THE ONLY FUNNY ARTICLE VINNIE EVER WROTE!

Originally, this space was reserved for an article I wrote about the flier you see to your left. Unfortunately, it was not funny. That’s not just my opinion. That’s the group consensus of our tastes like chicken creative approval board. Every month we present our article/story ideas to a professionally-trained committee of men and women whose job it is to separate the shit from the shinola. And, in the past year and a half, I’ve come to learn one very important thing: I very rarely make shinola, if you know what I’m saying. At first, I thought it was simply because I am extremely intelligent-- nay, intellectually superior to the rest of humanity. Then the committee told me that was not true. I asked if it had something to do with me being as handsome as Denzel. That, too, was evidently not the case. I really am that handsome, but it had no bearing on my lack of humor. So, after careful consideration, I’ve come to a few explanations for my inability to make people laugh.
1. MY PARENTS: As the oldest, smartest, and most beautiful child of “fresh off the boat” parents, a huge burden was placed upon me: I had to learn everything on my own. And I mean everything. My parents spoke English about as well as a New Zealand Aborigine. They couldn’t order a pizza, let alone teach me how to function in this English-speaking land. They were perpetually unemployed through much of my childhood, forcing them to open their own Italian delicatessen. Everyday, my siblings and I would have to take customer orders and translate them for our dumb, immigrant parents. This left little time for me to learn how to be funny.
2. DRUGS: I didn’t do enough of them in high school. Or college. Or now. Maybe I should have. History shows that all the funniest people were addicts. Richard Pryor? Cokehead. John Belushi? Cokehead. Chris Farley? Cokehead. And now they’re all dead. Except Pryor, who might as well be, seeing as how there isn’t much work for horribly crippled, physically deteriorating comedians. Maybe if I start snorting now, I’ll be funny for a few good years. Then you’ll find me dead in an apartment, surrounded by sleeping prostitutes and empty bags of blow.
3. POETRY: It’s the language of love, of life, of the limerick. Nothing’s funnier than really opening yourself up and pouring it all on the page. And pouring it in rhyme. Some of our truest comedic geniuses were poets: Shakespeare, Dr. Seuss, Steve Martin. They all understood iambic pentameter thoroughly, and made the transition into comedy as easy as breathing. This may be why I can’t get a laugh. I never liked poetry. Never. I always found it to be horribly lame. I still do. Poetry is literature’s little nook and cranny for whiny bitches. They can throw on a beret, sip on a mochachino, and scribble out some shit about how they’re a child of the night with a wandering soul, lost in this cold, hard concrete wilderness. And everyone laughs at it! Genius!
But that’s not me. I’m neither poet, nor cokehead, nor product of English speaking parents. I’m just bitter that you bitches don’t find me funny.