My first exposure was via National Lampoon magazine. Remember that? Then, Deep Thoughts became a feature on Saturday Night Live, with those silly, irrelevant, inspirational poster-type backgrounds. I have a book of Jack Handey postcards, all with those silly backgrounds of seagulls and whatnot.

One of my all time favorite Deep Thoughts is this one:

I think a good product would be "Baby Duck Hat." It's a fake baby duck, which you strap on top of your head. Then you go swimming underwater until you find a mommy duck and her babies, and you join them. Then all of the sudden, you stand up out of the water and roar like Godzilla. Man those ducks really take off! Also Baby Duck Hat is good for parties.

Okay, I can't leave this one out:

One thing kids like is to be tricked. For instance, I was going to take my nephew to Disneyland, but instead I drove him to an old burned-out warehouse. "Oh no," I said, "Disneyland burned down." He cried and cried, but I think that deep down he thought it was a pretty good joke. I started to drive over to the real Disneyland, but it was getting pretty late.

I saw this one for the first time tonight:

Here is a good selection of Jack's work, some of which neither David nor I had seen before! This link also has some beyond the standard Deep Thoughts collection.

Just for fun, I looked at DeepThoughts.com, figuring that it would be an official Jack Handey site, but it isn't. It is pictures of some guy named Mike's 2002 hat party. While not quite what I was looking for, it looked like Mike knows how to throw a hat shindig.