The Robert Benchley Society Announces the Top-Ten Semifinalists in 2013 RBS Humor Writing Competition

Today David Trumbull, Chairman, Robert Benchley Society, announced the top ten semi-finalists in this year's humor writing competition. "There were many fine entries and the preliminary judges are to be commended for their dedication in carefully reading and ranking the entries. "I know it was not easy, in some cases, for judges to place a rank order to entries that were so good that, in a less exclusive contest, any one of them might have been number one," said Mr. Trumbull, "however, the results, which were derived from a tabulation of all the score cards, in the end, produced a definitive list of the ten funniest and most Benchley-like," Trumbull continued.

This years preliminary judges were:

• Sharon Lyon, a founding member of the Robert Benchley Society

• Matt Hahn, Chairman of the Washington "Lost Locomotive" Chapter of the RBS

• Daniel Montville, winner of the 2007 RBS Award for Humor Writing

• Chris Morgan, Vice Chairman, East Coast, RBS

• Ed Tasca, winner of the 2009 RBS Award for Humor Writing

• Michele Wojciechowski, professional humor writer and stand-up comediene

The top ten entries (in alphabetical order) are:

• Lowell T. Christensen of White Rock, N.M. for The Excruciating History of Dentistry

• Chelsea Fisher of Arlington, Virginia for The Old Movie Shuffle

• Ramona Grigg of Drummond Island, Mich. for Budget-Cutting the Hard Way

• Dave Jaffe of Deerfield, Illinois for Quality is Job Three out of Seven!: How to Create a Press Release

• Barbara Samuels of Port St Lucie, Florida for Take a Gesund-hike

• E. Mitchell of Palatine, Illinois for How to Be Human

• Lisa Smith Molinari of Newport, R.I. for The Future of Archaeology

• Cindy Lane Poch of Stillwater, Minnesota for Iatrophobia

• C.J. Scuffins of Dublin Ireland for Quick! Sand!

• Jerry Zezima of Coram, N.Y. for As a man who is known far and wide...

The final determination of the final first, second, third, and fourth place entries will be made by this year's final judge Dr. Gina Barreca, author of It's Not That I'm Bitter: How I Learned to Stop Worrying About Visible Panty Lines and Conquered the World (St. Martin’s), who has appeared on 20/20, The Today Show, CNN, the BBC, NPR, Oprah, and Dr. Phil to discuss gender, power, politics, and humor. Her earlier books include the bestselling They Used to Call Me Snow White But I Drifted: Women's Strategic Use of Humor (reissued in a “classic” edition in 2013), Babes in Boyland: A Personal History of Coeducation in the Ivy League, and six other books she's written-- in addition to sixteen she's edited. They've been translated into several languages, including Chinese, Spanish, Japanese, and German. Gina, whose columns from The Hartford Courant are distributed worldwide by the McClatchy-Tribune Syndicate, is Professor of English and Feminist Theory at the University of Connecticut. Her B.A. is from Dartmouth College, where she was the first woman to be named Alumni Scholar, her M.A. is from Cambridge University, where she was a Reynold's Fellow, and her Ph.D. is from the City University of New York, where she lived close to a good delicatessen. Gina writes regularly for Psychology Today, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and The Huffington Post; she has also written for The New York Times, The Independent, Cosmopolitan, and The Harvard Business Review. She grew up in Brooklyn, now lives with her husband in Connecticut, and has two step-sons who are at that adorable age where they’re attorneys. A new member of the Friars' Club, a "Voices and Visions" honoree of CT Women's Hall of Fame, winner of UConn's most distinguished teaching award, and a keynote at events from The Erma Bombeck Conference, the National Association of Independent Schools, Women In Federal Law Enforcement, The Smithsonian, and The Chicago Humanities Festival, Gina can be found in the Library of Congress or in the make-up aisle of Walgreens.

The awards will be given out that the Ten International Annual Gathering of the Robert Benchley Society, Friday through Sunday, November 22 through 24, 2013, in Boston. The theme of this year's Annual Gathering is "You Can Always Tell a Harvard Man."

Boston RBS Chapter Monthly Round-up Set for Thursday, Sept. 19th

The Boston "We've Come for the Davenport" Chapter of the Robert Benchley Society will hold its monthly Roundup at the Downtown Harvard Club, high above Boston town on the 38th floor of One Federal Street, in the Financial District. We'll gather at the Crimson Pub on Thursday, September 19th, beginning at 5:30 p.m.
Dress code is informal or business casual. For more information, contact David Trumbull at david@robertbenchley.org.

Let the Laughter Begin!

The entries in the 2013 Robert Benchley Society Annual Award fro Humor Competition are available for reading at www.robertbenchley.org/2013_competition/index.htm.

This year's final judge is Dr. Gina Barreca, author of It's Not That I'm Bitter: How I Learned to Stop Worrying About Visible Panty Lines and Conquered the World (St. Martin’s), who has appeared on 20/20, The Today Show, CNN, the BBC, NPR, Oprah, and Dr. Phil to discuss gender, power, politics, and humor. Her earlier books include the bestselling They Used to Call Me Snow White But I Drifted: Women's Strategic Use of Humor (reissued in a “classic” edition in 2013), Babes in Boyland: A Personal History of Coeducation in the Ivy League, and six other books she's written-- in addition to sixteen she's edited. They've been translated into several languages, including Chinese, Spanish, Japanese, and German. Gina, whose columns from The Hartford Courant are distributed worldwide by the McClatchy-Tribune Syndicate, is Professor of English and Feminist Theory at the University of Connecticut. Her B.A. is from Dartmouth College, where she was the first woman to be named Alumni Scholar, her M.A. is from Cambridge University, where she was a Reynold's Fellow, and her Ph.D. is from the City University of New York, where she lived close to a good delicatessen. Gina writes regularly for Psychology Today, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and The Huffington Post; she has also written for The New York Times, The Independent, Cosmopolitan, and The Harvard Business Review. She grew up in Brooklyn, now lives with her husband in Connecticut, and has two step-sons who are at that adorable age where they’re attorneys. A new member of the Friars' Club, a "Voices and Visions" honoree of CT Women's Hall of Fame, winner of UConn's most distinguished teaching award, and a keynote at events from The Erma Bombeck Conference, the National Association of Independent Schools, Women In Federal Law Enforcement, The Smithsonian, and The Chicago Humanities Festival, Gina can be found in the Library of Congress or in the make-up aisle of Walgreens.

The award ceremony will in Boston, November 22 - 24, 2013.

Reminder, Friday, August 30th, is the Deadline to Submit Your Winning Essay

The deadline to enter the 2013 competition for the Robert Benchley Society Humor Award is August 30, 2013. For more details or to enter click here. The award ceremony will in Boston, November 22 - 24, 2013. This year's theme is "You Can Aways Tell a Harvard Man..." Now, to get you in the mood for Boston --

Something to Get You in the Mood for the RBS Annual Gathering in Boston

Remember, your entries for the 2013 Robert Benchley Society Annual Award for Humor Writing are due by Friday, August 30th. And now, for something completely different --

The deadline to enter the 2013 competition for the Robert Benchley Society Humor Award is August 30, 2013.

The deadline to enter the 2013 competition for the Robert Benchley Society Humor Award is August 30, 2013. For more details or to enter click here. The award ceremony will in Boston, November 22 - 24, 2013. This year's theme is "You Can Aways Tell a Harvard Man..." Now, for a song from another very funny Harvard man, Tom Lehrer.

Speaking of college football, his an excerpt from Mr. Benchley's "Football; Courtesy fo Mr. Morse," from :Of All Things (1921)

Sunday morning these fine fall days are taken up with reading about the "40,000 football enthusiasts" or the "gaily-bedecked crowd of 60,000 that watched the game on Saturday." And so they probably did, unless there were enough men in big fur coats who jumped up at every play and yelled "Now we're off!" thus obstructing the view of an appreciable percentage.

But why stop at the mention of the paltry 50,000 who sat in the Bowl or the Stadium? Why forget the twice 50,000 all over the country, in Chicago, St. Louis, San Francisco, Atlanta, who watched the same game over the ticker, or sat in a smoke-fogged room listening to telegraphic announcements, play by play, or who even stood on the curbing in front of a newspaper office and watched an impartial employee shove a little yellow ball along a black-board, usually indicating the direction in which the real football was not going. Since it is so important to give the exact number of people who saw the game, why not do the thing up right and say: "Returns which are now coming in from the Middle West, with some of the rural districts still to be heard from, indicate that at least 145,566 people watched the Yale-Princeton football game yesterday. Secretary Dinwoodie of the San Francisco Yale Club telegraphed late last night that the final count in that city would probably swell the total to a round 150,395. This is, or will be, the largest crowd that ever assembled in one country to watch a football game."

You can always tell a Harvard man...

...but you can't tell him much. -- Yale president Arthur Twining Hadley, Yale College Class of 1876, quoted in the Chicago Daily Tribune, May 27, 1906.

This year the Robert Benchley Society Annual Awards Dinner will be held at the Main, Back Bay, Clubhouse of the Harvard Club of Boston. Robert C. Benchley, a Harvard man (Class of 1912) would have felt right at home with us in the Harvard Club's Back Bay mansion on Commonwealth Avenue. It all began with a torchlight parade down Massachusetts Avenue, culminating with Harvard President A. Lawrence Lowell laying the cornerstone at 10 p.m. on February 26, 1913. A little over eight months later, on November 12, 1913, the Club's new home was formally dedicated. The Harvard Club of Boston has always been a magical place. While not a member of the Harvard Club of Boston, Mr. Benchley was an active member of the Harvard Club of New York. Watch for an announcement here in a few days regarding booking overnight rooms at the Harvard Club for out-of-town Benchley fans.

The "You Can Always Tell a Harvard Man" theme will continue throughout the Friday, November 22, through Sunday, November 24, Tenth Annual Gathering of the Robert Benchley Society. In addition to the black tie awards dinner at the Main Clubhouse, we'll also enjoy the fabulous 38th floor views of Boston, high a-top the modern sky-scraper in the Financial District that houses the Downtown Clubhouse of the Harvard Club at One Federal Street. Save the date and prepare to come to Boston, the "Hub of the Universe" for this fun weekend being planned by the Boston "We've Come for the Davenport" Chapter of the Robert Benchley Society.