Leftridge: RIP Harris Wittels

Comedy writer Harris Wittels, 30, was found dead in his Los Angeles home yesterday from what was probably a drug overdose. Wittels, inventor of the humblebrag and producer/writer for Parks and Rec, Eastbound and Down and The Sarah Silverman Program was a funny guy and it’s super shitty that he’s dead. (He was, by all accounts, a genuinely good dude, too, and I guess that’s maybe more important in the grand scheme of things.)

I first discovered him on Grantland.com where he wrote monthly (for a while, anyway) pieces about “humblebrags” he found on Twitter. (The humblebrag twitter account was its own thing first; he’d find and retweet them to almost 250K followers. For Grantland, he’d pick that month’s top ten and then add his commentary. Check the link. They’re well worth reading.)

For the uninitiated, a humblebrag is exactly what it sounds like it is. Someone—usually a celebrity, but not necessarily always—brags, but then adds some sort of addendum to convey humility or humbleness.

This is from his July 28, 2011 column:

And here’s another from that same piece:

Anyway, he wasn’t breaking comedic barriers, but it was funny. (And frankly, fairly inventive. The humblebrag as a concept is as old as time, but Wittels was the first person to identify it as a “thing.”)

In addition to the humblebrags and his work on Parks and Rec (where he produced 77 episodes, wrote 12 and played animal control officer “Harris” in a handful), he was a semi-frequent guest on several popular podcasts. On the Comedy Bang-Bang podcast, he had a recurring segment called “Harris’s Foam Corner” where he tried out stray material that he didn’t think was funny enough to become jokes. (It actually was, but the hilarity was in the no-sell by everyone involved.)

But as well known as Wittels was for his quick wit and comedic prowess, he was just as well knows for his open struggles with drug addiction.

In a now-haunting November, 2014 episode of the You Made it Weird with Pete Holmes podcast, he described how, after a failed rehab stint, he relapsed on Oxycontin. When the pills quit working—as they always do— he decided to try heroin. Over the span of 30 or 40 unbelievably engaging minutes, he talks about going to buy it for the very first time, first getting ripped off (multiple times) in seedy MacArthur Park, before eventually scoring on Skid Row.

The discussion kicks in around the 55 minute mark:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfBmZOxaDm4

It’s sad to think about what could have been were it not for his unappeasable demons. Like many tortured, talented comedic minds before him—Mitch Hedberg, Lenny Bruce and Greg Giraldo to name but a few—we’ll never know how far he might have gone.

Heroin is such an unrelenting fucking asshole and addiction is awful.