Welcome to Michael and Us. I'm Will Sloan, here as always with.

It's Savage. Welcome back, everyone. I've been reading a lot of the Algonquin Roundtable

writers lately. People like Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley, Alexander Wilcott. The Algonquin

Roundtable, people still know it as a signifier for people who are witty together and clever,

and do bon motts and that sort of thing. It still sort of exists in the popular consciousness

as that. And certain of the writers have lived on, others less so.

And I've been enjoying a lot of their work, but, you know, I got this book here. It's called

The Algonquin Wits, a crackling collection of Bon Mott's, Wisecracks, Epigrams, and Gags. And it's a

collection of funny things that they all said at various points.

And it's interesting how comedy ages because, you know, there's some comedy that age as well.

I've seen films by Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin with an audience and they still get laughs and there's something powerful about hearing a joke resonate across a century.

But obviously, you know, there's a lot of comedy,

topical comedy, for instance, that sort of ages like milk. And that's always been the case.

And this book, it's sorted by the names of the authors, and it's a collection of funny things they said. You know, for example, in the section for George S. Kaufman, it says, after the flop of his first play,

someone in the house, Kaufman remarked, there wasn't. As a young theater critic and aspiring

playwright, Kaufman was assigned to cover a new Broadway comedy. In his review, he wrote,

There was laughter in the back of the theater, leading to the belief that somebody was

telling jokes back there. Okay, one more. This is from Alexander Wolcott. He says,

All the things I really like to do are either immoral, illegal, or fattening. Okay, actually,

one more. So back to George S. Kaufman.

Kaufman and Charlie Chaplin once got into a discussion about personal health. At one point,

Chaplin announced with pride that his blood pressure was down to 108. Common or preferred,

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