It’s the most pun-derful time of the year!
Brooklyn Paper Radio marked its annual (and first-ever) pre-Christmas show by celebrating the nifty wordplay that readers have come to expect from their beloved broadsheet-shaped tabloid.
The show decided to review its greatest hits after Bklyner Editor Donny Levit posted his own year-end tribute, “28 Brooklyn Paper Puns That Made Us Cringe In 2016.”
Naturally, radio hosts Gersh Kuntzman and Vince DiMiceli had a homonym to pick with Levit. DiMiceli offered Levit a pointed defense of all puns, which, of course, are beloved by Brooklyn Paper readers, and as necessary to good journalism as thick shoe leather.
“Caffeine free: Artist opens cash-optional coffee shop in Williamsburg,” DiMiceli read, referring to a Brooklyn Paper headline of Dec. 8 that referred to a cafe offering coffee for no money.
“That’s a great headline, Donny,” Kuntzman said. “You have to admit it.”
He did. And that allowed Kuntzman to share his favorite Brooklyn Paper puns of all time — and it was the same pun three times!
“We did ‘Doe-saster’ when a deer got run over,” Kuntzman said. “Then we did ‘Dough-saster’ when a pizzeria blew up. And then we even did ‘D’oh-saster’ when we wrote something about ‘The Simpsons,’ believe it or not.”
Oh, he believed it. But Levit still took exception to DiMiceli’s Oct. 18 headline that ran atop the Paper’s coverage of the funeral for District Attorney Kenneth Thompson. “Closing statement: Pols, friends eulogize DA Ken Thompson at funeral,” the headline ran. The lede particularly bothered Levit: “The prosecution rests.”
“That’s so disrespectful,” offered Levit, who is a good guy, by the way.
“It’s not,” replied DiMiceli. “There’s no exclamation mark, which would have been disrespectful.”
The conversation got as close to heated as a non-trolley discussion could get on Brooklyn Paper Radio, so Kuntzman served as moderator, pointing out that the article was certainly not the only story the Paper had done on the untimely death of Thompson.
“This was like the third-day story,” offered Kuntzman, who, as an editor at the New York Daily News, certainly knows his way around the issue of tabloid over-reach. “I’d give them that leeway.”
Speaking of over-reach, Kuntzman revealed on the show that his two columns this week slamming Russian President Vladimir Putin have earned him death threats from Russians and Americans alike.
“They send me e-mails telling me they know where I live,” Kuntzman said. “The good news is that Vince has my obit and promises to run it. Vince, we may need to change the lede from ‘Gersh died in a bike accident’ to ‘Gersh was killed by Russia.’”
“No problem, Gersh,” DiMiceli offered.
It’s all part of another jam-packed episode of Brooklyn Paper Radio, so take a listen.
Brooklyn Paper radio is recorded and podcast live every Thursday at 4:45 pm — for your convenience — from our studio in America’s Downtown and can be found, as always, right here on Brook