Berkowitz - Away with words: an irreverent tour through the world of pun competitions

For Gabi, without whom my life would have less meaning than a bad pun.

Some people have a way with words, and other people... oh, uh, not have way.

Steve Martin

Puns are the droppings of soaring wits.

Victor Hugo

Language has no patience. Yesterdays Thats So Raven will become tomorrows Raven AF, whether were prepared for it or not. Although this evolution tends to happen gradually over time, some people dont have that kind of time. These brave pioneers make up their own words, either to communicate new ideas or to keep from being boring. Way more of these new words are actually puns than most people would care to admit.

The word pun is a blanket term, though, spanning across all different flavors of wordplay. Heres a brief glossary of the kinds youll be seeing in this book.

• Homophonic pun: words that sound the same but have different meanings (Walking in light rain is a mist opportunity)
• Homographic pun: words that are spelled the same but sound different (Of the two types of anesthesia on offer, Id prefer the number won)
• Homonymic pun: words that are spelled and sound the same (I felt unsettled inside so I had an evening out)
• Portmanteau: words that combine two other words in either sound or meaning (Lossary, as in a glossary that is kind of a waste of time)

People are screaming. Throaty howls, guttural bellows, and those whoos where the first two letters drop off like rocket boosters so the rest of the word can soar. Im screaming, too. On either side of me are people I could swear Ive seen on the street holding clipboards, encouraging me to switch to green renewable energy. Ordinarily, Id cross a busy intersection to avoid those people, but right now were on the same team, and our combined energy is making the floor thrum beneath our feet. For some reason, the couple just ahead can only muster a paltry golf clap, but theyre a lonely minority, within the greater lonely minority of people who would come to an event like this.

The man standing on the lip of the stage at the Highline Ballroom in New York City looks like a magician. His hair is a wavy brown head-cape, his face is gaunt but telegenic, and hes tall enough to dangle things just out of most peoples reach. Every time he says somethingalakazam!the room explodes.

There is nothing Ive ever been surer of than the fact that this is, hands down, the best reaction to a pun Ive ever seenand Ive been to Jewish summer camp in Florida. Twice.

Applauding because someone made a pun seems like a paradox. Every lesson the world has taught me about comedy, irony, and how adults behave in public suggests that this should not be happening, that were perhaps laughdrunk from some airborne elixir or that the delicate fabric of civilization is unraveling. But its not.

Instead, the five hundred people in the crowd get their wish: Jargon Slayer advances to the next round of Punderdome.

Imagine the biggest You Had to Be There moment that has ever happened. The sky cracks open and a fleet of aliens touches down to teach Earthlings how to move solid matter with their minds. Its awesome. However, you are seriously under the weather that day and cant leave the house. Also, the aliens unlock everyones mind powers only for one day, and only on condition that theythe aliensnot be captured on video. Never again are they seen or heard from, and telekinesis resumes not being a thing. Its hard for some people to accept that it even happened. But it did. You just had to be there.

Well, reader, I was there. Not with aliens, of course, but I have experienced something equally implausible. I spent a year attending, participating in, and documenting pun competitions, along with other activities that secretly resemble pun competitions. In that time, I received and recited more puns than even the most ardent Gene Shalit admirer would be able to endure. The book you are about to read presents these puns as they happened, and I must stress right up front that the reactions to them are not embellished.

You are going to read some puns that sound just tremendously unfunny, puns that dont make sense, puns that will get your blood boiling. This book is going to be heaved across somebodys living room, borne on a flight of rage, and its going to scuff a banister. The important thing to know, though, is that when these puns were performed, they got the exact-size laughs and cheers described here. It strains credibility. The words cognitive dissonance will seem exceedingly applicable the more you read. Its going to seem as dubious as those nights in college when you left a standard issue party early and everyone told you the next day how legendary a rager it became the minute you left. But it really happened. Every gnarled, misshapen, double-meaning word is true.

You just had to be there.

When I was seventeen, Jill ODoyle asked if Id seen Titanic yet. It was the beginning of third-period calculus, the movie had just opened, and I had some opinions about its star.

Titanic? I said, my lips curling into the fat-kid equivalent of a Billy Idol snarl. You mean with Leonardo DiCraprio?

Jill looked about a thousand detentions exhausted by this response, but to her credit, she ignored what Id said and became suddenly fascinated by the contents of her Trapper Keeper. Our chat was over. Two weeks later, I saw Titanic and I cried.

As far as I can remember, this was my introduction to how puns generally go over out in the world.

Back at home, though, things were different. My dad had always been fond of pejorative twists on celebrity names. He would say John Revolta a lot, especially in the latter years of the Look Whos Talking franchise, but no famous person was safe. Politicians, basketball players, lead singers of bands Id never heard ofthey were all fair game. So I had come by the instinct honestly. I would leave it honestly, too.

The Leonardo DiCraprio incident was more of a failure to read the room than an indictment of puns. It was still typical, though, of what happens when a lazy wordburp rips through casual conversation. There just isnt all that much you can say to a puneven when its not arbitrarily bashing the dreamiest movie star on the planet. The best reactions I got in the years to come were nods, groans, and other minor acknowledgments that wordplay had just occurred. More often what Id get were bone-chilling silences, third-degree stink eye, and heavy Twitter unfollowings. So I caved in and absorbed what I thought was the conventional wisdom: that puns are comedy kryptonite.

Until I set foot in my first pun competition, I had no idea just how many people disregard the conventional wisdom. In Brooklyn alone, its at least four hundred a month.

Punderdome began as an ephemeral whim in the spring of 2011, when a spritely spark plug named Jo Firestone heard about one of the weirder annual traditions of Austin, Texas: the O. Henry Pun-Off World Championships. She was shocked and delighted to find out such a thing existed. Although not much of a punster herself, the rising comedian wanted to see what kind of puns Brooklyn would generate, if given not just an excuse or permission but a mandate to make them in front of an audience. Without looking any further into the O. Henry than its central premise, she booked a venue in Park Slope to stage her own version.

Considering that punning is widely thought of as the essence of the dad jokenarrowly edging out the Im hungry/Hi, hungry, Im Dad construction by a nose hairits almost poetic that Punderdome was cofounded by a comedians dad. Fred Firestone is a retired attorney turned consultant, known for busting out frequent passable impressions of Rodney Dangerfield. When he got the call from Jo, asking for his thoughts on what a pun competition should entail, Fred offered so many suggestions that Jo ended up asking if he might want to just fly in from St. Louis to be her cohost. He said he needed more time to think about it. Then he called back ten minutes later, having already booked a plane ticket.