Writer following his heart, living the dream

By Lars Trodson

There’s a great expression I recently heard: "Feeling
9/10." It means your mood is upbeat and carefree, something
like you felt the day before the terrorist attacks on 9/11
— hence the name. I think it’s just a terrific turn of phrase.

That’s what I was feeling the other day. I was driving on
Goodwin Road up in Eliot, Maine. The snow had melted and the
brown grass had emerged and it looked like the end of winter
in New England. I went past the working farms, and the sky
was blue and my little pickup was just puttering along.

I was headed into Portsmouth to see my former colleague and
friend John Breneman, who has stepped out of the workaday
world to pursue the dream of writing humor for a living. We
were going to spend the morning talking about the fulfillment
of a dream and the craft of writing.

Just months ago Breneman had nothing but an idea. He wanted
to write full-time. Over the years, he has written a column
called "Fake
News" where he combines a factual event with his
own flights of fancy, and local readers may know him from
that. He was a regular contributor to the old ThumpCity web
site, which also included Chris Elliott. But those endeavors
proved only enough to scratch the itch.

We had talked over the years about the kind of commitment
it takes to fulfill a dream. It’s almost impossible today
to keep that dream on a part-time basis; you must dive into
it headfirst and keep kicking and screaming and scratching
and fighting until someone either hears you or no one wants
to hear you any more. Particularly in the creative arts. We
were working at the same newspaper when I left to write a
book, and John followed — and I do not mean that in any other
way than in the chronology of things — just a few weeks later.

It
takes no small amount of courage to leave a comfortable job,
particularly one you’re good at that pays the bills. Once
Breneman turned 40 it would have been even easier to simply
settle into that groove and say it was a little late to change
horses. But when he was searching for something to do in life
long ago, his father Ernie gave
him some advice: Write stuff. That phrase rattled around in
Breneman’s head until he could ignore it no more.

Just several months into his pursuit, Breneman now has a
web site devoted to his clever and funny writings. It’s called
The Humor Gazette, and it is already creating a buzz in the
extremely populated world of ‘zine writing. The fact that
his creation is getting linked up to other well-known comedy
and satire sites certainly means he’s onto something. You
can find out what I mean by clicking on www.humorgazette.com.

The web site was originally intended to be a kind of warehouse
for the volumes of sketch pieces, humorous jabs, word-plays
and verbal pratfalls that he’s been crafting for quite some
time. But now it’s taken on a life of its own. He’s being
helped by his web master, a young man named Jeff
Raper, and Breneman has made a commitment to keep his
web site updated and topical. One day Breneman showed me all
the html code that sits just behind the clean and bright graphics
of his web site. So, I said to myself, that’s what the mind
of a comedian looks like.

On the day we talked, Ralph Nader had just entered the presidential
race. Breneman, who is nothing if not smart, conflated Nader’s
history as an auto safety pioneer with his political ambitions
and wrote a piece called "Crash-test
dummies endorse Nader." You’ll be mistaken to think
this kind of joke is obvious; you try to come up with it first.

This is my take: Much of the humor writing today is either
quite precious or downright unfunny. As an example, when was
the last time you actually laughed at something a radio D.J.
or a morning TV talk show host said? Not very recently, I
would imagine. Or: When a writer launches into a "humorous"
piece on NPR, I begin a mental countdown as to when the author
will begin his or her supposedly clever tangent to the original
topic — which always starts right on time — and then wait
nervously for the piece to wrap up with its intended ironic
and literary conclusion.

I suppose it isn’t fair to build someone up by negating the
talents of others, but the point is comedy, as the famous
man once said, is hard.

Breneman did not, by all accounts, start out as a funny kid.
He was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to a father who was
a successful advertising executive and a mother who shared
his penchant for collecting antiques — something both parents
put to good use when they opened up their own shop. (They
now own two G. Willikers
toy shops.) "We had a big house and a big yard and a
creek in the back," Breneman said. A house they bought
in the little neighborhood of Gibsonia was filled with old
stuff, including an old-fashioned candle-making machine and
a printing press — which was later used to do promotional
material for the antique store.

In 1972, Ernie Breneman had had enough of the rat race and
decided to move. He investigated several different locales
and the family settled in York, Maine — "sight unseen."
The kids didn’t want to move, "but then we looked up
Maine in the encyclopedia." The Breneman children, there
are three, had never seen the ocean and when they first came
upon the water it was high tide and they looked at each other
and said: "Where’s the beach?"

That’s a funny story, but Breneman says he does not have
"Pennsylvania, pre-age 10 memories of comedy. My first
memories of being a sapient individual come from baseball."
He was a Pirates fan — Stargell, Clemente — "and I
became a voracious consumer of all things baseball. My dad
called me a walking encyclopedia." He was a shy kid,
not loud. His mother Jill said he was an observer. "I
didn’t say much," which he said he preferred to "voluminous
pie-hole ramblings." (Which is more my style.)

High school, in York, is where Breneman’s first comic impulses
manifested themselves. In English class, teacher Daniel Beetz
told Breneman his writing was "strange, but good. That
was not lost on me." A news-writing class he took in
high school led to assignments, and Breneman said he "did
an off-beat piece about the wombat. I just liked the sound
of the word." The original article combined factual details
and also "fake news" about the wombat. Right there
you have the direct linear descendent of what Breneman does
today.

The production side of the school newspaper, by the way,
was so enamored with what he had written they named the paper
"The Wombat Weekly." There’s nothing like a little
outside validation to give you confidence, and that’s what
happened. A class in broadcast journalism led to the production
of "fake news bits" for a school TV news program.
Breneman was named literary editor for the school yearbook,
and he was quite right when he said: "There are some
people who carry the load on the yearbook" and quickly
adds: "I wasn’t one of them." He wrote a poem, "Ode
to a Wombat."

After graduating from Colby College, there was the proverbial
trip around the country in a van with a friend. "We picked
up a hitchhiker and there was something about attempted murder
so he was the last hitchhiker," Breneman said of the
trip. "When we got back it was very much like: Now what?"
And his father gave him that advice, "Write stuff."
The elder Breneman knew the then-editor of the York Weekly,
Patti Hart, who gave Breneman his first professional gig,
writing sports for the York Weekly, back when it was an independent-minded
newspaper.

The career proceeded amiably, on a pleasingly upward arc,
with a five-year stint in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where
he wrote a humor column, and then a return to the Portsmouth
Herald, where Breneman was the much-lauded Sunday editor.
He also wrote his fake news pieces there.

But…but. "I needed to make the time to do what
I love to do. Something was burning more brightly inside of
me and that was the humor," he says. "There was
frustration of not doing what I was really meant to be doing."

He had put a book together, pitched it, and received enough
encouragement to "give me a taste." And so, rather
than stew, rather than stay with the conventional and then
look back at a life where the chance was not taken, Breneman
left his job and immediately began work on his writing.

Now he is watching The Humor Gazette make a little splash.
"My numbers are so tiny, but to watch them grow and watch
them spike is exciting," he said.

Breneman is still working on the book, several in fact, and
he hopes to make it into the Holy Grail for all fiction writers,
The New Yorker (and has in fact received a couple of encouraging
responses from that magazine). But in the meantime he continues
to add fresh satire to his site, which, in the main, is a
worthy addition not just to cyberspace but to the cultural
life here in Portsmouth. It is John’s hope, it is indeed my
hope, that Portsmouth will be known as the home of this original
and funny and sharp collection of writings.

"People say comedy is a difficult thing and I agree
with that," said Breneman. "But the reason I know
it’s what I should do is because it’s easy for me." Maybe
so, but interrupting a career to pursue whatever dream one
may have is not so easy. Good for him. And, by the way, good
for us.

NH
winner Kerry urged to avoid ketchup stains

By John Breneman

Sen. John Kerry won a convincing victory in the New Hampshire
primary on Tuesday, prompting pundits to say the only way
he could lose the Democratic nomination now is if he gave
a ranting speech punctuated with an unnerving scream.

Kerry’s handlers have also advised him to avoid cursing,
belching and phony-looking Harley Davidson photo-ops as the
race moves to South Carolina and beyond.

"One accidental fart on national television could be
the soundbite, or ‘smellbite’ if you will, that could derail
the front-runner," said media analyst Joe Mentum. "Howard
Dean has proven that one embarrassing misstep, replayed on
cable news 145 million times, is all it takes to change the
entire campaign landscape."

Kerry also has been cautioned about making lame jokes, getting
ketchup on his shirt and spending too much time with Teddy
Kennedy.

Though he says it is "too early" to talk about
potential running mates, sources say Kerry may look past the
usual suspects like Sen. John Edwards to consider a pretend
politician like Martin Sheen, Will Ferrell or Wesley Clark.

Howard Dean finished second in New Hampshire, followed by
Clark, Edwards and Joe Lieberman, but notoriously cantankerous
Granite State voters showed their displeasure at the entire
Democratic slate by casting write-in votes for Portsmouth
Mayor Evelyn Sirrell, Patriots football coach Bill Belichick
and political newcomer Michael Jackson, coming of his surprise
victory in the Iowa caucuses.

Election interpreter Chad Counter, commenting on the results
of an exit poll conducted at Exit 14 on I-93, said New Hampshire
citizens used their votes to convey a range of emotions: "anger,
hunger for change, fear and loathing, bewilderment, angst
and unbridled sexual desire."

N.H. voters crushed in primary stampede

By John Breneman

Some election analysts predict a low turnout in today’s first-in-the-nation
primary, saying voters in New Hampshire are so physically
and intellectually battered by round-the-clock campaigning
that many may lack the strength just to drag themselves to
the polls.

"Wes Clark’s people called me 14 times last night. I
couldn’t get any sleep," said Reggie Sturdvoter, adding
that Howard Dean shook his hand so vigorously that the resulting
torn ligaments may prevent him from voting.

Several Portsmouth residents reported minor injuries from
being jostled amid boisterous factions of sign-waving campaigners
and one downtown resident said he sustained inner ear damage
from the nonstop howling and horn-honking just outside his
window.

Another factor that may affect turnout, pollsters say, is
the high number of prospective voters who’ve simply wandered
off the campaign trail in search of more peaceful terrain.
One such man didn’t get very far.

"I tried heading for the high country, but John Kerry
cut me off on a Harley and asked if I thought he was cool
enough to beat Bush," said Hampton resident Archie Stump.

Many Granite State residents say they are eager to perform
their civic duty but are confused about who to vote for.

"I like that guy that yelled and squealed, but now they
say he’s no good cause he yelled and squealed," said
Chad Puncher of Exeter. "Maybe I should vote for that
cute young southern boy or that rich older fellow who says
he cares but looks like he doesn’t."

While the Democrats clash over who is best suited to knock
President Bush out of the White House, each campaign appeared
to share the view of a Kucinich spokesman who said, "We’re
confident that if we can just get enough people to stand on
the street corner waving signs, freezing their asses off and
yelling ‘Woooooo!’ at the top of their lungs, we’ll be able
to win this thing."

Kerry held a double-digit lead over Dean, but both men trailed
the 52 percent of voters who said the first-in-the-nation
primary is fun and everything but now wish the candidates,
their entourages and the media would just "shut up and
get the hell out of New Hampshire."

1-27-04

Jacko
takes Iowa

By John Breneman

Michael Jackson coasted to victory in the Iowa presidential
caucuses on Monday, receiving an avalanche of votes from citizens
left so numb by round-the-clock "Jacko" coverage
that when they got to the polling place his was the only name
they could think of.

The result surprised pollsters who predicted that, despite
an 11th-hour endorsement by Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan,
the embattled entertainer would finish no better than sixth.

"Voters want a candidate who can capture their imagination,"
said pundit Johnnie Cochran. "Now those other guys are
boring, dull. But you take just one look at Michael and your
imagination is working overtime."

Political analysts said Jackson’s failure to make a single
live appearance in Iowa didn’t hurt him because his image
could be seen on TV approximately five hours a day. No candidate
could match Jackson’s grassroots organization, those millions
of followers throughout the world who demonstrate cult-like
allegiance to the spooky, mask-faced King of Pop.

Jackson also enjoys strong support among middle-class Iowa
voters, who appreciate his lunch-bucket work ethic and his
decision to turn Caucasian. Conventional wisdom says the victory
catapults Jackson into front-runner status heading into the
Jan. 27 primary in New Hampshire.

In other election news: Democratic contender Wesley Clark
got a jump on his New Hampshire primary rivals by proclaiming
himself a big fan of the Super Bowl-bound New England Patriots
football team.

"I was rooting for the Pats way back last week when
those other guys were pretending to like the University of
Iowa basketball team," said Clark, who dressed himself
up in a Patriots jacket, hat and Lawyer Milloy jersey to watch
Sunday’s AFC championship game at a bar in Sunapee, N.H.

"I’m a patriot, too," the retired general said
as he pretended to take a realistic blue-collar swig of Samuel
Adams beer.

1-20-04

White House janitor pens tell-all book

By John Breneman

Longtime White House janitor Dusty Flores has written a new
book with shocking "inside dirt" about the goings-on
at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Flores, fired in a December 2002 shakeup of the White House
custodial team, said he wrote the book to call attention to
the fact that President Bush is "kind of a numbskull
who gets crumbs all over his desk."

The man formerly in charge of emptying the circular file
at the Oval Office said he could no longer remain silent about
President Bush’s habit of soiling sensitive documents with
bright orange Doritos residue. Or the president’s incessant
humming and doodling during sessions with his top-level advisers.

"Now I’m no brain scientist," said Flores, "but
during these Cabinet meetings Bush would just sit there grinning
like a monkey, munching a box of Animal Crackers. The only
questions he’d ask would be like: ‘What’s a deficit?’ and
‘When can I wear the Top Gun suit again?’"

In an interview with "60 Minutes" set to air on
Sunday, Flores told Andy Rooney that when the president was
called upon to make a difficult decision, he would often disappear
into the bathroom with the Sports page and not come out for
30-40 minutes.

Flores said "national security" prevents him from
revealing much more about the outcome of these private deliberations,
"but let’s just say I kept a lot of Glade lemon-scented
air fresheners handy."

The book also airs dirty laundry about overnight guests in
the Lincoln Bedroom, including which ones swiped the scented
soaps and monogrammed towels.

1-12-04

The Bush administration cleverly launched a rocket-propelled grenade into one of its two left feet this week with its decision to exclude France, Germany, Russia and other nations from $18.6 billion in U.S. funds to rebuild Iraq.

President Bush explained Thursday that only
those nations that “risked lives” in his ill-advised
personal crusade to crush Saddam Hussein would be eligible
for U.S.-financed reconstruction contracts.

“American taxpayers are getting screwed
in this deal so it is only fair that we also stick it
to any nation that was not part of the ‘coalition of the
willing’,” said the president.

“Besides, I¹ve already promised
most of that money to my pals.”
It is widely believed that the bulk of the Iraqi reconstruction
bonanza will be awarded to politically connected U.S.
megacompanies favored by the president and his cronies.

Competitive bidding may not even be needed,
Bush explained, because “the courageous corporate
warriors at Halliburton and Bechtel risked their lives”
to produce outrageously inflated estimates of what they
will charge to rebuild Iraq’s electric, communications,
transportation and oil industries.

In keeping with his extraordinary capacity
for general cluelessness, the president did not appear
at all fazed that his administration was simultaneously
asking “those chicken-shit countries that didn’t
send their guys to be killed” to write off billions
in debts owed to them by Iraq.

The Pentagon list of who’s been naughty
and nice also freezes out Canada, while insuring that
key U.S. allies like Eritrea, Albania and Uganda will
reap up to a couple thousands bucks each.

“What a dipshit,” Russian President
Vladimir V. Putin said of Bush. “That guy is number
than a hake,” agreed Chancellor Gerhard Schröder
of Germany. “Mon dieu,” said French President
Jacques Chirac. “Monsieur W. is, how you say, an
imbecile.”

Foreign policy analysts say the fact that
France, Germany and Russia are outraged by the Pentagon
decision fits well with the administration’s strategy
of accidentally fomenting anti-American sentiment throughout
the world.

Dukes of Hazzard support Dean

By John
Breneman

The fabled "Dukes of
Hazzard" endorsed Democratic presidential candidate
Howard Dean today, responding to Dean’s recent comment
that he wants to be "the candidate for guys with
Confederate flags in their pickup trucks."

Support from Southern icons
Bo and Luke Duke was welcome news for Dean, who sparked
a controversy with his casual mention of the banner that
symbolizes the repression and enslavement of African-Americans.

The former Vermont governor
was in full damage control mode today, saying what he
really meant was that he wants to be "the candidate
for guys who drink shots of Jack Daniels out of Dixie
cups."

The incident forced the Dean
camp to address criticism of racial insensitivity. Newly
hired spokesman Kunta Kinte III said Dean subsisted on
a diet of chitlins and collard greens while putting himself
through medical school and is a big fan of the TV sitcom
"Whoopi."

The Dukes said the moment they
heard Dean might need their help they hopped through the
busted-out windows of the General Lee — their famed 1969
Dodge Charger with a Confederate flag painted on top —
and hit the gas, spitting up dust and getting the needle
up to 135 mph on their way to Vermont.

New poll numbers released today
show Dean running well ahead of his rivals in pivotal
Hazzard County now that the Dukes have pledged to help
him "get that greedy Boss Hogg out of the White House."

11-07-03

President says he won’t rule out using

military force to squash Democrats

By John Breneman

(Nov.
4, 2003)   WASHINGTON — With his poll numbers slipping,
President Bush said today he would not rule out using military
force if he feels any of the Democratic candidates poses a
significant threat to U.S. interests.

The president said he has evidence that retired Gen. Wesley
Clark and other Democratic contenders may be stockpiling chemical
and biological weapons in their campaign warchests. Further,
Bush said, the British government has documents purporting
to show that Sen. John Kerry attempted to purchase uranium
"yellow cake" from Niger.

"You’re either with us or you’re a terrorist,"
said Bush, who claimed to possess some "darn good intelligence"
revealing that each Democratic candidate opposes both the
president and his policies. Bush said he has learned that
Howard Dean and Joe Lieberman have ties to al Qaeda and that
Al Sharpton once invited Saddam Hussein and his sons to a
P. Diddy concert.

If the Democrats persist in criticizing the war in Iraq,
the president said he will have no choice but to "give
’em a taste of heavy artillery." Asked what types of
offenses might warrant a military response, Bush said he would
only consider deploying troops if the Democrats continue to
whine about U.S. casualties in Iraq and the need to seek help
from the international community.

The president’s mother, Barbara Bush, who recently called
the field of Democratic contenders "a pretty sorry group,"
said she stands prepared to use even harsher language "if
those pathetic liberal jackasses don’t stop harassing my Georgie."

Bush stopped short of issuing a formal declaration of war
against his rivals, but assured the American people that he
would not hesitate to use some of his favorite "nuke-u-lar
weapons" to defeat the menacing Democratic "axis
of evil."

Brother can you
spare a euro?

Europe has erupted in euro
euphoria. After years of euro-planning, the people across the
pond have finally got their hands on that new unified currency
you’ve been hearing about – the euro.

Spain, France, Germany and
the gang are now awash in an unfamiliar rainbow of pretty pastel
bank notes and bright jingly doubloons.

All the fashionable European
countries are doing it. Italy, Greece, Austria. They’re loving
the euro in Luxembourg. They’re mad for it in Madagascar. No
wait, that’s Africa (conversion table: 1.32 euros = 1 afro).

The euro is worth a little
less than a buck (about 90 cents) and some say it looks like
Monopoly money. (The back side of the 50-euro note features
a portrait of the Greek philosopher Socrates wearing a top hat
and monocle.)

In fact, the Associated
Press reported that on Jan. 1 a customer at a bar in southern
France bought himself a drink using a Monopoly bill from the
game’s European edition.

So they’re still working
out a few bugs. For example, right now it costs 0.62 euros for
a can of Coke in Copenhagen, but 150 euros for a Mountain Dew
in Dusseldorf.
There have been scattered reports of people accidentally tossing
the unfamiliar eurocash into the eurotrash. And a high-profile
PR campaign cautions: "Don’t take any wooden euros."

Meanwhile, economic analyst
Frank Drachma is advising U.S. consumers to pay no attention
to the advent of the euro, which will be largely ignored here
in the land of the almighty dollar.

John Breneman
1-6-02