Monthly Archives: May 2020

Joke About Hertz Going Bankrupt

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The joke:

As a result of too much debt and the coronavirus, Hertz filed for bankruptcy. Plus Hertz officials owe an extra billion dollars because they didn’t return the company with a full tank of gas.

How I wrote it:

I focused on this business story because the big news outlets were covering it, which indicated that a mass audience would probably be interested in a joke on the topic.

To create the joke, I started with my Punch Line Maker #1: Link two associations of the topic. One handle of the topic, “Hertz,” has associations like “make a reservation,” “return with a full tank,” and “decline the insurance.”

Another handle of the topic, “bankruptcy,” has associations like “Chapter 11,” “owe money,” and “falling sales.”

After mentally trying out many possible combinations of associations, I decided that the funniest punch line would link “owe money” and “return with a full tank.”

To make that punch line work logically, I had to figure out who would owe the money for not returning the company with a full tank. The company couldn’t logically owe the money to itself, so the angle I wrote said that unspecified “Hertz officials” owed it.

I set the money they owed for the gas at a billion dollars, in line with my Joke Maximizer #8: Wildly exaggerate. A tank of gas doesn’t cost anywhere near that much, even at rental car company prices.

And I mentioned “too much debt” in the topic, to more smoothly connect “bankruptcy” in the topic to the idea of owing lots of money in the angle and punch line.

Joke About a Gym on Lockdown

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The joke:

A Pennsylvania gym reopened during the state’s lockdown and received four citations. Actually the gym received a high-intensity set of two citations, then had a one-minute cool down, then received another set of two citations.

How I wrote it:

This news item drew my attention because it’s about a huge story, the coronavirus pandemic, but only incidentally. It also has a handle, “gym,” with a lot of associations that might be used to create a punch line.

For a second topic handle, “citations” didn’t seem promising because it doesn’t call to mind any strong associations. So I considered “four” for a handle, and quickly realized that I could link it to “gym” by treating it as a number in a workout routine.

But I faced a wording challenge because in a gym you would perform four reps, say, of an exercise; you wouldn’t receive them. And the topic says that the gym received four citations.

I dealt with that challenge by using my Joke Maximizer #6–Make the punch line parallel–and repeating the word “received” that appears in the topic.

But that meant I had to carefully word the rest of the joke so it would be clear that I was referring to a workout routine. For clarity, I repeated the word “gym” at the start of my angle. I also added gym jargon like “high-intensity” and “cool down” that I harvested from Google. Those added details also exploited my Joke Maximizer #9: Get specific.

Listing all those details of the citation workout routine does telegraph the punch line a little bit, which I normally try to avoid. But I thought the details were necessary to make the joke completely clear.

Joke About Concrete Made With Urine

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The joke:

The European Space Agency says that to make concrete on the Moon, one useful ingredient could be human urine. They’re calling the project “One giant leak for mankind.”

How I wrote it:

This was one of those news items that makes you think, “There has to be a joke in there somewhere.” The item has several topic handles, like “concrete” and “urine,” with multiple associations that might be used to create a punch line.

But it took me a few tries to find an approach that worked well. First I used my Punch Line Maker #3 and asked the question “What might you make out of concrete that smells like urine?” Maybe a lunar base that smells like a New York City subway station?

I also asked the question “And what might they make on the Moon out of human excrement?” But that didn’t get me anywhere either.

Then I moved away from “concrete” and focused on the topic handles “Moon” and “urine.” I thought I might link the two by changing the well-known tagline for the movie “Alien” into something like, “In space, no one can smell your urine.”

Thinking of taglines associated with space must have reminded me of Neil Armstrong’s famous words as he first set foot on the Moon, which ended “One giant leap for mankind.” And I realized I could use wordplay, and my Punch Line Maker #1, to link that quotation to an association of “urine”–“leak”–and create my punch line.

So keep trying possible topic handles and Punch Line Makers until you find a combination that unlocks a solid punch line.

Joke About Madonna and the Coronavirus

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The joke:

Singer Madonna revealed that she has coronavirus antibodies. She says she has no idea how she caught the coronavirus, and neither does her latest lover, a Chinese horseshoe bat.

How I wrote it:

When I read that Madonna had said something about having a disease I immediately thought about her having contracted it by having sex with somebody. That’s because I’ve been writing Madonna-is-promiscuous jokes since well before she published her coffee-table book “Sex” in 1992.

So I gravitated toward my Punch Line Maker #3, asking myself this question: “How did Madonna get the coronavirus from sex?”

To answer that question, I brainstormed associations of the topic handle “coronavirus” and arrived at “it came from a bat.” I thought that association provided a sufficiently surprising answer to my question so I made it the basis of my punch line.

But this version of the joke would have been too on-the-nose: “Singer Madonna revealed that she has coronavirus antibodies. She says she got them by having sex with a bat.” To boost the funniness of the punch line, I added an angle implying that the source of Madonna’s infection is a complete mystery. That way when the punch line reveals an obvious source the surprise is heightened.

In editing my laugh trigger, I used my Joke Maximizer #9: Get specific. I researched the specific type of bat that has been found to carry the coronavirus and used that name instead of the generic “bat.”

Adding “Chinese horseshoe” to “bat” makes the joke clearer too, because “bat” could also refer to a baseball bat.