Paragraph of the Week

David Owen's article "Taking Humor Seriously," a profile of longtime The Simpsons' writer George Meyer, from the March 13, 2000 issue of The New Yorker:

"I just watched everything," he [Meyer] told me, "and always with the same slack expression on my face. I watched so much and from such an early age, in fact, that I didn't understand what TV was for. I say this to people and they think I'm kidding, but I didn't realize that 'The Dick Van Dyke Show' was supposed to be funny I thought you just watched it. The people said things, and they moved around, and you just waited till you saw the kid-you know, you liked to see Richie. My brothers and sisters and I rarely laughed at anything we watched. We watched more to learn what the world was like and how adults interacted, and what a cocktail party was, what a night club was, what you did on a sea cruise -- although I did like shows where the joke would be that somebody got shot or fell out of a window. When you're a kid, you like to see adults getting away with stuff; because you hope to join them one day in anarchy and mayhem."