Keillor - Pretty good joke book

A Prairie Home Companion

NEW 5TH EDITION

A Prairie Home Companion

NEW 5TH EDITION

Published by
HighBridge Company
201 Sixth Street SE, Suite 220
Minneapolis, MN 55414
highbridgeaudio.com

2009 Minnesota Public Radio and Prairie Home Productions, LLC. A Prairie Home Companion is produced by Prairie Home Productions, LLC, presented by Minnesota Public Radio, and distributed by American Public Media.

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the written permission of the publisher.

Joke research by Jeff Alexander, Brian Becker, Joyce Besch, Melissa Christensen, Mike Danforth, Alan Frechtman, Rachel Goettert, Kay Gornick, Kate Gustafson, Tiffany Hanssen, Kathryn Slusher, Rob Knowles, Theresa Larson, Laura Levine, Kathy Mack, Andrea Murray, David ONeill, Katy Reckdahl, Hillary Rhodes, Russ Ringsak, Ella Schovanec, Elena See, Vincent Voelz, and the staff and friends of A Prairie Home Companion.

Cover design by Sandy Ackerman.

eISBN-13: 9781611746228

The Library of Congress has cataloged the previous edition as follows:

A prairie home companion pretty good joke book.New 4th ed.

p. cm.

ISBN 1-56511-979-7 (pbk.)

1. American wit and humor. I. Prairie home companion (Radio program)

PN6165.P73 2005

818.60208dc22

2005020062

INTRODUCTION
BY GARRISON KEILLOR

The New York Times came out with a big story in the spring of 2005 saying flatly that The Joke Is Dead. Naturally, this got my attention right away. And then, like a lot of what you read in newspapers, the big story petered out down around the third paragraph. It turned out that the reporter had talked to a few stand-up comedians and they do not tell jokes in their acts. From this slight evidence, the reporter naturally reasoned that nobody in America knows any knock-knock jokes and men arent walking into bars and lightbulbs arent getting changed and priests dont hang out with rabbis.

For all that the Times may know about the Middle East, the Times is not authoritative when it comes to humor. You will notice this from reading it. Looking to the Times for an assessment of American humor is like asking George W. Bush to review dance. In fact, people tell jokes just as much as they ever did, and maybe more, and the Internet speeds the absorption of new jokes into the word-of-mouth joke culture. Janet Jackson had her blouse fall open accidentally and her breast fall out at the Super Bowl halftime show and in a couple days the e-mails were flying: Did you hear that Janet Jackson was pulled over by the L.A.P.D.? Yeah, her right headlight was out. A week after the President confessed to canoodling with the intern, someone said to me, They had a Presidents Day Sale at Macys and all mens pants were half off.

You go along thinking youve heard every knock-knock joke in Christendom and then along comes

Knock knock.

Whos there?

Eskimo Christians.

Eskimo Christians who?

Eskimo Christians, and Ill tell you no lies.

The Eskimo Christian knock-knock does not displace the Sam and Janet knock-knock in your affections or the Olive or the Amos, but you add it to your hard drive and from now on, if the dinner-table conversation should ever veer toward the Inuit people, you now have something interesting to offer.

Likewise, after years of men walking into the bar, and termites (Is the bar tender here?) and horses and cheeseburgers and drunks of all sorts,

A dog walks into the bar and says, Hey, my name is Bob and Im a talking dog. Isnt that something? Ever heard a talking dog before? Not one as smart as me, Ill bet. How about a drink for a talking dog? And the bartender says, Sure, the toilet is right down the hall.

Whats dead is the practical joke. The tipping of outhouses, the use of whoopee cushions and dribble glasses, the placement of a Holstein cow in your uncle Earls bedroom. Those boyish pranks seem to have ended back in the Fifties somehow, at least among grown men. But the telling of jokes is a durable feature of small talk in America.

In the Chatterbox Cafe in Lake Wobegon, if you are new in town, the odd guy who married the farmers daughter, you might sit with the group of gentlemen telling jokes and then, when the opportunity presents itself, you offer a joke and if its new and you tell it well and dont flounder around in the setup but tell it cleanly and simply with not too much topspin, remembering this is Minnesota and we like it dry, and if you tell it gracefully, not overselling the joke, youll be welcome here. No need for a rsum or testimonials. If you can tell a joke, youre okay.

Jokes are democratic. Telling one right has nothing to do with having money or being educated. Its a knack, like hammering a nail straight. Anyone can learn it, and its useful in many situations. You can go through life and never need math or physics but the ability to tell a joke is often handy. Jokes are good for your health. At the Chatterbox, nobody says, I dont know why, I just cant remember jokes, or People sure dont tell as many jokes as they used to, do they, people simply sit and drink coffee and as the conversation hops around in a surrealistic way from hunting to dogs and cats, and then to elephants and Alzheimers and old age, sex, Lutherans, someone leans back and says, I read in the paper the other day that the nursing homes are giving out Viagra. And someone says, Oh really? Yeah, theyre giving it to the old guys to keep em from rolling out of bed. Your clothes may be disheveled and your life in chaos, you may be of the wrong religion and be hopeless when it comes to politics, you may walk around with the New York Times tucked under your arm, but if you can tell a joke well, youll be okay.

GARRISON KEILLOR

If you cant be kind, at least be vague.

Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people seem bright until you hear them talk.

I wondered why the baseball was getting bigger, and then it hit me.

Before they invented golf balls, how did they measure hail?

If its true that we are here to help others, then what exactly are the others here for?

Why do people point to their wrist when asking for the time, but when they ask where the bathroom is, they dont point to their pants?

Whose cruel idea was it for the word lisp to have an s in it?

If things get any worse, Ill have to ask you to stop helping me.

I longed for the pitter-patter of little feet, so I got a dog. Its cheaper, and you get more feet.

Rehab is for quitters.

If its zero degrees outside today and its supposed to be twice as cold tomorrow, how cold is it going to be?

If you dont go to other peoples funerals, then they wont come to yours.

Did you hear about the dyslexic agnostic who stayed up all night debating the existence of Dog?

My best friend became addicted to line dancing. It got so bad he had to enter a two-step program.

On my computer are the two buttons representing the things I can never have: Control and Escape.

Did you hear about the paranoid dyslexic?

He always thought he was following someone.

Last night I lay in bed looking up at the stars in the sky, and I thought to myself, Where is the ceiling?