By Ben Leit ’18 and Ellie Pitkowsky ’18, Jewish Club Co-Presidents

Hello, Newark Academy!

Our names are Ben Leit & Ellie Pitkowsky, and we are absolutely psyched to be the new editors of The Minuteman’s humor section! See how we used the word “psyched” and ended the sentence in an exclamation point? It’s because we’re relatable #af!* We feel that we will really mesh well together as editors – after all, we have a lot in common, such as…

1. Dairy intolerances
2. An unwavering sense of truth and justice
3. We are the humor editors
4. We both write real goodly
5. Jake McEvoy

Anyway, now that the ice is broken, we can really dig down deep into the issues at hand. We are well aware that there are some pretty high expectations for the Humor Section, thanks to last year’s humor editors – Sanya Bery cruised through the year on self-deprecation, and Tyler Mudge tried his best. We’ve also had a bit of turbulence in the past year due to censorship, a tricky topic to tackle in today’s polarized journalistic landscape. With these expectations and the omnipresent reality of the end to civil liberties looming over our heads, we promise you, our captive audience, we will try to revitalize a refined sense of humor. One with integrity. A tasteful sense of humor, only controversial when the article demands it. Not! Hahaha!

We also have a lot of awesome writers coming down the pipeline** for us. First up, we have none other than Benjamin Marvin Berkowitz, a dear friend of mine. Plainly said, Benjy is a man amongst boys, a god amongst men. In his free time, little known fact: Benjy actually invented “Agent Orange”! Bet you didn’t know that, did you? Next up, we have veteran writer Tyler Mudge, who Jake McEvoy, our “boyfriend,” is trying to poach for the Arts Section. Maybe that’s not such a bad thing. Lastly we have Danny Lifson, who is legitimately a bad journalistic influence on everybody, himself included. It is highly unlikely that any one of his articles will make it past the newspaper office. We are ecstatic to see what these three terrific writers will write in the coming year: Benjy’s elaborate comedy promises to be clever and easy to follow, Tyler’s obscure film references are sure to impress, and Danny’s unorthodox style of comedy will certainly prompt a reaction of some sort!

And those are the (hopefully) returning writers for the humor section of The Minuteman for the 2017-18 school year! If you think that you’re funny and you’re interested in writing for the Humor Section, feel free to reach out to us! We will be less than pleased to recruit a new writer due to our crippling fear of being overshadowed, but will nonetheless give you a chance. We wholeheartedly look forward to an awesome year of laughs, memories, borderline offensive jokes, controversy, jokes that went too far, broken relationships, and impromptu prayer! Goodbye!

*Although the abbreviation ‘af’ has been widely accepted into modern-day teenage vernacular, we were told that unless we censored the meaning of it, our article, our labor of love, would not be able to be published. So, in this instance, ‘af’ stands for “A Fair-Amount”.

**When we say the word ‘“pipeline,” we are not referring to the Dakota Access Pipeline. That’s Commentary Editor (and aspiring Wall Street tycoon) Andrew Wyshner’s department.