HumorIs – Adam Overland

A few weeks ago someone with the Star Tribune wrote to me asking if I’d like to be a more regular contributor to the commentary section of the paper, based, evidently, off the strength of my one and only commentary there about the weird lack of winter we had in Minnesota, though it was primarily about my moral failure to feel happiness for others who are experiencing happiness themselves. Reluctant introspection aside, the request felt like a foot in the door to my once-upon-a-dream job of being a humor columnist for a newspaper. But like most of my dreams, I’d set it aside long ago to bask more comfortably in the final defeat of youthful idealism coupled with the inertia-of-circumstance worldview that comes so naturally with early middle age. 

So of course I said that I would be delighted. I wrote something shortly thereafter but then they passed on it, so I popped it off to Minnpost which published it the next day. It was a piece I really liked, somewhat for what it said, but also for how it sounded … it had a kind of flow to it that felt nice in its writing, and in its reading (I hope). That one was about springtime in Minnesota (another weather piece, groan), though really it was about the fact that death is coming for all of us (and there is rarely a 10th inning) and so we’d better not be messing around (hilarious stuff). I’d titled it “Bang the rug loudly” but they decided to go with something more direct.

As with the Strib commentary, the Minnpost one delivered a little bump in visitors to my blog, since like the Strib they were kind enough to allow me to link to it in my brief bio. I wish I’d had something fresh for new visitors to read, but lately I’ve neglected the blog, choosing instead to sit on the couch eating too much and watching countless hours of NBA playoffs. Plus, how do you even impress the new people? You can only write so much stuff about the weather/existential doom, and I’m not sure I do enough things outside my own head to really lay the groundwork for good content. Historically, all the good writers who were introverted hermits also had towering intellects (Nietzsche, J.D. Salinger), but those of us with average intelligence actually have to go out and do things to think of stuff to write about, which is a problem. 

One time a few years ago I went to Dick’s Sporting Goods and as I was passing by the women’s clothing section on my way to the fishing stuff a mannequin caught my eye and I found myself more than a little attracted to her. She was really fit, which isn’t uncommon among mannequins, but she also had great hair, similar to hair an ex-girlfriend of mine had that I really liked and who I was probably still attracted to. So I was thinking, well, I could write about that mannequin experience here for the new people, because maybe there are some of them who could relate to that, but then what if only like 30% of the new people relate to being attracted to a mannequin and the rest don’t? Then you run the risk of not really impressing too many of them and maybe even turning more of them away than not, especially the ones who don’t like mannequins or who lie and claim never to have been attracted to one, not even once. 

And then I was thinking, what’s the point anyway? That once-upon-a-dream of mine isn’t even all that aspirational in this day and age. Newspapers aren’t doing well, and the heyday of the columnist that matters is either behind us, or it’s happening in a different medium, and I don’t want to do TikTok and don’t have the body for OnlyFans. I just want to do the words and not have to dance and say “link in bio!” I feel like I’ve arrived at a party that ended years ago, and the house the party was held at has been demolished, and there’s a bunch of overpriced condos in its place.

Fortunately, writing is often its own reward because there are no other rewards unless you’re really good. The thing itself is the reward. But it’s definitely nice when more people read the thing.