Your Favorite Joke

Do you have a favorite joke? If so, why is it your favorite joke (yes, I know that explaining why a joke is funny has to be the least funny human activity, but humor me...pun intended)? Do you have it memorized, is it a comedian's signature bit, or did you learn it from a parent or a friend?

For my part, I do not have a relationship with any joke in particular as the humor that most appeals to me often lacks a referent and it seems that such a degree of absurdity does not conform well to the tightly-constructed genre of the joke. What do remain for me are comedic memories of individual bits from sketch comedy, which frankly tends to be my favorite genre of humor.

In the late 1990's (damn it, I am dating myself with this one...) when MTV was still generally quite cool and had a panoply of interesting programming, there was a sketch comedy show called The State. This was the heyday of the sketch comedy troupe and The State began as the comedy troupe of a bunch of NYU students and their friends (including producers David Wain and Michael Showalter who have subsequently become machers in the entertainment industry). There was a recurring bit called, "Old Fashioned Guy" in which a Southern gentleman in a seersucker suit (played masterfully by Thomas Lennon of Reno 911) would state, "Call me old fashioned, but I..." and continue by sharing something absolutely non sequitur. Here is an example:

Old-Fashioned Guy 

I am not sure why this bit has stuck with me. Watching it again many years later, I hardly chuckled, and there have been so many things that have certainly made me laugh much more for altogether different reasons, but perhaps I didn't laugh this time because I knew what to expect. Perhaps it was the paraprosdokian or "unexpected quality" of the humor that made me laugh as an adolescent. Now that I know what to expect, "Old-Fashioned Guy" has simply become a delicious bit of nostalgia.

In any case, if you do have a favorite joke or bit, please post it here and if possible try to articulate why it is your favorite.

The Tour of the Absurd

While many of the jokes that have found their way to this archive could be rationalized (i.e. we could even if heavy-handedly, explicate why they are funny), the focus of our jokes this week will be those that are completely absurd and whose humor defies logic. I begin with one that I heard years ago from my wife:

 Boy: Daddy, I want a cookie!

 Father: No hands, no cookie.

Animal Farm...

From one of my favorite comics, Mitch Hedburg, on the differences between frogs and bears: "I like to talk about the differences between frogs and bears. When there’s a frog around I don’t have to hang my sandwiches from a branch. A frog knows they are for me. He’d rather have a fly, ‘cause a fly zigzags and my sandwiches do not. Unless I go like this. When I want some honey on some toast I don’t have to squeeze a plastic frog.” -Mitch Hedberg

Week II: Let the zaniness begin...

Courtesy of Cara B.: Two nuns are riding their bicycles over a bumpy path back to their secluded convent. One nun exclaims to the other, "I've never come this way before," to which the other replies, "I have--it's the cobblestone."

And we're off...

Three men are standing on the rooftop of a skyscraper. The first man says to the second, "There is an invisible trampoline at the bottom of this building, and if you jump off, you won't die but will simply bounce back up," to which the second man replies, "Fine, prove it." The first man darts off the rooftop, plummets down quickly, but sure enough, bounces back up over the ledge joining the other two on the rooftop. The second man exclaims, "That was awesome," and promptly dashes over the edge to his death, splattering across the pavement. The third man turns to the first and says, "Superman, you are such a dick when you're drunk."