New Jersey Stage published its 25,000th story in December 2021. As the site approached the milestone, we posed the question on social media as how we should celebrate.  One response was to highlight our favorite stories from over the years.  We liked this idea, but could not narrow things down to just 25 favorites so we will present a favorite each day from different genres. Today is a look at comedy with our feature on New Parent Smell - an illustrated book by Rutgers alum Ben Rosenfeld and his wife Michelle Slonim Rosenfeld.

The feature was published on July 24, 2020 and is available here. In the piece, we talk about how the two comedians brought their pregnancy and parenting tips into their comedy acts. “We were inspired to create the book because we liked our pregnancy and new baby jokes, but as our daughter is now a full-blown toddler, we couldn’t keep talking about being pregnant and a newborn,” said Ben.  “So we thought a  book was a cool way of letting our pregnancy jokes live on and creating something that’s a fun gift to give to your newly pregnant/new parent friends.  Michelle had us read a bunch of books when she was pregnant, but even the ‘funny’ ones weren’t particularly funny.  So when you combine her research and my ‘we can do better’ - you get our book.  We have a lot of new material about toddlers, so if this does well, sequel!”

This was our third time talking with Ben Rosenfield with the first taking place in 2016 after he released The Russian Optimist, his second comedy album.  The second took place two years later following the release of his third comedy album, The United States of Russia.