So where did we leave off???

Oh, that’s right – in 2003! Boy, it sure has been a while, hasn’t it?! 😳

Let me tell you, this is one post that I’ve been hoping to write for quite a while now – truth be told, I’ve actually tried to re-launch this site probably half a dozen times in the decade since we last shared a few laughs together, but it just was never completely in the cards and each time I’d inch a little bit closer, just to eventually find myself overwhelmed with moving across the country or wedding planning or publishing books or buying a new house.

To quote a wise, young Sausage King of Chicago, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

And the truth is, I really have missed this site – it was the first major creative endeavor that I undertook and it gave me a chance to work with a ton of insanely creative people who I still admire to this day. It’s fun to be in the business of making people laugh and though I’ve still been able to focus time on writing my own humor columns and all of that, I finally decided that it was about time to give Just Laugh another shot, too, because in reality my drive has always been a little bigger than any one writer or artist’s work…

Which is probably a big part of why it’s been so difficult to get this back off the ground because, well, there’s a whole lot more to this site than I ever really remembered!!! It’s not just a matter of taking submissions once again or uploading a few jokes – there have always been so many different sections to Just Laugh that bringing every single one of them back up to date has proven to be extraordinarily cumbersome. Because of this, I finally decided about a month ago to give it more of a phased approach rather than holding off for another decade until everything finally came together all at once when I was no longer to see a good joke without coke bottle prescription glasses! The plan that I came up with looks a little something like this…

• Phase #1 – new site layout, introduction of Just Laugh Humor Blog
• Phase #2 – Joke Database, Special Features & Magazine Content – part 1
• Phase #3 – Downloads & Games, Special Features & Magazine Content – part 2
• Phase #4 – Links, along with any other stragglers

Now with this post, phase #1 is officially done (yay!), so next on deck will be the transition of our Joke Database, which surprisingly has continued to be a popular section of the site even in our nearly 10-year absence! In addition to bringing each section into this colorful, new layout, I also plan to dramatically increase the amount of content as well – I’m expecting our Joke Database to be roughly 3-5x bigger than it stands today in its original 2003 form and also have a handful of new special joke collections, too! All of this, of course, is going to take a while to pull together, so in the meantime you’ll continue to see links to the old version of our site (red with yellow buttons) for several areas until each has individually been moved over.

Mind you, we’ll also be creating lots of new content on the main site, too! I haven’t yet decided if I want to bring Just Laugh magazine back as it was with individual issues every three weeks throughout the year, but I hope to soon be featuring works on our new homepage both from the classic contributors who you may remember from way back in the day as well as also meeting some new creative folks to share their funny stuff with all of our readers, too. In fact, if you’re a contributor old or new who might be interested in working with us here in our new 2012 venture, please go check out what I’ve written up over at create.justlaugh.com and drop me a line so that we can get connected!

I’ve also created this new blog, aptly titled the Just Laugh Humor Blog as a means to share more of the great humor that passes by my monocle on a daily basis.

Folks, I could go on and on, but chances are 2/3rds of you have already clicked away anyways … I guess ultimately I just want to say that I’m really excited to see what the future holds for Just Laugh as I dust off its boxes here and there around the site, and I hope that you’ll keep coming back and bringing your friends as well to see what we’re able to come up with for new funny stuff as I scramble to get the proverbial band back together for the sake of harboring said chuckles! For everyone who’s continued to casually browse the site and read back through our archives over the last decade without a single update in sight, thank you, for it’s honestly been some of those surprisingly non-zero page counts that have kept this project in the back of my mind as a viable option to even consider revisiting at some point.

I’m super excited to finally be able to say that the time is now, and I look forward to having a whole lot of fun getting back to sharing everything that makes me and my friends laugh that we find around the Internet.

Yours in the funny business,

Scott Sevener
Founder of Just Laugh,
Editor-in-Chief of the new Just Laugh Humor Blog,
Purveyor of Fine Meats & Cheeses