When
Lisbeth Salander is 70 years old, she goes to a doctor for her annual checkup.
The doctor says, “You’re in good shape, but your tattoo’s draggin’.”
(Rim
shot)
I made
this joke up. Maybe you didn’t have to be told that. It is not a very good
joke, but it is my own. If I had a joke meter attached to this blog, I’d be
curious to know how many of you find it funny. On second thought…
I
have long wondered who makes up the jokes that our friends tell us under the
rubric, “Have you heard this one?”
 |
| Challenger seconds after it blew up |
Setup. NASA changed its official soft drink to Coca
Cola.
Q. Why?
A. It couldn’t get 7-up.
I
remember being amazed at the speed with which that dark joke made its way around
the 3,794,083 square miles of the United
States. It was internet speed at a time when the internet was not in the game.
Why so fast? Was the joke spontaneously thought
up by thousands of people all at the same time? Unlikely. The fact is that it
is a “good” joke in the sense that it works, and good jokes, like good news, travel
fast. But who started it? And where?
I
have made a lot of jokes in my day, but these have been quips that came to mind
during a conversation. For example, a friend was recently comparing the U.S.
Congress to a bunch of Neanderthals.
I
said, “You’re giving Neanderthals a bad name.”
The
Neanderthal joke is really a crack. It is very context dependent. You had to be
there to enjoy it. Cracks are written on water. NASA jokes are written on 3 x 5
cards.
For
a joke to be more than a crack its context has to be obvious like mother-in-law
jokes, or bad marriage jokes like Henny Youngman’s, Take my wife…please.
That
is too bad in a way because some cracks are really memorable. I remember once
being on safari in Tanzania. For some reason the long drives from one campsite
to another engender a pun mania among the passengers in one’s land cruiser. I
heard one of the best one liner cracks I’ve ever heard in a land cruiser. Margot
Jones made it.
She
said, “Anyone who thinks that a Cape Buffalo is harmless is an oxymoron.”
Now
that deserves to be heard around the country in one day flat. It never will
be. Which brings me to my final point.
There
is an Academy Award for Best Film. There ought to be an Academy Award for Best
Joke. I can see categories like:
Best
Joke on a 3 x 5 card.
Best
crack.
Best
pun.
Best
comeback.
Here
is my candidate for best comeback. It comes from Algonquin Round Table lore. The Round Table—they dubbed themselves
the “Vicious Circle”—met in New York City’s Algonquin
Hotel for lunch for ten years between 1919 and 1929 where they traded jokes, puns and cracks that,
through their various newspaper and radio outlets, sloshed around the country.
One
of the Round Tablers comes into the lunchroom and runs his hand over the bald pate
of one of the members already seated.
He says, “Hmm. That’s as smooth as my wife’s bottom.”
He says, “Hmm. That’s as smooth as my wife’s bottom.”
Without
missing a beat the bald-headed member runs his own hand over his own scalp and
replies, “You know. You are absolutely right.”
They
don’t make comebacks like that anymore.
