Monthly Archives: April 2021

Joke About Earth Day

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The joke:

It’s Earth Day 2021, and President Biden is taking deforestation very seriously. This morning he looked in the mirror and made a solemn pledge to plant 100 new hair plugs.

How I wrote it:

I chose Earth Day as a joke topic because holidays tend to have a lot of associations that can be used to assemble a punch line.

To help in brainstorming associations, I Googled “how to celebrate Earth Day.” I planned to use my Punch Line Maker #2: Link the topic to pop culture. So I asked myself whether one of the associations of the topic handle “Earth Day” suggested a celebrity in some unexpected way.

“Picking up trash” didn’t suggest anybody. For example, I couldn’t think of a celebrity who had started dating anybody who might be described as “trash.”

“Reducing use of plastic” suggested some celebrity refraining from having more cosmetic surgery. But I couldn’t think of the right celebrity; singer Cher seemed overused as a plastic surgery punch line.

Then I saw Earth Day references to deforestation and planting trees. I associated those in an unexpected way with thinning hair and hair plugs, which I then linked to President Biden.

Although I’ve seen hundreds of jokes about Trump’s hair, I can’t remember seeing any about Biden’s hair. So I did another Google search and confirmed that Biden had, in fact, had hair plugs implanted. I wanted to be sure that most of my audience would accept that association as true.

Now that I had a punch line about Biden planting new hair plugs, I edited my topic and my angle to guide my audience smoothly toward it. I added “President Biden” and “deforestation” to the topic.

I also added “This morning he looked in the mirror” to the angle, to make it clear that Biden pledged to plant the hair plugs in his own scalp and not in somebody else’s.

Joke About Disney’s New Dress Code

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The joke:

This week Disney announced that its theme park employees will have a more flexible dress code. And it’s about time. Finally, animation fans can go Donald Duck-style: no pants.

How I wrote it:

I gravitate toward news stories about Disney for joke writing because the topic has so many well-known associations that can be used to create a punch line.

Here I used my Punch Line Maker #1: Link two associations of the topic. The first topic handle, “Disney,” is associated with all the Disney characters. The other topic handle, “more flexible dress code,” is associated with unusual wardrobe choices.

To link the two associations, I brainstormed Disney characters who have made unusual wardrobe choices. Donald Duck, who wears no pants, seemed funny. So I decided to base my punch line on him and end the joke with “Donald Duck-style: no pants.”

But following the topic with something like this seemed a little weak: “Is that a good idea? What if animation fans want to go Donald Duck-style: no pants?”

Instead, I thought the joke would be stronger with an angle that leads the audience to expect that the new dress code will result in something good. That way the final image of human employees walking around pantsless would be more surprising, and therefore funnier. So I came up with the angle “And it’s about time. Finally…”

I ended the joke on “no pants” because my Joke Maximizer #2 advises, “End on the laugh trigger.” “Pants” is a funny word because of two characteristics: It’s short, with only one syllable. And it has two stop consonants, “P” and “T.” The humor potential of “pants” was undoubtedly a factor leading Dave Letterman to include it in the name of his production company, Worldwide Pants.

Joke About Vladimir Putin

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The joke:

Today Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law allowing him to run for president two more times. The law also extended absentee voting: whoever votes against Putin goes mysteriously absent.

How I wrote it:

I focused on this news item because I felt like, for a change, writing a joke about a politician who isn’t American. Plus this story made the national news in the U.S., so I thought my audience might have some interest in it.

First I distilled the news item into a topic sentence that contained only the elements I thought I’d need to write a joke. Some versions of the item had a headline like “Putin signs law that could keep him in Kremlin until 2036.” Other versions had a headline like “Putin signs law allowing him to run for two more terms as Russian President.” I adapted the latter headline into my topic sentence because it referred more directly to elections, and I sensed that I’d be writing a punch line about the election process.

Once I had a topic sentence, I used my Punch Line Maker #1: Link two associations of the topic. One topic handle, “run for president,” has the association “voting,” which has the sub-association “absentee voter.”

The other topic handle, “Vladimir Putin,” is associated in most people’s minds with “does terrible things to political opponents.” So I realized I could link the two topic handles with a punch line featuring some wordplay on “absentee voter.”

But working out the exact wording was a little tricky. I wanted to use my Joke Maximizer #6: Make the punch line parallel. But making the angle and punch line both refer to “absentee voter” would result in a punch line something like “whoever votes against Putin mysteriously becomes an absentee voter,” which doesn’t clearly communicate the idea that Putin is making them disappear. The wording that I settled on trades parallelism for clarity.

Joke About Marshmallow Peeps

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The joke:

It’s almost Easter, and for a lot of people that means Marshmallow Peeps. There are marshmallow bunnies, marshmallow chicks, and new this year for Covid–marshmallow bats.

How I wrote it:

I wanted to write a joke about Easter because the holiday, two days away, was in a lot of people’s minds. Plus the topic of Easter is only relevant once a year, so I try to take advantage of it when I can.

To write this joke I used my Punch Line Maker #2: Link the topic to pop culture. I started by brainstorming associations of the topic handle “Easter,” landing on “Marshmallow Peeps.”

That candy has sub-associations which are the animal shapes it comes in, like bunny and chick. And those animal shapes called to mind something that is not mentioned in the topic but which is also associated with animals–the coronavirus.

So I created a punch line that links Easter with another cultural phenomenon, Covid-19, by means of a Peep shaped like an animal linked to the coronavirus–a bat.

To be sure the audience would quickly grasp the significance of the bat in the punch line, I made sure to also mention Covid.

I also made the punch line more effective with my Joke Maximizer #10: Use the Rule of Three; “marshmallow bats” is the third in a list of Peep varieties.

After I posted this joke online, somebody informed me that actual bat-shaped Peeps used to be available for purchase. Anybody in my audience who had known that probably would have found the punch line less surprising and, therefore, less funny.

If I had heard beforehand about the real bat Peeps I might have also used my Joke Maximizer #9–Get specific–and added to the surprise with a more detailed punch line like “marshmallow horseshoe bats.”