David Wahl

Here’s an article I was interviewed for called The Business of Making People Laugh.

So what works? Beyond the juxtaposition of the unexpected, as in waffle-flavored dental floss or a vengeful unicorn doll that comes with figurines to impale on its horn, Wahl cautiously posits that a successful gag, by McPhee’s standards, comes from “something that people probably think is a private joke. The product allows them to share in the idea that here’s a community of people who share that joke. Every culture on the Earth has something with bacon, so bacon bandages allow people to connect over something specific that’s actually very broad. Those are the things that people think are funny.”

When I first met my wife, she collected issues of Weekly World News and was Bat Boy obsessed. Little did I know that a decade later in 2002 I would be quoted in this esteemed newspaper. The reporter was amazed that I was happy to talk to the Weekly World News. One shocking fact I learned, Max Durango is a woman!

This is from a series of photos I did called Disinterested Pug With Found Objects. The idea was to take pictures of objects as I found them with my pug, Roscoe, sitting nearby. Roscoe is gone, but the pictures remain.

I had the great pleasure of being a contributing editor to the online magazine Monkey Goggles for over a year. I wrote an article a week for the site, which was quite challenging.

My most popular article was a description of the time I waited on Mick Jagger while working at a toy store. It even got linked on Boing Boing!

I co-wrote this book! It’s a bunch of great pictures of amazing Archie McPhee products and the stories behind them. It’s called, Who Would Buy This? The Archie McPhee Story.