Monthly Archives: November 2020

Joke About Darwin’s Notebooks

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The joke:

Cambridge University says that two notebooks written by Charles Darwin with his ideas about evolution have been stolen. Witnesses described a suspect who started walking on all fours, then walked in a crouch, and finally walked upright.

How I wrote it:

I thought I could write a joke about this topic pretty easily because the two topic handles–“Charles Darwin” and “stolen”–seemed to have enough associations to link into punch lines.

I started with my Punch Line Maker #4: “Find a play on words in the topic.” I tried using wordplay to link one association of “Charles Darwin,” namely “evolution,” to an association of “stolen,” namely “theory of the crime.” The result was a joke that ended something like, “At first the police thought it was an inside job but their theory evolved.”

But I didn’t think that joke would be clear enough because “their theory evolved” seemed a little too far away from “theory of evolution.”

Then I started wondering whether “theory of evolution” was even the correct term. So I Googled it. When I did, this well-known illustration caught my eye:

And that illustration pointed me toward my Punch Line Maker #5: Visualize the topic. I wrote a punch line that links that pictorial representation of “evolution” to an association of “stolen,” “eyewitness description.”

Even though that illustration depicts five walking creatures, I only described three of them in my punch line because of my Joke Maximizer #10: Use the Rule of Three.

My original topic sentence didn’t include the word “evolution” so I went back and added it. That’s because the audience needs that concept firmly in their heads in order to make the mental connection to the walking creature illustration.

Joke About the Sexiest Man Alive

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The joke:

Today People magazine named actor Michael B. Jordan the Sexiest Man Alive for 2020. Or as Rudy Giuliani put it, “Today People magazine named President Donald J. Trump the Sexiest Man Alive for 2020.”

How I wrote it:

I focused on this news item because I thought “the Sexiest Man Alive” had a lot of associations that could lead to punch lines.

I tried my Punch Line Maker #2–Link the topic to pop culture. “Sexiest Man Alive” (SMA) is such a grandiose title that I immediately thought of linking it to a person in pop culture well-known for self-aggrandizement, Donald Trump. That is, I decided it would be funny to base a punch line on the idea that Trump claimed he was the SMA.

To set up that punch line, I needed an angle that provided a logical reason why Trump would make that claim. He was claiming at that time that he had won the presidential election, so I tried angles based on the idea that there had been voting irregularities in the SMA election.

But ending the joke with something like “President Trump immediately demanded a recount” seemed too on-the-nose. Plus, as soon as the audience heard “President Trump” I thought they might be able to predict the punch line.

Finally it occurred to me to have someone other than Trump declare that Trump was the SMA. The logical candidate for that role was Rudy Giuliani, who had been making outlandish claims about the outcome of the presidential election.

To arrive at the final version of the joke I used my Joke Maximizer #6: “Make the punch line parallel.” I did that by giving Giuliani’s quote the same structure and wording as the topic sentence, down to the inclusion of Trump’s occupation and middle initial.

Joke About a Hundred Mummies

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The joke:

Today Egypt unearthed more than 100 mummies, including priests and high-ranking officials dating back more than 2,500 years. Archaeologists identified the mummies by asking Joe Biden if he recognized anybody.

How I wrote it:

As soon as I read this news item I thought “there has to be a joke in here about some famous person being really old.” That is, I gravitated toward my Punch Line Maker #2: Link the topic to pop culture.

To use that Punch Line Maker, you start by identifying a handle of the topic, like “mummies.” Then you brainstorm a list of associations of that handle and think of entities in pop culture that those associations also relate to.

In this case, I linked “mummies” to the association “really old,” then linked that association to “Joe Biden,” who became the basis of my punch line.

But I didn’t want my punch line to be something too direct, like “Archaeologists said the mummies were as old as Joe Biden.” That would have violated my Joke Maximizer #11: Don’t be too on-the-nose.

Instead, I implied that Biden was 2,500 years old by stating that he knew personally some of the people who were mummified.

Although the joke doesn’t strictly need it, I left in the detail about “priests and high-ranking officials” because those seemed like the sorts of people Biden would have schmoozed with back then. So that detail made the connection between the topic and the punch line even smoother and more logical.

I obeyed my Joke Maximizer #3–Backload the topic–by ending the topic on “2,500 years.” That’s information that my old-age punch line depends on.

Is a joke about Joe Biden’s advanced age too hacky? Not yet, I decided. But I look forward to him accumulating even more generally-accepted associations that I can use for making jokes.

Joke About Ballot Counting

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The joke:

BALLOT COUNTING UPDATE: Minutes ago there was a problem in Pennsylvania. A ballot counter got that song “867-5309” stuck in his head and had to start all over.

How I wrote it:

The results of the presidential election hadn’t been determined yet. So the counting of ballots was the focus of a lot of media attention, and therefore promising fodder for a joke.

Rather than get into the details of the multi-state counting operation, I wrote a general topic sentence about ballot counting and applied my Punch Line Maker #3 to that. I asked myself the question, “What could go wrong with the ballot counting in one of the states?”

To answer that question, I brainstormed associations of “counting,” one of which is “losing your place because you’re distracted by other numbers.” That seemed like a promising basis for a punch line.

But my Joke Maximizer #9 is “Get specific,” so I needed a simple, surprising, specific way that numbers could distract a ballot counter. Did Trump or Biden supporters burst into the counting room and start shouting random numbers? That idea seemed pretty vague. And why would they want to slow down the counting?

I decided it made more sense that a song with numbers in it would get stuck in a counter’s head, as songs sometimes do. I immediately thought of the song “867-5309,” but wasn’t sure that enough of my audience would know it.

An online search of “songs with numbers in their titles” produced other candidates, but none that sported as nice a string of random digits as “867-5309.” So I went with that.

Starting the joke with that important-looking, all-caps headline made the silly punch line more surprising in contrast and, therefore, made the joke a little funnier.

Joke About 3 Musketeers Candy

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The joke:

This year Halloween trick-or-treating is a little different with the coronavirus. For example, Mars Candy just announced the 3 Musketeers bar is down to 2 Musketeers because D’Artagnan is in quarantine.

How I wrote it:

I had seen a lot of news stories advising people how to celebrate Halloween safely during the pandemic. So I thought I’d distill them into a generic news item and write a joke about it.

The topic promised to be fertile because both of its handles, “Halloween” and “coronavirus,” have many associations that I could use in my Punch Line Maker #1: Link two associations of the topic.

One of my most prominent associations of “Halloween” is candy, so I brainstormed the names of candies.

And strong associations of “coronavirus” are “social distancing” and “quarantine.” So I sought out candy brands that were names of people to whom I could attribute those pandemic activities.

That thinking led me to the Three Musketeers candy bar. I thought about maybe having its maker (which my research confirmed is Mars) issue a special coronavirus edition of the candy consisting of three individual One Musketeer bars, so the Musketeers could socially distance. But I decided that it was tidier to link the two topics handles with a punch line that put one of the Musketeers in quarantine.

More research told me that the original Three Musketeers were Athos, Porthos, and Aramis. But I felt that not enough of my audience would immediately recognize those names and I wanted to obey my Joke Maximizer #4: Make everything clear.

So instead I quarantined another, more familiar, swashbuckler from the tale, D’Artagnan. In doing that I took advantage of the fact that a punch line doesn’t have to be factually true. The audience only has to accept that the punch line is true long enough for it to make them laugh.