A joke should have the perfection of a haiku. Not one extra word. No wrong words. It should seem to have been discovered in its absolute form rather than created. The weight of the meaning should be at the end. The earlier words should prepare for the shift of the meaning. The ending must have absolute finality. It should present a world view only revealed at the last moment. Like knife-throwing, joke-telling should never be practiced except by experts.
For many laymen, a joke is a heavenly gift allowing them to monopolize your attention although they lack all ability as an entertainer. You can tell this because they start off grinning and grin the whole way through. They're so pleased with themselves. Their grins are telling you they're funny and their joke is funny. The expert knows not to betray the slightest emotion. The expert is reciting a fact. There is nothing to be done about it. The fact insists on a world that is different than you thought. The fact is surprising and ironic. It is also surprising--you mustn't see it coming. That's why the teller should not grin. His face shouldn't tell you it's coming. If the joke is also vulgar, so much the better, but it must never exist for the sake of vulgarity. That's why "The Aristocrats" is not only the most offensive joke in the world, but also, in the wrong hands, the most boring.
"The Aristocrats" was even the subject of a 2005 documentary. It is an inside joke among professional comedians, who sometimes compete at telling it when they gather. Every version of the joke is different. In its classic form, a vaudeville team walks into a booker's office, to pitch their act. "What do you do?" asks the booker. One of the entertainers describes a series of obscene, perverted, scatological acts, involving persons of all ages, races, disabilities, grotesqueries, perversions and sexual orientations, and additional other partners whether animal, vegetable or mineral, and not neglecting incest, bestiality, matricide, bodily waste, vomiting and other sudden voidings, necrophilia, bondage, whatever. It is described in racist, sexist and obscene terms.The description of this disgusting performance is prolonged for as long as possible.
Mary Van Note
"Okay, okay! What do you call your act?" the booker finally asks.
"The Aristocrats."
In the documentary, many of the comedians agree that the best version of "The Aristocrats" they've ever heard was told by Gilbert Gottfried, at a Friars' Club roast of Hugh Hefner soon after 9/11. He told a joke about 9/11 and the audience, containing many other professional comedians, shouted: "Too soon! Too soon!" Gottfried was dying. In desperation, he switched in midstream to the Aristocrats. He knew that every comic in the room would know what he was doing. He told it with the speed and urgency of a drowning man dictating his last will and testament. It was a brave and brilliant tactic, and in a way asserted our right to laugh in the shadow of tragedy.
In the movie. I think George Carlin is the best of some 100 performers listed in the credits. He observes that most comics don't "tell jokes." They do routines based on their observations of life. This is true. I was honored one day to be sitting at lunch at the Pritikin Longevity Center with Buddy Hackett. He was joined by friends who came to visit him. I recall Soupy Sales, Jan Murray and Carl Reiner. None of them told a single joke.
A lady approached the table. "Buddy," she said, "have you heard the one about..."
"Yes," said Buddy Hackett. "Lady, excuse me, we're all professionals at this table. Tell your joke to the amateurs over there."
Cody Woods
Buddy was a student of the science of comedy. His favorite Las Vegas stage was at the Sahara. "I was offered twice the dough to move to a certain hotel," he told me, "but nothing doing. Comics who work that room always flop. There's a physical reason for that. The stage is above the eye lines of too much of the audience. At the Sahara, the seats are banked and most of the audience is looking down at the stage. Everybody in the business knows: Up for singers, down for comics. The people want to idealize a singer. They want to feel superior to a comic. You're trying to make them laugh. They can't laugh at someone they're looking up to."
I remembered Hackett's Law one day when Errol Morris was hosting a screening of his "Gates of Heaven" at Facets Cinematheque. People watching that great film have never been able to agree if Morris is ridiculing his subjects, or ennobling them. Facets has a flat section of seating and then the seats angle up. I was precisely on the dividing line. The people behind me were laughing. The people in front of me were quiet. Their seating instructed them how to react.
But I stray. Regarding the art of the joke, I offer myself as an experienced student. As a freshman in high school, I memorized all the cuts on an LP of great comics, and performed Hackett's "The Chinese Waiter" routine at a lunch of the Urbana Rotary Club. I remembered all my lines, but I flopped. I was trying to make the dilemma of Hackett's waiter clear. The genius of the routine is that the waiter is clear only to himself. Hackett's delivery hurtles straight ahead, never pausing for the audience: "No! No! One from Column A! Two from Column B!"
Michael D'Bey
I wanted to perform stand-up. I idolized Henny Youngman, and later Rodney Dangerfield. They practiced the humor of paradox, based in ancient Jewish tradition. The world conceals its traps from us. In a crazy situation, strict logic must be applied. Things are the opposite of what they seem. This world view was distilled into jokes by generations of Catskills comics, who reached an eerie perfection. Irony is a weapon against the inevitable, but don't depend on it. You'll probably lose anyway, but not in the way you think you will. Audiences had already heard half of the jokes, but the humor was in the delivery. Here is a template for the perfect Catskills joke:
A guy goes in to a psychiatrist.
Psychiatrist says, "You're crazy!"
Guy says, "I want a second opinion!"
"All right--you're ugly!Notice the economy. Not one adjective. No names. No descriptions of anything. Go in, kill, get away.
I am discussing here jokes. I am not discussing comic monologues. No Richard Pryor, Bill Cosby, Sam Levinson, Myron Cohen, Eddie Murphy, Garrison Keillor, Sarah Silverman. For that you need to be an actor, missus, and also if you were a writer it wouldn't kill you. To tell jokes, an actor we don't need. We need a demonstrator, to reveal the treacherous nature of the world, which is waiting with betrayal, humiliation, impotence, defeat, cuckoldry and the merciless application of logic. You think you've said something, and the ground shifts under your feet. Observe the ground shifting here:
I took my wife to a wife-swapping party. I had to throw in some cash.
Dean Inouye
We are talking your basic jokes here. Anyone can tell them if they have any kind of an ear and apply themselves. We are not talking comedy routines, like you see in a comedy club. For that you need talent. It takes a hell of a lot of nerve to walk out on the stage of a comedy club. You could die out there. That's how comics talk: I killed. I died. Standup comedy is a mental blood sport. Using only the weapon of your mind, you cause other people to laugh. "Ninety-nine percent is in the delivery," Buddy Hackett told me. "If you have the right voice and the right delivery, you're cocky enough, and you pound down on the punch line, you can say anything and make people laugh maybe three times before they realize you're not telling jokes."
One of my friends for 30 years was the Broadway star, movie actor and veteran of the Canadian Catskills circuit, Lou Jacobi. He loved to tell jokes, and I was his willing pupil. Standing up to give the toast when Chaz and I were married, he got a big round of applause.
Thank you, thank you. I don't deserve that. Of course, I have arthritis. I don't deserve that either.Lou Jacobi told a joke in a reasonable tone of voice, as if he were explaining something.
A man comes home early and finds a naked guy hiding behind the shower curtain.
"What are you doing in there?"
"Voting."
Greg Edwards
Lou made an observation one day that revealed an instinctive understanding of the underlying nature of jokes. He told this story:
A newlywed couple are driving down to Florida. Guy looks over, his wife looks so good to him, he rubs her on the knee.
"We're married now. You can go a little farther."
So, he drives to Fort Lauderdale.After the story, I asked Lou, "Why didn't he drive to Miami?"
He said, "Miami doesn't take long enough to say." His answer was so subtle and perceptive, and depended so much on the musical nature of comedy, that you may have to tell the joke a few times both ways to see what he meant.
I am not writing these lessons to prepare you for Vegas. Possibly you may be able to risk amateur night at a comedy club. Standup comics make it look easy. It isn't easy. But if you master these ten rules, you can kill at a dinner party. Break them, and you die.
Lynn Ruth Miller
1. Know the joke. Know it cold. Know it. Know it. Anyone who gets halfway through a joke and says, "And then, ah...let's see...I think he says something like..." should be stabbed with a dinner knife.
2. Never step on the punch word.If at all possible, the punch-line should end on the word that reveals the joke. Study the examples above. Never add one single word after the punch word. For example, this not good:
I got in a taxi and asked the driver to take me to where the action was. He pulled up in front of my house about five minutes later.3. Use a four-letter word if the joke requires it. For example:
A homeless man walks up to a guy and asks for some spare change.
Guy says, "Neither a borrower nor a lender be. Shakespeare."
Homeless man says, "Fuck you. Mamet."4. Never explain. "See, there's this playwright named David Mamet writes fuck all the time..." If you think you have to explain who David Mamet is, (a) don't tell the joke, and (b) make some new friends.
5. Do not elaborate unnecessarily. Some fuckwits consider you to be their captive audience. Because the structure of a joke allows them to monopolize your attention, they spin it out endlessly, while you, their helpless victim, stare at them with glazed eyes. Example:
This couple, they're both in their 20s, they get married in Temple Beth Sholom down the street here. He has his new Mercedes parked outside. He just got it yesterday. His beautiful bride says, "Herbie (his name was Herbie), it's a lovely day, let's just cash in our airplane tickets and drive to Florida. In those day, you didn't have to pay a penalty to cash in a ticket. So anyway..."6. Never repeat. The deeply clueless are so pleased with their so-called wit and so convinced of your stupidity that they tell their joke a second time. "Yeah, because they were just married, see, and she looked really sexy to him..." They usually chortle all the way through, their way of demonstrating their joke is so funny.
David Kleinberg
7. Beware of accents. Very few people can do them well. This includes a surprising number of people who think they can. I once knew a guy who did superb accents, but would never stop. One joke after another. German, Irish, Russian, Greek. Relentless. He was so goddamned satisfied with himself. Unless you know what you're doing, risk only an extreme version of your own ethnic accent. Related to that...
8. Be careful about ethnic or religious jokes. If you have to look around the room to check for anybody you might mortally offend, you probably missed someone. This is just common sense. If you risk such a joke, it should depend on the subject to make any sense at all:
The Pope gets into a limo at LaGuardia. Tells the driver, "I like-a these big cars. You mind-a I drive?" He gets pulled over by a cop. Cop radios his captain. I just pulled over a really important guy." Captain says, "Who is it? Mayor Bloomberg?" Cop says, "Bigger than that. He's got the Pope driving for him."9. If it's a long joke, it may better funnier if it is told quickly. That in itself will be funny:
Man wakes up in the morning, sees a gorilla in the tree outside his window.
Calls up the zoo. "I got your gorilla in the tree outside my window."
Zoo says, "Okay, we'll send a man right over."
Man says, "Waitaminit! Waitaminit! That's a big gorilla! It's gonna take more than one man to get it outta the tree!"
Comes a knock on the door. Little guy from the zoo says, "Okay, buddy. Here's our plan."
Man says, "Waitaminit! Waitaminit! What do you mean--our plan? That's your gorilla, you get it out of the tree."
Little guy from the zoo says, "Don't worry, buddy. You got the easy part. You stay on the ground. I got the hard part. I climb up in the tree. Okay. I got a shotgun, a broom handle, a savage Dalmatian dog, and a pair of handcuffs. I climb up in the tree, I push the gorilla out with the broom handle. The gorilla hits the ground. The dog runs over and bites the gorilla on the balls. The gorilla screams and throws his hands up in the air. You run over, slap on the cuffs, and I take him back to the zoo."
"Waitaminit! Waitaminit!" the man says. "What's the shotgun for?"
"Listen, buddy. If I fall out of the tree instead of that gorilla, shoot the dog!"
Tapan Trivedi
Film historians will recall that part of that joke is told in "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore." Martin Scorsese told me the complete joke, taking several seconds.
10. If the joke really works, you can bend a few rules, but not Rule #1.
Okay, you're on your own. I hope you get to be good, or at least better. I will provide you with an all-purpose joke as a starter. To adapt this joke, simply change the identity of the lady:
Lady walks into a bar with a duck under her arm.
Bartender asks, "Where'd you get the pig?"Lady says, "It's a duck."
Bartender says, "I was speaking to the duck."
¶All the photos of stand-up comics are © Leo Hochberg; permission kindly granted. They and many more taken by Hochberg at the weekly Stanford Comedy Show in Palo Alto are here.
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If you got nothing else out of this entry, you got this link.
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"Take my wife--please!"
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Never interrupt someone telling a joke
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The Henny Youngman jokes Alan King told at his funeral.
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In appreciation: Ruth and Lou Jacobi. (Photo by Roger Ebert, Toronto 1999)
Though I love a good joke, I'm definitely getting more from monologue comics at the moment. Billy Connolly is a great one for the multi-level monologues: his routines scan like computer programs with subroutines within subroutines, somehow all the brackets are closed and he makes it back to where he started. Denis Leary, on the other hand, is best when he tells a story from start to finish e.g. his famous rant on "coffee-flavored coffee".
Q: What's the difference between Ignorance and Apathy?
A: I don't know, and I don't care.
I think the punchline is: Shoot the dog!
A blog entry about comedians? If I hadn't just gotten back from the worst afternoon of golf, I'd be more enthusiastic.
Why was it such a bad afternoon? There were four of us, Stanley, Fred, and my best friend from high school, Jack. We were playing at a club in Pacific Palisades where it takes six months to get a reservation.
And then, just as we reached the first green, my old friend Jack fell down dead. Must have exerted himself too much, because he had a heart attack.
And the rest of the afternoon, it was the same thing, over and over. "Hit the ball." "Drag Jack," "Hit the ball." "Drag Jack."
Ebert: Funny you should mention golf. Just last week, on Good Friday, the Pope slipped out of the Vatican to play 18 holes. He gets a hole-in-one. "The Heavenly Father is punishing me!" he moans. "Who can I tell?"
Hi Ebert,
I couldn't disagree with you more, but I really enjoyed this read. You're right that there's a certain style of humor that really needs economy, a sense of objectivity, and razor-sharp timing. But your rules for telling jokes would have left as great a joke-teller as Mark Twain out in the cold. Twain made the distinction thus (using "story" instead of "joke", which was his age's version of the stand-up routine):
"The humorous story may be spun out to great length, and may wander around as much as it pleases, and arrive nowhere in particular; but the comic and witty stories must be brief and end with a point. The humorous story bubbles gently along, the others burst."
This is from his short "How to Tell a Story", and contains some great wisdom about the nature of different styles of comedy. I recommend reading it, especially his comparison of two versions of the "Wounded Soldier" routine, and why the less economical version is the funnier one.
I don't think this necessarily contradicts anything you've laid out here, but maybe it's worth considering that there are different ways to skin a cat.
Brilliant entry, Roger!
I have somehow become the guy at my job who has to tell the jokes that are going around. I've learned from other people's delivery of jokes who best to fine tune the joke, and mostly, I find it's best to eliminate any unnecessary detail, and yes, know your audience.
Despite this, I still occasionally tell what I think is a fairly easy to understand joke, which baffles the person I'm telling it to. Or upset them, such as the day I came home from work, stone-faced, and asked my wife if she'd heard about Ellen Degeneres. No, she replied. I told her that Ellen had drowned. My wife threw up her hands in shock, covering her face, to which I replied, yes, they found her face down in Rikki Lake.
I'll leave you with this one, which is mildly amusing :
While visiting a friend in the hospital, a man entered the hospital elevator with an employee dressed in traditional "whites" and whose charge was a complex-looking piece of equipment, all chrome with a myriad of handles, bars, valves, gauges, dials and inverted bottles of various liquids. "Goodness," I said with a grimace, "I'd hate to be hooked up to that!" "So would I," replied the attendant. "This is a rug shampooer!"
Oh, and since we're on the theme of golf jokes,
The police were called to an apartment and found a woman standing over a lifeless man, a bloody 5-iron in her hand. The detective asked, "Ma'am, is that your husband?" "Yes," sobbed the woman. "And did you hit him with that golf club?" "Yes. Yes, I did." She dropped the club and covered her face with her hands. "And how many times did you hit him?" "I don't know... six, maybe seven times," she sobbed. "Just put me down for a five."
My friends and I on the old Faceless Book were having a nice virtual discussion based on the question of whether or not the true hero of the Dark Knight film was actually the Joker. At one point, I broke out in a fit of madness and assumed the Joker's voice in order to tell a rather subversive joke and just in time for the Easter holiday. So, while trying to break as many of your ten commandments of joke telling as possible, here goes: (remember, it's the Joker telling the joke, see?)
Have you heard the one about the three enemies who walked into a bar together?
Oh, you have? Well, allow me to regale you with my own version of this standard tale. I think that you’ll find it sufficiently renewed to bear hearing it again, as I’ve given it my own exclusive twist. Here goes:
“A Bat, a Clown, and a Two Bit Murderer (name of Joe Chill) walk into a bar at the end of Crime Alley. They immediately seat themselves at a central table just as the animosity among them is beginning to bubble above the surface. The atmosphere of the establishment is dark and bleak by design, but one corner of the place is lit up like a city shining on a hill, seemingly illuminated by something resembling a brightly burning lamp. A Stranger emerges from the radiance and though His approach is viewed with suspicion, He is allowed a seat at the central table. He orders up a few rounds from the bartender, but the man behind the counter refuses to practice his craft in the presence of the Stranger. The Stranger suddenly snaps his fingers, giving voice to a swift and terrible prayer, which converts all of the booze behind the bar into holy water. With little discussion, the three enemies agree to communal baptism, and their collective sins are washed away with the water poured from the bottles. Even the outward symbols of their bondage are scrubbed away: the Bat’s cowl and cape are discarded; the Clown’s make up runs and then is washed away; and even the Two Bit Murderer's bloodstained hands are cleansed, and he becomes just another Average Joe, although with a much cooler last name (than say "Wurzelbacher"). A last bottle of wine, held in reserve in the backroom, is brought out by the bartender along with some soda crackers that take the place of unleavened bread. Communion is administered to all comers and the three former enemies clasp hands with the Stranger and all things are made new. Mountains of grief and resentfulness are moved out of the Way. Genuine forgiveness fills the room. And it was at this precise moment that the three became blood brothers, assigning each other new names as a symbol of the rebirth that they had mutually experienced. One was called Lazarus, one was dubbed Jonah, and one became known as Marty Magdalene. (Guess which one was me??? Wink, wink).
Punchline: Why does all of this sound like a joke? (wait for it…wait for it…) Why does the whole damn thing just make me want to break down and cry? Is that a tear forming now in the corner of my eye? No, this cannot be. As the immortal poet once wrote: “...it's nice enough to/make a man/weep, but I don’t/weep, do you?”
FIN
You're right, most stand-ups aren't really jokers: monologuists basically tell really funny stories. Jim Gaffigans probably my favorite, though: he talks with this brilliantly casual voice, which lets us relate to his stuff better. Check out his Hot Pockets routine:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9c9lAfXQHs
An engineering student is eating lunch in the quad when a classmate of his rides up on a bicycle.
"Where'd you get the bike?" the first engineer asks.
"The strangest thing," says the second, "a beautiful woman riding this bike stops in front of me, jumps off, takes off all her clothes and says, 'Take what you want!'"
"Good choice," says the first, "you wouldn't have fit into her clothes."
Ebert: A little old lady runs naked through the lobby area of the old folks' home shouting "Super sex! Super sex!" A little old man says, "I'll just have the soup, please."
Yes. If a joke is vulgar, it should be funny in spite of it's vulgarity. Monty Python, really over the edge humor, but it's the wit that works.
Hmmm, I think the punchline should be
"Listen, buddy. If I fall out of that tree, shoot the dog!"
Ebert: Of course it should be. (Hand smacking on forehead.) I've been telling that joke for 30 years and never got it wrong before. This is the fourth correction I've had to make already, and on an entry where such a mistake is fatal. Maybe I should take the damned thing down and bring in the eagle-eyed reader JJM to whip it into share.
"To adapt this joke for any occasion, simply change the identity of the lady."
What lady? All I see is a man, a little guy from the zoo, and a gorilla. Unless I telling me would violate rule 4.
Ebert: The lady turns up in the next paragraph. A correction was inserted in the wrong place. Fixed.
Excellent essay, even if some of the ideas are plagiarized directly from Mark Twain. Er, I mean, influenced by.
Hey, I'm just busting your chops--I love you, man.
Ebert: Unfair! Many are plagiarized indirectly.
I think I'm finally understanding why people confuse my stoicism with being funny. I'm 5'6", talk fast, and just moved to the South.
And here I'd been hoping I finally developed some charm.
I order the club sandwich all the time, but I'm not even a member, man. I don't know how I get away with it
I saw this wino, he was eating grapes. I was like, "Dude, you have to wait. "
I like rice. Rice is great when you're hungry and you want 2,000 of something.
I don't have a microwave oven but I do have a clock that occasionally cooks shit.
Ebert: I know this guy, he took his nose apart to see what made it run.
Four year old to his pregnant mom:" Mom,mom,what's in your tummy?"
Mother:"It's a sweet little baby,dear"
Son:"If she's that sweet, why did you eat her"
I prefer the dumb ones to the Henry James variety ( ....after a long monologue at a party a blonde expresses her bewildermint to which the author replies "Ma'm I have'nt even come to the verb yet.")
Why does an XXX smile everytime the lightening strikes ? Because he thinks he's being photographed.
How do you make an XXX laugh on Saturday?
Tell him a joke on Wednesday.
Once a XXX was travelling on a train. He felt sleepy so he gave the guy sitting opposite him on the train 20 rupees to wake him up when the station arrived. This guy was a barber, and he felt that for 20 Rupees, the XXX deserved more service. So, when the XXX fell asleep, the barber quietly shaved off his beard. When the station arrived, the XXX was woken up, and he went home. Reaching home, he went to wash his face, and suddenly screamed when he saw the mirror.
Said his wife " What`s the matter?"
Replied the XXX "The cheat on the train has taken my 20 rupees and woken up someone else"
Now you need to make a list titled "How to politely let someone know they totally ruined a perfectly good joke based on their delivery."
I find the hardest thing to do is "pretend to laugh." (Along with many other things, of course)
My father's a master joke-teller, and my little brother--bless his soul--is not. I nodded knowing while reading because I've seen the so many times the same joke told by different people and to different effect. I watch my brother die, and I know why I never tell jokes.
My favorite joke: "Johnny sits in class and it's show-and-tell, and he's got his hand as high in the air as it'll go. Teacher says, "Alright, Johnny, you're up," and Johnny walks up to the board and draws a small, black dot. Teacher says, "Whacha got thre," and Johnny replies, "It's a period." "I see that, but why's it so special." "Well... I'm not sure, but my sister's missing one and my dad fainted, mom had a heart attack and the neighbor shot himself."
Q:What comes first, the chicken or the egg?
A:Depends on what you order first.
The smutty ones are too language specific anyway. I googled out a specimen of what Aristocrat means--horrifying, you have us beaten there. A great joke is certainly a level of the Eureka! phenomenon.
"Listen, buddy. If I fall out of that tree, shoot the gorilla!"
And all this time I thought I was supposed to shoot the dog.
Ebert: Open fire, anyway.
Roger, your pope golf joke is flawed. The phrase "on a very tricky shot" ruins the joke. To get a hole in one on any hole is amazing. It need not be a tricky shot. There are no real tricky shots off of the tee anyway. I stopped reading the joke and looked back over the sentence out of befuddlement before reading the punch-line. The break between set-up and delivery was interrupted and the impact of the joke was lost. Indeed, word choice is keen.
Ebert: You're right. I've changed it. I must have been up too late.
In copy/pasting the Mamet joke to a friend, it occurred to me that it seems a little funnier if it goes "Guy says, 'Neither a borrower nor a lender be. Shakespeare'." than "Man says, 'Neither a borrower nor a lender be. Shakespeare'." Using the word "man" twice back to back seems to dampen the effect. (Soft/hard sounds a la 'The Sunshine Boys', maybe?) But then again, maybe I'm crazy.
Agree/disagree?
Ebert: Agree. I've changed it.
First off, I understand the sort of pretentiousness that accompanies linking to my own material in a comment like this, but to me, the possibility of having Roger Ebert watch my comedy routine is worth any sort of perceived pretentiousness.
Anyway, thanks for all the tips, I think that they are all very applicable to the craft of joke telling. Telling a joke is just that, a craft, I believe that the real art of comedy lies beyond the initial joke. The greatest comedians out there are not great for their material, but mainly for the comedy persona that they have created. So much humor lies is the friction between their persona and their material.
Steve Martin is mainly hilarious not because of his banjo playing or use of silly words, but because he sets himself up as an intellectual hipster, so the arrow through the head or out of control "happy feet" is so much more surprising.
I know you weren't really talking about character driven monologue comedy, but I think that all of the best comedy is dependent on setting up the context around it. Just the name of the URL you gave us: oldjewstellingjokes.com sets up an entire context for their material. Thanks for taking humor seriously, that's the only way to get to the laughs.
Ebert: "All candy should come out of Batman's neck?" Sounds right to me.
OK, here's my current favorite:
A traveling salesman asks a ranch owner if his property line ends at his fence. The rancher responds, “Mister, I could get in my car first thing in the morning and drive all day, and I still wouldn’t reach the end of my property.” The salesman responds, “Yeah, I had a car like that once.”
I did stand-up for over a decade, worked with improv groups, and yes, memorized my favorite stand-up monologues. But there is nothing quite as wondrous as the economy of a good sharp joke.
What I marvel at most are "kid" jokes. Here are people with the most limited world experience, not to mention vocabulary, and yet these playground quips always make me laugh.
A sampling:
"What did Washington say to his men before crossing the Delaware?"
"Get in the boat."
"Where does the president keep his armies?"
"Up his sleevies."
"Mom, is it okay if I go wee?"
"Alright."
"WHEEEEEEE!"
I think one of my proudest moments as a writer came when a Catholic priest told me "I used one of your jokes during my homily last Sunday...and it _killed._"
It was the week that Pope was visiting the US. "Do you think the Pope Benedict's Secret Service codename might be 'Eggs'?" I wondered.
Both the joke and the response were delivered via Twitter, singlehandedly justifying the existence of this magnificent service.
Did the joke on TV die with the Ed Sullivan Show? It feels that way to me. Carson really discovered all the great baby boomer storytellers from Seinfeld to Williams to Letterman. But I remember Jan Murray and Phylis Diller and Jack E. Leonard and the great Alan King. Come to think of it I can't remember someone standing and delivering classic jokes on TV (talk show monologues excluded) since Rodney died.
By the way, reading your blog is the next best thing to sitting in the bar stool next to you. Cheers!
I heard you tell this one: What's the difference between a bowling ball and Bella Abzug? In an emergency you could eat a bowling ball.
Kangaroo walks into this bar, see. Orders a beer, gives the bartender a ten dollar bill. Bartender thinks, "kangaroos don't know nothing about money, right," gives the kangaroo two dollars change. After a while, making conversation, the bartender says, "We don't get too many kangaroos around here." Kangaroo says, "At eight bucks a beer, I'm not surprised."
Ebert: That joke is in shockingly bad taste. I told it, you say?
What's the difference between an angry rooster and a lawyer? The roster clucks defiance, while the lawyer...
So who lays claim to the "wife swapping" joke? That's got Steven Wright written all over it...
You don't remember? It was several years ago at a panel on humor at the CWA in Boulder. Of course, I can never forget that one.
Roger, you hit the nail on the head and I wanted to, so I'm going to repeat some of the things you said, in a slightly different way.
Most people don't know how to tell jokes. If I can, I never tell a joke that is more than two sentences long. Even better is one sentence. But most people think that by dragging a joke out, it makes it funnier. If there is a line in the joke that is supposed to be said twice, they'll repeat it eight times. And so by the fifth time you hear, "But I don't want any peanuts!", you want to slit both your wrists and theirs.
When people start to wander off in the middle of your joke, I think that's a good sign that you went on too long. Take the hint.
Do we wanna mention Punchline Piracy?
Shall we have a few from the late, the great, Mitch Hedberg?
"A severed foot is the ultimate stocking stuffer."
"I got an ant farm. Them 'fellas didn't grow shit."
"I'm an ice sculptor. Last night, I made a cube."
"I was at this casino minding my own business, and this guy came up to me and said, 'You’re gonna have to move. You're blocking a fire exit.' As though if there was a fire, I wasn't gonna run. If you're flammable and have legs, you are never blocking a fire exit."
"It’s very dangerous to wave to people you don’t know, because what if they don’t have hands? They’ll think you’re cocky."
"I would imagine if you could understand Morse Code, a tap dancer would drive you crazy."
"You know when they have a fishing show on TV? They catch the fish and then let it go. They don’t want to eat the fish, they just want to make it late for something."
"The depressing thing about tennis is that no matter how good I get, I’ll never be as good as a wall."
"I wrote my friend a letter with a highlighting pen, but he could not read it, he thought I was trying to show him certain parts of a piece of paper."
One of my own:
"A man walks into the doctor's office, and he says, 'Doctor, I need you to give me a kiddley transplant.'
Doctor says, 'You mean a kidney transplant.'
Man says, 'I said kiddley, diddle I?'"
Should it be that long, or should I restrict it to the first line?
Ebert: "Tell me, Doc. How do I stand?"
"That's what puzzles me."
The way my brother ends that joke is: the parrot says, okay, I promise to stop cussing, I'll be good, just don't put me back in the freezer, but tell me this. What did the chicken do?
You are quite the joker, Roger, a part of you we never got to see "at the movies."
Jokes are hard, puns are easy, which is why I specialize in the latter, hoping to elicite the sweet sound of "ewww, that's just so bad!" from my victims.
Ebert: On the parrot, you're getting closer...
That really long one back there? It had all the elements of humor except the being funny part.
Really interesting post. I'm curious... what triggered you to write it? Did you have your last straw of hearing someone completely botch a punchline?
Ebert: It was our annual Dirty Jokes Dinner at the Red Lion Inn in Boulder.
You're gonna hate me, all these corrections, but I think "I was talking to the duck" is funnier than "I was speaking to the duck."
Here's a joke my daughter inadvertantly invented when she was toilet-training. I'd been so ENCOURAGING. "Good GIRL, Sweetie! GOOD Girl!!" every time she had any success. One day my wife was gone, just me and the infink, and I HAD TO GO REAL BAD. I closed the bathroom door, putting her in her stroller on the other side, but kept talking to her. "I'm making the pees! I'm almost done! I'm flushing the toilet! I'm washing my hands!!"
When I came out she said, "Good GIRL, Papa!!!"
It's funny you should bring up jokes as a topic. The last couple of months, I've been watching films by the Marx Brothers for the first time, and I think Groucho Marx might be the best joke deliverer I've ever seen. His punch lines hit so quickly that it takes a couple seconds for me to laugh. I think you are absolutely right that the delivery is much more important than the content of the joke. My favorite Groucho joke doesn't sound very funny when you read it, and he even comments on the joke itself. Yet, I still think it's hilarious, and I'm not even sure why.
It's from my favorite Marx Brothers movie, Horse Feathers(which I think has better jokes than even Duck Soup). The brothers are causing chaos in Thelma Todd apartment, and angering her father(David Landau).
Landau: What are you doing here?
Chico: Me? I'm the music teacher. I give her singing lessons.
Landau: [to Thelma Todd] Since when are you taking singing lessons?
Chico: Since you came in.
Landau: [to Groucho] What are you doing here?
Groucho: I'm the plumber. I'm just hanging around in case something goes wrong with her pipes.
[Groucho turns to the audience]
Groucho: That's the first time I've used that joke in twenty years.
I have heard different version of the joke in Rule No.8. It was George H.W. Bush and he was driving limo very fast instead of his driver because he was late for the conference. "Bigger than that. He's got Bush driving for him."
Two jokes I've heard
"You have to be creative, confident, and competitive to work in this company."
"I'm your man, sir."
"Prove me."
"The coffee for others was mixed with rat poison."
"Honey, I'm home! Why are you naked?"
"I'm protesting against you for not buying even one suit of decent clothe for years."
"What? I've been working hard to earn money for your clothes! Here, look at what you have in the closet! Blue velvet dress, fur coat, cashmere blouse, and, Oh, hello, Roger..."
And possible variation of rule No.8:
When you are in front of acquaintances and the joke is quite vulgar, Be careful with the names used in the joke, maybe.
I'm not good at telling jokes, but I think I have some possibility. People are sometimes confused because I'm serious even when I tell something trivial. Maybe I have punchline and attitude problem. Anyway, friends laughed when I told them about "Hannah and Her Sisters" and "Jaws: The Revenge".
A teacher asks her class, "If there are 5 birds sitting on a fence and you shoot one of them, how many will be left?"
"A boy replies, 'None, they will all fly away with the first gunshot."
The teacher replies, "The correct answer is 4, but I like your thinking."
Boy says, "I have a question for YOU."
Teacher says "Okay, what is it?"
Boy says "3 women are on a bench having ice cream. One is delicately licking the sides of the triple scoop of ice cream. The second is gobbling down the top and sucking the cone. The third is biting off the top of the ice cream. Which one is married?"
The teacher, blushing a great deal, replied, "Well, I suppose the one that gobbled down the top and sucked the cone."
The boy says, "The correct answer is the one with the wedding ring, but I like your thinking."
My grandmother told my grandfather this joke during their courtship in Chicago's Roarin' Twenties:
Guy in a bar asks the drunk woman next to him, "How many drinks does it take to make you dizzy?"
The gal says, "Two, and the name is Daisy."
This is possibly my favourite joke, yet people tend to stare at me blankly when I say it:
Three guys walk into a bar. Barman says "Jeez, I thought one of you would've noticed it."
Come on. It's gold.
Personally, I love offensive/disgusting jokes. The more offensive the better. I don't care who is offended or why, I just love em all the same. I really have no idea why I'm like that. I don't really like the aristocrats though. I watched Gilbert Godfrey's version, I watched Bob Sagat, I watched a few other guys I can't remember--they all bored me. Just too long and too obvious I guess.
Since there were a bunch of golf jokes up there, here's one I got from a reader's digest I've always liked.
Two aliens land next to a golf course. They see a golfer whack his ball off the tee and into the rough. Then they see him, cursing all the way, storm up to the ball and hack away with an iron until he finally gets the ball out of the rough. And straight into a sand trap. So they watch him as, still cursing and red faced, he marches into the sand trap and hacks away at the ball until finally he gets out of the sand trap and onto the green and finally into the cup.
Says one alien to the other: "That guy is really screwed now."
Ebert: Spaceship lands, and a little green man walks up to a gas pump and says, "Take me to your leader!" No answer. "I said again, take me to your leader." No answer. Little green man pulls out his ray gun, and says, "This is your last chance." Gas pump remains silent. The alien fires his ray gun, the gas explodes, and he is hurled hundreds of feet through the air. He picks himself up, dusts himself off, and limps back to his flying saucer. His co-pilot says, "How'd it go?" Little green man says, "Not very well. He just stood there looking at me with his c**k stuck in his ear."
In the line of "Little Johnny" jokes...
The teacher asks her class what part of people goes to heaven first.
Little Sally raises her hand, and says it's the heart. Little Joshua raises his hand, and says its the mind.
Little Johnny raises his hand, and says it's the feet. The teacher asks why he thinks that.
"Last night I woke up and looked in my parent's room. My Mom was lying on the bed with her legs up in the air and screaming 'Oh God! I'm coming, I'm coming!' Thank God my Dad had her pinned, or we would have lost her for sure!"
I knew there was a comedian lurking in you, Rog. Seems to me you've always been "softer" on comedies than most other reviewers - I put it down to a sense of humor (which the others might be lacking).
Johnny Carson (rest his soul) claimed to be horrible at telling straight-out jokes, but he wrote this one and it's classic:
Nearing death, two old baseball fanatics make a pact that whoever dies first will come back and tell the other if there is baseball in heaven.
Sure enough, soon one of them passes and is quick to visit his friend. He says "I have good news and bad news. The good news is that yes, there is baseball in heaven. The bad news? You're pitching thursday."
-always watchin movies, always readin Ebert-
Alfred
Greatest Joke Ever Told...
Duck walks into a pharmacy to buy some chapstick... He says, "Put it on my bill."
Some of your rules seem at odds with the great essay by Mark Twain. I'm trying to settle the differences. I think its simply that Twain doesn't like a good joke. He prefers a good story, that happens to be funny.
Thanks Roger. Since you seemingly aren't going to opt for the surgery, I'll just hope that you get a lucky dice throw and recover your voice naturally, so you can tell jokes again.
Ebert: My little piece was for people who could use some improvement. Twain was in the major leagues.
Here's one that's funny but I couldn't tell you why...
Two penquins are standing on an iceberg.
One penquin says "You look like you're wearing a tuxedo."
Other penquin says "What makes you think I'm not?"
I think of myself as a pretty solid joke-teller. Actually, I'm sure of it. I recently moved to Argentina. My life here has been great, and I have few complaints. But one of frustrations is that my Spanish is still not at the point where I can tell a joke, good, bad, or otherwise. The only times I'm funny is when I misunderstand something or accidentally say something incorrectly. For instance, when I told my team at work that if they wanted more conejo on a particular issue, to let me know. Conejo means rabbit. Consejo means advice. They all laughed at the boss. It was funny but certainly not a joke. You see my problem.
I guess what I'm saying is, given your situation right now for so much time without being able to speak, that I understand (at laest a little) how you are unable to participate in one of your favorite activities. It is something you have worked your whole life on, striving for perfection, and now you are not even able to make an attempt. But your writing is still hilarious when it should be (most notably your recent take on Bill O'Reilly's antics). You make me laugh all the time anyway. Now if you could only help me tell a joke in Spanish. I suppose the rules still apply. OK, I'll take a shot, since we're talking golf and all:
Maria está preguntando a su esposo, Alberto.
Maria: Que harías si muerto?
Alberto: Te guardaría luto.
Maria: Durante mucho tiempo?
Alberto: Muchisimo tiempo!
Maria: ¿Por qué?
Alberto: Porque tu pérdida sería muy dolorosa para mí…
Maria: Qué bonito! ¿Volverías a casarte con otra?
Alberto: No
Maria: ¿No te gusta estar casado?
Alberto: Mmmhhh… Después de un largo luto, quizás me casaría…
Maria: ¿Dormirías con ella en nuestra cama?
Alberto: Es de suponer, no?
Maria: ¿Pondrías su foto en la mesita de luz?
Alberto: Pondría las dos…
Maria: ¿Tendrían sexo?
Alberto: Seguramente, supongo…
Maria: ¿También le darías mis palos de golf para jugar con ella?
Alberto: No, no, ella es zurda.
The quick English version: "Honey, what will you do if I die?" "Oh, I would be in mourning for a long time." "Would you remarry?" "Only after a very long time." "Would you sleep with her in our bed?" "Yes, I think I would." "Would you put her picture on the nightstand?" "I would put both hers and yours." "Would you have sex with her?" "Yes, I suppose I would." "And would you give her my golf clubs so you could play with her?" "No, of course not. She's not lefthanded."
"Last night I came home from work; found my best friend in bed with my wife, and I said: 'Lenny! I have to! But you?'"
--Billy Crystal
"Two cannibals are eating a clown. One says to the other: 'Does this taste funny to you?'"
--Tim Vine
This horse walks into a bar. The bartender says, "Hey, why the long face?"
What's interesting about that joke is you have to say "This horse". "A horse" isn't as funny.
My girlfriend and I used to trade all sorts of silly jokes back and forth. Our favorites were elephant jokes.
Why did the elephant fall out of the tree? Cuz he was dead.
Why did the second elephant fall out of the tree? He was tied to the first one.
Why did the third elephant fall out of the tree? Thought it was a game.
Why did the tree fall down? Thought it was an elephant.
Why do elephants wear little green hats? To sneak across pool tables.
How can you tell there's an elephant in your bed? The big E on her pyjamas.
What do you do if an elephant comes through your window? Swim like hell.
(If you don't get the last one, repeat it to yourself a couple of times.)
Ebert: Know how to have sex with an elephant? One steps on you and you're f*****d.
Roger, you use words very precisely, and clearly take delight in finding the right word for the job (think "gobsmacked"). So your use of "fuckwit" surprised me. I always took that word as one used by someone who couldn't think of a better way to express themselves. But perhaps it has shadings I've missed?
btw, thanks for the link to oldjewstellingjokes.com. I sent it to my german lutheran Mom who laughed and laughed!
Ebert: No shadings. But a cheap word.
Dear Roger,
This great blog entry, and your most recent "Great Movie" selection, "La Belle Noiseuse" brings to mind the great joke about the painter and his model: (did I first read this joke in one of your columns? If I did, a google search did not reveal it as such. If it WAS you, forgive me.)
Anyway, there's this artist and his model and they've been trying different poses and themes all morning, but with no luck. It's all crap.
So they take a coffee break to discuss how best to attack this latest composition.
And as they're talking and having coffee, a car pulls up in the driveway.
The artist says, "Quick! You better get naked or my wife will think we're up to something!"
Two guys are walking down the street when they come across a dog licking himself.
"I sure wish I could do that," one guy confesses.
"I don't know. He looks kinda mean," his friend replies.
I love the double shift in world view that occurs in the last two lines.
Breaking rule #8, but here goes:
Chinese man says to his wife on their wedding night, "Honey, I give you anything you want. What you want?". Wife giggles and says "Number 69". Husband says, "Beef with broccoli?"
Dumb blonde gets a cell phone from her husband for Christmas. He's pleasantly surprised the next day when she answers his call. She says, "Oh honey, these things are easy to use. But how did you know I was at Wal-mart?"
Nice to hear a mention of Henny Youngman, who I had the privilege of meeting when I was nine years old. It was 1978. Henny was at that stage in his career where he did appearances at shopping mall openings, which is exactly what brought him to our small town. My father ran the local radio station, and Henny came by for an interview. I'd never met anyone famous so my dad let me skip school for a few hours to come up.
Henny sat me on his lap, told some jokes, and generally charmed everyone in the room. When it was almost time for him to leave, he looked at me and said, "You're a nice kid. I want to give you a diamond pin." He then reached into the pocket of his suit jacket, pulled something out, and handed it to me.
It was a dime, soldered to a safety pin.
I still have it.
Ebert: I have one of those too. He gave it to me at the Carnegie Deli, which he was working for free. He also opened his wallet and said, "I want to show you my Pride and Joy." It was a card with photos of laundry products on both sides.
I love deadpan humour (go Bill Murray), but here's proof that it's possible to make you laugh with a beautiful smile on one's face:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grRv-rz0CKA
Then again, when there's a British accent in the game...
I dated a teacher in high school, it didn't make me cooler.. And a lot of you are like "yeah that's cause you were home-schooled"
-
Daniel Tosh
I love Rodney Dangerfield, too. I bought a DVD compilation of his stand-up and I watch them repeatedly.
Why I find Rodney remarkable was that he would hit a topic with four or five jokes and they jokes would build like a crescendo, and then he would move to another topic. It was like a flurry from a well-trained fighter. His stand-up from the '70s was very tight. He became more of a one-liner guy as he got older.
Some Rodney favorites:
I got some dog. We call him Egypt because he leaves a pyramid in every room.
His favorite bone is in my arm.
I'm so ugly my dog closes his eyes when he humps my leg.
My favorite:
Some cook my wife is. At my house, we pray after we eat.
Ebert: She told me, "I wanna go someplace I've never seen." I told her, "Try the kitchen."
What's the difference between a bowling ball and Bella Abzug? In an emergency you could eat a bowling ball.
I've actually heard this as a racist joke in even worse taste.
As for humor, jokes and comedians are almost never funny. Really funny. This is my official opinion now. I was 'the funny one' for a long time in my social group growing up and got very interested in comedy and comedy theory, wondered why I was funny or anyone else was funny; along the way I became, I think, a very discerning guy about humor. And with jokes and stand-up I think the form itself stifles the potential for real humor. And as I've gone on I've decided really funny people are the ones who are about ten times smarter/wiser than anyone else in the room (this doesn't include me, I'm talking about the pros), but the room tends to not recognize the fact, and the performer tends not to point it out to the room or be aware of it. This is why Letterman is far and away the funniest late night host, while Leno is just a joke teller, and Conan O'Brien is not even that. Actually the late night hosts are an interesting lot of examples of humor and why people get laughs. Craig Ferguson is the likeable guy who is funnyish but not really funny, but who through great effort and energy and personal charm, wins his laughs. Letterman is the actually funny guy. Leno the joke teller. O'Brien - I dunno. Doesn't work for me, but I guess so far as he works for anybody, he's an effort guy.
Norm MacDonald is very funny, and for the same reason Letterman is. On the other hand Jon Stewart isn't particularly funny. And if you can figure why that is you'll have learned a lot about comedy.
I also, and this actually involves both Norm and Dave at times, am finding absurdist (genuine absurdist, not the Dmitri Martin weak tea stuff) stuff funnier as I go on, and anti-comedy funnier. Norm's set at the recent roast of Bob Saget is a good example; Andy Kaufman's whole career is a good example. On the other hand, when this is done wrong, or by someone who is not equipped to do it - Joaquin Phoenix, for instance - it's really horrible. You have to be more than a comedian, not less, to do that.
Then there's written humor. Why is Mark Twain funny? Kurt Vonnegut? The Catcher in the Rye? Why is A Moveable Feast one of the funniest books ever written? It's a rich topic. I know people are mostly just content to laugh, but I think humor and what works and why, and even what is 'really funny', is one of the real neglected areas of study.
Although I did like that guy's kangaroo joke.
Ebert: Mark Twain just gets better the more you read him. P. G. Wodehouse is funny, but not everyone's cuppa.
Did you hear about the mathematician with a bowel obstruction? He worked it out with a pencil.
I once told an involved joke about the Titanic while I was stoned out of my gourd. I wondered why no one laughed, and the next day, my friend said that I told the whole thing backwards, starting with the punchline.
A cop and his chief are talking in his office.
Chief says "Did you hear abour Roger Ebert? He assaulted someone."
Cop says "Did he hurt him?"
Chief says "Yeah. He was critically injured."
Cue everone in the room groaning and slapping their foreheads in disgust.
Two dogs were running down the street.
One fell into an open manhole.
The other looked back and said, "Well, doggone."
Amen to the Mitch Hedberg comment. I'm 22 and Mitch is easily the favorite comedian of my generation. Mitch will be revered by the majority of my peers as the master of the craft, may he rest in peace.
"I haven't slept for ten days, because that would be too long."
However, my favorite joke ever comes from Steven Wright, another one-liner comedian.
"Last night I played a blank tape at full blast. The mime next door went nuts."
Sometimes it's the tellers themselves, even if they're not great at it.
This one was told to me by a devout Irish Catholic: Jesus is carrying His cross, and they enlist someone to help him. So the guy's walking along and Jesus pulls out a cigarette and offers him the pack. "Raleighs, eh?" the guy says. "Do you save the coupons?" "Sure," Jesus answers. "How do you think I got this cross?" (Not merely offensive--especially with Easter looking over my shoulder--but you gotta know about Raleighs to get it.)
And from a hyper twelve-year-old: "How many kids with ADD does it take to change a light bulb?" "How many?" "Let's ride bikes!"
And--as I think I may have mentioned before during a digressive thread on one of your previous posts--my favorite joke-telling scene in movies, from My Favorite Year: Mark Linn-Baker as Benjy Stone tries to teach Jessica Harper how to tell a joke. And the joke is: A guy walks into a psychiatrist's office with a duck on his head and the psychiatrist says, "Can I help you?" and the duck says, "Yeah, can you get this guy off my ass?"
Last one: Carl Reiner on The Dick Van Dyke Show as Alan Brady signing off: "And remember, folks: Walk down the street with a big smile on your face. You'll be surprised how many people come up to you and say [beat], "What so funny?"
In 2002 a study conducted by Richard Wiseman of the University of Hertfordshire revealed this to be the world's funniest joke...
A couple of New Jersey hunters are out in the woods when one of them falls to the ground. He doesn't seem to be breathing, his eyes are rolled back in his head. The other guy whips out his cell phone and calls the emergency services. He gasps to the operator: "My friend is dead! What can I do?" The operator, in a calm soothing voice says: "Just take it easy. I can help. First, let's make sure he's dead." There is a silence, then a shot is heard. The guy's voice comes back on the line. He says: "OK, now what?"
More info (and some great runners-up) here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World%27s_funniest_joke
As a stand-up fanatic, (both one-liner and story telling types) it pleases me to no end that THE Roger Ebert is a stand-up fan too. I frequent the Jukebox Comedy Club in Peoria, IL and have seen quite a few amazing performances there. I've also seen some awful ones. But I've never heckled. I was just wondering what your stance on heckling is. Some people feel that if a comic is bombing they deserve to be made fun of and some people, like myself, believe that since they are on the stage you should just let them at least try and finish and maybe (hopefully) recover. I've gotten into verbal shouting matches with other patrons in the crowd before because their heckling pissed me off so bad. But with mainstream incidents (Michael Richards is still fresh in everyones minds) making the news, heckling has become much more common. Have you ever heckled? WOULD you ever heckle?
Also, just because other people have contributed, here are 2 of my favorite one liner type jokes (one clean, one dirty):
"A skeleton walks into a bar. He orders a drink and a mop."
"Two flies are sitting on a piece of shit. One of the flies lifts his leg and cuts a fart. The other fly turns to him and says "do you have to do that, I'm trying to eat!"
You keep writing 'em, I'll keep reading 'em!
Ebert: Hecklers are cowards and very poor sports. Invite them to take over a performance and they flee.
A baby seal walks into a bar, and orders a Canadian Club. The bartender asks the seal if there will be anything else, and the seal pauses for a second, and says "make it a headbanger". After downing a few of those, the seal then turns to the attractive woman at the stool next to him, and drunkenly asks her "so....are you looking for a little phoque tonight?"
The two movies which made me and me family split with laughter were Circus(Chaplin) and Duck Soup. Another at least for me would be Fish called Wanda. Is comedy going out of vogue.
it's worth considering that there are different ways to skin a cat.
However, you only get one chance.
When a category of joke is well known (and usually overdone), humor can be found in bending the core rules to laugh at the category:
How many surrealists does it take to screw in a light bulb? Two - one to climb the giraffe, and the other to fill the bathtub with brightly colored machine tools.
How may mice does it take to screw in a light bulb? Two. But they have to be _small_ mice.
There are also such jokes that rely on other jokes for setup:
There once was a man from Peru
Whose limericks stopped on line two
There once was a man from Verdun
It has been my experience that having children, loving and raising them is like living one long stand up routine so often played for keeps. Case in point...you know your child's education process is gonna be rocky when the first kindergarten "report card" comes home with the kid being cited demerits for "mocking the teacher".
Life has its moments as well. I remember back in the days when older theaters would show double features as a way of keeping the doors open. At a theater in Milford Connecticut I watched Russ Meyer's Vixen followed by Godzilla and in a crumbling inner city theater in Fort Worth Jesus Christ Superstar and Dracula Has Risen From the Grave. (Talk about your resurrection themed flicks).
And Roger as I am sure you can attest to...hospitals can be a place for humorous quickies. i.e It is three in morning and you are roused from sleep by a particularly unpleasant sensation as a nurse tech attempts to start a new IV by working a needle the size of a railway spike(!) between the first two knuckles of your right hand and as the needle glances off bone and cartilage sans vein the tech notices your wide open stare and asks "Oh did I wake you?" And you are overwhelmed with replies all of them Mamet-ian.
I remember one rather idiotic joke that still cracks me up, it is really told for the benefit of the teller. You walk up to someone what follows goes something like this.
"Excuse me, would you ask me if I'm a cheeseburger?"
"Huh?"
"Ask me if I'm a cheeseburger."
"Uh..ok. Are you a cheeseburger?"
"NO!!!"
You say "NO!" with as much vehemence, indignation and outrage as you can muster. The expression on the face of the person you just prevailed on to ask such a dopey question is often priceless and funny as heck. ed by "NO!" and the frightened half step retreat of the questioner and the expression of "good grief what's the matter with this idiot" and then the "Why is everyone laughing at me?"
I take my miniature schnauzer along when I am out running errands. The other day it was too hot to leave him in the car so I brought him with me to my AA meeting. I don't know if the program is working on me but this morning I noticed my pooch making the rounds of the neighborhood, he was telling the other dogs where he had buried their bones.
kerry of inframan
Ebert: I took my parrot, and he started saying, "John Doe wants a cracker."
I did a poor job of editing my earlier posting. Forgot to finish deleting a paragraph that was getting wordy. Sorry. But I only screwed up so Roger wouldn't feel so bad.
kerry of inframan
Ebert: That's okay. I deleted it for you. The first one, right?
"To adapt this joke for any occasion, simply change the identity of the lady."
What lady? All I see is a man, a little guy from the zoo, and a gorilla.
This had me laughing more than the original.
"Listen, buddy. If I fall out of that tree, shoot the gorilla!"
And all this time I thought I was supposed to shoot the dog.
O Christ! This is genious!! Seriously! LOL!! Im crying!!! !!
Re Msr Hackett`s observations re stage height and eye line --- perhaps also it is because a comedian is threatening. s/he threatens to pull one down into his/her pit of revelry, which forces one to respond in a way that is revealing. interesting that canadas biggest comedy fest - just for laughs - occurs on an elevated stage.
one of the problems with my CP is not being able to tell a joke properly. the thing is.. i cant inflect my voice, not for sarcasm or any other reason. although i do a mean Joe cocker impression
a Couple years ago, on the show Last Comic Standing. there was a comic named josh blue who has CP. a friend of mine complained he was doing too much material based on his disability. this stumped me. he explained that bill cosby had a very successful career virtually ignoring race;. i countered that richard pryor build a career exploiting race.
blue went on and won the competition. whether or not he got pity votes i'll let you decide..
Great blog. My favorite Golf Joke: A good man dies, and meets St Peter at the gate. St Peter says, "You've led a good life, but you once said a bad word - I can not let you into heaven" Man says "I can explain. I was playing golf and I hooked my drive into the woods" "Is that when you cursed?" "No - I found the ball, had a clear shot, but I hit into a sand trap" "And then you uttered the obscenity?" "No, I punched a sand wedge 2 feet from the pin"
"AND YOU MISSED THE FUCKIN' PUTT?!"
I am reminded of a large Thanksgiving dinner that came to an awkward silence. My four-year-old cousin was seated next to the tiresome relative with the long jokes and stories that he, and he alone, would laugh his way through. At the end of one she turned and asked the rest of us, "Why is he trying to tell jokes?"
And that joke you told about the Englishman asking to the use the men's room at the cafe had me stumped for some time.
Ebert: I'll try it again.
Guy goes into a French cafe, asks the waiter, "Can you tell me where the men's room is?" Waiter says, "Monsieur! I have only two hands!"
Roger,
I've performed with quite a few of the comics from your pictures when I was doing the open-mic stand up circuit in the SF Bay Area a couple of years ago. It brought back some memories that were great when I killed, and sucked when I died.
I'm a better writer than performer (according to some of the people in your photos, Lynn Ruth Miller can be a riot), and while I think you summarized it perfectly, I thought I'd add a few more tips:
10) What you think is funny may not be what the audience thinks is funny, and it's your job to find out what the audience thinks is funny--During my first year, my act was built on jokes that were intended on shock, thinking that they should get them because they were well-written. It doesn't matter. No matter how well the words are crafted, mothers don't like jokes about children getting kidnapped. Period.
11) Avoid jokes about excrement of all types--Just a personal observation, but nothing kills laughter like a shit joke. They'll laugh all day about farts, but something about the Dirty Deuce justs sits them back.
12) You are always allowed to make fun of yourself.
13) Remember the Rules of Three (from Heather Barbieri of Rooster T Feathers, www.roostertfeathers.com). 13a) Three related jokes is a bit, if you've got a good joke, think of two more and you'll have a full minute and a half of material. 13b) If you have tried a joke three times, and it only worked once, then it is not funny.
14) Never step on a laugh. Sometimes it surprising when they are laughing, take the time to let them start to die off.
15) When you are scared, time moves slower in your perception. Adjust your delivery accordingly. Refer to Rule 14).
16) You will die more than once. Just get up there again.
17) Remember Rule #1.
Ebert: Paddy is taking a dump in the park when the constable comes by. Paddy slaps his hat over the evidence. Constable says, "What d'ya have there, Paddy me boy?" Paddy says, "I trapped a rare brown pigeon." Constable says, "Oh ye did, did ye? I'll see to that." He lifts an edge of the hat, grabs under it, and gets a handful of doody. "Ah, the poor birdie! I broke every bone in his body!"
Q: What did the snail say while riding on a turtle's back?
A: Wheeeee!
Some observations...
Ok. so maybe this is the place to bring up the idea that men are naturally funnier than women - or, to put another way - a funny female stand-up comedian is a rare thing. this is an opinion that i have had through observation: i have yet to laugh at/with a female stand-up comic. now Im sure that there are brilliant female comedy writers and even performers (slapstick ie Lucy, Carol Burnett). so there must be something in the delivery. (of course, this is not to say that all male stand-ups are funny). I think it has to do with *to kill*. THis aggression is a male thing, generally.
A study was done on this by an English prof, somewhere in Wales (this is not a joke). His hypothesis was that men are naturally funnier because of the effects of testosterone. His experiment was to ride a unicycle through a crowded area of a town and note verbal responses. Of the 400 responses, about 200 were men. The females and older men generally responded with encouragement and admiration. The younger men were the most caustic. In fact, he noticed that pre-adolescent males were more likely to respond in physically threatening ways, but, as the ages advanced through adolescence, physical response gave way to verbal abuse. His conclusion was that verbal abuse (which often were attempts at humour - ie wheres the rest of your bike, did you lose a wheel etc) were means of channeling testosterone-driven aggression into more socially acceptable routes. He suggested that a reason for the aggression was that he was attracting favourable attention from the females and thus away from the males. if i can find the link Ill send it along.
so essentially if this experiment and conclusions have merit, men are funnier because they have more practise surviving and manipulating social nonvariables into variables, in ways that do not land them in prison. one will also notice that in the world of comedy there are few (any?) jock types. The skinny, or fat, or just plain non-athletic type, learning he cannot channel aggression via sports is more likely to seek other means and, if clever enough, comedy. The athletic have no need to be funny, and so arent, or their humour will be more primitive, physical, prankish. I think that this process is accurate (that comedians are failed athletes) because aggression in pre-adolesents is generally going to be channeled physically as that is whats most immediate. the mental aggression of the comedian requires sophistication and must be learned and honed through experiment and experience. this is not necessary if the physical outlet is generally successful (good at sports). these are not absolutes, just generalizations that are observable.
Your book "A Kiss Is Just a Kiss" included the comment "You know the only thing better than honor? In her."
I never forgot that, and for the past few years, I've been able to maneuver some conversations with people to include talking about honor -- and then I slip in that comment. All the people either grin or laugh, few of them charitably.
You know who did neither? My mother.
Ebert: Not quite right. John Wayne was asked on location in Mexico what he thought about Nixon's conduct of the Vietnam war. He replied, and I personally heard this, "The President is behaving with honor. And the only thing better than honor...is In her."
Loved the article it was good to see a pic of my friend Tapan. As a stand up comic myself it bothers me that the general public perceives what we do to be easy, when in actuality it takes allot of humiliation, pain and work to just get a good 15 min routine. And one guy above me jacked Mitch Hedberg jokes without crediting him unlike the second guy who did the right thing him credit. Remember every time you take credit for a dead comic's jokes somewhere in the world a unicorn cries.
Ebert: The world must be littered with unicorns weeping because of me. The horror! The horror!
here is the link to humour study
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7153584.stm
A guy goes into a bar with a pet alligator by his side. He hoists his alligator up on the bar, turns to the bar’s patrons and says, "Ladies and gents, let me make you an offer. I will open this alligator's mouth and put my private parts inside. Then gator here will close his mouth for one minute. After that, he will open his mouth, and I will remove myself unscathed."
"And in return for being such a daredevil, each of you will buy me a drink." The crowd murmurs its approval.
The man stands up on the bar, drops his pants, and places his unit in the alligator's open mouth. The gator closes his mouth and a loud gasp emerges from the crowd.
After one minute, the man, grabbing a beer bottle, raps the gator hard on the top of it's head. The alligator opens his mouth, after which the man removes himself completely unscathed as promised. The crowd cheers and the first of his free drinks is delivered.
The man stands up once again making another offer, "I will pay $100 to anyone who is willing to give it a try."
A hush falls over the crowd. After a short pause, a hand rises up in the back of the bar. A blonde timidly says, "I'll try it, but only if you promise not to hit me on the head with the beer bottle."
Some jokes, if you tell them fast enough, they don't need to make sense or be hilarious. In college, this was my eight second joke:
Guy walks into a hardware store, says, Can I have a number 10 bolt?
Clerk says, Sure, you want a screw for that?
Guy says, No, but I'll blow you for that clock radio.
Another odd variety is the joke that takes everyone a beat to get. I tell this one and then count to three before the smile:
Termite walks into a bar, says, Is the bar tender here?
(...two, three...)
-=-Joe
I hope you realise, Roger, that you've just opened the floodgates; you've just invited thousands of faceless people to share their jokes with you. If any blog will push your 'read every comment' policy to breaking point, it will surely be this one.
Which reminds me of the time little Johnny lost his mummie in the supermarket and a security guard came to help him.
'I've lost my mother!' the boy cries.
'That's OK son, we'll find her. What's she like?'
'Cock and bingo mainly.'
Sincerest apologies.
I call RECYCLED JOKE! I recall it originally as "Did ya hear Jim Nabors died? Yeah, they found him face-down on the Hudson."
I remember this one from my childhood 25 years ago. Why on earth haven't I forgotten it?
"Mom, is it true people turn to dust when they die?"
"Yes, honey."
"Then someone died under my bed."
"Good artists copy; great artists steal."
"A man walked into a bar.. And it hurt."
I'm just an extra. I overheard Mark Ruffalo, who by the way is the nicest actor I've been around, on the set of "Zodiac." I don't know where he got this one from, but I overheard him say it between takes.
He started with:
"So, this skeleton walks out of a bar holding a can of beer and a mop..."
While the other was waiting for the punchline, Mark bent over slightly, clutched his ribs, and, like a little boy, said "Hee hee hee."
After reading through this entry, it reminded me how much I always wanted to be a wonderful teller of jokes. Many of my family members were quite adept and could spend an entire evening trading their comic offerings. And while I received many of their other genetic hand-me-downs, this skill was not among them. Joke-telling not only sidestepped me, it flipped me the bird while doing so. I’ve ruined more punch lines than the sum total of every drunk uncle at every wedding since the dawn of time. Eventually I gave up trying altogether and focused on being sarcastic and irritating which I seem much better equipped for.
Regardless of our individual abilities, everyone can enjoy a good old-fashioned knee-slapper when told by someone who knows what they’re doing. Sadly, there are few who perform this style of comedy anymore. The only current stand-up who comes close to the tried and true one-liner is Steven Wright. Even though his delivery could best be described as relaxed bordering on comatose, he is succinct and minimalistic in his approach.
~ I was walking down the street and the prescription in my glasses ran out
~ Everywhere is walking distance if you have the time
~ The cost of living hasn’t affected its popularity
~ Photons have mass? I didn't even know they were Catholic
~ I have an existential map. It has “You Are Here” written all over it
p.s. Very impressive list of rules, Mr. E. Here are 2 others that are favourites of mine:
1) I believe there was a consensus among Sid Caesar’s writers that the funniest number was thirty-two. I don’t exactly know why, but honestly…who could argue?
2) The penultimate rule of all time from Neil Simon’s Sunshine Boys – words with a “K” are funny. ‘Alka-Seltzer is funny. Chicken is funny. Pickle is funny…L’s are not funny’ For additional confirmation, look no further than Bugs Bunny who knew the Coachella Carrot Festival and trains arriving from Cucamonga were always good for a few laughs.
Ebert:
~ Autofellatio is its own reward ~
This my favorite blog entry.
A lot of times when I'm reading what you write (mostly reviews, or other articles too) I'm laughing or grinning (or trying not to) til the end.
I'm going to tell a joke off the top of my head.
Here get on and I'll tell you: "Get your worthless ass off my head."
I'm glad somebody besides me thought of the penguin joke. Garrison Keillor botched that one on a broadcast of Prairie Home, and since then it's been a running gag, even to the point of being included in the Prairie Home Companion movie. In that film, there's a scene where the angel of death is talking to GK and telling him that she was listening to that particular broadcast when she died (she was laughing at the joke so hard that she lost control of her car and crashed, and as the car rolled over it occurred to her that the joke just wasn't that funny). She asks GK to tell her the joke again.
"That's it?" she says when he finishes.
"Yes," he says.
"That's the joke?"
"Why is that funny?"
"I suppose it's funny because people laugh at it."
"I'm not laughing."
That joke is one of my favorites even though I can't see a single reason for why it should be amusing at all. Perhaps because it's such a weird twist? I don't know; there's a light bulb joke about surrealists that has a much weirder twist, yet people get it (Q. How many surrealists does it take to change a light bulb? A. Fish). The penguin joke seems to hover in some middle ground between funny and unfunny. Most people I've told it to don't get it/roll their eyes/think I'm utterly insane.
Shaggy dog stories break the law of brevity, and they're not for everyone simply because they are so long yet have such oblique punchlines. However, a liking for them seems to run in my family. There may be an optimum formula for typical jokes, i.e. the rules cited by Roger, but it seems to me that there are parallel universes for jokes where different rules hold true.
I might be wrong but if I remember The Aristocrats correctly, Lisa Lampanelli was the one who observed that comedians never actually tell "jokes". She also said something to the effect of "the moment you start telling jokes, you are through".
Here's something odd about Jewish humor. I got a book of Jewish jokes and found them to be absolutely hilarious, incredible stuff, but was met with mild chuckles and faint smiles when I tried to share them with others. The reaction I got was "Well, they are pretty clever but not rolling-on-the-floor-my-sides-hurt-from-laughing funny".
I lent the book to a Russian Jewish acquaintance and he and his wife loved it. They read the whole 300 page volume straight through and laughed for hours.
Some things just don't translate, do they?
to levin: make sure you credit mitch hedberg on those jokes. he was very underrated and underappreciated, as is stephen wright.
to roger: i remember another post in which you debated someone who ended the "second opinion" joke with, "okay, you're ugly too." you told him to cut that last word, but rodney dangerfield also added "too" at the end.
you know a joke is great when you're standing in line at the supermarket, you think about the joke, and you start snickering with that supressed laughter that squeaks out of your nose, and then you have to cough and pretend you were clearing your throat or something.
Writer Norman Cousins felt that laughter was literally the best medicine. He suffered from various painful ailments. It was the Marx Brothers that seemed to do the trick for him. This quote is from Wikipedia: "I made the joyous discovery that ten minutes of genuine belly laughter had an anesthetic effect and would give me at least two hours of pain-free sleep," he reported. "When the pain-killing effect of the laughter wore off, we would switch on the motion picture projector again and not infrequently, it would lead to another pain-free interval."
I wanted to re-type my joke:
I'm going to tell a joke off the top of my head.
Here get on and I'll you to get your worthless ass off the top of my head.
There are endless ways, I now realize for the punchline. You could also say "How's your balance?"
Whatever I imagine Don Rickles telling it the best. He's a genius.
I can't believe you didn't, to paraphrase Twain, kill the frog; good, funny, solid rules and regulations for the teling of the joke.
I only tell one joke, and it seems seasonally appropriate to share it; ideally, it should be told in as broad an Oirish accent as possible. And it's long -- violating one of the rules -- but that's in part the payoff:
"Three Irishmen die in a house fire -- which happens -- and they get to Heaven -- only to find the Gates of Heaven are locked and chained up, with St. Peter standing out front tapping a baseball bat against his palm.
"Alright, some of you lads are not exactly the best Christians we've had, so now there's test. One question; get it right, entrance to Heaven's delights and God's love; wrong, eternal torment in the grip of Satan in Hell. You -- Seamus McGarvey -- what do we mean by, what do we celebrate on, what do we mean by celebrating on Easter?"
Seamus steps up: "Well, St. Peter, Easter's the holiday where we celebrate the comin' of the Pilgrims to America; we eat turkey and then watch the Yank football."
St. Peter says 'That is NOT Easter; that's Thanksgiving!"
WHOOOSH! Pillar of flame envelops Seamus. Down to Hell, eternal torment, screaming the screams of the damned as he goes.
St. Peter looks at the second one. "Michael O'Herily: what do we mean by, what do we celebrate on, what do we mean by celebrating on Easter?"
Michael steps up, cap in hand: "Well, St. Peter, Easter's the holiday where we celebrate our pagan roots for the Fall solstice; the little ones dress up like ghosts and goblins and go trick-or-treating ..."
St. Peter says 'That is NOT Easter; that's Halloween!"
WHOOOSH! Pillar of Flame envelops Michael. Down to Hell, eternal torment, screaming the screams of the damned as he goes.
St Peter looks at the last man: "ONE QUESTION! Get it Right, Paradise! Get it wrong, Damnation! Good God, lad, you get this right, I'll being your friends back for restoring my faith! Peter O'Reily, what do we mean by, what do we celebrate on, what do we mean by celebrating on Easter?"
Peter O'Reily steps forward and speaks in a low, clear voice: "Wellll, St Peter: When Jesus Christ died for our sins on the cross, his followers took Him down from the cross, wrapped Him in a shroud, laid Him to rest in a cave and rolled a stone over the mouth of the cave. But three days after His death, St. Peter -- On the day that we call Easter -- He rose from the dead; He tore off that shroud; He rolled back the stone at the mouth of the cave and He stepped into the sunlight, and if He sees His shadow, it's another six weeks of Winter. ..." "
Maybe it works better when it's said out loud,
James.
Many people have come of late to the misgiven idea that comedy is somehow more relative than other modes of communication. This has led to the idea that comedy is not an art form, and further to the plague of "funny because they're not funny" or "funny because they're unprepared" comedians of the Ben Stiller school. (That said, I really liked TROPIC THUNDER.)
But I contend that comedy need be as steely as any other art form, and that the "jam band" mentality ("Just get up there and try, dude!") has led to a lot of watery humor lately. The Marx Brothers shouldn't be 100 times funnier than SOUTH PARK, but they are... and from that we could graph the decline of Western civilization.
Comedy is no more relative than tragedy. But some idiots will laugh or cry at anything.
And, as a bonus along with that pearl, I've got a good bit of papal humor for you:
The Pope is sick. His doctor, the best in the land, comes to give him some grim news.
"Pontiff, you're dying," he says.
"But my flock," the Pope says, "What will they do without me? They need me."
"Well," says the doctor, "there is one thing, but it goes against everything you stand for. You would have to make love to a woman. That would clear you right up."
The pope winces, the weight of morality upon him. Finally, he speaks: "For my people, yes, I will do this thing that goes against my very being."
"Fine, your holy," the doctor says, "I shall arrange it."
As he heads out of the room, the pope calls after him.
"Oh, and one more thing, my loyal servant?"
"Yes, pontiff?"
"Make sure she has huge tits!"
Favorite joke (as told by uncle Junior in "The Sopranos"):
Chinese man goes to the optometrist, says he has problems with his vision. Doctor runs a bunch of tests on him and says "I think I know what your problem is - you have a cataract."
Chinese guy looks confused: "Cadarac? No, me dlive Rincoln Continentah"
So is that offensive in spite of being funny? Or is it not even funny?
Also: Guy is lying in bed at night, woken up by a someone outside yelling "Help, I need a push!" He rolls over and tries to go back to sleep. Ten minutes later "Hey, I need a push" and again 5 minutes after that. Guy gets out of bed and goes out into the dark to help. "I can't see - Where are you?"
"Over here on the swing"
but I am curious as to your opinion on the chinese guy joke...it is 2009, and I dont want to be telling a stupid "racist" joke just because it makes me laugh a bit...
A grasshopper walks into a bar. The bartender points at him and says "Hey, you're a grasshopper! We've got a drink named after you!" And the grasshopper says "Oh yeah? You got a drink called Leonard?"
I learned this joke when I was thirteen. I still think it kills. Twice I've seen it used in some crummy film I can't remember, and in each case the joke was ruined by changing the proper-name in the punchline to something far less funny (in one case, "Steve"; the other I can't even recall).
You left out one thing, Mr. Ebert:
Comedian: So, Roger, you want to know the secret of being a great comedian? Just ask me.
Roger: What's the sec-
Comedian: Timing.
(and yes, that joke is much funner spoken rather than written)
Roger,
Buddy Hackett told a "clean" joke to Johnny Carson one night and got a big laugh. Johnny then asked him to tell it AGAIN. Buddy told the joke again and STILL got a big laugh. He was a genius. Can you find that clip?
Richard
When you're talking about delivery, no one comes to mind more than Stephen Wright. He does the Dangerfield-style one-liners, except...unlike Dangerfield's, they're not funny on paper, or in anyone else's hands.
But something about his bizarre deadpan delivery is absolutely hysterical; it's like if someone made a deal with the devil so that their comedy would be hilarious no matter what, and then just didn't even have to try anymore. I've never laughed so hard at any comedian as him.
"How do you get an Illini cheerleader into an elevator?"
"Grease her hips and throw in a twinkie."
Ebert: "How do you get a Michigan graduate a job?"
"First, get him a college education. .
The lowest form of humor... is the Chuck Norris joke.
(1) There is no theory of evolution, just a list of creatures Chuck Norris allows to live.
(2) Charles Darwin based his "survival of the fittest" theory on Chuck Norris.
(3) “Godzilla” is Japanese for Chuck Norris.
(4) Chuck Norris thinks "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" is a chick flick.
(5) Chuck Norris once kicked a McDonald's so hard that it became a Wendy's.
(6) Chuck Norris can strangle you with a cordless phone.
(7) An iceberg didn’t sink the Titanic. Chuck Norris was taking a late-night swim and the ship got in his way.
(8) The Bible says that Mary was a virgin. Chuck Norris has a polaroid that proves otherwise.
(9) Chuck Norris was born in a log cabin, which he built himself.
(10) Chuck Norris frequently donates blood to the Red Cross. Just never his own.
(11) Chuck Norris does not sleep. He waits.
Yo le habría dicho eso a usted, Reed. ;)
Steven Spielberg was discussing his new project - an action docudrama about famous composers starring top movie stars.
Sylvester Stallone, Robert De Niro, Bruce Willis, and Arnold Schwarzenegger were all present.
Spielberg thought the performaces would be best if the actors played someone they knew and admired.
“Well,” started Stallone, “I’ve always admired Mozart. I would love to play him.”
“Chopin has always been my favorite, and my image would improve if people saw me playing the piano,” said Willis. “I’ll play him.”
“I’ve always been partial to La traviata,” said De Niro. “I’d like to be Giuseppe Verdi."
Spielberg was very pleased with these choices. “Sounds splendid.”
Then, looking at Schwarzenegger, he asked, “Who do you want to be, Arnold?”
So Arnold says, “I’ll be Bach.”
Re: Ebert: Paddy is taking a dump in the park when the constable comes by. Paddy slaps his hat over the evidence. Constable says, "What d'ya have there, Paddy me boy?" Paddy says, "I trapped a rare brown pigeon." Constable says, "Oh ye did, did ye? I'll see to that." He lifts an edge of the hat, grabs under it, and gets a handful of doody. "Ah, the poor birdie! I broke every bone in his body!"
That's a good one, and would kill at the party, but it takes a special performer to pull that one off on stage.
One joke I tried three times (and worked once) was a filler between bits.
Furrow brow, grunt, grunt harder, and finally forcefully exhale while smiling and exclaim
"Damn I LOVE these adult diapers!"
Mr. Ebert - Love your blog and reviews. You're one of the few film critics I trust... This was another great post and I was just thinking the whole time I read it, that I would love to see you write a book about your thoughts and philosophies of art... just a thought.
Hope all is well.
best,
Tyler
I was brought up in an Irish family who loved humor above most anything else. So I always thought I could "get" any joke I heard. Until a friend asked me "Did you hear about the Plastic Surgeon that hung himself", breaking up with laughter. No, no, I don't get it. Tell me. But he wouldn't. It took reading a Jackie Susann book and when I read the sentence, I got a great laugh out of this old joke!
By the way, I was practicing your rules, and doing OK with my favorite old joke, and then You had the audacity to "give it away" at the end. The duck/pig story is one of the best it my book and anybody will "get it".
Cheers,
Jo
Yo le podría haber dicho eso a usted, Reed. ;)
Roger, if you have a heart, you'll delete my first attempt at recalling correct high school Spanish (in which case, you could un-bold the podría, also).
:(
Which brings to mind..."She offered her honor; he honored her offer, and all night, it was on her and off her."
I have annoyed everyone in my family by telling this joke over and over. I heard someone else try to tell it once, and they broke rules #1 and #5 - and nobody got it.
An American, an Frenchman, and a Mexican are all trying to woo the same woman. She gives them a challenge - come up with the best sentence that uses the words 'liver' and 'cheese.'
The American thinks this is silly, and simply says "I like cheese, but not liver." The Frenchman, in his most seductive voice says "I will prepare you a fine meal with liver pate and aged cheddar cheese" The Mexican says "Liver alone, cheese mine!"
Like many jokes, you know from the setup that something is coming, but if told smoothly (Rule #1) it works. If you stumble and fumble for words, people get distracted trying to figure out why liver and cheese? And it is a rare case where anyone can do the accent - you will almost unconsciously say it right.
Three little old ladies are sitting on a park bench.
A man runs up and flashes them.
the first little old lady has a stroke.
The second little old lady has a stroke.
the third little old lady couldn't reach.
I think that satisfies the rules!
Roger, Roger, Roger, you've already told this joke:
A guy goes in to a psychiatrist.
Psychiatrist says, "You're crazy!"
Guy says, "I want a second opinion!"
"All right--you're ugly!
And you got it wrong the first time. You're missing a word at the end that's necessary for the rhythm:
A guy goes in to a psychiatrist.
Psychiatrist says, "You're crazy!"
Guy says, "I want a second opinion!"
"All right--you're ugly, too!"
You've got to have the "too" in there or the joke isn't as funny. Conduct a seance and ask Buddy. Or call Freddy Roman--he's still around.
Ebert: I like my way better. Don't step on the punch word.
A joke for sad people:
knock knock
who's there?
mark
mark who?
mark loves you.
This one only works when spoken aloud:
A termite walks into a bar and says "Hey, where's the bar tender?"
Excellent entry! I happen to be a reprehensible joke teller. I get too nervous and always rush it. I do, however, compose my own Knock Knock jokes for my four year-old daughter. She takes issue with my delivery, but is sweet enough to humor me:
Knock, knock.
Who's there?
The.
The who?
No, The Rolling Stones.
(this one elicits no response from my daughter)
Knock, knock.
Who's there?
pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.
(this one elicits the lovingly frustrated, "Daaaaad!")
Knock, knock.
Who's there?
Bob.
Bob who?
Peterson.
(this one sends her into fits of maniacal glee)
Knock, knock.
Who's there?
Smell mash.
Smell mash who?
Yuck! Smell your shoe!?
(the more explicit version is "Smell map" which I did not invent)
P.S. Though it wasn't one of your ten rules, you mention that smirkiness indicates smug satisfaction--a deadly comic persona. I think that Norm MacDonald is one of the funniest working comedians, and smirkiness is essential to his act. But yes, he's an anomaly.
Patient to shrink:Doctor, my memory is gone,I can't remember a thing.
Doctor: Since when do you have this problem?
Patient: What problem?
Re: Scott's comment about women not being funny...and that study, which I suspect is really obscure humour.
Women and men have different types of humour. Heinlein touched on this in Stranger in a Strange Land. A female stand-up comedian will often not be funny to a man, but will leave other women gasping for breath. As for the professor in Wales, the unicycle is a distinctly male type of humour. Most women would probably just look on him as weird.
I do remember seeing one female comedian who cracked me up. She talked about being "late". On day 35 she went to a deli and ordered a sandwich for lunch. The guy behind the counter asked her if she wanted a pickle. She asked him, "Why?"
By day 40, it's like playing roulette. "C'mon, red 28!"
I thought it was funny...
Of course, I also thought Billy Connoly's joke about the sky-diver was hilarious.
When I was in middle school, telling a dirty joke was kind of like a rite of passage. You were still "just a kid" unless you could tell someone a dirty joke that they didn't know. In 7th grade, some guy told me a joke about male enhancement surgery, but took way too long to tell it, describing the man, the doctors, the appointment, procedure, recovery period, etc. I condensed the joke to a few simple sentences and told it in gym class the next day:
This guy's just recovered from an experimental surgery where doctors plant the trunk of a specially bred baby elephant into his penis. Ready for some action, he heads to a bar and starts to chat up the barmaid. But just as he starts to get excited, his dick springs out of his pants, snatches a trunkful of peanuts out of the bowl in front of him, and darts back under the table.
The barmaid says, "Want to show me what else you can do with that thing?"
The guy says, "Sure. Just let me get these peanuts out of my ass."
Mr. Ebert, love our insight as always. What about those comedians who walk on the razor's edge all the time? I recall some things people like Jeffrey Ross and Lisa Lampanelli do in roasts... Jeff Ross performance in the Emmitt Smith roast (easy to find in youtube if somebody wants to) is so much funny as it is an act of courage... your thoughts about the so-called "insult comics"?
1. A xxx was drawing money from ATM. The xxx behind
him in the line said,
"Ha! Ha! Haaa! I`ve seen ur password.
Its 4 asterisks(****).
The first xxx replies, " Ha! Ha! Ha! Fooled you again.
Its 1258."
2. xxx enters kitchen and opens the sugar box. Looks
inside and closes it.
Wife observes the whole episode
Again he comes and does the same .
Wife : Why are you doing this?
xxx replies:The Doc told to check sugar level regularly
3. xxx was walking on the road and paused to read the graffiti on the wall. It read "Padne waala gadha."(one who reads it is an ass.) xxx thought for an hour, erased it and wrote back,"Likhne waala gadha."(One who wrote it is an ass).
4.There was once a competition involving three gruelling tests. The participants had to do the following in immediate succession:
a.) Drink five bottles of hard whiskey in one go
b) Enter a room where there was a starving lion and pluck out its eyes with bare hands.
c) And then screw a very horny babe to her full satisfaction.
Many people bravely tried their hands (or should I say mouths) at it. Few could get beyond the first stage. And the inebriated few who managed it, got promptly eaten up by the starving lion. There was none who could read the third stage.
And then, one fine day, a nonchalant xxx walked into the contest. Five bottles of whiskey were nothing for him. He emptied five bottles in five gulps. Then he said, "We're fine,now where is the lion?." When shown the room, he coolly walked in. There was no hint of fear on his face, but rather the cool confidence of a person who knew he could do it.
Sounds of a mammoth fight came from the room. Screams of the Sardar and growls of the lion were intermingled. Thumps and thuds which shook the very earth ensued. All of a sudden there was a piercing, heart-rending roar from the Lion. The audience waited with bated breath, their hair stood on end. And then, as suddenly as it had begun, the titanic roar stopped. An eerie silence prevailed.
As the audience watched, with eyes popping out, the door of the room opened, and out came the xxx. Badly bruised, with blood streaming from his face, hands and legs, he stumbled out - victorious, nevertheless. His face had the glow of satisfaction of an emperor who had just won a battle.
And then he asked, "Where is the woman whose eyes I have to pluck out?"
5.xxx news channel gets news that 100 xxx s are killed in a train accident at
xxx station. Only one left alive. The correspondent goes to
himand asks, "Sir how did it happen?"
xxx: "All these guys were waiting for the train when there is an announcement the train is coming on the platform in two minutes. Naturally to save their lives they jump on to the track."
Correspondent: "Thank god. Thank God you were smart enough to stay on the track. "
XXX: "No no unlucky me! I was here to end my life and was lying on the track. And this damn announcement and I jump to the platform."
Variation of the penguin joke that I find much funnier:
Two penguins are standing on an iceburg.
One says, "Nice tuxedo."
Other says, "Go fuck yourself."
How about a joke by Ingmar Bergman?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmA7MkAjOiA
Ah, but Mark Twain proved in "How to Tell a Story" that it sometimes can be hilariously funny to break Rule #1! I think that's the story in which he posits that a clumsy joketeller who forgets all the lines can - if the product of canny genius rather than simple idiocy - be even funnier than a straight-up joke. Nevertheless, a lovely post ~ thanks.
And Roger, since you liked the angry rooster and lawyer joke:
What's the difference between an oyster gatherer with epilepsy and a prostitute with diarrhea? One of them shucks between fits...
Ebert: A sharpshooter and a constipated owl? One shoots to hit...
What's the complete joke from "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore?"
Ebert: That's it. The gorilla joke.
A good one if you ever find yourself in a mental hospital: "Doctor I have Asperger's syndrome - I've got burgers up my ass."
I would marry Janeane Garofalo even though she's twenty years older than me and has tattoos on her arms. Ellen Page is kind of like her mini-me.
Do jokes constitute intellectual property? Can you copyright them?
Have there been legal actions where this was an issue? I guess the answers may be yes.
Great article! I've been a fan of the Joke Economy theory since I read your review on The Aristocrats way back in 2005. The joke manglers at parties are great at getting you down, but if you ever run into one in your group, you can always tell this one when they leave:
A guy is touring a prison. An inmate shouts "45!" and the rest all laugh. Another one shouts "57!" and they all laugh again.
Guy asks the warden "What's with the numbers?"
Warden says "They've heard the jokes so many times, they just give em numbers to save time telling em."
Guy shouts "28!" and the whole place goes silent.
The warden looks at him and says "Some people just can't tell a joke."
Mr. Ebert, I've been reading your reviews since I started reading newspapers, at around age 12, and have been a fan of your blogs ever since I worked graveyard shifts at a cement plant. There's not a lot to do before 3:00 AM, so I would always check out your website. Anyways, here's one of my favorites...
An Irish guy, an African guy and an Englishman are all waiting in the maternity ward of a hospital. All of their wives are in labour. They're all nervous, pacing back and forth, when suddenly, the doors burst open at the end of the room. A doctor comes rushing in and announces that their wives have all given birth to healthy baby boys. And what's more, they all delivered within moments of each other. The only problem, the doctor says, is that the hospital staff are having trouble figuring out to whom each baby belongs, so would they please come along and help identify them?
Without another word, the Irish guy elbows past the other two fathers and races down the hallway. When the other man catch up to him, he is cradling a little newborn black child in his arms. "Ah, to be sure, this child here is mine, me own flesh and blood".
"Really?" says the doctor, "because of the three children here, I wouldn't have thought he'd be yours".
"Yes", says the Irishman, "but one of the other two is English and I ain't taking the chance"!
Kid walks up to his dad: "Dad, what's a 69?"
The father gives him the facts. No detail is spared.
Kid starts crying:
"Look, a 65 is a C, a 70 is a B. What is a 69?"
(Curious question: when any of you read that joke, did you picture the dad in a wingback chair reading the paper? I always do)
Pursuant to rules 1, 2, 4, 5, 6 & 8:
A priest, a minister and a rabbi walk into a bar. The bartender says, "Is this a joke?"
The other ending to the prison joke is this:
Another prisoner shouts "352!" and the whole place explodes in uproarious laughter.
The guy says to the warden, "That 352 must be a really good one!"
The warden looks at him and says "Not really; they just haven't heard it before."
This penguin brings his car to the shop and asks the mechanic to check the motor. While the mechanic works on the car, the penguin goes for some ice cream, but having short wings, makes a mess with the ice cream all over himself.
He then returns to the shop and the mechanic says: "Looks like you blew a seal" -"Oh, no, no, this is ice cream!"
Two things here. First, why is the punchline of "the aristocrats" supposed to be funny? Do I just not find it funny because in America I don't hear about important aristocrats and their scandals? Is that what the joke is? Or did it start out as a real joke about the scandals of aristocrats and then evolve into an in-joke for comedians?
First-and-a-half, I did not remember Gilbert Gottfried that joke at the Hugh Hefner roast. What I do remember is his brilliant intro. "Ice-T basically did my routine already, but I'm gonna do it anyway! You white motherf---ers! And I'm gonna f--- some white bitches!"
Second, your rules for jokes discount the proud tradition of the shaggy dog story, with a lengthy and elaborate build-up that creates maximum anticipation and a punchline that lets all the air out of the joke. The humor comes from the fact that you invested so much interest in something that turned out to be nothing at all. Should I regale you with the story of The Purple Wombat? Nah, I'll do The Gloop Maker instead.
Not enough science jokes.
Geologist Joe: Centrifuging the sample yielded a basaltic component.
Geologist Moe: My sediments exactly.
Astrophysicist Bill: I violated spacetime by traversing the Swartzchild radius.
Astrophysicist Phil: Back atcha.
Particle physicist Brenda: How can you tell if a cow likes to party?
Particle physicist Glenda: She's got her Muon?
Particle physicist Brenda: Close. She LEPTON over the Muon.
You can Tell a Black Hole Joke, but you can't Sing Ularity.
**********
Erratum: It should have been spelled i-n-a-d-v-e-r-t-E-n-t-l-y. I regret the error.
A dyslexic guy walks into a bra...
Two professors are at a nudist beach.
One says to the other: "Have you read Marx?"
The other replies: "Yeah -- I think it's the wicker chairs."
A man takes his dog to the cinema to see War and Peace. The audience is amazed to see the dog and his reactions to the film. When Natasha faces dire straits, the dog howls, and when things go well, he barks and wags his tail. After the film ends, a woman comes up to the dog's owner and says: "Wow, your dog's reactions were amazing!" The man replies: 'I'm surprised, too. He hated the book.'"
Q: What's black and white and eats like a horse?
A: A zebra.
A door to door salesman knocks on a door.
A boy about eight years old answers, dressed in stockings and suspenders, with a fat cigar in one hand and a large glass of red wine in the other.
"Is your mum in, son?" says the salesman.
The boy replies, "Does it f***ing look like it?"
Q: What did the German watchmaker say to a broken watch?
A: Ve have vays of making you tock.
Outstanding thread!
But related to your point of a joke requiring precisely the right words, earlier in the thread someone quoted a Mitch Hedberg line about tennis (A) but it just didn't sound right. A little googling and youtubing and... presto! Found the right version (B).
A: "The depressing thing about tennis is that no matter how good I get, I’ll never be as good as a wall."
B: "The thing about tennis is: no matter how much I play, I'll never be as good as a wall. I played a wall once. They're fucking relentless."
See what I mean?
A = conceptually humorous
B = funny
Keep blogging Roger.
That's an order.
Snail: "I want you to paint the letter S all over my car"
Autobody guy: "Why would you want me to do that?"
Snail: "'Cause when I drive by, I want people to say "Look at the 'S' car go!""
I have a recollection of an Esquire magazine article back in the late '70s that listed intrinsically funny words. There were, as I dimly recall, quite a few of them--50?--but the three that stay with me are "penguin," "elbow," and "macaroni"--only because I imagined the World's Funniest Joke (not Deadliest, à la Monty Python) would somehow involve a penguin eating elbow macaroni. Thirty years later, and nothing has occurred to me. Any suggestions?
Ebert: Califlower cracks me up.
SM Rana - You should check out the most recent South Park episode legally available online at South Park Studios for an answer to your query. I have a feeling Parker and Stone had a bone to pick with Carlos Mencia.
My favorite kind of joke violates four of your rules, which is why they should only be told by experts: Pat and Mike jokes. In general, the longer, more elaborate, more ethnically offensive and told with the broader accent the better. They should be so long in the telling that by the time you get to the punchline, everyone at the party will have drifted over to hear.
Here's a short version of my favorite one:
Seems Pat and Mike, blessedly unburdened with gainful employment, are walking down the road. They are deep in their cups and deeper in argument. They come to a convent. Mikes says, "Ah, Pat, I think I can settle our argument."
He leaves Pat on the road, walks to the convent door and knocks. The mother superior answers.
"Mother, could ya tell me, are there any leprachuan nuns?"
"No, my son, there are no leprachuan nuns."
"Are ya certain? In all the convents in all the world, there are no leprachuan nuns?"
"Away with ye, ye daft man. There are no such thing as leprachuans, so of course there are no leprachuan nuns."
And she slams the door. Mike makes his way back to the road where his friend waits.
"Patty, me boy, it's bad news. You've been fucking a penguin."
Steven Wright (sorry Steve) passes away and arrives at the pearly gates where he finds Mitch Hedberg seated outside on a celestial stone wall.
Mitch: Guess what?
Stephen: What?
Mitch: That's what I've been trying to do!!!
Everybody needs money. That's why they call it money.
Still works for me.
Ebert: Many readers objected to my belief that the line was funny. I don't understand why.
The world's most economic joke has only four words (five if you want to be properly grammatical). It appears in the Farrelly brothers' Kingpin, and is the only example I know of a genuine one-liner (most one-liners being two-liners).
The scene: Woody Harrelson stands at a bar, very much alone. He turns to the space next to him and yells "WHO YOU CALLING 'PSYCHO'?!"
Mr. Ebert: A Califlower joke from the greatest set in recent stand-up history!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLllujNEs88
Ow. Number 9. Ow.
The joke-teller in my head must have been really good, because I fell down. Oh, a new joke is always priceless, thank you for that gift :)
Going to start in on your commentary on Dark City soon, Roger, now that I've finally seen the beautiful director's cut. I just wish I'd seen THAT version instead of the one I saw in the theater. Oh well, it's not like I can un-see a picture, not until they invent those brain syringes.
Nor can I un-hear a joke, but if I had to laugh as hard as I was laughing a few minutes ago, I'd die.
For a bit of an English bias, this from the great English comic writer (meaning writer for comedians) Dennis Norden:
A man goes into a pharmacist "Have you got something for acute laryngitis?"
The pharmacist: "Can I help you?"
And from Bob Monkhouse:
I want to die peacefully in my sleep, like may father.
Not screaming in fear like his passengers.
Did you hear about the movie they're making about the classical composers?
Schwarzenegger called up and said "I'll be Bach".
A classic example of a joke that must be delivered completely poker-faced. I've fooled many friends into believing that an actual movie about classical composers was being made only to spring that on them.
I eventually figured out that people enjoy jokes that reinforce their sense that they're sophisticated and intelligent. For example, a comedian might be telling a joke about a really dumb guy. If he said during the joke, "we're talking a really stupid guy here!", that isn't funny. But if he says sarcastically, "We're talking a real Stephen freakin' Hawking!, now THAT'S funny. It's funny because of the pact between the comedian and the audience that asserts something along the lines of, "I'll tell this joke which gives you credit for being able to make the mental leap of knowing who Stephen Hawking is, and you'll laugh because I made you feel good about your intelligence." I think so many jokes depend on that pact. Thanks for the great post.
Ebert: But Stephen Hawking is smart. I'm missing something.
Great post. I write television comedy for a living and the word I use most when discussing the art of the joke is specificity... the specificity of the language; the precision in the placement of words. There is nothing more frustrating for a room full of TV writers than to agonize over the placement of every verb, noun and preposition, only to have the actor on the floor treat the script as a rough approximation of what they might maybe say in the scene, should the mood strike.
A recent example (all names changed)...
The script is basically this: Two guys in an office. They need a plan.
BOB: Do you have a plan?
JOE: (STROKING CHIN, THINKING) Maybe I do, Bob... Maybe I do.
(LONG BEAT)
BOB: Well do you?
JOE: (QUICKLY) Yes.
Okay, not a great joke. Not even a joke per se, but a little riff on the old sitcom cliche of someone stroking their chin and saying "Maybe I do, Billy. Maybe I do."
Except that the actor doesn't say that. He says this:
BOB: Do you have a plan?
JOE: Maybe I do... Maybe I do, Bob.
That's right. He puts Bob's name at the end, not the middle. Is it just me or is that, like, 500% less funny? Unfortunately I wasn't on the floor at the time, and he did this in every single take, so that's what aired. Sigh.
Ebert: People with a tin ear can't do comedy.
I tell my wife in bed: will you at least just hold it" and she said "It Is on hold."
So I said to my wife: "Baby, I am so hot to trot" and she says "Here's your jogging shoes."
So, I says: "Boy, am I a green-eyed monster." And she says "You're the one who fucked Gung Ho."
Ebert: I am beginning to understand why a woman once told me that most women regard dirty jokes as a cow regards a slaughterhouse.
By JMW on April 13, 2009 9:55 PM
Re: Scott's comment about women not being funny...and that study, which I suspect is really obscure humour.
Women and men have different types of humour. Heinlein touched on this in Stranger in a Strange Land. A female stand-up comedian will often not be funny to a man, but will leave other women gasping for breath. As for the professor in Wales, the unicycle is a distinctly male type of humour. Most women would probably just look on him as weird.
I dont think the unicycle is humourous. If one is simply using it as transportation. I think its value in this case is that it is unusual, though not overtly so, and therefore attracts attention without appearing so. If a women rode a unicycle would she receive the same response from men as the prof did? Not likely. This ought to have been the 2nd part of the experiment. The female unicyclist would not represent a threat to the men, and would likely receive treatment from men similar to what the prof received from women: some sarcasm, but mainly respect.
Ebert: I have noticed that when a woman can really tell jokes, men love it. Women too. Many women fail because they don't go in for the kill. I would love a Dangerfield routine from a woman.
Some who can: Phyliss Diller, Moms Mabley, Joan Rivers.
Rivers: "Honey, if he wants that ring in the settlement, eat it. The difference between men and women is that men won't go through shit for a diamond."
There is a constellation if not a galaxy of physics jokes.
Q: How many theoretical physicists specializing in general relativity does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Two. One to hold the bulb and one to rotate the universe
Q: What did Donald Duck say in his graduate physics class?
A: Quark, quark, quark!
A student to Einstein in a train : Excuse me, professor, but does New York stop by this train?
Q: Why are quantum physicists so poor at sex?
A: Because when they find the position, they can't find the momentum, and when they have the momentum, they can't find the position
Two atoms bump into each other. One says "I think I lost an electron" The other asks, "Are you sure?", to which the first replies, "I'm positive."
Descartes walks into a bar.The bartender says "Sir can I get you a drink ".Descartes "I don't think..."...... and disappears!
Heisenberg having had one too many is out for a drive when he's stopped by a traffic cop. The cop says "Do you know how fast you were going?" Heisenberg : "No, but I know where I am."
A neutron walks into a bar, enjoys a beer and asks "How much?"
Bartender:"For you, no charge."
Why did the chicken cross the Mobius strip?
To get to the same side
(All from the net)
It has occurred to me sometimes that laughter is a very mysterious thing and at any rate a distinctly human phenomenon. One thing that puzzled me in some of Kurosawa's movies( Roshomon for one) is the way the characters laugh out in situations where a very different reaction might be expected. Sex also has of it an element of absurdity which is it is the foremost subject of the joke. What is laughter? Did our cave ancestors laugh or is it an acquired culturism?
I confess. I skipped right to the end to post my "comment". Because I could instantly tell this was going to be a comment thread FULL of people's favourite jokes and, having seen a couple already, I just HAD to add my favourite pope joke:
The Mother superior is hearing the confession of a young novitiate. "I'm very sorry Mother Superior, but I have sinned. I gave a man a blowjob."
Mother Superior hasn't got a CLUE what a blowjob is, but feigns understanding, absolves the younger nun and tells her to go and sin no more.
Very soon afterward, she has an audience with the Pope.
"Your Holiness,” she says. "Could you please tell me what a "blowjob" is?"
The Holy Father wrinkles his brow for a moment and replies, "About twenty bucks."
What's the difference between drinking American beer, and Fosters from Australia?
Your head spins in the opposite direction.
I spilled spot remover on my dog. Now he's gone.
- Steven Wright
Raymond Ogilvie: '...why is the punchline of "the aristocrats" supposed to be funny? Do I just not find it funny because in America I don't hear about important aristocrats and their scandals? Is that what the joke is? Or did it start out as a real joke about the scandals of aristocrats and then evolve into an in-joke for comedians?'
I don't know the history of the joke, but I find that punchline hilarious because it doesn't make any sense. The comedian pretends to expect a big laugh when there's nothing there, and after putting the audience through such horror. That's why I laughed myself sick when I saw a clip of the South Park version. [SPOILER WARNING] You kind of have to know the characters, but Cartman is a shameless, self-centered pig. He eagerly tells his friends the whole story which he heard on cable the other night, while they keep asking him to stop. He delivers the punchline, there is a moment of silence...
Kyle: "I don't get it."
Cartman: "Neither do I."
I think if I were trying to tell that joke, I'd follow Mark Twain. I'd do it deadpan, in a dry, thoughtful way as if discussing impressionist art, with a lot of digression. I'd keep the tempo of my voice slow and steady while accelerating the atrocities, then mention the punchline without any emphasis, then pause, lost in thought, trying to remember if there was anything after that...
In the interest adding one more joke to the pile, here's my favourite "light bulb" joke:
How many Marxists does it take to screw in a light bulb?
None. The light bulb contains within it the seeds of its own revolution!
Of course, I must throw in mine!
Clean:
What did the bartender say when Dickens ordered a martini?
Olive or twist?
I have a freind who's a pain, but I can't get mad because he's really a good guy. He ran in just yesterday, all excited: "Hey, I just dug an eighty foot hole in your yard, and filled it with water!"
I could only shake my head and think, "He means well."
Dirty:
Guy goes to a doctor, says "Doc, ya gotta help me. My dick, it's bright orange."
He pulled down his pants, and sure enough, his dick is a bright, glowing orange!
The doctor is fascinated and runs all kinds of tests, but can find nothing. Finally in frustration, he asks the man to go over his previous day step by step.
"Well, I didn't do anything special," says the man. "Just eating Cheetos and watching porn.
Chinese guy walks into a bar with a parrot on his shoulder. Bartender says, "Hey, that's cool - where'd you get it"? Parrot says, "China -- they got millions of them over there".
Well, I never did claim to be a good storyteller, but let me try this again: Stephen Hawking IS smart, so it's funny to hear someone SARCASTICALLY call a dumb guy "a real Stephen Hawking", in the same way it's funny hear a smart-ass character in a movie call someone who did something dumb "a real Einstein" while rolling his eyes.
Anyway, my point is, audiences laugh- in part- because they feel good about themselves for recognizing the reference by the comedian. For instance, maybe if the documentary film "American Swing" catches on, comedians might puncuate a story about a non-helpful person with a line like "he was as useless as a nun at Plato's Retreat!" Now, if he just said, "he was as useless as a nun in a sex club", that isn't really funny. But the other way makes the audience members work the tiniest bit (that's key... you don't want them to need any REAL time to pull up the reference), thus making themselves feel good about themselves for knowing cultural touchstones, and thus more in the mood to laugh.
This IS only a theory of mine, so feel free to reject. But I do hope I made myself clearer this time.
When I gave lectures on film at the university I once worked at, someone in the audience once asked me to name the funniest film of all time. I couldn't begin to answer that question (choosing from Chaplin's work, or the Marx Brothers? Madness), but I did tell them what I thought was the funniest SCENE of all time: The "take a letter" exchange between Groucho and Zeppo Marx in "Animal Crackers."
The puns fly with such precision that you scramble to keep up, and each one outdoes the previous. Groucho stays on the top of his game with absurdities, and Zeppo (who I think is the most underrated straight man of all time) plays along without ever winking to the audience and eventually (and perhaps miraculously) one-ups the verbally explosive Groucho with such a plain-English, matter-of-fact rebuttal that his older brother is literally left speechless. It slams Groucho to an immediate halt, and it is an abrubt climax that's nearly violent in the way it deflates Groucho's on-a-role wisecracks. Which makes his retort to Zeppo all the more hilarious (and uncharacterstic of Groucho, who usually has the greatest comebacks): He starts physically swinging at his younger brother, who remains oblivious to the way that he just ruptured Groucho's aggressively clever wordplay.
The whole exchange is basically a three-act opera of words, puns, and one-upmanship all into itself. And it executes your initial thesis in this blog exactly: A great joke has absolutely no word out of place, and no extra words.
I shall include the link here, for your readers' consideration:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-J6OEEbZ9Ko
Ebert: I like my way better. Don't step on the punch word.
It should be, "alright, you're also ugly."
at about 1:45 this morning (4/14) i remember being here and typing a joke about a Chinese guy on a construction site. the joke was a play on the R/L pronunciation, and i was hesitant to submit it until i saw jokes with a similar take. i don't see the joke here. was the submission rejected or did i possibly not actually submit it?
Ebert: I thought it was borderline. But the border seems to be shifting...
I admit it was funny.
Richard Kaufman wrote:
With respect, while Mr Ebert is technically correct, Mr Kaufman made the right call on this one. Not only does "too" improve the delivery rhythm, it refers back to "second opinion" for the slower wits in the audience.
The Punch Word Rule exists for a good reason. If it went "You're ugly, besides" folks wouldn't know whether to laugh or wait for you to finish. But a pro would fire it off "yer-ugly-too!" so no problem.
BTW does anyone know who did this one first? Maybe it was the Unknown Comic, who died onstage and nobody remembers. What I can't figure out is: if it depends on a sudden switch of context, why does it make me laugh the 1000th time I hear it? (And no, I don't have old-timers disease...to the best of my recollection.)
Of course one can ruin anything with over-analysis. I love doing that.
Good advice is to learn at least two clean jokes and be able to tell them well. I also think it's good to have a few in your arsenal that are truly offensive. In the spirit of utter tastelessness, this is one of my favorite child molester jokes (you have been warned):
A little boy is walking through the dark woods with a child molester. He says, "Gosh, these woods sure are dark and scary." The child molester goes "How do you think I feel? I gotta walk outta here alone."
The funniest joke I ever heard is the one about Shirky. I believe it’s titled “Everyone knows Shirky”. I heard it from my brother 30 years ago and each time I either hear it or tell it…I still laugh. The first time I heard it I laughed so hard, I almost lost consciousness. Actually I think it’s the hardest I ever laughed. The fact that it’s a clean joke is all the more amazing.
Anyone who’s ever heard it, knows exactly what I mean. It’s an urban legend kind of a joke, for no one knows who told it first or where it comes from. But man, is it funny…
I’m sorry if I teased anyone, I didn’t mean to. But the joke needs to be heard – a lot of it in is the delivery.
Ebert: Yes, you did mean to. And you can't leave us hanging.
Let's not forget the classic:
Why does a dog lick his balls?
Because he can.
Ebert: Many women fail because they don't go in for the kill.
I think the testosterone theory helps explain this.
Ok, hows this:
Its been 40 years since the social and sexual revolutions, which is when you started to see female stand-ups emerge (like the Dillers and Rivers). However, in the US mainstream (which is the market we are discussing), society has been increasingly conservative since the 60s and 70s. Therefore, mainstream females are faced with social restraints, but not the conservative constraints found in pre-soc/sex revolutionary society but in post-revolutionary society.
Which looks like this: You could call this `Madonna-ism` - which (to me) describes this phenomenon perfectly. Stay with me. Madonna (not the virgin) supposedly represents a form of post-feminist emancipation. Notice it is limited to sexuality (and, inadvertantly, economics). Notice the sex is limited to posing as a (perhaps adolescent) stereotypical male sexual fantasy. Being post-revolution (post-feminist) and within the constraints of a conservative society she is herself restricted - she cannot express the sexual emancipation of feminism. In a liberal society she would merely be an oddity, an eccentric; perhaps ironic. However, in a conservative society she is perfect - both iconoclast and iconic. She both maintains the status quo in male fantasies of the perfect woman by limiting attention to the power of the sexualize body, yet, because she is post-revolutionary, she alludes that this is a continuence of female emancipation. Which of course it isnt.
So, similarly, female comedians, post-revolution, are limited. They either find material that fits with what conservative society expects of them - talk about domestics, relationships. Iow, stay in the kitchen/bedroom honey.... Or. They turn into the guys fantasy of the perfect drinking buddy - can hold her own with the raunchy humour and can swear you under the table (madonna-ism). They confuse killer wit with raunch.
Few dont fit these molds. Paula Pounstone and Ellen Degeneres come to mind.
Why are there virtually no female political comedians (Sarah Palin notwithstanding)? Is it because their predominantly female audience is more interested in the relationship ie kitchen/bedroom side of life?
Why are most of this blogs readership male (as I thought this woulda stirred up more of a response from the fems)?
Ebert: When she was on a roll, Molly Ivins was a political comedian. See her speech in the clip at the bottom of the previous (Boulder) entry.
Shortest jokes:
"Pretentious? Moi?"
"OVERREACTING?!!!??!" (yell this and look extremely angry)
Strange as it may seem, there are some jokes that really don't translate. Here's one a Russian friend told me to illustrate the point:
A platoon of hedgehog soldiers were marching through the countryside. The commander shouted "Company, halt! Fall out and graze!" The hedgehogs left formation and began walking around on the hillside, nibbling the grass. The hedgehog commander watched them, full of pride. "Ah, they're just like horses!"
That's it. There's no cultural reference, it's not quoting anyone. Russians say they find this joke really funny, but they just can't explain it.
Not that we're voting (yet), but my favorite so far:
By Mike on April 14, 2009 4:38 AM
"A dyslexic guy walks into a bra..."
Another variation of the "numbers" jokes.
A man attends a comedian's convention with a friend, who was a professional stand up. He noticed that people merely stood up, shouted out a number such as "52", "25, or "13", all to great laughter.
His friend explained, "you see, we comedians have heard every joke in the business. So we assign them a number to save time telling them".
So the guy stands up and shouts "74". The whole place goes silent. Some hiss. Others turn their heads and glare. As he sits back down, he sees his friend hiding his head in shame. The friend says, "you God damn racist!"
S M Rana, Chandigarh,
What is laughter? Did our cave ancestors laugh or is it an acquired culturism?
I once read that the definition of comedy had something to do with incongruity. I think I remember it saying that in evolutionary terms it may have been a reaction to something that may have seemed scary or life-threatening, but was actually no harm at all...so you laugh.
But this website probably explains it better:
http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~taflinge/theory.html
One of the rules on there said it has to appeal to the intellect and from there I want to say something regarding:
Ebert: I am beginning to understand why a woman once told me that most women regard dirty jokes as a cow regards a slaughterhouse.
I didn't mean for it to be dirty. I just was looking up idioms, since I serendipitously capitalized on one the first time with "off the top of my head". I intended to write a joke with that and the segue into the joke turned out to sound like a joke itself (i'm not going to top that one). I recommend using that one for hecklers: hey, let me tell a joke off the top of my head, and you've got'em. Anyway, I was having bad luck with the idioms so just took whatever was there, and the wife jokes were the easiest way to go. I wrote those jokes in about 4 minutes.
Ebert: Not dirty. Just guaranteed not to get an easy laugh from women.
I'm feeling a little guilty that most of the women readers are sitting this one out.
Everyone loves jokes! That's why they call them jokes.
Raymond Ogilvie asks: First, why is the punchline of "the aristocrats" supposed to be funny? Do I just not find it funny because in America I don't hear about important aristocrats and their scandals? Is that what the joke is?
To quote my favorite film critic quoting my favorite jazz musician: "There are some folks that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em."
Anyway, my second favorite joke (since my last one appears to have been too racy to make the blog):
Pablo Picasso dies. At the pearly gates, God says, "who are you"? "I'm your humble servant, Pablo," says Picasso. "Prove it," says God, "or I can't let you in there." So Picasso pulls out some burnt cork and a napkin, does a quick sketch, and with trembling hands gives it to God. Recognizing the genius, and nodding approval, God says, "go ahead in."
Martin Luther King dies. At the pearly gates, God asks, "who are you?" "I am Martin Luther, son of Martin Sr. and Alberta." "Prove it," God says, "or I can't let you in." So King steps back and for five minutes delivers a fiery speech on race and his love of his Creator. God nods his approval, smiles, and says, "go ahead in."
George Bush dies. At the pearly gates, God asks, "who are you?" Thumping his chest, "I'm George W. Bush, you should know that." God says, "prove it, or I can't let you go in there." "Prove it?" asks Bush, "what the hell do I have to prove it for." God is taken aback: "Well, Pablo Picasso and Martin Luther King had to prove it." Bush asks, "who the hell are they?" God smiles. "Go ahead in."
I always took the punchline of The Aristocrats to be that the name is 100% wrong for the act. Like a pratfall comic calling his act Swan Lake.
Ahh, the Catskills!!! Started my love affair with the area in the mid-Depression ("the big one," as Archie would say). Saw so many comics start out there. As a teen-ager I would work the so-called sound system in the casino (that's what they were called before the use of "nightclub" took over in the Jewish Alps) and was always warned by the comic to make sure the mike didn't go dead during his gig.
Had the pleasure in my adult life of working with Buddy H. and Carl R. Loved them both.
One more from Henny Y. which is not part of Alan King's eulogy:
Man walks into a doctor's office and immediately raises his right arm.
Man: "Doctor, doctor, it hurts when I do this."
Doctor then raises his right arm and says, "Then don't do this."
Btw: The elder statesmen today from the Catskills training ground who are still out there plying their trade: Freddie Roman, Dick Capri, Mal Z. Lawrence.
Yes, Gilbert G. and "The Aristocrats" is one for the ages.
Ebert: People with a tin ear can't do comedy.
There's a series this side of the pond called Love Soup in which one of the characters is a comedy writer for the BBC. In one scene he's sitting with a fellow comedian watching a sitcom they wrote, spitting nails as the ditzy reality TV star for whom the show is a vehicle ruins the sketch just by emphasising a word...
What they wrote:
"Fat? When he joined the company, this office was on the tenth floor."
What she says:
"Fat? When he joined the company, this office was on the tenth floor."
Astonishing just how much difference it makes when you try and bludgeon the audience with the gag. Give them the benefit of the doubt, and credit them with some intelligence. They'll get it, if you let them.
Who started light bulb jokes anyway? Did they have any idea where it would lead? If they could have copyrighted the idea they'd be as rich as the smiley-face guy.
Ok I'll do one on myself:
How many computer programmers DITTSIALB?
None, that's a hardware problem.
Roger:
Here is a challenge for you. What is the funniest joke you have ever heard *about* a movie?
The worst pun I ever heard about a movie came from Bob Hope. It was about the 1986 remake of "The Fly" -- which, you'll remember, is about a scientist who accidentally turns himself into a fly.
"My favorite scene in the movie is when the scientist and his wife are sitting in a restaurant. The scientist drinks a bowl of soup, and his wife turns to the waiter and says, 'Waiter, there's a soup in my fly!'"
Ebert: "Raise the Titanic" cost so much, it would have been cheaper to lower the ocean.
>>Two nuns meet in the hall of their convent.
Young Nun: "Sister, there's a rumor that there's a case of VD in the convent."
Older Nun: "Oh, tht's wonderful news. I'm getting tired of Seven-Up."
***********************
Pat and Mike are walking home from the pub when they see a severed head in the middle of the road.
Pat: "Isn't that Tommy O'Toole?"
Mike (bending down to get a closer look): "Can't be. Tommy's a lot taller."
*************************
The critics want films that instruct them
And when they don't, then they deduct them
From their lists of the best
So mine won't pass the test
And if critics don't like that - well, what are you gonna do about it?
*************
Thank you, and drive safely.
Where do jokes come from? And how do they find their way throughout the world? Most of the jokes everyone's telling here, I have heard through the years told by people from different parts of my country, Mexico (including the one about the gorilla, the dog and the shotgun, by the way). I am especially curious on the "ethnic" jokes told by S M Rana, where the name of the ethnicity has been changed to "XXX". In Mexico we have those exact same jokes, all of them about people from, of all places, Galicia, Spain (don't ask me why and I doubt anyone in Mexico -or Spain, for that matter- knows).
On the other hand, there are the jokes that will not travel, since they work only in a certain language. I told earlier the joke about the penguin ("looks like you blew a seal"), which is one of my favorites on penguins since I heard it some years ago, but I can only tell it to people who understand English very well.
And then, there's the "Mamet joke". I have used, in Spanish, the "everybody loves money..." line with basically the same mixed results you report. Some get it, some don't. I love it.
Ebert: I asked Mamet once to "explain" it, and he said something like, "It explains itself."
What is yellow and dangerous?
Shark-infested custard.
Ebert:
Q. Why does a lobster make the ideal pet?
A. It doesn't bark, and it knows the secrets of the deep.
Three sailors, an Ensign, a Lieutenant and a Captain, survive the sinking of their ship. After swimming nearly 20 hours in the angry ocean they wash up on a seemingly deserted island.
Exhausted and hungry, they search through the thick trees for water and food. Finally, they come upon a clearing and discover a bounty of food and drink. The men can’t believe their luck. But the Ensign and Lieutenant aren’t so sure, for it doesn’t belong to them. The Captain orders them to and they rush in and start filling their mouths and quenching their thirsts.
Suddenly from out of the Forest, march one hundred, very large, warrior men. They are aghast that these sailors have stolen their food and drink.
The Chief stomps forward and yells, “For this crime, you will have to choose to suffer OGA BOGA or death!”
The Ensign says “I was only following orders! I am only a lowly Ensign.”
The Chief says “Then you will suffer only half OGA BOGA or death!”
The Ensign sighs and says “I have a wife I would miss too much. I choose one half of OGA BOGA.”
50 of the 100 Huge Warriors strip the Ensign and bend him over as each has their way with him.
The other two men mouths drop.
The Lieutenant tries to run but they catch him.
“Ah”, the Chief says,” you are clearly higher in rank so your choice will be to suffer two thirds OGA BOGA or death!”
The Lieutenant bows his head and says “I also have a wife and I have children so I have too much to live for. Two thirds OGA BOGA it is!”
75 of the 100 Large Warriors strip the Lieutenant and do the same thing to him.
When it’s the Captain turn, he knows what’s coming, stands and says “OK, I get it. I’m the Captain so I will have to choose between 100 percent OGA BOGA or death, right?”
The Chief smiles and says “Correct.”
“Well I’m not married, have no children and have nothing to live for. And there is no way that is going to happen to me. So I choose death!”
The 100 Warriors all let out a collective gasp and look at the Chief.
The Chief beats his chest and says “Have it your way. Death...!”
The Chief pauses, looks at the Captain and smiles. Finally he lets out a roar:
“...By OGA BOGA!”
Some fuckwits consider you to be their captive audience. Because the structure of a joke allows them to monopolize your attention, they spin it out endlessly, while you, their helpless victim, stare at them with glazed eyes
You and I share the same opinion of Dane Cook, I see.
The best non-joke joke I've ever heard is the scene in "My Favorite Year" where Mark Linn-Baker is trying to teach Jessica Harper how to tell the duck on the head joke.
Loved this. My cousin visits from Pennsylvania once a year and we exchange as many dirty jokes as we can. Last weekend we went on for quite a while. (My family is like that.)
Wife: "Honey, I just got done visiting the doctor and he said I have the body of a 29 year old!"
Husband: "Oh yeah? What did say about your fat ass?"
Wife: "Oh, he didn't mention you."
The penguin with the car trouble joke is much funnier when it's told by chimpanzees in a bar:
http://tr.truveo.com/Chimps-in-a-Bar-Talking-About-a-Penguin/id/133518407
Trust me.
>DDV> Everybody needs money. That's why they
> call it money.
>TL> Still works for me.
>Ebert: Many readers objected to my belief
> that the line was funny. I don't understand
> why.
I think the humor is heavily dependent on Danny DeVito delivering the line. If you envision Bill Gates delivering it, it isn't funny. Tom Hanks? Not funny. Dustin Hoffman? Only funny to the extent that he could mimic the DeVito persona: driven by an avarice that charmingly transcends mere logic.
Here is the greatest joke I ever heard, told to me by a very serious-looking Jesuit.
I never tell it because, in a group of a few people, the odds are high that no one will get it. And then you have to violate the rule against trying to explain it.
But if a bunch of people are reading, someone will get it....
For years, Brother Francis of the Franciscan Order and Brother Dominic of the Dominican Order had an argument over which was the holiest order.
Finally they decided to take their argument to the Ultimate Decider. They repaired to a neutral cathedral to pray.
For six days and six nights they prayed for divine guidance. On the morning of the seventh day an ark - not unlike the Ark of the Covenant - appeared upon the altar, shimmering in an ethereal light.
Brother Francis and Brother Dominic crept up to the altar and, with trembling hands, opened the ark. Inside the ark was a parchment on which was written:
"Dear Brother Francis and Dear Brother Dominic -
Each of your orders is equal. Each of you is equally beloved in mine eyes.
Signed,
God, SJ"
Where "the Aristocrats" is concerned, that isn't even the right punchline. The original, as it seemed to me as a result of my research, had the name of the act as "the Sophisticates," which is a hell of a lot funnier than "the Aristocrats."
--//--
So, the bartender looks up and finds a Scotsman standing at the bar with a pained look on his face.
"What'll ya have?"
"Whuskey, and make it a dooble."
The bartender pours the drink, the Scotsman downs it in one pull, and winces.
"What's the problem?" the bartender asks.
"It's this," the Scotsman says, pulling up his kilt. Attached to his scrotum is a small, gnomish creature with bulging eyes, holding a small steering wheel and saying "vroom, vroom" while bouncing on its knees.
The bartender stares for a moment, and asks, "What the Hell is that thing?"
The Scotsman sighs and says, "I dinna ken, but it's drivin' me nuts!"
Little Jake asks his dad in the kindergarten: "Can a 6 year-old girl get pregnant?"
Dad: "No, quite impossible."
Jake: "I knew the bitch was blackmailing me."
We all know it's hard enough to deliver a joke, what I want to know is who are the creative geniuses that originate the jokes that make the rounds. Certainly not me.
I recall that even back in gradeschool there was no end of hilarious jokes and clever ditties that spread like viruses. Were they written by other kids? Kids in my school, or my class? Or, were they composed by adults, perhaps scattered across the continent, and picked up by American school kids like falling dominos.
In my recollection, the most popular thing going in kid world was to replace the words of notable, often classic, songs with litanies of sarcasm. The Battle Hymn of the Republic, Popeye the Sailor Man, the Ballad of Davy Crockett, Elvis' current pop hits (like Hounddog) and sundry commercial jingles (such as "I like Bosco...") were just a few such songs that suffered a million impious (or downright earthy) iterations during recess and on the daily walk home.
Have any urban ecologists ever researched the origin and spread of such school kid memes?
Any of you out there still have your set of "Monster Cards" that came with a slab of insipid pink, brittle chewing gum for a penny apiece? I mean the original series from the 1950's with a "You'll Die Laughing" joke on the back. I think my mother disgarded mine in the 60's--probably representing thousands of current dollars. Had the entire set, with many duplicates. It's really the packrats who will inherit the earth. LOL.
Ebert:
Q. Why does a lobster make the ideal pet?
A. It doesn't bark, and it knows the secrets of the deep.
Agreed. Not to mention that it blushes when you give it too much love.
(Canned laughter)
Thank you, from a chronic violator of rule number 5. You see, I'm a young man who just likes to be listened to and if I can find an audience, I'm going to talk, because once the joke is over your turn to talk is over, and I just like to keep going and milking what I have to say for everything it is worth even if what I am saying can be explained merely by the first sentence I used. So anyway...
Dear Roger, since we're on the subject of comedy, here's a clip from A Bit of Fry and Laurie, from the comedic couple that brought us Jeeves and Wooster. I can never get over this one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vpbv8x1eqU&feature=related
Another great article Rog. This reminds me by the way,...
Why wasn't Christ born in America?
God couldn't find three wise men and a virgin
A variation on the little Jake joke:
Little Jake asks his teacher in the kindergarten: "Can boys get pregnant?"
Teacher: "No, quite impossible."
Jake: "See, Jimmy? Stop crying!"
I agree, the joke benefits from being told by monkeys, but then again, the monkeys are a joke in themselves... risks distraction. What's the main joke here?
This is the one my little sister always makes me tell:
(Scottish accent is vital - I do this well, confirmed by actual Scots.)
D'ye see that house on the hill? I built it with my own hands. But, do they call me "MacGregor the Carpenter?" Nae.
D'ye see that fence on the lawn? Well, I built it with me bare hands. But, do they call me "MacGregor the Fence-Builder?" Nae.
D'ye see that boat in the harbor? I built her with me two, bare hands. But, do they call me "MacGregor the Boat-Builder? Nae.
Ach, but if you fuck one goat...
A Physicist, and Engineer and a Mathematician are watching a building when two people enter it. They all agree that there are now two people in the building.
Minutes later three people walk out of the building.
The Physicist says "Our original assumption was flawed."
The Engineer says "They reproduced."
The Mathematician says "If one more person walks into the building it will be empty again."
I eavesdropped on these two guys talking and one of them says: "You always put your first love on a pedestal." And the other one says: "Should I put her back in the basement?"
How do you tell a gay guy to keep a straight face? Tell him you're on-air in 5 minutes.
Was Michael J. Fox only, in "Teen Wolf" only attracted to that girl because her name was "Boof?"
So the officer says "I understand this is difficult for you sir but I need to hear what happened in your own words."
The man says "I always golf alone but my wife has been nagging me to let her come along. I forgot she was on the women's tee and drove the ball right into her head."
The officer says "That matches what we found a sharp impact killed her instantly. But I have to ask about the ball we found in her ass."
"Oh that was my mulligan."
S M Rana said: "One thing that puzzled me in some of Kurosawa's movies( Roshomon for one) is the way the characters laugh out in situations where a very different reaction might be expected."
Japanese will often laugh in a socially awkward situation or when otherwise embarrassed; but perhaps you mean specifically Toshiro Mifune's characters, who frequently tend to explode in a clownish sort of guffaw. When he does this in a film, it usually seems to me to indicate the brash, unpredictable nature of his characters, especially as contrasted with the other principles.
Try as I may, and I have for several years, I do not get the "Everyone needs money" joke. I know that puts me on the list of eggheads, but I must be honest. Although I haven't tried hard enough, because I never bothered to watch "Heist." Is the joke supposed to be funny in and of itself, without any context from the film? I've tried it on other people, to figure it out, but no one has gotten it.
However, there is a quote that is eerily similar, and one that I did laugh at, from the mouth of Archie Bunker, 20 some years before Mamet's quote. I wonder if any of your readers have the actual quote. It ends with, "That's why they call him God."
Roger, have you ever caught yourself laughing at something that was offensive to everyone else in the room, and felt a bit ashamed in front of them (though your instincts told you that they just didn't get it.) Or, caught yourself offended by something that everyone else in the room found funny?
I know that "Pulp Fiction" is a "Great Film," and I am not doubting that it is a masterpiece of filmmaking. But you know what, I do not enjoy it. I walked out of the theater as a teenager at the part where the man in the backseat of the car had his head blown off and Travolta and Jackson were quite cavalier about it. The whole audience laughed, and I just felt sick to my stomach. Maybe I was too young at the time, but I've never gone back to the film.
However, the next year, I watched the ultra violent "Fargo," absolutely loved it, and laughed myself nutty. I feel guilty about this, but when I think of a film scene that has truly made me spill my guts in laughter, it is at the beginning of "Fargo," when the wife is sitting in the living room watching TV and the man in the ski mask tries to look inside. She is so not used to neighbors stopping by in ski masks, that it's not until he crashes in that she decides she might be in danger. Am I the only one who found this funny? No one in the Michigan theater laughed. Then, in 2001, my New York roommates seethed with anger at me when I rented it for them to watch. "Oh, you think this is funny? Let me guess... she's going to die. You're sick."
I keep your quote "It's not what it's about, it's about how it's about it" in mind.
Ebert: "Everyone needs money..." is not a joke so much as a statement that takes the form of simple logic snd is actually a meaningless loop.
"Hrist is a ownderfu movie with some of Mamet's funniest dislogue.
Bobby Blane: There's nothing wrong with prayer. We knew this firefighter, this trooper, who always caried a bible next to his heart. We used to mock him, but that bible stopped a bullet.
Jimmy: No shit.
Bobby Blane: Hand of God, that bible stopped a bullet, would of ruined that fucker's heart. And had he had another bible in front of his face, that man would be alive today.
A comment on the delivery of a joke. I remember the actress Jean Marsh (creator-writer-star of the 1970's British series "Upstairs/ Downstairs) appearing on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. She told the story of how, as a young ingenue, she appeared in a play and always got a huge laugh when she uttered her line: "He had the biggest stalk of rhubarb in the village." She didn't understand why the audience thought that was so funny, and once a fellow actor explained the joke to her, from then on, when she delivered the line, it never got a laugh.
That was a great joke by Joel Grant about God being a Jevy. Anyone who went to Catholic school would immediately know the "SJ" stands for "Society of Jesus." Understandable the joke was told by a Jesuit.
It reminded me of the following remark by Milton Shulman about a friend who was a brilliant mathematician, you know, the type that can be very egotistical. "I knew a mathematician who said, 'I do not know as much as God, but I know as much as God did at my age.'"
The epigram, or pithy intellectual remark, seems to stimulate many of the same neural pathways as a good joke. Both depend on the recognition of contradiction, and contradiction is inherent in reality. After all, every yin is defined by its yang (opposite). You often run across such gems in the context of a larger work like a novel or some philosophical tract. Here's a few from a list of many I have jotted down over the years.
"Maturity, the way I understand it," he told me, "is knowing what your limitations are." He wasn't far from Bokonon in defining maturity. "Maturity," Bokonon tells us, "is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter can be said to remedy anything." --- Kurt Vonnegut
"The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as to seem not worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it." --- Bertrand Russell
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." --- George Bernard Shaw
"A great truth is a truth whose opposite is also a great truth."
--- Christopher Morley
"Sanity is madness put to good use." ---George Santayana
"Why should a group of simple, stable compounds of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen struggle for billions of years to organise themselves into a professor of chemistry? What's the motive?" --- Robert Persig
Hope those made you laugh as much as they do me.
Ebert: They did. Some leaves from mhy Commonplace Book:
"Women do not find it difficult nowadays to behave like men but they often find it extremely difficult to behave like gentlemen." -- Compton Mackenzie.
"Believe me, there exists no such dilemma as that in which a gentleman is placed when he is forced to reply to a blackguard." -- Edgar Allen Poe
"In the triumph and the jingle and the strange high singing of some aeroplane overhead was what she loved: life, London, this moment in June." -- Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
"In realistic paintings, one looks for the subconscious. In surrealistic paintings, for the conscious." -- Sigmund Freud
"Explaining madness is the most limiting and generally least convincing thing a movie can do." -- Pauline Kael
"No garden, however small, should contain less than two acres of rough woodland." -- Lionel de Rothschild
I don't usually like story jokes, but one of my favorites is a joke my grandpa told:
An Indian outlaw is terrorizing the poor white folk, so they hire a sharpshooter and take him out into the desert to track the Indian.
They spot the Indian on the horizon and say "There he is! Shoot'im!"
"Shoot him?" The gunfighter holds his finger and thumb about an inch apart "He's only that big!"
They get a little closer and say "There he is! Shoot'im! Shoot'im!"
"How in the hell am I gonna shoot'im when he's only that big!"
Finally they come right up on the Indian. The exasperated posse demands "Well are you gonna shoot him NOW or what?!"
"You expect me to shoot him!?" the gunfighter holds his finger and thumb an inch apart "I've known him since he was only this big!"
Ebert: Funny you should mention golf. Just last week, on Good Friday, the Pope slipped out of the Vatican to play 18 holes. He gets a hole-in-one. "The Heavenly Father is punishing me!" he moans. "Who can I tell?"
Actually Roger you're telling it wrong....
A few months back my Rabbi slipped out of Synagogue to play 18 holes on Yom Kippur. He gets a hole in one. "The Lord is punishing me!" he moans. "Who can I tell?"
Ebert: Bernie Madoff escapes from prison, and...
a small bit from the TV show Family Guy-- two construction workers on lunch break:
Construction Worker 1: Hey did ya hear my son got into Devry?
Construction Worker 2: What'd he hafta do, open the door?
>Ebert: Not dirty. Just guaranteed not to get an easy laugh from women.
>I'm feeling a little guilty that most of the women readers are sitting this one out.
Mr. Ebert, as a woman, I just wanted to say: I hope not! I've laughed harder than I have for a while reading your post and the comments, and I'm envious...I rarely deliver a successful joke and don't have one to share!
And then there's Shakespeare. Back in December the Daily Mail reported on the outrage generated by a performance of The Comedy of Errors that featured butt-naked simulated sex between two men--one, of course, disguised as a woman. But the best line comes from the theater's general manager, Richard Foster: "Perhaps in hindsight the theatre should have put up a notice, warning the audience of the content of the play." "Hindsight"--get it? Oh, those Shakespeareans.
Then again, joking in Shakespeare can be dangerous. One might simply disappear, like Lear's Fool.
A six-year-old boy is sitting on a park bench eating candy bar after candy bar. An old man comes up to him and asks "do you think you should be eating all of those candy bars?" The six-year-old-boy looks up to the old man and says, "My grandpa lived to be 106 years-old." The old man responds, "From eating candy bars?" Six-year-old replies, “No, he minded his own damn business!”
I am not good at telling those jokes in person. But there is a monk joke I tell that lasts at least 20 to 30 minutes. Based on your tips it is probably an anti-joke, in that it mainly amuses me and anyone else that has already heard it. I was at a church camp talent contest and I was booed off the stage before I even got to finish the last part of the joke. On an ironic note the guy that won the whole thing was doing a Jerry Seinfeld routine, looking back he followed your rules and won. The moral of the story is...
There have actually been some interesting recent advances in neurology that shed some light on what humor is.
[crickets chirping]
No, really. The short version is that the left hemisphere of the brain organizes the world into patterns, and the right hemisphere spots exceptions to those patterns. When those two things happen in quick succession, the contradiction makes us laugh. Why our brains are wired that way is still anybody's guess.
Aw Roger, did you have to go and try to explain the "everyone loves money" quote? It's like the Zen teacher trying to explain the Koan.
Heist has probably a half dozen or more great examples of more perfect pitch dialogue than any other movie of that genre. You can pretty much quote from that movie endlessly.
Joe: I'm not that smart.
Cop: If you're not that smart, how'd you figure it out?
Joe: I imagined a fellow smarter than myself. Then I tried to think, "what would he do"?
Bergman: Don't you want to hear my last words?
Joe: I just did.
Great stuff as always, Mr. Ebert.
I'm about a year into this thing called stand-up. My stuff's in the vein of Steven Wright/Mitch Hedberg/Demetri Martin, so click on my name to check out some clips.
I hope you likey! — Dawson
One of my favorite story (long) jokes goes like this:
2 guys decide to go out for a night of bar hopping. When they enter the first bar the first guy smiles at the bartender then winks and she gives him two free shots of tequila, no questions asked. They down their drinks and move onto the next bar and on the way the second guy asks 'wait a minute, how did that work?', the first guy replies 'shut up dick, I know what I'm doing!'
They enter the second bar and again the first guy smiles and winks at the bartender and again recieves two free shots of tequila, no questions asked. They again down their drinks and move onto the next bar, and again, on the way, the second guy asks how the hell that just happened. The first guy replies "shut up dick, I know what I'm doing!"
They enter another bar, the first guy smiles and winks at the bartender there, and again they receive two free shots of tequila, no questions asked. They finish the drinks and walk out and again the second guy asks how this keeps happening. The first guy again replies 'shut up dick, I know what I'm doing!
Usually by this point the person you are telling the joke to gets tired of hearing the same thing over and over and says something along the lines of "god, get to the point!" The goal of the joke is to get them to say this, so if you have to repeat the main part of it 6 times, do so. Because as soon as you get them to say something like that you yell out:
"SHUT UP DICK, I KNOW WHAT I'M DOING!"
So I am sitting at bar and a guy walks in with a normal body but a really small head.
He sits down and orders a drink.
Before I can say anything, he looks over and in a small-head voice says "you're wondering about my head."
"Yes" I say and so he tells me his story.
About a year ago I was shipwrecked on a deserted island. For four long lonely months - nothing but coconuts.
One day when walking along the shore I came upon a lantern. I rub it and out comes a genie. The hottest genie you ever saw.
Anyway, so she says 'thank you for releasing me from the lantern. I will grant you three wishes."
Without missing a beat, I say "Get me off this stupid island." And poof, we are off the stupid island and in Secaucus, New Jersey.
I think to myself, "This is awesome."
Then true to genie-form she says "You have two more wishes"
So I look at her, think for a moment and say "Ten million dollars" and poof a suitcase with 10 million dollars appears in front of me.
"One more wish" she says.
So I stare at her. I am off that stupid island. I'm rich.
"I don't need anything"
"Oh come on" she says, "can't think of an-y-thing?" and bats her eyelashes.
"Ok baby, how about a really small head."
OK, the numbers joke has been told a few times on here, but my favorite punchline goes like this:
"Bunch of comedians are attending a comedy festival. They're just shouting out numbers and laughing, yada, yada, yada ... Someone yells out "53" and no one laughs. The newbie asks why nobody laughs, and the old comic says: 'They'd already heard that one!'
"
There, I like that punchline the best, because of its surreal quality.
Ebert: Guy tells #71, but his accent is off.
Mel Blanc holds a gun up to Jack Benney and says "Your money or your life!" Benny just stands there being Jack Benny. Mel says "Well..." and Jack says "I'm thinking about it." This is usually considered the funniest Benny joke ever, but shouldn't have stopped at "thinking"? He walked over his punch word.
Ebert: In that Benny speaking style, he said, "I'm thinking about it." That worked.
Raymond Ogilvie asks: First, why is the punchline of "the aristocrats" supposed to be funny? Do I just not find it funny because in America I don't hear about important aristocrats and their scandals? Is that what the joke is?
It is precisly because the joke is told to american audiences that the term `aristocrat` is used: were it used in europe then there would be an immediate association with class and scandal; iow, it would be relevant outside of the joke, and thus, focusing attention on themes of class etc, take away from the point of the joke. the term aristocrat is, as you rightly observe, not politically charged in the US, so it is free to serve its purpose - to draw attention to, to crown, the absurdity. in fact, i would go further and suggest that the term is a form of `hoitee toitee`-ism - an american using the term for self-reference is obviously fishing for style, and thus makes it all the more absurd. the punchline is akin to someone doing a ridiculous act and crowning it with `ta daa!`
Sorry. Have to violate Rule #8.
A XXX walks into a bar with a big ol' pile of shit in his hands and says "Hey, look what I almost stepped in outside!"
Rule 2 and rule 5:
This Irishman walks out of a bar.
Paul J. Marasa : One might simply disappear, like Lear's Fool.
You will be happy to learn that the Lear Fool does not dissapear in the 1973 Russian (Soviet rather) version of the play called Korol Lir. He survives the holocaust to have the very word without departing from the original plot. A haunting and beautiful Fool indeed--no joker this!
Ebert: When she was on a roll, Molly Ivins was a political comedian. See her speech in the clip at the bottom of the previous (Boulder) entry.
Is this a mac file? I cant find anything to open it.
She is not a stand-up though, she is not a comedian, though Im sure she is perhaps a master of wit.
The older female comic on this page above fits todays bill of the `liberated`, post-fem, female artist - yep, all about sex, the vulva - wild and crazy times! I think i ran out of wind with the previous post about madonna-ism, so, to wrap up - during the 60s and 70s society went through liberating changes, uncomfortable changes in this area - women protestors burning bras, sexual liberation, the phenomenon of the movie Deep Throat and so on. Before all this the female sexualized stereotype was Marilyn Monroe - sex kitten. Cute. Oblivious. In need of taking care of.
But after the 60s and 70s (after Deep Throat, The Devil in Miss Jones etc) there is no going back to Marilyn, so the new female sex symbol takes the form of all that political energy - aggression, anger, humour, sex etc, de-radicalizes it, commodifies it, makes it safe for mass-consumption (in the same path the porn industry took after deep throat) and presto - you get madonna. It is no longer Marilyn so the naive claim it to be their symbol of emancipation - she is `bold`, `on her terms`, `playing by her (supposedly new) rules`. But of course she isnt. She is not cute, certainly not oblivious. But is it not merely market logic (i did not intend to end up here a marxist-feminist theorist, but it seems to be all i can find at the moment)? The logical progression from madonna is britney, perhaps even paris. De-radicalized they can only mimic the radicalness of the 70s liberals. It is reduced to mere style -- fashion.
And what does this have to do with female comics (Similar to comics in general. When lenny bruce swore and used obsceneties, it was radical. Not because he swore and told dirty jokes, but because of the context of those words. George carlin moved it that much furhter. Now, if a comedian uses gratuitous swearing, it is taken as a sign of insecurity and desperation (by those that know) because the words are deradicalized. Carlins last show of course used swearing liberally, and it retained its radical charge.)?
Like madonna they limit their gaze - and the gaze of their audience - to their body. now, foucault would not find fault with this. Social power exerts its discipline directly on the body of the individual. But, those bridges have been crossed, so their gaze is no longer radical, it is removed from the political context and it has simply become stylish - at best, frank; at worst - `edgy`. And i do not know why they do not take broader paths to more interesting, as in radical, areas. Generally.
Ebert: Not only a Mac file. Opens with the useful Real Player. Version for Windows at:
http://download.cnet.com/RealPlayer/3000-13632_4-10073040.html
I just have to say this: "The Aristocrats," the movie about the joke, may be one of the most thoroughly, seemingly willfully unfunny comedies I have ever seen.
So two men are sitting in a yellow room. One man is eating a banana. The other man turns to him and says, "Is that banana good?"
My cousin told me this joke when we were both kids, and I laughed very, very hard over it. Now and then I tell it to someone new. 90% of the time, they look at me funny. The other ten, they pause and then start laughing. I think it's brilliant: it takes advantage of the place we go in our heads when we're being told a joke, and plays a joke on it.
TIP: The punchline should be delivered in a hefty voice and with puckered lips.
Ebert: I'm looking at you funny.
Sorry. Have to violate Rule #8.
A XXX walks into a bar with a big ol' pile of shit in his hands and says "Hey, look what I almost stepped in outside!"
Also violates #2.
Maybe, "Hey, I saw this outside and almost stepped in it."
Ebert: How about:
"Can you believe people throw away this shit?"
One more: A Pride and Prejudice joke I invented.
Two girls are at house party, scoping out guys in the room.
One girl says, "Ya know, that guy over there owns a great deal of land."
The other girl says, "Oh, Darcy?"
Best when spoken.
Why did Jesus die on the cross?
He forgot his safe word.
I have so thoroughly enjoyed this blog that I have to offer up two of my favorites:
From 1976, when I was in first grade:
How do you recognize Ronald McDonald at a nudist camp?
He's the one with the sesame seed buns.
(It doesn't even make sense anymore, but it still makes me smile.)
Also:
A lonely man decided to adopt a pet. He finally settles on buying a centipede from a local pet shop.
Later that day, he decides to celebrate by taking his new pet out for a drink.
Leaning over the terrarium, he asks, "Hey, how 'bout we go out for a drink?"
No response.
The man repeats his offer again, this time shouting.
Again, no response.
Now the man is pretty irritated by the centipede's silence and he tries once more.
"HEY, DO YOU WANT TO GO OUT FOR A DRINK OR NOT?!"
A small voice drifts up from the terrarium...."Give me a minute - I'm putting on my fucking shoes!!"
To Nathan: If you were telling me the tequila joke, I'd let you go through 6 or 7 iterations, then look at you sadly and say, "You poor dick--you think you know what you're doing, don't you?" I was tipped off about 45 years ago with the Jackass and the Prospector variation: the prospector keeps saying "Have patience, jackass."
The most incomprehensible joke I've heard that actually made me laugh:
Why is a Duck?
Because one leg are both the same.
Thanks to Mary P for that one.
Funniest Golf joke: Guy makes a hole in one on 15. A Genie comes out of the hole. "I'm the Genie of the 15th Hole. For your hole in one--one wish." "Longer dick." "Granted."
By the time the guy gets to the clubhouse, he's having to stuff his dickhead in his shoe. WHAT TO DO? Pro shop. "Gimme 500 golf balls."
Back to 15, he fires ball after ball. FINALLY, another hole in one! Out comes the Genie.
"I'm the Genie of the 15th Hole. For your hole in one--one wish."
"Longer legs."
Zsa Zsa Gabor: I'm an excellent housekeeper. Every time I leave a man, I keep his house.
Since someone started on penguins...
A Mother Superior in an Irish convent is working in her office late at night. She becomes aware that she's heard a tiny voice laughing for some time. She looks around and on the windowsill are two leprechauns.
One is standing with his arms folded and looking very cross. The other is laughing fit to kill. The second calms down a bit and says to the first leprechaun, "Go on, ask her."
"Mother Superior," says the first, "would ye happen t'know if there are any leprechaun nuns in this convent?"
The Mother Superior is amazed, but rallies and replies, "No, my good leprechaun, there are no leprechaun nuns in this convent."
This sets off the laughing leprechaun again. The cross one asks, "Mother Superior, are you sure? Perhaps there might be a leprechaun nun visiting from some other convent?"
"No, my wee friend, I'm afraid not. I'm sure that if there were a leprechaun nun anywhere in Ireland I would have heard of it."
This is too much for the leprechauns. The laughing one looks to be killing himself, while the angry one turns, stumps to the corner of the windowsill and sits down in a huff.
"My good wee folk," says the Mother Superior, "may I ask what this is about? Why are you asking after leprechaun nuns?"
The angry leprechaun says nothing. After a long moment, the laughing leprechaun calms down again and finally says, "It's like this, Mother Superior. He just can't bring himself to admit that for the last four months, he's been fuckin' a penguin!"
Since I was a little kid and noticed everyone admired a cousin with brilliant comic timing, I've worked to develop my own. When someone tells me a mildly funny joke, I privately dissect it to see if I can improve it. I tell a joke to myself several times before springing it on an audience. I have worked hard all my life to learn to convey humor so others get what is so hysterical to me. But most helpful, I find, is having a keen sense of humor about the world in the first place. That may be inborn - I am lucky in that all of my blood relatives are capable of being very funny.
One thing I haven't seen mentioned is that a lot of jokes of a certain nature depend on the rule of threes. You set up the joke with two situations, and the third contains the punchline. I don't know why this works, but have found time and time again that for this type of joke, two is too little, and four is too much. There is something sacred about the number 3, and it shows up in humor.
As a cancer survivor, my humor has delved into some of the funny things about being a cancer patient. Some of it is gallows humor. I always get laughs from cancer patients and survivors, while people who haven't been through it can barely hide their horror and/or discomfort. Here's one: "The great thing about not going into remission is, you never have to worry about a recurrence."
I'm afraid I must object to your headline. I hate to because you've gotten so much criticism already. But to mention that the turkey is frozen is redundant. Leave that one word out, and the joke is vastly improved.
In telling jokes, I use phrases people actually use. Even if this makes the written joke longer, it makes the telling more fluid. Example of one someone mentioned earlier, slightly revised for oral telling:
A priest, a minister, and a rabbi walk into a bar. Bartender says "What is this - some kinda joke?"
I am female (yes, my name used to be unisex) and love all kinds of jokes, and I do get big laughs and queries about whether I've considered doing stand-up everywhere I go. I'll tell ethnic jokes, dirty jokes, poke fun at myself or the current awkward situation - whatever strikes me as funny. What I don't like are jokes that depend on not-so-thinly-veiled aggression, especially toward one group. I don't like to make anyone feel akin to a cow gazing upon a slaughterhouse.
One of my favorite Jewish jokes:
A Jewish mother sends her son a couple of sweaters for his birthday. He comes to visit a week later and is wearing one of them. She says "What's the matter, you didn't like the other one?"
Ebert: The joke depends on the turkey being frozen. No one here seems to know it.
Here is Wikipedia on the Rule of Threes:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_three_(writing)
And here is the example they supply (which I have improved):
"How do I get to your place?"
"Go down to the corner, turn left, and get lost."
This made me laugh this morning. Immanuel Kant, Lectures on Ethics:
The friendship of taste is a pseudo-friendship. It consists in the pleasure we derive from each other's company, and not from each other's happiness. Persons of the same station and occupation in life are less likely to form such a friendship than persons of different occupations. One scholar will not form a friendship of taste with another; because their capacities are identical; they cannot entertain or satisfy one another, for what one knows, the other knows too. But a scholar can form such a friendship with a business-man or a soldier. Provided the scholar is not a pedant and the business-man not a blockhead, each of them can talk entertainingly to the other about his own subject.
Ebert: I like it this way:
Provided the scholar is patient, each of them can talk entertainingly to the other about his own subject.
Many posters have mentioned something about cuss-words and how to use them. With that in mind I think it's important to add that, besides what the audience thinks, you should not use words that YOU are not comfortable with. Jokes works best when their appear honest, so you should not sound as if you're using euphemisms, and you should not swear if it is not normally part of your vocabulary. But then, maybe that should also restrict your choice of joke: in other words, a dirty joke where 'penis' is used instead of 'dick' looses some of its punch; some of its honesty.
Ebert: Yeah, and it doesn't work if the man from XXX walks into the bar with his hands holding a pile of human excrement.
Father says to son: "I like how your lifting the weights and staying in shape, but why are wearing that white-haired wig?"
Son says: "Because I'm going to be a CNN news anchor."
Father: "Has your sister become a prostitute?"
Son: "No, shes got an interview at Fox News."
Father: "I'll put on my football helmet, and we'll both apply for a job there."
A woman had a husband who was brutally honest. He never lied to her to spare her feelings. Everyday he would tell her she looked fat, for instance. So, she murdered him and married herself. How did that work out? Mirrors always lie.
Ah, good. This is still going. Here are a couple of doctor jokes:
A man is sitting in a doctor's office after an exam. He can tell the prognosis is bad because the doctor just stands there with a grim expression on his face. After a couple of minutes, the man finally blurts out, "look, Doc, whatever it is you hafta tell me, you can tell me".
The doctor sighs. "Okay. The bad news is you have a terrible case of Alzheimer's disease. The worse news is that this is the fifth time I've told you in the past ten minutes".
The second one:
A man visits the doctor to be examined for migraines. After the MRI, the doctor tells the guy. "I have some good news and some bad news". The man slumps. "Give me the bad news first," he says.
The doc says, "you have an inoperable brain tumor. You have six weeks to live."
The man says, "that's terrible, Doc. I think I need that good news now."
The doc says, "have you seen my new receptionist? The pretty blonde with the big tits?"
"Yeah."
"I'm doing her."
Ebert: Doctor to pretty blonde: "Take off your clothes."
Blonde: "For a headache?"
Doctor: "You'd be surprised what I've seen in my practice."
Do you know that there's currently a revival of this type of joke in the stand-up world?
In the "alternative" comedy scene, comedians such as Demetri Martin, Mitch Hedberg, Zach Galifianakis, and (earlier) Steven Wright rely almost entirely on one-liners. They seem different and many think it's a new approach, because they are often dead-panned and off-beat, but the structure is the same as the legendary comics you mention. You may enjoy them.
I'm a young comic and a one-liner fan, so was happy to see this interesting piece.
"Last night I walked a girl home. It got a little awkward at one point.......because she turned around, and found out I was walking her home."
"I know child abuse like the back of my dad's hand."
Eh, I'm tryin...
Ebert: Last night I found a giraffe wearing my pajamas. I could have frozen.
Three drunks walk into a bar. First drunk says, "I'll have a beer." Second drunk says, "I'll have a martini. Third drunk says, "Fuck you guys."
A Mexican, a Korean and a German walk into this Norwegian bar, and can't understand a word.
So, the pope dies and goes to heaven. God tells him, "My child, I know you were a scholar on Earth, so I have prepared a special surprise for you."
With a word, an entire library comes into being around the Pope, containing every Biblical translation and commentrary every written, right back to the original Gospels. Eyes wide, the Pope begins poring over the books and scrolls as God smiles.
A long time later, a scream comes from the library. The Pope emerges wide-eyed, shaking and mumbling "The missing letter R ... I don't believe it , it was the missing letter R."
"My child," God says, "what troubles you?"
"The missing letter R, oh, Lord," the distraught pope says. "All these years ... all these long, lonely years ... it said Cele-BRATE!"
Lose the "if" in the punchline, and it's funnier, Zach. Try it.
Lou Jacobi! I've only seen him a few movies, but he's always a standout. In "My Favorite Year", he stole every scene he was in as "Uncle Morty", and every year at Thanksgiving, I'm reminded of his admonishment from "Avalon" - "You don't cut the Tore-key until the last relative arrives!" I envy you for knowing him.
On the topic of humor, this little gem of a safety film has been making the rounds. It was apparently intended to be taken seriously, but about 80% of the people I've shared it with begin laughing uncontrollably:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAnAaFgjiiA&feature=PlayList&p=651DC8360D515D4A&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=39
It's not a "joke", but somehow it seems to fit in with your idea that the joke teller has to take what they're saying completely seriously, and that the "Three Stooges" can't realize what they're doing is funny. In this case, the seriousness of the message clashes with the over-the-top nature of the filming, and the repeated accident after accident to create a strange combination of hysteria and horror.
A Frenchman, a Russian, a Pole and a mother and daughter are sitting in a train car. The train goes into the dark tunnel and a loud kiss is heard and then a big TWACK!
The mother thinks, "What a good daughter I have! Someone tried to kiss her and she punched him!"
The Frenchman thinks, "Great, I kissed the daughter and she socked someone else!"
The daughter thinks, "My mother's an idiot. Someone tried to kiss her and she hit him!"
The Russian thinks, "What? First she kissed me and then she punched me?"
The Pole thinks, "Let the two of em' kiss, when the train goes into the tunnel in another few minutes, I'm gonna give it to the Russkie again!"
Great column, great responses. But in the interest of following your opening dictum that there should not be one wasted word in a joke I feel obliged to point out that the correct punch line to the "How many surrealists does it take to screw in a light bulb?" joke is: "The fish."
Ebert: "The bicycle."
"Ebert: A sharpshooter and a constipated owl? One shoots to hit..."
This brings to mind an interesting double feature: SHOOTER and IN THE LAND OF THE OWL TURDS
What's the difference between a nun and a girl taking a bubble bath? The nun has hope in her soul...
But seriously, folks, for some great Lou Jacobi please see Woody Allen's EVERYTHING YOU ALWAYS WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT SEX (BUT WERE AFRAID TO ASK); see the segment called "Are Transvestites Homosexuals?" Jacobi is priceless.
Ebert: When she was on a roll, Molly Ivins was a political comedian. See her speech in the clip at the bottom of the previous (Boulder) entry.
Sharp lady, good speaker.
Q: What's the difference between a one-legged chicken?
A: One leg is both the same.
Much better set-up than "Why is a duck?"...
By Larry on April 15, 2009 1:22 PM
Sorry. Have to violate Rule #8.
A XXX walks into a bar with a big ol' pile of shit in his hands and says "Hey, look what I almost stepped in outside!"
Also violates #2.
Maybe, "Hey, I saw this outside and almost stepped in it."
Ebert: How about:
"Can you believe people throw away this shit?"
Struth! I almost stepped in this!
My fear is that any joke I quote must be more stale, the better it is. Anyhow, here goes.
Spielberg smacks Chinese guy."Thats for Pearl Harbor."
Chinese guy,"But it was the Japs done it."
Spielberg:" Koreans, Japs, Chinese, you're all same."
Chinese guy smacks Spielberg real hard."Thats for the Titanic"
Spielberg:"But it was the iceberg did it."
Chinese guy:"Goldberg, Spielberg, Iceberg, you're all the same"
Ebert: James Cameron smacks them both.
Two peanuts were walking down a dark alley. One was assaulted.
Ebert: A sheep, a mule and a penguin walk into a leather bar. The sheep gets laid. The mule gets a blow job. The penguin complains, "People just don't know what to make of me."
By Ron Barth, Jr. on April 15, 2009 5:36 PM
By Zach Brutsche on April 15, 2009 12:55 AM
D'ye see that house on the hill? I built it with my own hands. But, do they call me "MacGregor the Carpenter?" Nae.
D'ye see that fence on the lawn? Well, I built it with me bare hands. But, do they call me "MacGregor the Fence-Builder?" Nae.
D'ye see that boat in the harbor? I built her with me two, bare hands. But, do they call me "MacGregor the Boat-Builder? Nae.
Ach, but if you fuck one goat...
Lose the "if" in the punchline, and it's funnier, Zach. Try it.
listen to the following rhythms, which i think are better, and allow for different deliveries --
1. Ach!... but fuck one goat...! (with equal spacing between words -- but fuck, one, goat)
2. Ach!... but should you fuck a goat...! (rhythm bounces on should and fuck and lands gloriously on goat)
Ebert: 3. But I fuck one lousy goat..."
Two men are robbing an apartment building when the cops come and barricade the lower levels.
"There's no way out," yells the first guy. "We've got to jump!"
The second panicks, "But we're on the thirteenth floor!"
"JUMP! This is no time to be superstitious!"
Recent immigrant to America, anytime last 30 years, from behind a concession stand:
"These Americans, I can never understand them. They say they want 'real', but they don't mean it! I make-a my sandwiches with real sand. They won't eat it! I make-a my hamburgers with real ham. They won't eat it! Don't even ask me 'bout the hot dogs..."
I like trying to figure out which concepts or word choices are funniest (like the point about "Ft. Lauderdale" taking longer to say), but I still can't figure out exactly why this exchange from Futurama still makes me laugh so hard:
Alien Queen: For the last time, I don't like lilacs! Your first wife was the one who liked lilacs!
Alien King: Yeah, she also liked to shut up!
And along the lines of not stepping on your "punch" word, here's a joke I always screwed up until my dad told me the right word order for the last line:
A traveling salesman goes to the bar on the top floor of his hotel. Though it's the middle of the day, the guy next to him is already thoroughly sozzled and irritating as hell. "Air currents," he keeps mumbling. "Wonderful air currents in this city."
After a while, the salesman's had enough. "OK, enough about the damn air currents, buddy. What's so special about them?"
The drunk struggles to his feet. "I'll show you," he says, and totters over to an open window. Without hesitation he climbs onto the sill, steps out into the air, does a little spin, and lands back on the ledge.
"See?" he says. "Air currents are so strong, they'll lift you right up."
"Gosh," says the salesman. "Could I do that?"
"Sure," says the drunk.
A few beers later, the salesman climbs onto the window sill, stares down at the traffic, takes a step, and drops fifteen stories like a rock. The drunk hiccups, shrugs, and slumps back down on his stool.
The bartender puts down the glass he's wiping, and fixes the drunk with a long, hard stare.
"You know, most of the time you're a pretty good guy," the bartender says. "But you are one mean drunk, Superman."
You want to be an actor? Learn to tell jokes. You want to be a writer? Learn to tell jokes. You want to be a film director? Learn to tell jokes.
Everything essential at succeeding in those art forms is contained in the act of making people laugh. The timing, the wordplay, the misdirection, the verbal prestidigitation, the ability to captivate someone's attention. It's all there. How can you perform, write or direct say... a subtle love scene where the word "love" is never uttered if you can't crack someone up with a joke about an old man falling down an open manhole? As different in style and tone as the two are, they nonetheless both require the same sort of storytelling ability.
There's no better example at how humour and storytelling are forever intertwined than the fact that a bad comedy is nigh unwatchable. Yet films like Exorcist 2, The Swarm or Death Wish 3 can be almost perversely satisfying if viewed in the right frame of mind. Yes, those are (very) bad films, but you can still laugh at their utter ineptness and at how gravely they take their ridiculous storylines because they do have some small amount of storytelling ability and they're functional if nothing else. A bad comedy on the other hand is a film that fails at the most basic level and I've rarely seen one work. Look at something like "Clifford". Technically, it should be funny, but it isn't. The jokes are all there, but it's as if they're being told in monotone by someone with brain damage.
I always loved this joke, which has many similar variations:
A man sees his doctor for his yearly check-up.
After the exam and tests are done, the guy days "So, doc, how am I?"
The doctor takes a long, deep breath and says, "Well, I've got some bad news. You have AIDS. You also have Alzheimer's."
The man is shocked. Pale. Silent. A few moments later, he brightens up and smiles.
"Well, at least I don't have AIDS!"
Three Catholic Religious are on a pilgrimage in the Holy Land: a Benedictine, a Franciscan, and Jesuit.
The Benedictine is carrying a load of bread.
The Franciscan is carrying a bottle of wine.
The Jesuit is carrying a car door.
They meet a fourth pilgrim who asks them: "What's with the bread, the wine, and the car door?"
The Benedictine answers: "When I'm hungry, I eat."
The Franciscan answers: "When I'm thirsty, I drink."
The Jesuit answers: "When I'm hot, I roll down the window."
Ebert: A Jewish man is worried about his son's future.
The rabbi says, "Let's make a little test. Tonight, when he comes home, on the table he'll find the Bible, a cigar, and a bottle of wine. We'll hide behind the curtains and watch. If he takes the Bible, he'll be a holy man. He he takes the cigar, he'll be a man of the world. If he takes the wine, he'll be a libertine.
The son comes home, lights the cigar, pours himself a glass of wine, and settles down to read.
Oy, vay!" says the rabbi's voice from behind the curtains. "He'll be a Jesuit!"
A farmer was on trial in Scotland for bestiality. "Is it not true" shouted the prosecutor, "that you selected one of the goats for your nefarious purpose?" "Aye" responded the accused. "And is it not true" thundered the prosecutor, "that you had the goat lick your testicles before proceeding to further debasements?" To which one of the jurors was overheard to say "A good goat will do that!"
One ought to make a distinction between comedy and satire, wherin a satirist may use comedic devices like jokes and such, but satire does not need to be funny to be effective. Edmund Burke proposed an aesthetic duality of the sublime and the beautiful, as a force of nature such as the Victoria Falls is sublime in its awe, a flower garden is beautiful. One might argue that satire is sublime where the joke or comedy generally is merely beautiful or rather a miscreant of the sublime, the grotesque.
However, Mark Twain maintained that laughter, the singular act of laughter, was a cosmological moment of consciousness that projected us out of ourselves to reveal our anxieties as trivial as grains of sand in a universe.
Love your recent columns. I’m still filled with anticipatory wonder over the thought of you doing a Camus vs. Simenon piece. Also along those lines, I’ve been reading some books published from your neck of the woods: Univ. of Chicago press recently re-release of Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s work. Sean Penn’s great movie The Pledge was based on one of his books. The Assignment, is the one I’ve just gotten into; like a Camus/Simenon lovechild. Great stuff.
Glad to see you are doing well!
My best,
Walter
Yes to what Knox said. A movie can fail in its own genre and succeed as comedy, but a comedy that sucks has already thrown its ace in the hole.
I have laughed at movies for how lame the jokes were, but I think that most such movies are intentionally so. These seem mostly to be spoof movies, Naked Gun, Undercover Brother, etc. where the joke itself isn't the joke, the joke is that they're telling the joke.
I'm going to invent a subgenre of the "3 guys walk into a bar" joke, before your very eyes and with little aforethought. This'll be the "brain teaser" subgenre, with three samples and then you're on your own.
Here's how it works: I give the title and you give the scenario.
Samples:
Clumsy Elizabethans These three guys walk into a bard . . .
Clumsy Talk-Show Guests These three guys walk into a Paar . . .
Hungry Termites These three Termite guys walk into a parallel bar . . .
Edgar Rice Burroughs fans
Clumsy Daniel Boone clones
(Challenger) Farmer Thiss, masquerading as a poplar
Have Fun, Kids!
Ebert: Three Russians walk into a tsar.
Three pickles walk into a jar.
Three landladies walk into a char.
Three parasites walk into a scar.
Three comics walk into Bill Maher.
To answer Peter Fawthrop's question about Archie Bunker statement, I believe the dialogue went like this: "God don't make no mistakes. That's how he got to be God."
Newly-weds Siao Ming and his wife took the car and went on a road trip honeymoon. A few days later, the car broke down near midday. Siao Ming attempted to fix the engine trouble, but after half a day of trying, the engine still won't start.
His wife, seeing him sweaty all over, took pity and said, "Sweetie, there's a motel not far from here. Let's just spend the night there and come back tomorrow. The car will be okay by then. No need for you to worry."
"No, no, no, that was before we were married. This time, the car's really broken down."
Q: What’s orange and fizzy and comes down the chimney on Christmas Eve?
A: Fanta Claus.
"Dr, would you kiss me?" says the patient.
"No", says the doctor. "You are a very beautiful woman but it's against my code of ethics.”
"Please, just one kiss", she asks again.
"It's totally out of the question" he replies.
"Strictly speaking we shouldn't even be having sex."
Doctor tells man, "I have some bad news. You have cancer and you have Alzheimers."
The man says, "Well at least I don't have cancer."
When laughter subsides, tell it again.
Then keep retelling it every few minutes, while forgetting parts or just screwing it up in various ways. It helps if you are old (like me)
A man goes to the doctor's. "I'm afraid that I am going to have to ask you to stop masturbating," says the doctor. "Oh no, why is that?" asks the worried patient. "Well," says the doctor, "it’s really putting me off."
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In keeping with one of the themes:
Two penguins are walking across an iceberg. One penguin turns to the other,"You look like you're wearing a tuxedo." The second penguin replies, "Maybe I am."
===
A penguin walks into a bar. He says to the barman: "My brother was in here earlier. Have you seen him?"
The barman replies: "I don't know. What does he look like?"
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And a parrot one:
A woman goes into a petshop to buy a parrot. The shopkeeper points to one and says, "That's a good one right there - used to live in a brothel." The woman thinks it's funny and buys the parrot.
When she gets home the parrot says,"F**k me a new brothel!" The woman laughs.
Her two daughters come home and the parrot says "F**k me new prossies!" The girls laugh.
The husband comes home and the parrot says "F**k me Keith, I haven't seen you for weeks".
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A Freudian, a Jungian, and a Lacanian walk into a bar. The Freudian orders a cigar. The Jungian orders an Etruscan mask to conceal his face. "You cretins!" says the Lacanian. He then orders a beer, which,however, he does not desire.
What do you do to an elephant with three balls?
Walk him.
Pitch to the giraffe.
Dear Mr. Ebert,
My brother once told me about Ronald Reagan's first meeting with Gorbachev. Maybe the story is apochryphal, but here goes: The ice between the two men and the two superpowers was pretty thick, so The Great Communicator employed a joke in an attempt to cause a break in the hopelessly frigid conditions. The joke had something to do with a firing squad and the lack of a need to worry on the part of the guy who was supposed to be executed, as the supply side problems of Soviet Communism had caused a shortage in bullets. Is there any way that you could possibly know this one off of the top of your head? (Incidently, the possibly apochryphal joke did not go over well, and the ice thickened into the age we fondly recall as the "height of the Cold War." I guess some guys can't tell a joke and others can't take one.)
P.S.-- I've written a sequel to my Joker joke. It's about Columbine. "Too soon, too soon" to post it? Sincerely, Philboyd Studge
Ebert: I doubt Reagan would have told that joke...
Angry wife to husband: "Take off my bra! Now off my panties! And don't you ever dare to put on my clothes again!"
About math. There are three kind of people in this world---those who know it and those who don't.
A lion is sleeping in the shade and a monkey sitting on a branch gets worked up and takes advantage of him posteriori. Feeling the moist in him lion wakes, grasps the enormity of it ---the king, being done to,by a commoner! How will I live it down! Having caught monkey in the act, red handed, so to say, gives chase and runs, runs, runs to catch the blackguard but finally the monkey gives him the slip. Lion slinks here and there lost in reverie finally reaching a military stockade where a guard is lounging on an easy chair, hidden behind a newspaper which he is reading.
"Did you see a monkey such and such hereabout?" asks lion.
The guard peers knowingly over his glasses ----actually its the monkey himself----and says, " Oh ,you mean the one who took you from behind?"
Aghast, the lion exclaims," Just half an hour ago and its already made the headlines??"
By Scott on April 15, 2009 9:29 PM
By Ron Barth, Jr. on April 15, 2009 5:36 PM
By Zach Brutsche on April 15, 2009 12:55 AM
D'ye see that house on the hill? I built it with my own hands. But, do they call me "MacGregor the Carpenter?" Nae.
D'ye see that fence on the lawn? Well, I built it with me bare hands. But, do they call me "MacGregor the Fence-Builder?" Nae.
D'ye see that boat in the harbor? I built her with me two, bare hands. But, do they call me "MacGregor the Boat-Builder? Nae.
Ach, but if you fuck one goat...
Lose the "if" in the punchline, and it's funnier, Zach. Try it.
listen to the following rhythms, which i think are better, and allow for different deliveries --
1. Ach!... but fuck one goat...! (with equal spacing between words -- but fuck, one, goat)
2. Ach!... but should you fuck a goat...! (rhythm bounces on should and fuck and lands gloriously on goat)
Ebert: 3. But I fuck one lousy goat..."
Yes, and you were right to lose the `Ach!` - entirely different tone, as someone who asks himself the question often.
An improvement would also to change `but do they call me `MacGregor the...` to `but do they say `there goes MacGregor the....`. There is more for the imagination.
From an Asimov short story:
A wife is on her deathbed, with her husband at her bedside, inconsolable.
"Before I die," she says, "I must tell you... I was unfaithful to you."
"Darling, I know." Says the husband. "Why else have I poisoned you?"
An example of how a joke would be created (this is a true story):
The other day my four year old son was asking for a piece of candy and I told him, "OK, but you have to be nice to your little sister". He immediatly started crying: "WAAAA! I'm not getting any candyyy!!!"
Great post. I like the Mamet joke.
I tell jokes sparingly, always trying to keep in mind your deadpan face rule.
I told one yesterday that I wish I could take back. I was standing around with some guys in a factory measuring a defect in a part. When there was a pause, I threw in this joke that I pulled somewhere deep out of my brain from a Roseanne Barr appearance on the Tonight Show when she first started:
Why do men like maps more than women do?
Because they can relate to the concept of "one inch equals one mile".
I thought it was funny. It died yesterday, though. And I made a quick exit.
That one's probably funnier told by a female.
By the way, I wonder how many people made it all the way through "The Aristocrats"? I did, but it took some doing.
I'm feeling a little guilty that most of the women readers are sitting this one out.
It seems jokes have gender and that of the present series seems clear. What are the female of the specie like?
on "the aristocrats," i wonder how many people don't get the joke because they don't know, through no fault of their own, what an aristocrat is/was. would the joke work if the punchline was "congress" or "the senate"? maybe some other sleazy group of people. it obviously would only work for someone who hasn't heard it yet. i smell homework.
Ebert: I must live in a delusional universe. How many people don't know what an aristocrat is?
In other news, an archeological dig in the Scottish Highlands reports the discovery of an old Scotch penny bearing the date AD 1604. The coin was found about two feet away from three skeletons, all on their hands and knees.
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A doctor says to his attractive woman patient, "For this next procedure, I will have to numb your breasts."
The woman says "All right" and removes her top.
The doctor puts his face between her breasts and goes " Num num num num num num..."
***********
(Phone rings.) "Good morning, Johnson, Johnson, Johnson & Johnson."
"I'd like to speak to Mr. Johnson, please."
"I'm sorry, but Mr.Johnson is attending the Conference on World Affairs and won't be back until Monday."
"In that case, may I speak to Mr. Johnson?"
" I'm sorry, but Mr. Johnson and his wife are vacationing in the Bahamas for two weeks."
"All right, then may I speak to Mr. Johnson?"
"I'm sorry, but Mr. Johnson's wife is ill, and he's taken an indefinite leave of absence."
"Then I guess I had better talk to Mr. Johnson."
" ( click ) Speaking."
***************
Q.: Why did the Gulf Coast get hurricanes while New York City got the Fox News Channel?
A.: The Gulf Coast had first choice.
****************
And for the Anglophiles , an old favorite from the Two Ronnies:
Ronnie Corbett: "We've just recieved word of a life form found on the moon: a large flower with one eye and flippers like a seal. Upon being photograhed, the creature blinked its eye, flipped its flippers, burst into bloom, then burst into flame and perished. Next week we'll have film of the blinking, flipping, blooming, flaming perisher, but until then it's good night from me..."
Ronnie Barker: "And it's good night from him."
****************
And it's good night from them.
Which reminds me of...
The Origin of Chapstick
An old cowhand came riding into town on a hot, dry, dusty day. The local sheriff watched from his chair in front of the saloon as the cowboy wearily dismounted and tied his horse to the rail a few feet in front of the sheriff.
The cowboy then moved slowly to the back of the horse, lifted his tail, and placed a big kiss where the sun don't shine.
Then he dropped the horse's tail, stepped up on the walk, and headed toward the swinging doors of the saloon.
"Hold on there, Mister," said the Sheriff. "Did I just see what I think I saw?"
"Reckon you did, Sheriff. I got me some powerful chapped lips."
"And does kissing a horse's ass cure the problem?" the Sheriff asked.
"Nope, but I shore don't lick 'em so much."
Wasn't it Morey Amsterdam, the "Human Joke Machine," who, if you fed him a punchline, could tell you the joke?
"Where did you get that awful haircut?"
"Until now, everything's been fine."
"I'm not sure; I'm sitting in this refrigerator, minding my own business ... "
"They did that to my baby brother, and he couldn't walk for a year!"
The cowboy grabs the horse by both ears and yells, "Read my lips! POSSE, damn it! Posse!!"
And so on.
Jokes for women
"An old flame comes up to me, tries to get back together with me and says all romantically: "I want you to be the last person I see when I die." So I said: "How about I just poke your eyes out?"
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"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I like men with big noses. My man has a big nose. No, not naturally, he's just a big liar."
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"Why do men grow hair in weird places? Cuz God knows men need women to have their ass on a string."
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"Why do women call their men sweetheart? I don't know, it really didn't taste sweet."
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Why do women get one of those elementary school clocks in their bedroom? So, they can imagine it's the last day of school.
Ebert: The joke depends on the turkey being frozen. No one here seems to know it.
With the right crowd, and some beverages if appropriate, it's fun to play a game where one person writes a punch line, or modifies a fairly well known one, and the rest attempt to write the joke.
So, although I don't exactly know the joke to Roger's parrot punch line," it's familiar enough with the parrot form that I'll give it a try.
Lonely elderly lady decides to buy a parrott for company. She gets it home and says, "ok, say Polly wants a cracker." Parrot is silent, but lady doesn't stop all afternoon, endlessly trying to get the bird to repeat the phrase. Finally, Parrot says, "lady, what I really want is for you to shut up." Lady, says, "why I never," and to punish the bird she puts him in the freezer for 5 minutes, before returning him, shivering, to his perch. [Insert punch line.]
Ok, I've got one: God says, "Murray, you have to buy a ticket."
Ebert: Congratulations! You're close enough.
A woman wants a parrot, but can't afford to spend $1,000. The pet shop has one bird for $25, but it has a problem: It was owned by a salty old sea dog and has a rude vocabulary. She say she'll train it to clean up its act.
She brings the parrot home, puts it on a perch in the living room, and begins to clean house. The bird says, "Great legs! Great legs!"
She throws it in the freezer for five minutes. Bird thinks it over, waits a couple of days, and says, "Great tits! Great tits!"
She throws it in the freezer for ten minutes. Bird thinks it over, waits a couple of weeks this time, and says, "Wanna get laid? Wanna get laid?"
This time it goes in the freezer for a full half-hour. When it comes out, it's shivering and sneezing and takes a month to get back to normal, Finally it nods toward the kitchen and asks, "What'd the frozen turkey want? A blow job?"
How many psychiatrists does it take to screw in a light bulb?
Only one, but the bulb has to really want to change.
On the topic of women and joke telling, it occurs to me that I've been with my wife for 33 years now and I don't remember her ever telling even one joke. She laughs at jokes, but never tells them. Ladies - is that common?
One of my mother's favorites:
Guy walks into a taxidermists with two dead squirrels.
Taxidermist says "You want these mounted?"
Guy says "Just shaking hands is fine."
An observation about humor and women. We are unlikely to find jokes at our expense (wife jokes, male-oriented sex jokes) funny. No big scientific mystery here. As far as Scott's humor-article link - a male scientist finds that men are more humorous than women because men appreciate what he thinks is funny more than women do? LOL! Now that is funny. ;)
My husband is of Scottish heritage, so I've collected a few Scottish jokes. Some are hoary with age, and aren't really Scottish at all.
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A technician was sent to the Isle of Lewis on a month's contract. He arrived on a grey, cloudy, drizzling day. The next day, it was still grey, cloudy and drizzling. On the third day, he awoke to again find it was grey, cloudy and drizzling. Seeing a small boy passing by, the technician asked in exasperation, "Does the weather here ever change?"
"I don't know," said the child. "I'm only six."
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An Englishman, an Australian and a Scotsman were in a bar. They'd just started on a new round when a fly landed in each glass of beer. The Englishman took his out with the blade of his Swiss Army knife. The Australian blew his away in a cloud of froth. The Scotsman lifted his up carefully and held it over his glass. "Go on, spit it oot, ye wee devil!"
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Bagpipes - the missing link between music and noise.
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Why do pipers march when they play?
A moving target is harder to hit.
When Tom Landry died and found himself at the pearly gates.
"Welcome!" said Saint Peter "You're in luck, God is a huge football fan and there is a special neighborhood for football legends such as yourself."
So Peter flew him over to this beautiful neighborhood and they started walking up the street.
He noticed a very nice four bedroom ranch house all decorated in Steeler black and yellow with the Steeler logo painted on the mailbox.
"I guess that's Rooney's house."
"Yup, sure is."
Then he passed another slightly larger house all decorated in the Bears Orange and Blue with a Bears logo painted on the garage door.
"George Halas?"
"That's him."
Then they started walking by this incredible mansion. It was at least 30 times bigger than any other house on the block and everything was painted Green and Gold. The 3 acre flower garden was meticulously planted to form an enormous Packer logo.
"That's ridiculous!" fumed Landry. "Why should Lombardi get a place that much better than anyone else?"
"Oh that's not Lombardis house. That's Gods."
Ham sandwich walks into a bar. Bartender says "Sorry, we don't serve food here."
Can I plug a website that combines brevity, humor and film criticism? The Four Word Film Review - use the link in my name. Samples from the top 1000 (of over 100,000 reviews):
On The Waterfront - "Brando feels pier pressure."
Fly Away Home - "Delusions of gander."
The Brain That Wouldn't Die" - "The life of brain."
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" - "Nut screws washer, bolts."
The Blob - "Jelly and I scream."
and in keeping with the dirty joke theme, the following have all been submitted for the 1977 moive Chatterbox about a woman whose vagina can speak:
"Bush - Read my lips"
"Periodically quiet"
"Pubic address system"
"One big wise crack"
"Leave wit to beaver"
Speaking of funny-because-it's-not-funny, Ricky Gervais exploits the British "agony of embarressment" humor with his character David Brent who tells jokes extremely badly. I've always said that it takes a good actor to play a bad actor, and maybe the same applies to comics. (I think Billy Wilder once said that only someone as decisive as Shirley MacLaine could play someone as indecisive as Fran Kubelik, that you have to be smart to play stupid, that you have to be sober to play drunk...)
If you haven't watched the debut of Susan Boyle on "Britain's Got Talent".... it's my new favorite example of Roger's concept of "elation". Try to find a video clip that shows the reaction of judges Simon Cowell, Amanda Holden and Piers when she walks out on stage BEFORE she starts to sing. (Simon asks her if she has any singers that she considers role models.) "Britain's Got Talent" isn't limited to a singing competition. The last contestant on that night's show did a striptease and she got three "Yes" votes to move on to the next round. I'm not 100% positive that Simon had no idea what Ms. Boyle was going to do... but all of the reactions we discussed take place. Demi Moore is now one of Susan's biggest fans, and it's interesting that Susan and Demi are practically the same age. (47 or 48)
Second, "State of Play" has gotten high marks for depicting a newspaper. A movie based on a 13-episode miniseries shown on BBC (British Broadcasting). Can a 2-hour movie capture all the suspense of a miniseries that gives us one episode a week? Is there enough time to bond with the characters?
I've mentioned a "Roger Ebert movie" about the demise of modern newspapers in Chicago. I have to think - but I could be wrong - that a "Roger Ebert movie" would be closer to Susan Boyle's appearance than "State of Play". More humor. More human drama. More elation.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/5064020.stm
Professor Wiseman said the joke contained all three elements of what makes a good gag -
(1) anxiety,
(2) a feeling of superiority, and
(3) an element of surprise.
"It makes us feel superior to the complete idiot who does not understand," he said. "It also has the surprise element as we don't see the death coming."
David Letterman's Top Ten Reasons Why Golf Is Better Than Sex...
#10...A below par performance is considered damn good.
#9...You can stop in the middle and have a cheeseburger and a couple of beers.
Or... A cheeseburger walks into a bar and says "Hey bartender give me a beer".
The bartender replies, "I'm sorry. We don't serve food here".
As long as we're talking about food...
Have you heard about the new low-fat communion bread?
It's called "I Can't Believe It's Not Jesus"!
I’m holding court outside of Philosophy lecture with a girl, her boy, and a third boy. I ask:
“Have any of you considered seeing the new Nicholas Cage movie Knowing?”
The girl says “I want to see that movie, but his acting is... intense. Why does Nick Cage act that way?”
And her boy says: “Nick cage acts that way because he experiences the world as things in-themselves.”
[True. After years of being on film Cage probably doesn’t understand the space he uses as contextualised by time.] But then the third boy comes out with this gem.
He says “Nick Cage acts that way because Nick Cage is the Unmoved Mover.”
I have a such HOOT at that. The people beside us start laughing.
This next one is a joke rather played than told so it hasn’t got a punch line.
I’m at the restaurant in the morning and the waitress brings over the toast I ordered, and she gives me this, “Bon appétit.”
So I ask, “Do you really speak French?” And a little embarrassed she admits, No.
“I’m sorry I asked, you know how it goes... « je suis un chien... »”
I speak the French slowly and deliberately. Like magic she repeats my words, she sais “Je suis une chiene.” And then she asks “What did I say?”
Me: “You said: I am a dog.”
Her: “Why would you make me say that?”
Me: “I was speaking for myself.”
All men have a fail safe, jocular joke. It’s like an evolutionary defense mechanism. It has to be a howler so that one isn’t expected to tell more jokes, although If a man had eighteen jokes like this he is a potential Tiger Woods of laughter.
Every day Ginny and Timmy ride home from school together on their bikes. They come rushing out of the schoolhouse but this afternoon there’s something Timmy fails to notice. Someone’s stolen the seat off of his bicycle. He jumps on it and sustains a painful injury.
Alert Ginny runs back to the classroom, hits the teacher’s desk and says “Jimmy’s hurt on his bike, he broke his asshole right over the frame!
And the teacher says
(Your impression of the teacher must embody ennui.)
“Rectum Ginny, Rectum.”
“Wrecked’im? Damn near killed him!”
Those last three I consider to be all mine. But, speaking of evolution, this next joke is so old I first heard it from a bonobo chimp at the Metro Toronto Zoo.
A farmer comes home from a day out at field empty handed. His wife asks him “Where’s the hoe?”
[I know I’m late up to bat here. I got to this as soon as I could. This has been a great break from my regular studies in deontological reasoning. I really hit the joke books hard to find theses next three .]
Next.
A lady taking the Saint John ’s ambulance course arrives late to her meeting in a state of great excitement. She says “I just crossed water street above forty fourth when I heard a terrible crash. A man got hit by a car. I hurried over, he had a compound fracture of the tibia. He was unconscious and was bleeding profusely from scalp laceration.”
And her coworker ask her “Is that when you put your Saint John’s ambulance course training into action."
“Yes, it was." she says, "I leaned down and put my head between my legs and prevented myself from fainting.”
Wowey.
A veteran returns from war and buys enough land to start a poultry farm. He sends a letter to the department of agriculture explaining that he has ample space and could probably handle three thousand chickens to start with. The department of agriculture grants his request but three weeks later the same farmer requests three thousand more chickens. The department of agriculture then decides to have an investigator place a call.
“How are you doing with the chickens?” asks the investigator.
“Not too well, actually” replies the farmer, “I don’t know if I’m planting them too deep or too far apart.”
Zowey.
Three Bostonians are sitting in an evangelical church when the minister announces “I want everyone here to put twenty dollars in the collection plate this morning.”
One of the chaps faints and the other two quickly carry him out.
Boom.
Q: Why is it that, even after losing the presidency, the GOP is still considered the cream of the American political class?
A: Because it’s rich, thick, and full of clots.
Blamo!
OF course the greatest punch line since 1965 hasn’t got a clear set up, hardly makes anyone laugh, and actually isn't at all from a joke. If you need a hint, it’s rock and roll.
"The sun's not yellow it's chicken"
Your rule #4 makes pefect sense. Thing is, not everyone knows everything there is to know in the world. Perhaps you can get away with violating #4 if the explanation is really short? Case in point:
Q: Why doesn't Smokey the Bear have any children?
A: Whenever his wife's in heat, he beats her with a shovel.
I've told the joke numerous times, and I've run into a few people who did not know (or at least remember right away) who Smokey the Bear is. So now I'll throw in "You know Smokey the Bear, right? 'Only you can prevent forest fires...' anyway, why doesn't he have any children...'
It seems a quick enough setup to make sure they get the joke.
Ebert: Because he practices prevention?
A very poor poet was Jenny.
Her limericks weren't worth a penny.
She'd write and she'd write,
but try as she might,
whenever she tried to write any,
she always wrote one line too many.
Ebert:
A Frenchman who wrote from the heart
Was attacked by a cook with a tart.
In his kitchen domain
He threw a bomb down the drain
Which resulted in linoleum blown apart
two men are talking. one says to the other "i once knew a man with a wooden leg named Cliff" Other man responds "oh yea? what was the name of his other leg?"
Greatest joke ever! Thank you, Mary Poppins!
My own wife is the loudest laugher( Ducksoup and even more the Chaplin Circus had her and me an my son litterally rolling and crying--god bless Groucho ahd Charlie).She laughs at jokes-not the smutty kind.
Pandit: I am so miser (kanjoos) that I went alone for my honeymoon and saved half the money.
Bania: That is nothing, I saved full money. I sent my wife for honeymoon with a friend.
Another variation of a previously posted joke:
Why does New Jersey have all the chemical plants & toxic waste dumps while California got all the lawyers?
New Jersey got first choice.
Husband,leaving for work,to wife: Bye,dear mother of four children.
Wife:Bye, dear father of two.
A woman stand-up comedian I really like is Maria Bamford. I imagine she would be the best to tell the jokes I wrote for women. She has a website too http://mariabamford.com/com_clips.shtml
Has anyone thrown this one out yet?
I went to the doctor, said to him, "My penis is burning."
He says, "That means someone's talking about it."
Once upon a time there was an International Scientific Competition to be held in Berlin. The Japanese are working on their latest supercomputer, the Americans on a car for Mars , the British on test tube elephants and the Chinese as usual under a veil of secrecy.The Indian Government assigns the onus of saving the national honour to Santa-Banta, the to be immortal home grown genious who,after due deliberation, as befits a country that prides itself on continuing as substantially agricultural in economy, decides to tackle the worldwide menace of rodentry. After months of labour he comes out with the following(diagram not available):
A razor sharp circular blade rotates in a horizontal plane. A narrow corridor leads to a point on its circumference.On two platforms on either side are heaps of cashew and hazel nuts respectively. The Rat reaching there is totally cofused and as he turns his neck from side to side muttering,"Hazel or Cashew?Hazel or Cashew?Hazel or Cashew?" the blade does the job and we have the rat without the neck and vice versa. The achievement is widely publicised to great applause and there is an upsurge of national pride and hopes of licking China revive.
The big day is near and Santa-Banta is flying to Berlin with hazel and cashew in left and right pockets.
"Lemme have just one" he says but the nature being what it is, its one more and one more and Santa-Banta is in no minutes nutless.
Horror! Anyway he's not one to faze and sets up his invention at the venue and explains to the female judge its the ultimate answer to the oldest problem--Rats!!
"How does it work?" she asks.
"Well, the blade rotates and rat comes along turning his neck now right now left saying "Where's the cashew?Where's the hazel?....Where's the cashew?Where's the hazel?....".....and here's your dead rat.
I made a first attempt at stand-up at a local open-mic night. Comments (positive or negative) would be appreciated:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkOH5gmOyT8
By Scott on April 16, 2009 11:18 AM
By Scott on April 15, 2009 9:29 PM
By Ron Barth, Jr. on April 15, 2009 5:36 PM
By Zach Brutsche on April 15, 2009 12:55 AM
D'ye see that house on the hill? I built it with my own hands. But, do they call me "MacGregor the Carpenter?" Nae.
D'ye see that fence on the lawn? Well, I built it with me bare hands. But, do they call me "MacGregor the Fence-Builder?" Nae.
D'ye see that boat in the harbor? I built her with me two, bare hands. But, do they call me "MacGregor the Boat-Builder? Nae.
Ach, but if you fuck one goat...
Lose the "if" in the punchline, and it's funnier, Zach. Try it.
listen to the following rhythms, which i think are better, and allow for different deliveries --
1. Ach!... but fuck one goat...! (with equal spacing between words -- but fuck, one, goat)
2. Ach!... but should you fuck a goat...! (rhythm bounces on should and fuck and lands gloriously on goat)
Ebert: 3. But I fuck one lousy goat..."
Yes, and you were right to lose the `Ach!` - entirely different tone, as someone who asks himself the question often.
An improvement would also to change `but do they call me `MacGregor the...` to `but do they say `there goes MacGregor the....`. There is more for the imagination.
Ron, when I tell the joke, I say "But you fuck one goat..." in a voice that is just about to boil over with anger. I don't know why I typed "Ach" and "If." I like to be grammatically correct when I type, and I guess it just spoiled the punchline. It's better live.
Roger, I've found that "You" rolls off the tongue easier than "I," and I find that the point gets across a bit more slowly, resulting in a lovely cascade of laughter, rather than one big cloudburst. It's worked well for me, and to tweak it any more might push it to the breaking point. Next time I tell the joke, though, I'll use the "I" and see how she goes. You've got a few years, and doubtless a few tellings on me, so you're probably right. Allow a young man some groundless arrogance, s'il vous plaît?
Scott, I prefer to say "Do they call me," as opposed to "There goes" because I learned it that way, and because I also like to think of the villagers calling MacGregor that to his face, and as an introduction. Cruel, yes, but funny.
How many feminists does it take to screw in a light bulb?
That's not funny!
What's the difference between a Scotsman and Mick Jagger?
Mick Jagger says "Hey! You! Get offa my cloud!" A Scotsman says, "Hey, McCleod! Get offa my ewe!"
Brant Osborn - Reagan and Gorbachev met for the first time in 1985 at the Geneva Summit, where they agreed on a fifty percent reduction in the two countries' nuclear arsenal. It was, for all intents and purposes, a success, and the two men got along famously. The Reykjavik summit of 1986 was a different story.
So, that anecdote is most, most probably apocryphal, yes.
Hotel clerk to newlyweds "Would you like a bridal suite?"
The bride giggles, "Oh no thank you, I'll just grab his ears."
What do you call a man who survives a three story fall?
An ambulance.
What do you call a black doctor?
A doctor, you racist son of a bitch.
Still my all time favorite:
Q: How many surrealists does it take to change a light globe?
A: Fish.
Abbott and Costello were so ahead of their time -- or possibly, there's nothing new under the sun. They take the role of the straight man -- precisely timed responses -- and push it until it expands an ordinary comic story into a cumulatively hilarious piece of meta-comedy.
(And speaking of "nothing new" relating to the referenced 1977 movie "Chatterbox": there's a 15th Century French tale called "The Chevalier Who Could Make Cunts Talk".)
Marcus -- Remember Rule #1, and know your material down to the letter. (Good recovery, though, on the 'stained glass'.) Tighten it up, work on the segues, and do a little more with the dog and cat phone sex. Important thing, though, is that I laughed.
Eric I on April 15, 2009 10:42 AM wrote: "Oh come on" she says, "can't think of an-y-thing?" and bats her eyelashes.
"Ok baby, how about a really small head."
You've completely botched the punchline of this joke. The correct punchline should be: "Ok baby, how about a little head."
Think about the difference. ;)
NO NO NO
The duck joke goes like this:
A man walks into his house with a duck under his arm.
He walks up to his wife and says, "I want you to see the pig I'm fucking."
His wife says, "That's....that's not a pig."
Man says, "I was talking to the duck."
I once saw an interview with Sammy Davis Jr. It has stayed with me. Sammy (who I consider in my humble opinion, one of the greatest performers who ever lived) was talking about how he managed to keep his reviews in perspective. He recalled, early in his career, opening at a club in some large city in Canada. The next morning, he checked the local paper for a review of his act. He found this shortest of columns following his name- Sammy Davis Jr.- "One eyed colored jew not so hot!"
Even the audience gasped. But Sammy just grinned and said after that, he learned to not put much store in other's opinions of him whether good or ill.
Why this entry now? I was thinking of the unknown columnist and his ungracious entry...it seems the joke was on him, after all.
Greatest clean joke ever (but it must be said out loud):
Q: What do you call a fish with no eyes?
A: Fsh.
re: jokes for women
I remember a greeting card I saw one time.
Front: a woman saying, "Men are always complaining that women suffocate them."
Inside: "Personally, I think if you can still hear them whining you're not pushing down hard enough on the pillow."
I don't know if that kills, but I just about died...
I don't agree that joke telling, like knife throwing, should only be practiced by experts. Stand-up is all about the practice; word choice, inflection, emphasis. The audience is the ultimate measure of your progress. If after awhile all you hear from the room is the sound of crickets, you'll know it's time for another, safer line of work. Like knife throwing.
My favorite joke to tell, although I am personally sick of it by now, and so is my wife!!
[Told in Pirate accent where appropriate]
----------------------
Pirate walks into a bar. He has a peg-leg, a hook-hand, and an eye-patch. Bar tender says: 'Boy, you really been through the ringer, how'd you get those attachments?'
"Well," says the Pirate. "A whale bit off me leg, so I gots this here peg-leg now. Got the whale eventually too!"
"How about the hook?" asks the bar tender.
"That," replies the Pirate. "I lost in a duel, but I done got the guy in the end."
"Ah," says the bar tender. "And what about the eye-patch."
"A seagull pooped in me eye," replied the Pirate.
"That doesn't sound so bad," came back the bar tender.
"Ah," said the Pirate. "But it was me first day with the hook!"
------------------
Looked that joke, till I told it too many times.
Hi Roger, thanks for a great read on a subject I love... If you're a George Carlin fan, I highly recommend "History of the Joke with Lewis Black," which includes an interview with Carlin as well as some classic jokes told by the master. It's a documentary like "The Aristocrats," but more about the art of telling jokes in general. (Not really about history, despite the title.) Interesting insights from folks like Robin Williams and Patton Oswalt, too, and my new (old) favorite, Shelley Berman. Here's a couple clips:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5y1aoZwCKH4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxR4RpPL1rc
My brother Brant is correct, Mr. Ebert. Apparently President Reagan loved to tell anti-Soviet jokes when in the company of Soviet officals, including Gorbachev. Reagan was especially partial to beginning summits between West and East with long-winded anecdotes in addition to the usual jokefest, prompting Gorbachev to react with an aside to his advisers,"On boltayet yeshchyo", or, "there he goes again." In fact, such was Reagan's fetish for ill-advised humor that George Shultz once admonished, "Mr. President, you can't just sit there telling jokes!" (see the selected excerpt from James Mann's forthcoming book about Reagan in this month's Vanity Fair).
I believe the joke in question goes a little something like this:
"A man is standing in line for meat...after a very long wait, he becomes angry and begins cursing the system. A suspiciously dressed man who had been lurking nearby walks up to him and says "Comrade, in the old days if someone made such complaints, well..." makes a gesture in the shape of a pistol and points it at his head.
After awhile, the man comes home empty handed. "What's wrong?" asks his wife, "Are they out of meat?"
"Worse," says the man, "they're out of bullets."
Q: What do you do with an elephant with three balls?
A: Walk him and pitch to the giraffe!
Q: How did the bee break his leg?
A: Because he fell off his honey!
Q. What has six balls and screws everybody?
A. The lottery.
Feedback for Marcus: A for courage and stage presence. B for delivery. C for appearance. D for material, including props. No Fs.
What your material needs is some good, red-meat jokes. The Cuss-O-Matic doesn't seem to be anything more than a weird-looking Harpo-Marxesque horn. It needs to do something both surprising and funny. What might that be? --Hey, YOU'RE the comedian; I'm merely the audience. [Rimshot]
As for appearance, you are just remindful enough of Drew Carey as to seem like him of the Bizarro world. I would try to find a different look.
But, again, A for courage; and if you keep being courageous and going back, guaranteed you'll be a better comedian for it. Good luck!
re: Marco Stam
Actually, I thought the joke was MUCH funnier with that punchline. I figured that the guy asking for "a little head" was the common punchline, and asking for "a really small head" was a great inversion.
I think this is as a good a blog as any to pop my comment-cherry...
I've only managed to read about half of these comments-- which is probably too much considering I'm at work-- so apologies if this has already been explored. But Roger needs some defense on this whole, "All right, you're ugly!" line. He's absolutely right when he says you have to end that line on the word 'ugly'. However, I do agree that the rhythm and the content of the joke necessitates another word in the punchline:
A guy goes in to a psychiatrist.
Psychiatrist says, "You're crazy!"
Guy says, "I want a second opinion!"
"All right, you're also ugly!"
It changes the timing to greater effect, I think, and also retains the punch word in its proper place. I can't take credit for that, unfortunately. The revelation belongs to the genius writers of Futurama. Of course, there it was the Robot Devil who delivered the line, "You're also lazy!"
Oh, and I'd also like to share my favorite Mitch Hedburg joke. Considering the topic, I think you'll like it, too, Roger. This is from memory, so the actual phrasing is probably a bit off, but here goes:
"I wrote a screenplay and showed it to my agent. He told me that he liked it, but that I needed to rewrite it. I said, 'Fuck that. I'll just make a copy.'"
As a writer, I never don't laugh at that.
Lastly, a line that always makes me and all of my friends laugh, even out of context from the joke/story it originates, is by Lewis Black:
"If it weren't for my horse, I never would have spent that year in college."
Marco Stam wrote on April 17, 2009 6:55 AM:
"Eric I on April 15, 2009 10:42 AM wrote: 'Oh come on' she says, 'can't think of an-y-thing?' and bats her eyelashes. 'Ok baby, how about a really small head.' You've completely botched the punchline of this joke. The correct punchline should be: 'Ok baby, how about a little head.' Think about the difference. ;)"
Marco, the point of the joke is that you're expecting him to say "how about a little head." The surprise is that he wanted "a really small head" all along. (I hope--otherwise, it's not a very good joke.)
Cute little girl climbs up on her her grandfather's lap and says:
"Grandpa! Grandpa! Do your frog imitation!!!"
Grandpa says: "My frog imitation? I don't do frog imitations."
Puzzled little girl says: "Really? But mom said as soon as you croak we're going to Disneyland..."
Q: Why should you always take two Mormons fishing with you?
A: If you bring only one, he'll drink all your beer.
Thanks to the reader who found the Archie Bunker quote, but it is not the one I am trying to remember. The one that I heard was more similar to the structure of Mamet's "Everyone needs money" quote. It would have been in the first, second, or third season. It was something possibly like "Everyone knows who God is; that's why they call him God." There wasn't a "That's how he got to be" in the quote.
In searching for the quote, I am remembering the days of grand TV, and I am only 32. The trend in TV is to make it cinematic in appearance. People ask me why I haven't watched any new series since the 1990s. I'd rather spend two hours watching true cinema- a Scorcese film- than a TV quality crime drama. I guess the only reason I once loved TV was because there were well written, and very funny, family sitcoms to lighten the burden of life, and give us families to relate to, or in some cases wish were our own. We got to know these people, and see their children grow up through the years. There are very few family sitcoms remaining, and the writing is mostly wretched.
Archie Bunker: Go ahead, ask your mother, *she* believes in capital punishment.
Gloria Stivic: Do you Ma?
Edith Bunker: Well, sure.
Gloria Stivic: MA?
Edith Bunker: Well, as long as it ain't too severe.
Normal people think: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it".
Normal engineers think: "If it ain't broke, take it apart and find out why not."
Software engineers think "If is ain't broke, it must not have enough features yet".
One of my earliest memories is my dad telling jokes at a dinner party, and I grew up wanting to be just like him. I love jokes and making people laugh! At work we especially like inappropriate jokes. For about a week we went around telling the first line of a well known joke and replacing the punchline with "AIDS" (said with a solemn face and sad tone).
"Why did the chicken cross the road?"
"AIDS"
etc.
Also...
This horse walks into a bar. Bartender says, "Why the long face?" Horse says, "My wife died."
Great article!
A tourist is walking in Belfast, middle of the night.
All of a sudden he gets a knife to his throat and is taken to an alley. The perp demands to know:
-You, what are you, you pig, are you catholic or protestant.
The man thinks like crazy, oh Lord, wrong answer and I am dead.
But then he gets an idea and says:
-I am jewish.
-Oh! I am the luckiest arab in the world.
---------------------------------------------------------------
A general tells three war veterans that they will be rewarded with money per cm of their height.
The first one is 175 cm tall so he gets 175 000 dollars.
The second one is more greedy so he puts out his hand and he measures a good 220 cm - so he will recieve 220 000 US dollars.
The third one is a very small veteran that is a nice and honest looking afro american with the heart in the right place. However he has a demand.
-I want to measure a different length, the one from the topp of my penis to my balls.
The general who likes him says:
-You are a very nice guy, and I like you a lot, I know that you are short, but come on, you can´t have a member THAT size, can´t you try to use some higher shoes or something?
-No Sir, I want to measure what I asked for.
-So be it, doctor, please.
The doctor takes out his tape and starts to measure from the top to the... ... ...
-Excuse me, where are your balls?
-In Vietnam, please, measure!
On sitcoms (and mormons), this one form Cheers:
REBECCA (angry): "Why can't more men send flowers?!"
SAM: "I didn't know mormons can't send flowers..."
The joke goes: Two guys walk into a bar. You'd think the second one woulda ducked.
Another opinion about the second opinion joke:
"Ok. You're ugly, too." is better. It doesn't step on the punch line/word because the punch word isn't "ugly". It's "too". He asks for a second opinion and the joke is he gets a second opinion from the same person, which "too" makes manifest. The other version is ok, but one has to derive the significance, which shouldn't be necessary in such a simple joke (unlike, "signed, God, SJ", where the derivation and "ah ha!" is part of the joke).
Hi Roger,
Just wondering why "in memory" re the wonderful Lou Jacobi, a fellow Torontonian.
Ebert: Oh, dear. Knowing Ruth had died, I someone got got in my head that Lou had also.
An exception for laughing at one's own jokes?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNU_F-DFaJw
I might have laughed for a solid minute at your brown pigeon joke.
All these laments that "women don't tell jokes," and no one invokes the great Rita Rudner?
"We used to have an apartment overlooking Central Park. We couldn't actually see the park, but at night, you could hear the screams for help."
Man goes to his doctor - "Doctor, I'm farting a lot. There is no sound but it smells a lot".
Doctor - "OK, have this pill".
After two weeks, man is back.
"Doctor, what did you do? I'm still farting and now its loud".
Doctor - "Good. Your hearing is back. Now let's solve the farting".
What did the fish say when he swam into the wall?
"Dam!"
-----
A piece of string walks into a bar and asks for a drink. The bartender replies, “Sorry, we don’t serve string.”
The string goes out, ties himself in a knot, ruffles the end and goes back in. The bartender says, “Aren’t you the string that was here before?”
The string replies, “No, I’m a frayed knot.”
Rita Rudner tells Dr. Katz, her therapist, about her husband staring into the fridge, unable to find the tuna fish behind the milk. Even when she tells him it is behind the milk, he cannot move the milk, because if he does, THE MILK WILL HAVE WON.
I know that this is belated, but I'm surprised there has been no mention (or has there?) of that most iconic joke-teller and supreme one-liner, Woody Allen:
"I am two with Nature."
"It is impossible to experience one's death objectively and still carry a tune."
"His lack of education is more than compensated for by his keenly developed moral bankruptcy."
"I'd call him a sadistic, hippophilic necrophile, but that would be beating a dead horse."
"Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons."
And let's not forget the poetic final punchline in Annie Hall: "I would, but I need the eggs."
The full version on the soundless farts:
Man goes to his doctor - "Doctor, I'm farting a lot, but there is no sound and no smell. In fact, while we have been talking, I've farted about 20 times".
Doctor - "OK, have this pill".
After two weeks, man is back.
"Doctor, what did you do? I'm still farting and now its loud, still no smell".
Doctor - "Good. Your hearing is back. Now let's solve your sense of smell".
Dear Mr. Ebert: You are truly a King of both Old and New Media. I am humbled and inspired by the presence of your prose. Looking forward to reading your next essay, "How I believe in God." Your take on the art of joke-telling was serious and layered with meaning, so I am eager to experience your take on faith and belief. I suppose, in the end, that these two topics (jokes and God) don't necessarily have to be represented as two polar extremes.
Dear Scott Osborn, Thanks, Big Bro', for coming to save the day. I do appreciate the serious assist in helping me to clean up after the mess created by my last post, which Mr. Ebert was gracious enough to post anyway. And thank you also for turning me on to this fiendishly immaculate forum. I am certain that it has to be the best blog on the web. Never mind that we both know that I'm too lazy to confirm that fact through any level of research, exhaustive or otherwise.
Dear Ali Arikan: Thanks for the input. My brother's followup reply does seem to confirm that Reagan did indeed view foreign policy summits as appropriate forums for joke telling, a stance which may or may not fly in the face of one or more of Mr. Ebert's tips on telling jokes. What I'm afraid that I have done was to encrust my version of the original tale--which in itself was hearsay, though from a source whom I love--with enough myth and niter (as I am wont to do) so that it perhaps falls into the dubious category of Apocryphal Truth at best, or SHAMEFUL LIES at worst.
I guess it's kinda sorta like that old game Telephone. You know the one: a person whispers a phrase into another person's ear and the process is repeated on down the line until the last guy or gal--let's refer to them as 32--inevitably repeats what he/she thought she/he heard and everyone chortles at the inconsistencies. No doubt you first played the game back in elementary school, when your beloved teacher inevitably used the game as a time sponge with which to suck up the dangerously unstructured minutes and seconds before the recess bell. Relive in your mind that moment when the key phrase was uttered for the final time, and it came out so mangled that you were damn glad that you weren't that kid. ("What a little crybaby Judas he/she is!" "Yeah, she/he ruins everything.") Coincidently, your faith in the veracity of any truth arriving to you via oral history--no matter how recent or dist