Monthly Archives: April 2019

Joke About Russia and N. Korea

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The joke:

For the first time ever, Vladimir Putin will be meeting Kim Jong Un. It’s pretty cool. They’re meeting at a fancy hotel so the reservation will read “Putin Un, the Ritz.”

How I wrote it:

I gravitated toward this news item because the handles “Vladimir Putin” and “Kim Jong Un” both have a good number of associations that might be used to devise a punch line. Plus both of the names seem to lend themselves to wordplay.

I remembered this hilarious wordplay joke that Conan O’Brien once delivered in a monologue: “It’s been reported that in high school, Kim Jong Un starred in a production of the musical ‘Grease.’ That’s also where Kim met his first wife, Olivia Newton Jong.” So I first considered writing my own Kim Jong Un wordplay joke.

But then I noticed that “Putin” sounds like “puttin’,” which I associated with the song title “Puttin’ on the Ritz.” Then I got lucky, realizing that “on” sounds like “Un.”

Linking those two wordplays into a surprising new song title gave me my punch line, thanks to Punch Line Maker #4: Find a play on words in the topic.

My last task was to construct an angle that logically connects the topic to “Putin Un the Ritz.” The Ritz is a fancy hotel, and these summits often seem to take place at fancy hotels, so claiming that the punch line is a reservation for the summit seemed to do the job.

Joke About a Spaceplane

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The joke:

Now there’s a ‘spaceplane’ that flies 25 times faster than the speed of sound. Fantastic! So if a baby is crying in the seat behind you, you won’t be able to hear it.

How I wrote it:

I focused on this news item because both of its handles–“spaceplane” and “flies 25 times faster than the speed of sound”–seemed to have lots of associations that could be linked to create punch lines.

But I didn’t use Punch Line Maker #1, “Link two associations of the topic.” Instead, the vivid image that the topic called to mind pointed me to Punch Line Maker #5–Visualize the topic.

I started by visualizing the interior of a futuristic spaceplane flying 25 times faster than the speed of sound: passengers sleeping, passengers reading, flight attendants walking the aisles, a crying baby…

Then I exaggerated an aspect of that mental picture. Because crying babies make sounds, I imagined that the plane was flying so much faster than the speed of sound that it left behind the noise of that baby I envisioned crying in a neighboring seat. And I had the idea for my punch line.

My last step was to add an angle to guide the audience smoothly from the topic to the punch line. “Fantastic!” leads the audience to expect some benefit of flying in that super-fast plane.

And “So if a baby is crying in the seat behind you” makes the logic of the joke clear; if the crying baby were sitting in front of you instead, you’d be able to hear it. As my Joke Maximizer #4 recommends, “Make everything clear.”

Joke About the Bezos Divorce

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The joke:

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has finalized his divorce. And this is interesting…Amazon says that customers who liked the Bezos divorce also liked Nicolas Cage’s divorce.

How I wrote it:

The original news item attracted my attention because it had several possible handles with lots of associations, like “Amazon,” “divorce,” “$150 billion,” and “the richest person in the world.”

After I settled on “Amazon” and “divorce” as the handles to base a punch line on, I trimmed away all excess verbiage in the news item to get my topic sentence; that’s because my Joke Maximizer #1 is “Shorten as much as possible.”

The handle “Amazon” is associated with, among many other things, its feature “Customers who bought this item also bought…”

The handle “divorce” is associated with other well-known people who got divorced recently, one of whom is Nicolas Cage (as I was reminded when I googled recent celebrity divorces).

To get my punch line, I blended “Customers who bought this item also bought…” with “Nicolas Cage’s divorce,” modifying as few words as possible so the association with Amazon’s recommendation feature would be clear.

Then I reinforced that association by adding the angle “And this is interesting…Amazon says that…”

I was pleased that “Nicolas Cage,” besides being an amusingly offbeat celebrity, also happens to have two “K” sounds in his name. That let me employ my Joke Maximizer #7, which is “Use stop consonants, alliteration, and assonance.”

Joke About Jussie Smollett

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The joke:

Jussie Smollett did not win Best Supporting Actor at the NAACP Image Awards. On the plus side, the story about his attack did win an Imaginary Award.

How I wrote it:

I picked this topic to write a joke about because the mass media are still covering the Jussie Smollett controversy enthusiastically. That’s a good indication that a mass audience would enjoy a joke on the topic; if a topic is uninteresting, people are less likely to pay attention to a joke about it and therefore less likely to laugh.

Once I had the topic, I identified two handles in it: “Jussie Smollett” and “NAACP.” Interesting associations of Jussie Smollett that I thought most people would agree with were things like “hoax” and “scam.”

So I wanted to use Punch Line Maker #1–Link two associations of the topic–by coming up with an alternate meaning for the initials NAACP that says “hoax.” That way I could finish the joke something like this: “But he did win a big award from that other NAACP, the [INSERT HOAXY MEANING HERE].” But after thinking about it for a minute or so I couldn’t come up with a good way to fill in the blank.

Then I turned my attention to a different topic handle, “Image Awards.” It occurred to me that “image” sounds kind of like “imaginary,” which is associated with “hoax.” That insight allowed me to use Punch Line Maker #4–“Find a play on words in the topic”–to link Jussie Smollett to the Image Awards in a surprising way and, I hoped, get a laugh.