The Great Indoors: Humor Columns, 1987-1996, by Eric Broder
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The Great Indoors: Humor Columns, 1987-1996, by Eric Broder
Ebook PDF The Great Indoors: Humor Columns, 1987-1996, by Eric Broder
Ever had someone tell you just a little too much about himself? Meet Eric Broder, who made a habit of doing this—in the newspaper! Certain classic elements make a humor column irresistible. Workplace humiliation, weird food, rotten vacations, cats getting rubdowns, sex machines, raging self-delusion, enraged babies, at-risk squirrels, and of course pitiful date fantasies with Madonna and Katarina Witt—pure catnip to the modern reader. At least, that is, if you judge by the regular readers of Broder’s “The Great Indoors” newspaper column. Between 1987 and 1996, Eric Broder captivated and even astonished readers of Cleveland’s alternative weeklies with just such intimate and rarely believable details from his own remarkable life. And he did it with remarkable style. In fact, Broder’s writing style has been said to recall an unholy combination of Dave Barry, Barry White, Dr. Laura, Super Joe Charboneau, Walt Disney, and former Pittsburgh Steeler linebacker Jack Lambert. This book is a treasure sure to be cherished throughout the millenium. Or at least to be left in the bathroom until it gets too mildewed to pick up. Either way, it will change your life.
The Great Indoors: Humor Columns, 1987-1996, by Eric Broder - Amazon Sales Rank: #2543251 in eBooks
- Published on: 2015-03-31
- Released on: 2015-03-31
- Format: Kindle eBook
The Great Indoors: Humor Columns, 1987-1996, by Eric Broder Review [The Great Indoors is] the most consistently funny column in Cleveland . . . maybe even America. (Tom Kelly WERE AM Radio 1999-11-01)Mundane subjects, yes. Unlike most confessional columnists, however, Broder is conscious of that fact. With him, wallowing in boring doings isn’t an exercise in navel-gazing, it’s a head-first dive into absurdity. And when it works, as it does in “The Great Indoors,” it’s very funny. (John Petkovic The Plain Dealer 1999-12-02)
About the Author Eric Broder’s weekly column, The Great Indoors, ran for many years in Cleveland alternative papers The Edition and Free Times. He has also written for local and national publications such as Men’s Journal, Profiles, Cleveland Magazine, the Plain Dealer, Northern Ohio Live, and Ohio Writer.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Amazing Stories!
I suppose you think that because this column is called “The Great Indoors” its author never goes outside. Just a couch potato who watches TV and eats Smokehouse almonds all night. A shlub who shuffles around the apartment giving himself carpet shocks. A guy to whom nothing happens.
Most of that is right. I do give myself shocks because I don’t pick up my feet when I walk. I’m trying to conquer this. I do watch a lot of TV, but that’s my job. I cover the waterfront. I admit I lie around on my can quite a bit. However, lots of things happen to me—amazing and exciting things. And they happen indoors.
I’d like to begin with my most exciting indoor incident. It involves Irma La Douce and a roach.
My friend Barbara and I went to the video store one summer evening last year and rented two movies on videodisc, Irma La Douce and A Thousand Clowns. We watched A Thousand Clowns, and enjoyed it very much. It was funny and heartwarming. Thought-provoking, too. It was dynamite entertainment, and I recommend it without reservation.
Anyway, we finished watching that and put on Irma La Douce. This movie was directed by Billy Wilder, one of my favorites. It wasn’t very good, but it was a handsome production, set in Paris and starring Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine.
I should mention at this juncture that it was brutally hot and humid that night, and I was just wearing shorts. Total vulnerability! Naked human flesh that any vermin would be delighted to chew on! This is important to the story.
So we are watching this movie and having a fine time when we hear a small scuffling sound come from around the TV. We’re not children. We know this is a bug or a rat. In this kind of weather you expect them. But you don’t like them around, that’s for sure.
I instructed our cat, Vince, to flush the animal out and kill it, but she was not interested and went away. I tiptoed over to the TV and peered behind it. There it was: a roach, a good-sized one. I could say it looked up at me and spit, but that would be embellishing an already exciting story.
I clapped my fingers against my palm like a schoolteacher to frighten it out into the open. That didn’t work. I stomped my foot. The roach only moved his leg a little. At that point I decided to sit back down and just wait and enjoy the rest of Irma La Douce.
We didn’t have to wait long. The movie was almost over when the roach came out. We expected him to run off to the side of the room somewhere and disappear. But he didn’t. He came charging at us like L.A. Raider defensive lineman Howie Long! I can still hear him galloping across the room: pittapittapittapitta. I’d like to say I met him head on, but I squealed and bounded up onto the couch. Barbara moved fast but didn’t scream like I did. The roach went under the couch.
We determined that this roach had to go or we’d be hostages to fear. I lifted the couch and there he was, going to the lavatory. Barbara put a plastic cup down on top of him. Caught! But now the hard part. Sliding the top of the container under the bug. I told Barbara that I would do this, since it was my home and thus my bug. She held the couch up, and I carefully started sliding the lid under the roach’s legs.
I got him, and carried the cup to the incinerator in the apartment building’s back hall. I tried to throw the roach down the incinerator, but he flew back at me and landed with a thud near my feet. I jumped around a little, then raced back into the apartment, locking him out. It was a narrow escape.
That was the roach story. This next one is a little less heroic, but again proves there is as much danger indoors as there is out.
Several years ago, I was to take a car trip up to Northern Michigan. The night before I left, I foolishly drank to excess. I woke up early, and felt keen pain all over my body—and was not at my best mentally, either.
In my little second-floor apartment I had a Carry-Cool air conditioner balanced in the window, held down by the sash. I knew I had to bring the unit in because I would be gone three weeks.
I staggered over to the window and just lifted the sash. Instantly I knew I had made a mistake. I forgot to hold on to the air conditioner.
How can I possibly convey the thrill I felt at that moment, when I knew my air conditioner was falling out of my second-story window? I was conscious of the sound it was making: whizzzzzzz. And then crash, of course. It was an exciting few seconds in my life; perhaps the most exciting. I really knew I was alive. Though at that particular time I did wish I was dead.
I looked out of the window, and down. There was the air conditioner, all right, lying on the concrete driveway. It was broken. It looked like a cartoon burlesque of a broken thing, springs coming out of it, nuts and bolts scattered. It looked like that then, anyway. I rushed outside, gathered it up, and put it by the trash.
That was it for the air conditioner.
These are just a few stories from the indoor world of adventure. I could think of plenty more, like when the Great Blizzard of ’78 shattered my storm window when I had the flu. But I think I’ve made my point.
[Excerpted from The Great Indoors, © Eric Broder. All rights reserved. Gray & Company, Publishers.]
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Most helpful customer reviews
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. Makes you ashamed to laugh out lout ... but you do anyway. By Terence L Drake I was a fan of Broder's when he was writing his column in the local Free Times and some other publications back in the late eighties and early nineties. His writing reminds me of some of the early Woody Allen books and much later, David Sadaris. He is able to take the most mundane occurences, and give them an absurd twist or significance that somehow creates real humor. I think he's one of those guys you either get or don't get. And if you do get it, you don't quite know why. And if you do get it, you are kind of ashamed that you do. At least that's how I feel. At any rate, I think this guy is really funny. This book was a real find. I hope you enjoy it as much as I have.
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful. The funniest columnist in Cleveland By Shannon Okey First of all, I am not related to nor do I personally know Eric Broder...but he is wicked funny and he causes me to run to the newspaper rack each week to read his column. Rants about small animals, his celebrity garden at the Home and Garden show, potato chips...plus some faux "60 Minutes" fantasies to boot? Pure comedic genius. By the way - I met someone who used to work with him at a bookstore many years ago - she reports he's ALWAYS been like this, it's not just a front.
2 of 7 people found the following review helpful. This is our Common Human Experience By Peter M Roche A very amusing and easy read, Broder's "Great Indoors" is simply a must have of anyone who has followed the man's weekly column in the Cleveland Free Times (or the old Cleveland Edition). It's a veritable autobiography of an indoor intellectual in serial form, and myriad points of cosmic import are established. You'll read, and will doubtlessly recognize yourself somewhere in Broder's tales of tribulation and triumph set here in the wondrous urban armpit of our Great Nation, Cleveland. The best part is that these columns are presented chronologically, and in bite-size readings. So you can put it down whenever you like. Read a couple bits on the bus. Peruse a few more nuggets while making your evening toilet. You'll come to realize that you aren't the only one who does silly and stupid things when left alone in the confines of one's domicile. This stuff is funny, and the author is to be lauded profusely.
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