Borowitz admits that “trying to rank artists is a tricky business,” but there’s something for everyone to love in this quartet of classic and contemporary funnies.
First James Naughton reads S.J. Perelman’s noir parody “Farewell, My Lovely Appetizer.” The Brooklyn-born Perelman was well known for his plays, screenplays and humor pieces, which often appeared in The New Yorker. And it’s no wonder that this story gets a great read from James Naughton, since he won Tony Awards as Best Actor in a Musical for both “City of Angels” and “Chicago.” He has also has appeared in numerous films and television shows, including “The Devil Wears Prada,” “Damages,” “Gossip Girl,” “Planet of the Apes,” “Hostages,” “The Blacklist,” “The Affair,” “Equity,”and “The Independents.” He’s currently featured in the series “Tap.”
Our second piece is also by a well-known New Yorker contributor, Susan Orlean, author of the bestselling novel The Orchid Thief, and many short comic essays. Here, Orlean complains about idle tots in “Shiftless Little Loafers,” read by Dave Hill. Hill is the host the radio show, “The Goddamn Dave Hill Show” on WFMU and is the author of two books, Tasteful Nudes and Dave Hill Doesn’t Live Here Anymore. He has written for the New York Times, GQ, Salon, Vice, McSweeney’s, Blender, The Huffington Post, New York Daily News, Guitar World, and The Cleveland Plain Dealer. He is a contributor to “This American Life” and has appeared on many television shows, including “Inside Amy Schumer,” and in the short film “Dream Job.”
Old-time radio is unmasked in Jean Shepherd’s “The Counterfeit Secret Circle Member Gets the Message, or The Asp Strikes Again.” Shepherd was an American raconteur, radio and TV personality, writer and actor, best known to modern audiences for the film “A Christmas Story,” which he narrated and co-scripted, based on his own semi-autobiographical stories. His collections include In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash, Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories: and Other Disasters, The Ferrari in the Bedroom, and A Fistful of Fig Newtons. The superb delivery is by another great raconteur, SELECTED SHORTS’ late host and founder Isaiah Sheffer.
We close with a story to keep you up all night—which is the problem the woman in Jenny Allen’s “Awake,” is having. Allen is a writer and monologist who starred in the one-woman show “I Got Sick Then I Got Better.” Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Vogue, Esquire, The Huffington Post and Good Housekeeping, among others publications, and she recently released the essay collection Would Everybody Please Stop? She’s a participating storyteller for “The Moth.”
Reader Jane Kaczmarek is a regular host of SELECTED SHORTS on tour and on the radio. She is best known for her Emmy-nominated role as Lois on Malcolm in the Middle. In New York, Kaczmarek has appeared on Broadway and off at Manhattan Theatre Club, Second Stage, the Public Theatre, New York Theater Workshop, and the Williamstown Theatre Festival. Kaczmarek appeared in Long Day's Journey Into Night at the Geffen Playhouse with Alfred Molina, and recently played the Stage Manager in Our Town with Deaf West Theatre.
