When my youngest, Max, was 8, he could run off a string of complicated jokes like an old pro in the Catskills. Really, he could have become a regular on the Tonight Show. That good.

We loved to talk about what was funny. I asked him what a really, really great joke would do.

“People would laugh until they cried.”

Exactly. It was then that I came up with an idea that almost drove Max crazy. That wasn’t the purpose, of course, but that’s the way it worked out for awhile. I told Max there was such a thing as The Perfect Joke. It was so funny people would not be able to stop laughing, and therefor they would die. The perfect joke, in the wrong hands, could wipe out the planet. Read more…

A few weeks ago I posted an open letter to GM CEO Fritz Henderson on the first day of GM’s entering into bankruptcy protection, offering my concern that Mr. Henderson’s reliance on great GM design to save the company might be a problem since GM had put so much ugly tin on America’s roads. I also noted that GM’s culture needed to change, and this was their last chance to get it right. I didn’t mention that most experts on corporate change say it requires 3 — 5 years to accomplish, if you know what you’re doing.

In an amazing display of exactly what I was talking about, Mr. Henderson tossed my article over the fence and assigned the response to Global VP for all design, Ed Welburn, who wrote a public letter back to “Gerald Sindell of the Huffington Post,” which contained an impassioned defense of GM design, and the thousands of artists and modelers at work around the clock around the world creating beautiful new GM cars. Mr. Welburn invited me to visit GM dealerships, look at and drive the new Chevys, Buicks and Cadillacs. I was also invited to visit to global design headquarters in Detroit and see for myself. Read more…

A Writer’s Guide to the 10 Things that will tell you when the Second Great Depression Has Officially Begun

1. You notice that people are selling onesies on street corners, like pencils, apples, and sheets from yellow pads.

2. You’ve had a request from a long-lost college friend to move in with you, temporarily.

3. You’ve asked an old friend if you could move in with them, temporarily.

4. Skirts and sentences are getting shorter, one to save on material, the other for the same reason.

5. You are awakened by a rooster in your neighbor’s yard.

6. The people in Dorothea Lange photos begin to look familiar.

7. You see a government ad in the NY Review of Books seeking authors to complete the history of their state, 1937 to the present.

8. You suddenly understand why Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich was a bestseller in 1937. You wonder how much of it is in the public domain and could be adapted to the current situation.

9. The editor on your novel suggests cutting out a couple of secondary characters to save on paper.

10. You start making your own bottled water.