Tag: thenewyorker

Margerumalia – Elephant Jokes

Eric Margerum

Newsletter – August 22, 2025

“You don’t get down off an ostrich. You get down off a duck.”

My latest entry for the New Yorker’s weekly caption contest. 

I admit, I borrowed the punchline from one of the many elephant jokes that were popular when I was a kid. I’ll also admit that I didn’t know what duck down was when I was that age. I thought the entire joke was based on the size of an elephant compared to the size of a duck. Obviously it’d be far easier to dismount a duck because you could just stand up. LOL.

Years later, when I actually understood the joke, I got to laugh about it all over again.

I consider this caption my homage to the well-known elephant joke. That’s not stealing, it’s a salute to the original. It also makes the reader imagine what the guy on the ground asked to get that response.

In improv this type of laugh line—a reminder about something said previously—is known as a call-back. Audiences adore a good call-back. It’s equivalent to an elbow in the ribs, including them in the joke while saying “See what I did there?”

I performed with an improv group in Los Angeles that was called Synthaxis. (Shout out to Margo and Phil who recently reminded me of that name!) If improv wasn’t difficult enough, we had the added challenge of being a children’s improv group. That meant we were playing in a world without guns, drugs, bad words, or naughty bits. Go ahead! Feel free to make stuff up, just dance around those land mines! 

One of those land mines was getting a “grab,” a suggestion from the audience.

I’ll never forget one time when me and another guy were asking the audience to name an activity and the only response was a wise guy who said “making love.” There are often several suggestions to choose from but when everyone heard that, the suggestions dried up.

My scene partner and I looked at each other, didn’t say a word, and started to mime hauling large objects around like a couple of furniture movers. We stacked one large object on top of the other for a couple of minutes until we were satisfied and stepped back to look at what we had made. 

“L – O – V – E,” one of us said. 

“LOVE,” said the other. 

And then we shook hands and congratulated one another.

It brought the house down! Second only to a good call-back is taking an impossible grab and figuring out a way to play it anyway.

Those moments are the “war stories” that actors share for years, the way athletes relive an amazing play that wins the game.

I hope you have some amazing “war stories” to share with friends and family. It can make for delightful nostalgia. Most story telling does.

TTFN

* * * * *

By the way, do you know how to make an elephant float? 

Root beer, two scoops of ice cream, and some elephant!

* * * * *

If you received this email because it was forwarded to you by a subscriber, welcome. You can subscribe as well by following the link on my website: ericmargerum.com. A free story awaits you there.

Margerumalia – April Fools’ Week

Eric Margerum

Newsletter – April 4, 2025

This was the line I submitted for the New Yorker’s monthly caption contest. I hope you enjoyed it. Mine wasn’t chosen, but I like trying my hand at the game.

My wife laughed out loud when she read it and she doesn’t give up those LOL’s easily, so it’s already a winning caption in my book.

I thought a bit of humor would be a fun theme for April Fools’ Week. 

ADDITIONAL WELLNESS CENTER FOLK

I described eleven different types of folk at the Wellness Center in my Feb. 21 Margerumalia. Since then, I’ve come up with three more: 

Tippy-Toe Trudy: No exaggeration, this young lady is walking around the track on the balls of her feet! I’ve seen her leave the oval walking flat-footed, but she walks several laps on the balls of her feet. Is she building up her calves for high heels? Who knows. 

The Bond Villain: A middle-aged man with close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair gave me a steely-eyed look when I said good morning as he was putting on his shoes. He said nothing, just stared, and the voice I heard was saying, “No, Mr. Bond. I expect you to die.”

The Loving Couple: These two are on Cloud Nine, hands clasped and walking at a pace better suited for the seashore. Maybe that’s the world they’re actually walking in. I remember making out with a girlfriend in a parking lot when a passer-by in a car yelled at us to get a room. We broke out of the embrace both laughing. No shield like love.

A BIT OF PARODY

You may know the famous first line of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. No? Oh, go look it up, it made me laugh when I read it at fifteen. (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/42671)

On a recent quick trip I packed a single bag in order to avoid additional airline fees and I came up with this thought in imitation of Jane Austen: 

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a traveler in possession of a good bag, will be in want of adequate space for the same possessions on the return trip. 

BUTTS ON THINGS  

I got this page-a-day calendar from a member of my writing group. She’d gotten it for her husband and he was kind of indifferent about it. It tickles the same little boy in me who giggles at fart jokes. I now enjoy a giggle every day. (You can find more of his silliness at briancook.net.)

MAMCHI HUMOR

In The Most Amazing Museum of Los Angeles I made a point of letting my readers know how to say the MAMLA acronym by way of the docent, Doris Weatherton. For the sequel I decided to provide the readers with a similar moment with the MAMCHI docent, Morris Weatherton, but with a humorous twist: 

“I am MORRIS WEATHERTON.” He continued his speech with large gestures and dramatic tones that belonged in the center of a three ring circus. “I am your DOCENT. Your guide to MAMCHI.” He pronounced the acronym “MOM-chee.”

“I’d have said it MOM-shee,” Tamara said to the others.

“Or MOM-shih,” added Brock, “because it’s short for SHIH-cago.”

“No, that doesn’t work,” said Yesta. “It sounds too much like you’re gonna say sh—”

“CHILDREN of all AGES,” said Morris Weatherton quickly…

BOOK SIGNING

No joke. The Tippecanoe County Library invited me to participate in a Local Author Fair on April 19th from 1:00 PM to 4:00 PM. I’ll be signing books, giving away mazes, and giving a 15-minute presentation about writing and about my book. 

If you’re nearby, I hope you’ll swing by and say hi. 

* * * * *

If you received this email because it was forwarded to you by a subscriber, welcome. You can subscribe as well by following the link on my website: ericmargerum.com. A free story awaits you there.

Margerumalia – Cartoon Humor & Book Review

Eric Margerum

Newsletter – July 26, 2024

I’ve always said that if I had the ability to draw I would have been a cartoonist. Especially the one-panel variety. “The New Yorker” has been emailing cartoons without captions for several years and, as you can see, the one here is my submission from a few years ago. It still makes me chuckle when I read it so I thought I’d share it with you. 

I’ve done a few more, but their new rules for submitting includes signing up for a free trial that evolves into a full-blown subscription. Don’t get me wrong, there are lots of great articles and tons of terrific cartoons in that magazine, but I have so much to read I just don’t have the time to devote to it. 

When I was growing up I discovered that my parents had a big coffee-table-sized collection of New Yorker cartoons covering about fifty years of politics, culture, and life in the Big Apple. I think it taught me more about Twentieth Century history than anything I ever learned in school. In fact, some of my ah-ha moments in college were related to cartoons that I suddenly understood in context. (Picture 20-year-old Eric at the back of the room grinning at a remembered cartoon published decades before he was born.) 

* * * * *

Speaking of devoting time to reading, I recently finished reading a book by a friend of mine and posted my review on Amazon, Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo. I recommend his book and encourage you to seek it out. Here’s what I wrote:

Effacement by Hieronymus Hawkes

“Exciting and Ingenious Story”

In the near future, humanity is steeped in internet connectivity, where everyone wears implanted chips as required by law. A disconnection from the lifelog is punishable by a fine and jail time. When Cole, who works for the company that writes the software, is assaulted, drugged and disconnected, he wants to find out who was responsible. And find out why people are dying from the latest lifelog upgrade. Was his life just splintered or saved?

This exciting and ingenious book does a marvelous job of bringing the reader into Cole’s altered reality, challenging us to examine his experience of effacement—like our current reality—and consider our own future. We wade with him through a tangle of relationships and a cluster of trust issues as he attempts to stay out of jail and prevent the software from harming anyone else.

* * * * *

Reviews are like tip jars for authors. It’s only spare change for you, but it adds up to something important for the author. Most books are only accepted as legit when they reach 100 reviews. Even low scoring reviews are part of that total because they lend legitimacy to the top scoring reviews. 

If you’ve read The Most Amazing Museum of Los Angeles you’d be doing me a big favor by writing a short review and posting it on one or more of the websites I mentioned above. Amazon, of course, is the 600 pound gorilla in the room and carries the greatest weight in the U.S. Thanks in advance for your time. 

TTFN