"Exeter, hotbed of comedy."

So Lew Morton, comedy writer for such shows as Futurama and NewsRadio, once sarcastically referred to our alma mater. I don't really know Lew, but he did buy me lunch once. I remember it like it was yesterday.

So it was with delight that I learned something this morning, something I should have known all along--Robert Benchley, the famous New Yorker humorist and inventor of the modern-day parody, is a fellow Exonian! Now we Exonians actually have a cheer we like to sing when we realize some famous person went to our school, so I guess I'll write it down, and then you'll be able to sing along with us sometime:

"Too-rah! Too-la-rooh!!! Exeter! Exeter! We love you!!!" (REPEAT 126 TIMES, OR UNTIL SOMEONE STEALS YOUR WOOLEN KNICKERBOCKERS)

I admit that his work isn't terribly accessible anymore; like most humor, it has not aged well (no humor improves with age, but some seems to at least retain some value). Every normal human being I've shown it doesn't find it funny at all; I'm not even convinced that many of his fans like it for any good reasons. Benchley was a member of the famed Algonquin Round Table and is a posterchild for the drunk, urbane wit...the kind of personality that drunk people who believe themselves to be urbane and witty flock to like moths at a cabin window.

But that said, there's something about Benchley's structure and levity that is supremely unique--you won't find another humorist who pulls off an aside quite the way he does. And did I mention that his pieces are a goldmine of comic ideas just waiting to be mined by the gigantic Minnesota Mining Company, based in Chisholm, Minnesota?