We're always glad to see another publications enter the online domain, especially if they're local and humor based. Which is precisely why we are so pleased that a cult newspaper that rocked Miami high schools, Misplaced Humor, has revived itself as a website. The founders of the paper, Sebastian Abella and Andres Rivero launched the site a few weeks ago.
Founded in 2008 at Coral Gables High School, Abella and Rivero's publication was originally met with the ire of the high school's administration and the school's newspaper Highlights. After using "Like Highlights, but less of a joke" as the motto for Misplaced Humor's first issue, the two were promptly suspended from the newspaper's staff.
Abella and Rivero, who cite influences as varied as humorists such as Mark Twain and Dave Barry to absurdists Mitch Hedburg and Steven Wright, quickly evolved past merely pissing of their school administration. Misplaced Humor used a fake news format in the vein of The Onion and ran regular features like advice columns and faux horror-scopes. A fan base quickly rallied behind the papers' lampooning of Miami and high school culture and Misplaced Humor soon reached a publication timeline of every couple of months, eventually accruing advertising among local businesses. They even managed to gain distribution in high schools across Miami.
With making the switch from print publication to online, Rivero and Abella hope that they can produce content beyond the fake news format as well as create a constant output that the print edition wouldn't allow. Plans are in the works to create web videos under the Misplaced Humor banner and to open up submissions to new contributors. We'll be eager to see if Rivero and Abella can use their comedy chops and expand beyond their high school audience.
Recent posts include an interview with college adviser Bruswky Stump, a former Jersey car dealer, and Pretentious Poetry Corner with the following faux verse:
"Kindergarten Diaries" by Spencer H. Hippster
My heart is like play-doh, and you're the toddler who's shaping it any way you want.
And sometimes the pieces of the clay are lost behind the cushions of my couch.
Maybe I shouldn't have let you play with it; it does, after all, say "for ages three and up."
And before you put it back where it belongs, you found the Legos you said you were
only friends with.
Maybe when you get older, you'll learn to pick up after yourself.
My heart I can pick up myself.
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