New Tricks for Old Dogs

With age comes wisdom. We become wise enough to realize that we can’t do some of the things we did so well when we were young. The beloved comedian George Burns said it quite eloquently: “I can do anything at eighty that I could do when I was twenty. That gives you an idea of what terrible shape I was in at twenty.”

Self-help books offer solid, beneficial techniques, but they really only work for the young. Award-winning comedy writer Gene Perret revealst that more mature devotees must adjust these techniques, tweak them, alter them, and in some cases, ignore them completely.

New Tricks for Old Dogs points out some of the flaws in the self-help philosophy. It tempers the advice with common sense. The battle cry of this volume is “Do it, but don’t overdo it.” Sometimes, after we reach a certain age, the best exercise program is a good, brisk nap.

Gene Perret has been a professional comedy writer since the early 1960s, writing stand-up material for Slappy White and Phyllis Diller, among others. He began in television in 1968 on The Beautiful Phyllis Diller Show. He wrote for Laugh-In and collected three Emmys as a staff writer on The Carol Burnett Show. Gene was on Bob Hope’s writing staff for twenty-eight years, the last twelve as Hope’s head writer. He traveled with the Hope troupe to several of the Christmas shows from war zones. He produced Welcome Back Kotter, Three’s Company, and The Tim Conway Show. Today, he lives in Southern California and teaches email classes in comedy writing. His hobbies include painting, sketching, and playing the guitar. He paints rather well and sketches adequately, but you don’t want to listen to his guitar playing. No one does. -