Steinberg - Jokes Every Man Should Know

JOKES
Every Man Should Know

Edited by Don Steinberg

Copyright 2008 by Don Steinberg

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Number: 2007932002

eISBN: 978-1-59474-469-3

Designed by Karen Onorato

Distributed in North America by Chronicle Books
680 Second Street
San Francisco, CA 94107

Quirk Books
215 Church Street
Philadelphia, PA 19106
www.irreference.com
www.quirkbooks.com

the Movies

Look, the reality is, you can get through life just fine without knowing the French Toast Joke, or Saul Goes to Vegas. Im not going to kid you about this.

It seems as if every week theres some new bestseller telling you what you should be doing to qualify as a full-fledged human being and extract every possible morsel of satisfaction out of existence before its too late. Fifty Places to Golf Before You Die ? Who needs that kind of pressure?

So Im not going to pretend that if you dont know the Ugga Bugga Joke, or the one about the guy in a bar who puts his privates into an alligators mouth, you have failed to fulfill your destiny as a man. Im not calling this book Jokes Every Man Should Know Before He Dies (in a tragic car crash with two friends. They go to heaven and are asked, When people see you in your casket at your funeral, what would you like to hear them say? The first guy says, I would like to hear them say that I was a great doctor and a great family man. The second guy says, I would like to hear that I was a wonderful husband and teacher who made a difference. The last guy replies, I would like to hear them say, Look, hes moving!).

On the other hand, theres nothing wrong with having a stash of great jokes ready to go. The right joke in the right social situation can be pure gold. Its akin to suavely producing a lighter at the very moment a beautiful woman puts a fresh cigarette to her lips, flicking the flame alight, and holding it steady three inches from her warm breath while she puffs. Like that ever happens. Holy shit, that would be ten times better than telling the joke about the gorilla who goes into a bar and orders a Cosmopolitan for $12.50. But sometimes, you know, the joke is all youve got.

The problem is that there are too many jokes, and an astronomical number of bad ones. The vast majority of them are told badly, in the wrong situations, by too many people. Jokes told by amateurs can be cringe-inducing. Theres so much room for awkwardness and discomfort, so many ways a guy walking into a bar can be a signal for everyone to curl up and die. Will it be racist? Will it misread the audience, delivering ill-considered and disgusting references to defecation in a crowd really better suited to urination? Will it ramble on and on until finally delivering a mediocre payoff that might have been acceptable if it came four minutes earlier?

Most joke books compile hundreds, even thousands of jokes. They dont help the problem. I think they hurt. Its like theyve put a tremendous pile of steaming, putrid crud in your living room, with a few gold nuggets mixed in, and said, Well, here you go. All of a sudden, youre like the hopeful little kid who just wants a pony for Christmas. When he rushes downstairs on Christmas morning, theres a gigantic mound of manure. His eyes light up, and he starts digging into the pile of crap, saying I just know theres a pony in here somewhere.

Were just going to give you the pony. That is what this slim volume is all about.

Since were very selective, its exciting what we get to leave out. No horrific puns, for starters. If youre looking forward to a little something about the car mechanic who tells the penguin, looks like you blew a seal, Im sorry, youll need to find another book. The classic and contrived tale of the perverted religious man named Pastor Fuzz? Lets pretend it doesnt exist.

We all grew up hearing the awful puns so horrific they make your right eye start throbbing, with setups that disrespect the art form of the joke by using crappily contrived names. The lady who had two dogs, bizarrely named Freeshow and Seymour; when she ran outside naked to find them, guess what she yelled? I have an acquaintance who recently took a whole room of people on a journey of at least five minutes that ended in the line: Only Hugh can prevent florist Friars. Please, spare us. Life is too short.

These kinds of jokes, I believe, are told as a sort of revenge against society. Theyre a form of passive aggression, intended to lash out and annoy. Tremendously bad jokes are more fun to tell than to hear, like a beginner practicing on the drums. Listen to me! People pass on the terrible jokes after hearing them, making others share the pain and perhaps relieving a bit of their own sorrow. Its a cycle of abuse.

So, yeah, well leave those jokes out. And Im not a fan of toilet humor, so well leave that aside too. There are differing schools on this, but to me, someone sitting down and going to the bathroom isnt a good scene to set when youre going for laughs. Now, standing upthats a different story entirely. Peeing someplace crazy can be hilarious.

A lot of so-called jokes are really just a cover for saying something mean-spirited, derogatory, racist, or sexist. We dont need that trash in this little joke pile. Look, funny is funny, were all adults, and in this wide world people sometimes do have cultural differences. Its okay to bring up the subject. But let a joke be a joke.

Bad language is another story. Ive never had a problem with well-played obscenity. Somebody once called profanity the effort of a feeble mind to express itself forcefully. The comedian Alan King once said that if you need to say fuck at the end of a joke, you dont have a joke. Screw them all. A bad word is just a word, used for emphasis, used because it sounds funny. Thats what words are for. And sex acts, well, weve got em in here, too. You cant have a good dirty joke without the good dirty. The feeling here, though, is that a true gentlemans sex joke is one that can be told in gender-mixed company.

There are people who will tell you that telling these kinds of jokes is a dying art. In fact, in 2005, the New York Times ran a mock obituary for the classic joke (headlined Seriously, The Joke Is Dead), reporting that jokes had been drowned out by the din of ironic one-liners, snark, and detached bon mots. Which makes you want to revive old jokes immediately. Sure, humor consumption has changed. Instant reactions to political blunders and celebrity problems flow over e-mail, blogs, and cable comedy shows. Theres probably more good comedy being made now than ever, though sometimes it seems like everything is a parody of something else. Who has time for the convoluted, made-up story about the husband who inexplicably keeps a box of empty beer bottles under the bed?

Still, how many late-night monologues or fake news-show quips can you remember right now?

Theres something undeniably retro about these classic jokes. They describe a throwback world of cheating 1950s-era husbands and wives, a time when alcohol abuse was still amusing and strangers made obscene bets in bars, when dogs spoke perfect English, golf was more important than friends, and good news always came with bad news. The joke in this book that involves sending e-mail? In its original version, the husband sent a telegram. But the classics endure. Sinatra and Skynyrd. Citizen Kane and West Side Story. The one about the airline stewardess in the awkward situation and the one where Jesus and St. Peter go golfing.