YU NEWS LIVE
THE JERRY LEWIS AWARDS
for excellence in writing that manifests our inner fool
Administered by Yossarian Universal News Service, The Jerry Lewis Awards are intended to honor the true stories told by individuals who, in the spirit of the fool for whom these awards are named, have amply demonstrated in the course of their everyday lives a curious urge, inclination and / or need to tackle a problem where no problem in the usual sense of the word exists, and which ultimately results in a mishap or disaster of their own doing.
To these unwitting folks who play the part in situations absent of any visible sign of an unstable situation; who proceed to confront a stable situation and promptly destabilize it; and who, in the process, become victims of their own circumstances--Yossarian Universal News Service pays tribute with these awards.
Laughter directed at oneself is a great gift possessed by few people. Ironically, Jerry Lewis was not one of them. To this end, The Jerry Lewis Awards are not about the pitiful person that Jerry Lewis embodied--a cruel, selfish and insecure egomaniac who preyed on women, but about the quasi-brilliant, idiot persona that embodied Jerry Lewis. To be clear: It is his character, and not his character, that we recognize here.
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The late great satirist and celebrated shit-disturber Lenny Bruce understood this better than most and wasn't shy about calling his own shots. The following joke, which he often included in his act to relieve the tension in the room caused by the presence of uniformed police officers who didn't laugh at anything except when they arrested him, was one that Bruce always liked to share: "A terrible monster attempts to terrorize a town. He grunts, he roars, he stomps, he breathes fire, but no one is scared. Sadly, the creature returns to the mad scientist who created him. 'What did the people in the town say?' the mad scientist asks. And the monster replies: 'They said that I was doing Jerry Lewis.'"