Handey's earliest writing job was for a newspaper, the
San Antonio Express-News. He lost the job after writing an article that, in his words, "offended local car dealerships". In April 1984,
National Lampoon published a piece titled "Deep Thoughts". Additional Deep Thoughts appeared in the October and November 1984 editions, as well as in the short-lived
Army Man comedy magazine, while more appeared in 1988 in
The Santa Fe New Mexican newspaper. The one-liners were to become Handey's signature work, notable for their concise humor and outlandish hypothetical situations. For example: • If trees could scream, would we be so cavalier about cutting them down? We might, if they screamed all the time, for no good reason. The recurring skit originated in 1989 with
Steve Martin and
Victoria Jackson as the crash-prone kitten's owners. In 1992 NBC aired a half-hour Toonces special. Handey, who lived with a real cat by the same name, once said he could not remember exactly how he dreamed up the premise. He said, "It was just one of those free association ideas you write down and look at later and think, 'Maybe.
Further writing In early April 2008, Handey published his first collection of magazine humor pieces, ''What I'd Say to the Martians and Other Veiled Threats
. Associated Press critic Jake Coyle wrote, "With absurdist musings such as these, Handey has established himself as the strangest of birds: a famous comedian whose platform is not the stage or screen, but the page." Handey subsequently became a regular contributor to The New Yorker'' Shouts and Murmurs section. On July 16, 2013, Handey's first novel,
The Stench of Honolulu, was released by publisher
Grand Central. ==Personal life==