The Best of Reality Ranch

The short story: This is a collection of humor writing in a variety of styles and formats. The long story: Scott Erickson has been a devoted fan of comedy from a young age, watching Bugs Bunny cartoons on Sunday morning and old Marx Brothers movies late at night. He was a huge fan of MAD magazine. He listened to comedy albums by George Carlin and Bill Cosby. He loved the early essay collections by Woody Allen. Later came Monty Python, which opened the door to the fascinating history of British comedy from the 1950's radio program The Goon Show through the 1960's satire boom. Etc., etc., etc... One day he had an idea. He thought to himself: "Since I love comedy so much, maybe I should try writing comedy." Of course, such an idea brought up a substantial question: What kind of comedy? Thus was born the zine entitled Reality Ranch as a forum for experiments in various types of humor writing. After 6 years, he was surprised to discover that much of what he wrote didn't make him cringe. And it was enough to collect into book form. Others have read his writing and joined him in not cringing. Two of the pieces included in this collection were winning entries in the Mona Schreiber Prize for Humorous Fiction and Nonfiction. One of the pieces was included in the book Laugh Your Shorts Off, a compilation of contest winners from the website Humor and Life in Particular.