Some people may remember the old Saturday Night Live skits with actor Al Franken, where he played the role of a man named Jack Handey. Mr. Handey would read aloud his “deep thought” for the day, to much laughter. What people may not realize is that he is also actually a real person. Jack Handey is an Emmy award winning author who wrote for Saturday Night Live for many years. While he was there on the SNL writing staff, he alone came up with and wrote the “Deep Thoughts” segment. It soon became a cult classic and really popular sketch on the show. While he may not have a diploma in philosophy, his deep thoughts series definitely impressed a lot of people.

Mr. Handey was not only a sketch comedy writer for Saturday Night Live . He also helped write some of the bits for a live Steve Martin performance, and his work was featured in many magazines, including The New Yorker and National Lampoon . In fact, it was the printing of the deep thoughts in the National Lampoon publication that really inspired him to take it further and use it on SNL . He also utilized his college diploma and wrote a segment called “Fuzzy Memories,” which was much like the “Deep Thoughts' series. Some of the Many people still do not believe that Jack Handey is more than just a person with a diploma writing strange philosophical quips or a pen name, but he is an actual person. Some of the most well known deep thoughts include:

 ·         “It takes a big man to cry, but it takes a bigger man to laugh at that man.” ·         “I hope that someday we will be able to put away our fears and prejudices and just laugh at people.” ·         “Fear can sometimes be a useful emotion. For instance, let's say you're an astronaut on the moon and you fear your partner has been turned into Dracula.” ·         “It's probably not a good idea to be chewing on a toothpick if you're talking to the president, because what if he tells a funny joke and you laugh so hard you spit the toothpick out and it hits him in the face or something.” ·         "Why is it that we will laugh at a man in a clown outfit, but we won't laugh at a man just walking down the street carrying a clown outfit in one of those plastic dry-cleaner bags?" 
 The premise of these one or two-liners that made them so funny is that the reader imagines the person saying them as if he seriously thought or contemplated these things for a long time. The hilariousness of the comments make it a very good example of satire. Jack Handey also had a strange connection with the popular 1990s grunge band Nirvana. The song entitled “I Hate Myself and Want to Die” has an actual Jack Handey deep thought in the lyrics. The deep thought is not sung aloud as part of the overall lyrics, but instead mumbled quietly in the background by singer Kurt Cobain. The deep thought he says is as follows: "Most people don't realize that large pieces of coral, painted brown and attached to the skull with common wood screws, can make a child look like a deer." 

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