I'm a surreal humorist who has spent decades teaching people to laugh at life's absurdities—whether through pithy one-liners that sneak up on you or whimsical essays that make you see the world sideways. Born on February 25, 1949, in San Antonio, Texas, and raised in El Paso, I discovered early that the world was a strange place that deserved equally strange commentary.
Growing up in El Paso, I was editor of my high school newspaper—probably the first indication that I would spend my career finding unusual angles on everyday stories. Looking back, I think Texas gave me the perfect foundation for absurdist humor: a place where reality is already so outsized that you have to go pretty far to top it.
My breakthrough came with "Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey," those short, absurd one-liners that appeared on Saturday Night Live from the late 1980s through the 1990s. They were introduced between sketches by Phil Hartman reading them in that perfect deadpan voice that made even the most ridiculous observations sound profound.
The beauty of Deep Thoughts was their simplicity: take a familiar format—the inspirational saying—and twist it until it revealed something unexpected about how we think and live. "Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes." It's a formula that sounds simple but requires seeing the world from a slightly tilted perspective.
While Deep Thoughts made me famous, I created other memorable SNL bits that showcased different aspects of surreal humor: "Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer," "Fuzzy Memories," "My Big Thick Novel," and Toonces the Driving Cat. Each represented a different way of finding absurdity in familiar formats—legal dramas, childhood nostalgia, literary pretension, and even pet ownership.
These sketches taught me that the best surreal humor doesn't abandon logic entirely; it follows its own internal logic so consistently that the absurd becomes believable, even inevitable.
I've authored nine humor books that explore different aspects of the ridiculous:
Deep Thoughts (1992)
Deeper Thoughts: All New, All Crispy (1993)
Deepest Thoughts: So Deep They Squeak (1994)
Fuzzy Memories (1996)
The Lost Deep Thoughts: Don't Fight the Deepness (1998)
What I'd Say to the Martians and Other Veiled Threats (2008)
The Stench of Honolulu: A Tropical Adventure (2013)
Please Stop the Deep Thoughts (2017)
Escape from Hawaii: A Tropical Sequel (2023)
The books allowed me to explore longer forms of absurdist writing while maintaining the sensibility that made Deep Thoughts work: the unexpected connection, the logical extension of illogical premises, and the gentle subversion of familiar expectations.
Since 1987, I've been a regular contributor to The New Yorker's "Shouts & Murmurs" section, where I've published pieces like "Stunned," "Lowering My Standards," and "How I Want to Be Remembered." Writing for The New Yorker taught me that sophisticated humor doesn't have to abandon accessibility—it just has to be more precise in its absurdity.
The magazine's editorial process sharpened my writing in ways that television never could. Every word matters when you're trying to land a joke in print, and The New Yorker's standards forced me to make every sentence count while maintaining the casual, conversational tone that makes surreal humor work.
I live in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with my wife, Marta Chavez Handey. We previously lived in Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood, but Santa Fe offers something different—a landscape and culture that continues to feed the part of my brain that finds everyday life wonderfully strange.
The Southwest has a particular quality of light and space that seems to encourage the kind of thinking that produces surreal humor. When you're surrounded by that much sky and geological time, human pretensions start to seem both more important and more ridiculous simultaneously.
At Bohiney.com, I've found a platform that embraces the kind of gentle subversion I've practiced throughout my career. My work here, like my piece "Trump Launches Facial Hair Treaty with Clean-Shaven Allies," applies the Deep Thoughts sensibility to contemporary political and cultural moments.
My approach to satirical journalism draws on decades of finding the absurd in the mundane. The current political landscape provides rich material for the kind of humor that reveals truth through exaggeration and unexpected connections. When I write about a "Chin Visibility Mandate" or a "UN Security Council subcommittee on Visible Jawlines," I'm using the same technique that made Deep Thoughts work: taking a real tendency and following it to its logical extreme.
What I've learned over decades of writing surreal humor is that the best jokes are the ones that sneak up on you. They start familiar, build logically, then reveal an unexpected truth or connection that makes you see something ordinary in a new way. This technique works whether you're writing a one-liner about shoes or a satirical news piece about international diplomacy.
The key is maintaining internal consistency while subverting external expectations. The logic has to work within the world of the piece, even if that world operates by different rules than reality.
My work continues to explore the space between the profound and the ridiculous, finding moments where deep human truths emerge from apparently silly observations. Whether I'm writing Deep Thoughts, New Yorker pieces, novels, or satirical journalism for Bohiney, the mission remains the same: helping people see their world from a slightly different angle and finding the humor in that shift of perspective.
Bohiney.com: Author Page
The New Yorker: Archive of Contributions | Notable Piece
Saturday Night Live: SNL Wiki Profile
Books: Available through major retailers and libraries
Reference: Wikipedia
Additional Sources: Telegraph Biography | Bohiney Blog | Paper Coffee Profile
From Saturday Night Live to The New Yorker, from Deep Thoughts to satirical journalism, I've spent my career proving that the absurd and the profound are often the same thing viewed from different angles. At Bohiney, I continue that exploration, finding new ways to make people laugh while making them think—or maybe making them think while making them laugh. The order doesn't really matter as long as both things happen.
https://bohiney.com/author/jack-handey/
https://sites.google.com/view/contributorsatbohineycom/jack-handey
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https://telegra.ph/Jack-Handey-The-Man-Behind-Deep-Thoughts-Long-Form-Absurdity-and-a-Career-that-Still-Sneaks-Up-on-You-09-01
https://bohiney.seesaa.net/article/517863358.html?1756719585
https://rentry.co/3rnseq8b
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https://www.minds.com/newsfeed/1809185850389553152?referrer=bohiney
https://bohiney.notepin.co/jack-handey-dnqxhtvf
https://journonews.com/jack-handey/