Many Hollywood celebrities you hadn’t thought about in a while will deliver a commencement address -- the way stars back in the 80s used to do a guest spot on “The Love Boat” or “Fantasy Island.” It was quick, fun, and showed your fans some range they didn’t always associate with that celebrity. Plus it’s a lot easier than joining a Reality TV show.

So I wrote an article that satirizes the trend of celebrity commencement addresses in part because they follow a general pattern: after talking about what an honor it is to be speaking to the graduating class, they almost always offer a humblebrag joke about their careers -- in case some parents and grandparents aren't familiar with the celeberty's oeuvre. Next comes a section about being a mediocre student -- especially for those speaking at their alma maters. The "meat" of the speech is an inspirational lesson focused on their struggles to make it to the top of the Hollywood food chain. In between there are the requisite jokes about hungover seniors moving back home to their parents' homes.

If you haven't seen them, colleges these days post these speeches onto YouTube. Jim Carrey gave one last year. Ed Helms and Amy Pohler each gave one. But then so did Snooki from "Jersey Shore." They can usually be very funny because these are (Snooki aside) great performers. But their speeches can seem a bit canned and formulaic.

After watching a number of celeb commencement addresses, I wrote the piece that appeared in the Boston Herald. And very nicely some people shared it among their social media peeps.

That's where the negative comments comes in. One friend posted it to our alumni page, and one person (who graduated before I arrived at the school so there's no history here) wrote: "What a waste of time." Another person (also no connection) wrote that she had never heard a celeb commencement address but the one given by Marion Wright Edelman at true college today was excellent.

In the history of negative comments, these don't even rank -- I realize that. But the first comment was somewhat annoying. If you don't like it and don't want to support the efforts of a fellow alum, don't write anything, I felt like posting. (Which I didn't over there but am doing over here.) As to the second commenter, Ms. Edelman is an accomplished activist, and while well known, is not a Hollywood celebrity -- so it's not a fair comparison. Ms. Edelman has a real point to make whereas a lot of the celeb addresses are meant to be entertainment. Which is why some speakers actually change hefty fees to "give" a commencement address.

Snooki charged Rutgers $32,000 to speak, more than it paid Toni Morrison. This year, the University of Houston admitted this week that it is paying Matthew McConaughey $135,000 -- plus travel and a fee to a booking agent.

But back to the mildly negative comments. I could respond with the idea that any controversy would be helpful in generating attention to the article or to me.

On the other hand, I've experienced little negative feedback until now. And I can't expect for everyone to be aware of the trends I try to satirize or to laugh at my jokes.

I also don't want to be thought of as thin skinned or as having no sense of humor about these things. (I laughed hard when a writer I don't know said he hated that one article of mine that got published that he wanted to quit the business. I actually took it as a compliment.). So I'm probably not going to respond.

But I reserve the right to change my mind.

What do you give a British royal princess? I thought a nickname might be a good idea -- since she has everything else and her name, HRH Charlotte Elizabeth Diana of Cambridge, is rather a long one.

The origin of this article actually came from another piece I had written, that had been rejected, that looked at royals and fast fast food joints. It's not just Burger King, Dairy Queen, and White Castle -- there are about a dozen restaurants with a royal connection despite the fact that one does not usually associate burgers and fast food with royalty.

Meanwhile, while my piece looked at nicknames that should not be conferred onto the princess, an alert friend, William Vodrey, found this: Titles You Would Not Want If You Were a King or Queen.

Their suggestions were pretty funny; but it's interesting, once again, to see different takes on a similar premise. What makes me feel a bit better is that that's from a message board, written by members of th Straight Dope, which has been going for almost five years now. Not that it's a competition, but I had far less time to turn this around.

I recently published a little article in a local paper that syndicated it to three other related newspapers. Entitled “Worst summer vacations in history,” it offered several faux diary entries purporting to be from summer vacations gone bad, including one from Noah’s son, Shem; an Egyptian complaining that the Sun God Rah never appeared while his brother-in-law, Atentophot-Who-Can’t-Hold-a-Job was around”; and a few others. (I’ll get to them in a moment, after I take a moment and wonder if Noah named his son Shem with the hopes he might someday join the 3 Stooges.)

The idea for the article came when a high-powered editor I was working with complained about not being able to get back to me because Internet access at his vacation home was spotty. I’ve encountered the same thing while on vacation — the frustration of not being able to access email, websites, and documents stored in the clouds, even when you should be at the beach or the lake or the mountains or wherever you are. I thought that would make a fun article — to balance complaints from a biblical flood on the one hand and the lack of WiFi for more recent vacations.

Anyway, the article didn’t generate any comments on the website of the newspapers that published it but I did see a mention of it on a fan fiction site. The person who posted the article had very nice things to say about the article, and then, instead of linking to it (as I did, above), she copied some of the diary entries onto the forum. Now I totally appreciate her kind words, and am glad the article amused her. (My wife did not like it so much at first because I assume she was concerned she’d recognize one of our vacations in the list; thankfully she realized we’ve never been to Nottingham where we were victimized by Robin Hood so that made a difference.) But the poster did not include a link back to the newspapers’ sites; I’m not suggesting that entry on the fan fiction site is generating tons of clicks — but none of those readers are clicking on the page, which might further encourage the newspaper editor to continue to run my pieces. (Just so you know, the fan fiction site is not devoted to my work; the article was cited as opportunity for fans of that particular ’60s TV show to write their own faux diary entries of bad summer vacations experienced the show’s characters.)

I’m sure the posting goes beyond fair use because it quotes more than half the article but it’s not like I’m selling copies of it elsewhere. I try to be careful about fair use whenever I cite someone else’s work in one of my blogs, and I always provide a link to the original. I want to encourage people to follow my work — not scold anyone — so, in the future, how about tweeting about it to drive traffic to the source?

Sometimes the way to improve a piece isn't by adding jokes to it but by deleting them. Even jokes I really like sometimes don't belong. I wrote an article last week that had more than two dozen jokes in it but it wasn't that good. Two people who read it didn't think the piece was funny enough. So I went back in, cut out a lot, and brought it to about 15 jokes. I submitted it, and the editor of the outlet cut a couple more, and now it's a much better piece.

I  mention this because I read an article in the New York Times that profiled David Javerbaum, a former "Daily Show" writer and the author of "An Act of God," a Broadway show based on a series of tweets.

You can hate him all you want because of that but he said something that makes sense to me:

“I have no problem whatsoever with cutting jokes of mine,” he said. “Being at ‘The Daily Show’ for 11 years, having my jokes killed by the thousands, and killing other people’s jokes by the thousands, after a while you realize it’s fine, there’s another one out there.”


I read that at a time (last week) when I had trouble with another piece I was working on. After reading those lines about needing to kill jokes, I killed a bunch of jokes that I liked but weren't working for me. After the cuts, the piece read much better. I haven't heard back if the editor of a different publication will run the piece but subtracting jokes improved the piece.

I'm writing about it to remember to keep that lesson in mind. 

Successful writing actually involves a lot of rewriting. That's particularly true when it comes to writing jokes or humorous articles. 

Sometimes it feels stupid to spend (waste) so much time over fart jokes or the equivalent. But as the late Joan Rivers said, it's important to laugh because life, otherwise, can be so difficult.

I've been thinking about the amount of time it takes to write a 600-word humorous article because I've written three different related articles, with varying degrees of success -- by which I mean whether I like them or not.

But while I took a break from rewriting the three articles, I came across a video profile of Jerry Seinfeld produced by the New York Times entitled, "How to Write a Joke." As experienced, funny and observant as he is, Seinfeld took two years to craft some thoughts about pop tarts into a bit he was proud of -- two years! 

I actually found that encouraging. And I'm impressed that someone -- who doesn't have to work -- takes so much pride in the craft.

Here's the New York Times clip followed by an edited version of his thought process in developing that joke. Finally at 2:11 there's final version that Seinfeld delivered on the Tonight Show. Also, here's a link to a lengthy New York Times Magazine profile of Seinfeld, "Seinfeld Intends to Die Standing Up" that's worth reading.