Laughter is good for you. Besides relieving stress, tension, and anxiety, it boosts your immunity, relaxes your muscles, decreases pain, and even helps to prevent heart disease. The boisterous laughter caused while reading this book will improve your health!
Those of you who have coulrophobia can read this book without fear: there are no scary clowns in this book. There aren’t even any circus clowns. Instead of focusing on clowns, this book points out the craziness in our society.
I’m not going to tell what each of the thirty-four short works in this book are about, but I will talk a bit about a few of my favorite ones.
“Go Fund my Extraterrestrial Lawsuit” – What can a man who has been abducted by angry extraterrestrials do? He can sue them! This is the first of the thirty-four shorts, and it made me laugh! When I find things funny, I tend to just chuckle a bit, but this story made me laugh out loud.
“In Defense of Sorority Slang” – Sorority slang might appear to be a lazy way of speaking to the rest of us, but they have come up with their own way of using words. My favorite sentence from this selection says it all: Would Shakespeare, who invented 10,000 words, so wholeheartedly shackle his own grammatical exploration?
“Children Beg to Return to Cages” – The negativity that came from separating kids from their parents when they illegally crossed the border caused President Trump to sign an executive order ending that practice, so everyone should be happy, right? No. But the backlash came from the ones it should have made happy. My favorite sentence from this one: CNN has reported dozens of cases of kids “kicking and screaming” and “throwing Elmo dolls at I.C.E. agents” upon being informed they were to be reunited with their parents.
“Insensitivity Training at Dunkin’ Donuts” – Freedom of speech, the ability to say what we want to say without fear of getting in trouble, is to be treasured.
In Do Not Feed the Clown, Matt Nagin is at times politically incorrect and irreverent, but he is always funny.
I was sent a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. If you would like to purchase your own copy of this book to read, I’ve provided an Amazon link below.
Amazon Link: Do Not Feed the Clown
Recommended Articles:
Butterflies Lost Within the Crooked Moonlight – a Review
Favorite Sentences:
Then there are egg hunts and egg dances, which makes one think this isn’t a religious holiday so much as an Alice in Wonderland reenactment.
That constant reference to the other, that search for confirmation, that challenge to the principles of solipsism place sorority sisters at the cutting edge of twenty-first century philosophical thought.
The bleak, pounding winds of the North Pole, the infernal darkness, and the prolonged isolation all exacerbated my despondency.
New Words Learned:
auteur – an artist (such as a musician or writer) whose style and practice are distinctive
cogito – the principle establishing the existence of a being from the fact of its thinking or awareness
colonics – of, relating to, or affecting the colon
droogs – young men belonging to street gangs
histrionic – deliberately affected: overly dramatic or emotional
mescaline – a hallucinogenic and intoxicating compound present in mescal buttons from the peyote cactus
pontificate – to express one’s opinions in a way considered annoyingly pompous and dogmatic
shawarma – roasted meat, especially when cooked on a revolving spit and shaved for serving in sandwiches
solipsistic – of, relating to, or characterized by solipsism, the theory that the self is all that can be known to exist
yenta – a woman who is a gossip or busybody
About the Author:
Matt Nagin is an author, educator, actor, filmmaker, and standup comedian. He has been published in Writer’s Digest, The New York Post, Mic.com, The Humor Times, The Higgs-Weldon, Grain Magazine, Arsenic Lobster, Spillway, Dash, Antigonish Review, and many, many more. His first book of poetry (Butterflies Lost Within The Crooked Moonlight) was released in 2017.
