‘Snide Remarks’ 10th Anniversary Feature: The 10 worst columns
I’ve written more than 550 “Snide Remarks” columns in the last 10 years, and I’m not ashamed to say that some of them have been absolute crap. There are deadlines involved, you see, and writing “Snide Remarks” has never, even in its heyday, been my sole occupation. Not that that’s any excuse. I’m just sayin’.
Here are my picks for the 10 worst “Snide Remarks” columns I’ve ever written. They are painful for me to read now. I hope glancing at them will help you appreciate the good ones all the more.
(P.S. Which columns would you have put on this list? Go ahead, let me have it.)
10. “The Young and the Viewerless” (Aug. 29, 2005)
This is the most recent column on the list. The idea was that I, a non-viewer, would watch one random episode of “The Young and the Restless,” summarize it for the reader, and see if that one episode made me interested in watching the show regularly. For some reason I thought my summary of the show would be a lot funnier than it was. Turns out it’s just boring.
9. “Shutteth Up!” (Feb. 2, 1998)
I attended a BYU production of “Romeo and Juliet,” leading to this column in which I a) made lame jokes about Shakespeare in general, and b) expressed frustration with people who talk and make other noise in the theater. The Shakespeare jokes were straight from a column I’d written seven years earlier, when I was in high school, and it shows. The other stuff was just rant-y and generic.
8. “The Heppiest Place on Earth” (May 4, 2001)
One of the frequent structures of “Snide Remarks” is for me to relate some amusing anecdote from my personal life. I had done this successfully enough times at this point that I guess I thought I could make ANYTHING funny, no matter how trivial the experience actually was. This column, about something silly that happened when a group of us were at Disneyland, is proof to the contrary. It’s a “you had to be there story,” and guess what? You weren’t.
7. “An Obsessive Compulsive Christmas” (Dec. 26, 2001)
Mom always loves the columns that talk about the family, but I think even she will admit that this particular entry is complete poo. The references to “accidents and family tragedies,” “a torrent of tears,” and “medication” are all generic kinds of jokes you’re supposed to make about your family, which makes the jokes lame. What’s worse, they’re not even true of my particular family, which makes them lamer.
6. “Cover Up” (Nov. 10, 2002) and “An Embarrassment of Richard’s” (Nov. 24, 2002)
These two ran almost consecutively in November 2002, at a point when my loopy editor was trying to get me to write about important issues instead of just whatever I happened to have seen on TV the night before. She had some good points, and I did successfully write some humorous pieces on legitimate issues — but these two columns are examples of how not to do it. They’re both strident and unfunny. I loathe them.
5. “Making Fun of Strangers” (June 26, 2002)
A certain degree of elitism has always been part of “Snide Remarks,” usually balanced in the alternating weeks with a healthy dose of acknowledging that I’m kind of an idiot, too. It’s not uncommon for me to mention, as a tangent to what I’m really talking about, someone I saw in public who was dressed inappropriately or hilariously. But this column consists ONLY of that — and as a result comes across as more mean than funny. Even though you agree that a woman with bountiful back fat shouldn’t be wearing a haltertop, and that it’s silly to get a tattoo of a movie character, it still somehow seems a little offsides for me to devote an entire column just to making fun of them.
4. “Deface the Music” (Jan. 19, 2001)
In this column, I make fun of the lyrics to a song that was not particularly popular even at the time, and then joke about the opera “Rigoletto,” which the average reader has not seen. Why did I do this? I suspect it was a combination of two things: the “I can make anything funny!” syndrome (see #8), and not having anything else to write about.
3. “Off to a Ricky Start” (Aug. 27, 1999)
The title was prophetic: This was only my second week of writing “Snide Remarks” for the Daily Herald, and already I was sucking. The jokes in this one are weak and generic. It’s too bad, because the statement “this is a tragedy like none the world has ever seen,” used hyperbolically, remains in general use within my family to this day. ‘Tis a pity I couldn’t have worked it into a better column.
2. “Angry Moon” (May 16, 2001)
I believe this is the shortest column I’ve ever written (494 words), and it’s definitely one of the most insubstantial. It consists entirely of “amusing” anecdotes from my friends, which is a fairly amateurish and stupid way to go about writing your columns. “Har har! Listen to this funny thing my friend did! Har har!” The column is historic, though. The friend whose dad mooned her didn’t want to be identified (even though I had mentioned her before in “Snide Remarks”), so I came up with a pseudonym for her: Luscious Malone. Thereafter, I generally gave my friends fake names in the column, mostly just for fun. Still, this particular column was lousy.
1. “Bad Poetry? Please, Sir, May I Have Smoe?” (July 6, 2001)
I think I consider this one The Absolute Worst because I distinctly remember the circumstances under which I wrote it: I was on deadline, I was panicked, and I had NO IDEA what to write about. This column was born of sheer desperation, and you can smell it. I found some bad poetry and made fun of it. And that’s it. Ugh. Let this be a lesson to you. If you absolutely can’t come up with ANYTHING, tell your editor you can’t come up with anything and plead for the day off.
August 21st, 2007 at 2:30 pm
Though I’m laughing at these, I’m crying on the inside.
Just thinking about you writing a humor column while panicked makes me want to grab a shotgun and put you out of your misery. While crying, of course.
You poor, poor smoe.
August 21st, 2007 at 4:01 pm
The only columns I really didn’t like were numbers 10, 3, and 1 (with 1 probably being the worst). I salute you for putting together a list as comprehensive as this one however.
August 21st, 2007 at 5:07 pm
Ho ho! I do, indeed, love the Christmas one, with all its talk about our stupid traditions. Every year about this time I say I’m not going to put up all the decorations, because I’m too tired, but in reality, I bought two more Christmas trees last year, for a total of nine, and it just wouldn’t be Christmas if I didn’t nearly kill myself decorating.
One fun tradition he didn’t mention is the Walking to Circle K for donuts on Christmas Eve. The four boys go, and after we moved to our new house in 2001, they started driving back to the old house, parking, and walking to Circle K from there. The neighbors watch for them. And when Jeff got married, the dilemma was whether Bethy could go, because it’s supposed to be just the boys, but she’s Jeff’s wife, so she’s part of him. So they took a vote by giving a thumbs up or thumbs down, but no one wanted Jeff to see what they voted, so they stood in a circle with their eyes closed and did their signs, but since everyone’s eyes were closed, they still didn’t know who voted how. (She didn’t want to go anyway, so the problem was solved.)
So that there was a good column.
August 21st, 2007 at 11:02 pm
Wow, I never realized that No. 2 wasn’t funny until you pointed it out, and I’ve already read that one several times.
Also, “The Heppiest Place On Earth” has always been one of my treasured columns, and having Eric say he doesn’t think it’s funny won’t stop me from laughing every time I reread it. I think he illustrates the situation perfectly, and if not, then I guess I have a brilliant imagination.
“An Embarrassment of Richard’s”: I remember “LaVonda Does LaVerkins” to this day (although, admittedly, 2002 wasn’t so long ago).
I think No. 4 is a good column, despite what has been said here.
I feel the same of No. 3.
No. 2 makes me laugh out loud. It could be that it’s late at night, but perhaps I simply enjoy everything Eric has written, regardless of what the author thinks?
August 22nd, 2007 at 6:33 am
I thought this line most interesting in “The Heppiest Place On Earth”:
“After sitting through this ride five times, and getting seriously weird looks from the lithe young man who operated it…”
I looked up lithe just to make sure it meant what I thought it meant (and it does really mean supple and flexible), and found it funny that every source used “a lithe ballerina” as an example.
Then I thought about the passive aggressiveness of Eric to compare the teenaged ride operator to a ballerina.
Then I wondered what the operator could have done to have Eric describe him as lithe.
August 22nd, 2007 at 10:17 am
He must have had a unique way of operating the ride, is all. Like, with his feet or buttocks or something.
August 22nd, 2007 at 2:53 pm
“Shutteth Up” has long been one of my favorites because the Oedipus bit kills me every time.
August 24th, 2007 at 5:20 pm
I will go to my grave believing that “An Embarassment of Richard’s” is a hilarious column. I still remember reading it for the first time back in the day.
Perhaps my firm testimony of its hilarity comes from agreeing with the premise of the article (Deseret Book’s censorship of a book that explores a gray moral area of life), or perhaps it is because I have also been delighted to read the description of Book of Mormon Sleuth. But probably it is due to one of my favorite Snide Remarks’ lines ever: “In the world of Deseret Book, however, there is no gray, only black and white (mostly white).”
And of course, the dissection of foamy-mouthed, angry letters are frosting on a hilarious heaping of Snide Remarks cake.
September 24th, 2007 at 9:20 pm
Okay, while I love most of Eric’s articles, I just have to say that there is only one, for me, that was so awful that I couldn’t finish reading it. That was the one where we were treated to a retelling of Eric’s experience getting his colon cleansed. Ohhh man. I don’t even like to think about it. Love you, Eric, but please keep that $%^! to yourself. (hahahaha! Get it???) =D Okay, I’m done with the bad puns. But seriously.