“How Do I Land?” Kurt Brauohler’s Cloud Project is a humor lesson in skywriting, gift of absurdity

On March 23, 2013, a funny thing happened in the sky above Los Angeles.

A skywriting plane wrote letters in cloud form amid the blue sky. An “H,” followed by an “O,” then a “W,” eventually spelling out: “HOW DO I LAND?”

howdoiland-twitter

The joke culminated the efforts of Kurt Braunohler’s Cloud Project, which he had launched on Kickstarter about a month earlier.

“What I’m asking you to do is going to sound stupid at first, but it’s going to be beautiful and amazing and awesome,” Braunohler said in his video appeal to Kickstarter.

But why?

He explains: “I think we can all agree that life is pretty bleak place to be a lot of the time. Often you might even think, “Who thought this was a good idea to begin with!?” (God – what a jerk.) But I think that if there’s a way we can, just for a fleeting moment, give strangers an unexpected gift of absurdity, then I think we can make the world a slightly better place.”

So he did.

And after fulfilling Kickstarter rewards earlier in the month, such as mailing off autographed framed photos of the skywritten joke, he posted one on his Tumblr yesterday. “HOW DO I LAND?! Here’s a comp of the actual letters from the Cloud Project! The actual day had a very high winds, and the letters appeared and disappeared quite quickly. But if you watched the sky for 20 minutes you could probably piece it together. BUT STILL WE DID IT!!! Thanks to everyone who contributed! Photo by Robyn Von Swank!”

That soon landed, in fact, on Reddit. In the top spot. Where it still sits this morning.

How cool is that?

Just ask Braunohler, who Tweeted: “pros of seeing it live: beer, pros of seeing it on reddit: you can actually see it all”

Above: Photo by Robyn Von Swank

And here is Eric Nigg’s time-lapse video of the actual skywriting in motion…

Related: Kurt Braunohler relates his philosophy of inserting absurdity into strangers lives via the first episode of Scott Moran’s “Modern Comedian” series.

Sean L. McCarthy

Editor and publisher since 2007, when he was named New York's Funniest Reporter. Former newspaper reporter at the New York Daily News, Boston Herald and smaller dailies and community papers across America. Loves comedy so much he founded this site.

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