Living on Laughs
Modern Humorist's first book puts it on the path to success.
By James Norton

There aren't many islands of hope left on the World Wide Web.

The onset of strange, real-world demands — like "making a profit" — have pulled down some of the Web's most interesting content destinations and threatened the existence of numerous others. Two of its flagship sites, Salon and Amazon, are fighting for their lives as smaller content sites put out begging bowls and hope that users will feel charitable enough to drop a couple of bucks in the cup.

Two of the sites that seem to have figured it out rely on adaptable business models, intelligent, funny writing and alternative revenue streams to keep themselves afloat. McSweeney's and The Onion have both built legions of followers, spawned successful books and kept themselves rolling forward with force. Meanwhile, the grand, venture-backed dreadnoughts keep imploding in darkly humorous fiascos of hubris and punishment.

Add another site to the list of savvy survivors: Modern Humorist. With the recent publication of its first book, "My First Presidentiary," MH has proven that it's ready to be counted among the winners. The book, published by Three Rivers Press, is one of the site's numerous efforts to capitalize on the popularity of its daily humor content.

"We always knew we could squeeze a little bit of money out of advertising and merchandise," MH co-founder and co-editor Michael Colton said, "but we knew it wasn't going to sustain the company we had in mind. We always knew [the site] was a great way to create this brand and then start leveraging it in other areas."

In addition to the book, MH provides content for numerous established print magazines, and has landed a deal to produce promotional material for Microsoft. In a medium where the advertising base has collapsed, the shift away from purely providing Web content is a smart fiscal move.

"When we started, I would say that for the first six months or so, we were spending 90-95 percent of our time on the website," Colton said. "Now it's more like 10 percent of our time or some weeks, 5 percent. [The site is] much more on autopilot."

For a site that launched in May 2000, the jump into the world of publishing and other media ventures was rapid. Within a few months of launching, MH had a two-book deal lined up with Three Rivers. The obvious commercial appeal of neatly packaged topical humor and some fortunate connections held by MH's CEO, Kate Barker, helped seal the deal.

But for Web surfers, the site's entrepreneurial acrobatics are second in importance to the writing itself. The most important thing about the MH story is that the stuff they put out is consistently funny — arguably some of the best published. The book's no exception.

Modern Humorist's First Presidentiary

"My First Presidentiary" is modern presidential history writ large — with crayon. Co-authors Kevin Guilfoile and John Warner have assembled a collection of short, humorous bits told from the perspective of George W. Bush, richly illustrated with crayon drawings and third-gradelike cursive handwriting that the authors represent as Bush's. In the process, they've taken some necessary liberties with the presentation of the president's personality.

"We didn't see George W. Bush so much as a target as a muse," said Guilfoile. "We were able to use his presence. When he goes out in public, he's surrounded by people like Colin Powell and Dick Cheney and it's so awkward, almost like this child surrounded by grown-ups. That was the metaphor the book used."

"I think that our George Bush character is sort of charming in his cluelessness and naiveté," Warner added, via e-mail.

Some of the book's best bits revolve quite directly around grade-school imagery. "Fun things to do at Camp David" details a schedule of making windsocks, canoeing, ceramics, negotiating peace between the Palestianians and Israelis and making animal masks. It's accompanied by a crayon illustration of Dennis Hastert and Richard Gephardt (wearing wolf and bear masks, respectively).

Another good piece features a word search for the names of world leaders. Bush has clearly given up and circled things like OPRQGG and RYPYGIDY.

With the exception of some genuinely edgy quotes taken directly from the mouth of Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, the book hurls a mess of shrewdly observant and amusing softballs. But the thing's still based on the idea that president has the mind of a 9-year-old. Would the authors feel uncomfortable if they were in a room as the president flipped through the book?

"I don't think there's anything in the book that's mean-spirited really or out of bounds," Guilfoile said. "I would hope he would take it in good humor. I don't think the book comes out with knives flashing or anything."

Despite the book's basically meringue-like sweetness, its political facts are razor-sharp. Along with "The Daily Show" and The Onion, Modern Humorist has repeatedly proven itself willing to dig deep and spoof political news in a nuanced way.

But do humorous presentations of current events just contribute further to the much-celebrated ignorance of the American electorate? Guilfoile doesn't see it that way.

"I don't think that people are going to read our book in lieu of the New York Times," Guilfoile said. "But what 'The Daily Show' is doing — which I think is the best topical humor on television — is right on. Because first of all, they're competing head to head with the local news, and quite frankly... they're more informative! I mean, they're obviously having a big goof, but the idea that television news is anything you can really be educated by is a fallacy."

From ASCII to Ink

"My First Presidentiary" is a marriage by proxy of two key pillars of Internet humor. Guilfoile and Warner both have extensive experience at McSweeney's, and the book's publisher is Three Rivers Press, publisher of The Onion's book "Our Dumb Century."

Of "Our Dumb Century," Guilfoile said "I love it. I have it on my coffee table. It's interesting — I think the Onion is so good at what they do that they've essentially made it difficult for anyone else to do it. As much as I love the Onion, I don't think there's a lot of that voice in my work just because they own it so much. It's interesting too, because the fake news piece has been such a staple of written humor for so long, but they've been able to come along and take ownership of it."

Like "Our Dumb Century," "My First Presidentiary" has leapt from a popular website to bookshelves across the country. It's a model that may be viable for other well-established sites that turn out top-notch humor content.

Being able to wrangle a book deal is not necessarily within everyone's reach, however. But despite the gap in resources between Modern Humorist and smaller humor sites, co-author Warner was also relatively rosy about the prospect for survival for little guys like Sweet Fancy Moses, Uber.Nu and others.

"I'm pretty certain that online humor is here to stay," Warner said. "All the sites you name, and some others I can think of like dezmin.com or freedonian, seem to be largely labors of love for their creators and the people who contribute to them, so while different sites will come and go, humor will be part of the Web as long as the Web exists."

Like Modern Humorist itself, the "My First Presidentiary" authors have a lot of irons in the fire. Both the Chicago-area authors have their own books in the works — Warner's is a collection of short stories, while Guilfoile is polishing up a novel-length comic romp centered on Chicago's music scene. And they're also contributing to something decidedly low-tech — a local newspaper.

"Kevin and I are starting to write semi-regular humor pieces for the Chicago Reader (the free indie-paper here), and I think we're going to try to expand the places where our work is seen," Warner said.

But ink-based excursions aside, Guilfoile still sees the beauty of the Web.

"In a lot of ways, I prefer writing for the Internet because it lasts forever there. I'm a big fan of stuff you can print and hold and read, but it's very ephemeral — the next week it's completely gone. If you didn't read it, there's never a chance to discover it."

E-mail James Norton at jrnorton@flakmag.com.