Did You Lose an Hour or Are You Just Happy to See Me?
March’s All Weather Newsletter from GP
Spring is in the air and you know what that means! The weather has lost its ever-loving mind. Our beloved dog Aggies doesn’t know if she should wear her winter sweater, spring kimono, or just give up and chew a bone on the couch.
Fortunately, the GP newsletter makes you look great no matter what Mother Nature is doing outside. Read on for the funnies.
Most Popular piece for February: ‘Wordle by Mary Oliver’
Elizabeth Simone’s piece tapped into the collective obsession with this five-letter guessing game. We loved the way she combined a beloved poet with a modern distraction and asked her to share her process of creating it:
The process of writing/illustrating this piece was filled with ups and downs. I love The Wordle and originally had tried to do a much longer piece about The Wordle that was basically something along the lines of “Famous Authors Contemplate The Wordle.” I wrote a few beats in the style of different famous authors. The Mary Oliver beat I wrote for that longer piece is basically the final version of the text in “Wordle By Mary Oliver.” Writing the Mary Oliver beat came easily. It was one of those rare and delightful writing moments where the joke comes out fully formed and you laugh aloud at what you just wrote.
Most of the other beats for that longer piece were not flowing as easily. I worked on that piece for over two hours and the next day discovered that someone else had basically already done that idea! I was devastated and scrapped the whole thing. But I still loved the Mary Oliver beat and it felt like a shame to completely abandon it. Later that week, I was in a meeting with my writing group and another member who is also an illustrator said something that sparked the idea to turn just the Mary Oliver beat into its own little piece and include a drawing with it. It felt a little out there — I’d never seen satirical poems with illustrations before — was that even a thing? But I gave it a go.
The illustration ended up being more challenging than I would have imagined. It was not easy to draw straight lines for the Wordle boxes. It was also surprisingly difficult to work backward from GEESE. I worked on the words for days and at one point thought I might not find enough words to make it work. But I persisted and I’m glad I did. I’ve always loved Mary Oliver’s work and I love the Wordle and it was fun to pay homage to both in this piece. I’m delighted to hear that others enjoyed it as well.
Featured ‘Toon: Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon
Paul Lander’s cartoon reminds everyone that getting too close to Kevin Bacon is kinda unhygienic, okay? Check it out!
Writing Tip: Try Branching Out
If you feel like your comedy mojo is harder to find than student loan forgiveness, try moving to a different medium. If you primarily write your comedy, try drawing illustrations. Or maybe this is the year you finally put together that short video sketch you’ve been thinking about.
Sometimes our creativity is like a toddler — it stands in the corner and shouts “I don’t wanna!” when you try to get it to do some work. But using a new medium is like luring the creativity toddler with a cookie. You use different mental muscles, and learning how to be funny in a new way feels more like play.
Get to Know the Editors: Are you for or against springing forward an hour?
Cassie: For it! I’ll miss that hour of sleep, but I miss the sun even more and my vitamin D levels are dangerously low.
Teresa: We hates it, Precious. Both car accidents I’ve had happened the week of the March time change, and they were ten years apart. I try to spend that week at home with my head in the covers.
Amy: For — I need the serotonin boost!
Brett: Hate it — it’s probably the root cause of 99% of bugs for computer programmers, and that’s who we should really be thinking about.
Susan: Hate it. It’s the biggest joke the devil played on the world. When you work with people in different countries with different daylight savings times, it's confusing
Kegan: Love and hate it. Love that I get my extra hour of sleep again. Hate that I feel like the Germans made this up to screw with everybody (and yes, Germany came up with the concept of DST). But then again, I love that, because you gotta give credit where credit’s due to a good prank. Well done, Germany.
Ash: Love it, the more light we have the better. I think we should move clocks forward 24 hours. That will give us heaps more sun and light right? Is that how it works?
