerds shall inherit the earth!)

Get your copy of [name of book] here. 

Published by travsd

Writer and performer Trav S.D. (www.travsd.com) is best known for his books "No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous" (2005) and "Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube" (2013). He has written for the NY Times, the Village Voice, American Theatre, Time Out NY, Reason, the Villager and numerous other publications. Trav has been in the vanguard of New York’s vaudeville and burlesque scenes since 1995 when he launched his company Mountebanks, presenting hundreds of acts ranging from Todd Robbins to Dirty Martini to Tammy Faye Starlite to the Flying Karamazov Brothers. He has directed his own plays, revues and solo pieces at such venues as Joe’s Pub, La Mama, HERE, Dixon Place, Theater for the New City, the Ohio Theatre, the Brick, and 6 separate shows in the NY International Fringe Festival. In 2014 he produced and directed the smash-hit "I’ll Say She Is", the first ever revival of the Marx Brothers hit 1924 Broadway show in the NY International Fringe Festival.