Dorothy Von Irony's Journal of Literary Humor and Humorous Literature

Great Brains and Growing Pains

dorothyvonirony — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 16:43:12 +0000

This very Journal has spawned a live reading-comedy hour! Since its innaguration in the spring (and the addition of a saucy new host Abbi Crutchfield on May 21st), it has become a lethal funsplosion of literary excellence. From a meeting of minutes at a whaler’s convention to rejection via instant-message to a personal account of joining the Mile-High Club (with illustrations!), you never know what you’ll hear. You just know you’ll get it from the funniest writers today.

Last week, on the Dorothy Von Irony Show…

I opened with my signature bubbly cheer in muted tones of brown and beige. It was enough to garner the attention of a lanky, bearded man who stopped to watch the show. His large, weathered hands and surly stoicism made him a mystery to me, but I like to think of him as someone who would play “The Drifter” in a movie based on a John Steinbeck novel.

Eliza Faria-Santos made our heads explode with her musings on people with a Genius Complex. Then she shared her tale of qualifying for junior varsity Mensa status. She’s a smart cookie who rips a heck of a new one for the arrogant man in your life.

Show creator Jen Dziura kept her thoughts to herself, but still looked glamorous while doing it. What’s her secret? The blood of young goats I believe.

RG Daniels gave us a sampling of some of his vintage jokes, the ones where the concepts and the punch lines accidentally meet. It was awkward, it was angsty, it was hilarious.

This show gets better and better, so you do NOT want to miss our next installment, Wednesday July 16th at 9:00PM. Chelsea Market. I’m talking to YOU, Google employees and Food Network crew. I never knew taking time off from The Living Room would be such a fulfilling experience. Now I know what deadbeat dads feel like.

Dorothy Von Irony’s Hour of Literary Comedy and Comic Literature
after Chelsea Mind Games
Chelsea Market
75 9th ave (btwn 15th/16th streets)
9:00PM, FREE
www.chelseamindgames.com

Running late on decisions

dorothyvonirony — Sun, 19 Aug 2007 00:21:55 +0000

For those of you waiting to hear about your submissions, we are running a bit behind (and your editor’s preparing to leave on a Middle East tour isn’t helping!)

Just sit tight! Imagine yourself in a cozy waiting place, one with quilts, and hot chocolate back before you knew about calories or trans fats.

10 days til deadline!

dorothyvonirony — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 15:01:54 +0000

…and the submissions have been rolling in. In whatever sense submissions can “roll.”

All submissions will be read in July, and submitters will receive prompt responses.

You might ask, if you were an inquisitive sort of person: what are a comedian-blogger-person and a small press publisher doing, publishing a literary humor journal in print, in this day and age? After all WordPress is so easy! (Indeed, it is).

There’s just something about pages, though, isn’t there? If you read a funny website, you kind of feel like you’ve squandered minutes or hours of your ephemeral existence; if you read a funny book-like object, you feel as though your minutes or hours have been channeled into the appreciation of something with a lifespan, at least a half-life. You’ve lengthened the reign of Ozymandias.

Those decrying the end of the publishing industry — nay, the end of books! — keep telling us we’re moving towards print-on-demand. Barnes and Noble will consist of a coffee shop and a row of kiosks. Kind of like that row of Metrocard machines. And you’ll search in the kiosk for the book you desire, and it’ll print for you, right there in the bowels of the machine, and be ejected out the bottom — where the Metrocard receipt pops out. Right there. And that’s it. A book! Maybe instead of book signings, authors could digitally store their signatures, inside the machine, and you could pay an extra dollar to have the signature printed right inside the front cover of your made-fresh-just-the-way-you-like-it book!

Or maybe we will write funny things and publish them in book form and then read the funny things at events and sign the books and you’ll get a little bit of beer on your copy, but it will be the beer of gregarious pleasure, so you won’t mind. And then you will stumble, drunkenly, back into the subway holding your beer-loved copy of Dorothy Von Irony’s Journal of Literary Humor and Humorous Literature, and you will think of this post.

first post: call for submissions

dorothyvonirony — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 21:23:21 +0000

Dorothy Von Irony’s Journal of Literary Humor and Humorous Literature
(which is, in fact, exactly the thing it sounds like)
is seeking submissions for its inaugural issue

We are seeking submissions of humor writing, as written by and for the highly literate. Fiction and nonfiction are both acceptable, although fiction should seek to be especially humorous. Maximum length is 5,000 words. Minimum length is several words, unless you have thought of a single word that is funny enough to merit publication on its own, in which case you are a god among us. Poetry and visual arts (appropriate for black and white printing) will also be considered, provided that they are humorous, in the smartypants sort of way that makes us feel both hopeful and aroused.

Dorothy Von Irony’s is edited by comedian Jennifer Dziura (jenisfamous.com) and published by Sepulculture Books (sepulculture.com). Deadline for Issue 1 is July 1st, 2007. Please email all submissions as PDFs or Microsoft Word attachments, with appropriate introductory and descriptive text in the body of the email, to dorothy@jenisfamous.com

There is no payment for this, but contributors will have their names and humorous writing published in the finest quality inks, will receive a free copy, and will be invited to read their humorous writing at humorous events.