Monthly Archives: August 2021

Joke About Cocaine in Bananas

Posted on by

The joke:

Police in Montenegro say they’ve seized over 1 ton of cocaine hidden in a shipment of bananas. Police became suspicious when they read the new book, “Curious George Joins the Sinaloa Cartel.”

How I wrote it:

This news item seemed like a promising topic for a joke because its two handles–“1 ton of cocaine” and “bananas”–each seemed to have enough associations to link into a punch line.

I used my Punch Line Maker #3: Ask a question about the topic. The natural question to me was “Who would smuggle a ton of cocaine in bananas?”

To answer that question, I used associations of the two topic handles. “1 ton of cocaine” is associated with “drug kingpin.” “Bananas” is associated with “monkey,” which is associated in turn with famous monkeys.

I looked up a list of famous monkeys online and Curious George caught my eye. The idea of making Curious George a drug kingpin seemed funny, so that idea became the basis of my punch line.

But deciding how to word that idea took some work. I needed a simple way to make Curious George a drug kingpin. I looked up the names of well-known drug kingpins. Was Curious George the new business partner of El Chapo? Or did the police suspect a new drug kingpin, Curious “El Chapo” George?

I finally decided that the clearest and most natural scenario would have Curious George getting in trouble while participating in some activity, the way he did in his books. But this time the activity would be drug smuggling. So that’s what his new book, and my punch line, would be about.

Instead of just naming the new book something like “Curious George Smuggles Drugs,” I used my Joke Maximizer #9–Get specific–and named a specific cartel.

“Police became suspicious when” is an angle that I’ve used before. It sometimes comes in handy when I’m writing a crime-related joke.

Joke About the Iowa State Fair

Posted on by

The joke:

The Iowa State Fair is offering fairgoers free Covid-19 vaccinations. State health officials are concerned about the delta variant, the lambda variant, and because it’s a state fair, a deep-fried variant.

How I wrote it:

I thought I could get a good joke out of this news story because the topic handles–“state fair” and “Covid-19 vaccinations”–seemed to have plenty of useful associations.

The original headline that I saw referred to “Midwest state fairs.” But given current events, I thought my audience might briefly think that that headline was about affairs of state in the Middle East. So, for clarity, I rewrote the topic to refer to just one specific state fair.

Then I used my Punch Line Maker #1: Link two associations of the topic. The topic handle “state fair” is associated with, among other things, unusual deep-fried foods like deep-fried Oreos and deep-fried pickles.

The other topic handle, “Covid-19 vaccinations,” is associated with the Covid-19 variants.

To link those associations, I created a punch line with the laugh trigger “deep-fried variant.”

Because the Covid-19 delta and lambda variants are pretty well-known, I decided to make my punch line a list, exploiting my Joke Maximizer #10: Use the Rule of Three.

But the list made my angle and punch line fairly long, putting a lot of distance between “state fair” in the topic and “deep-fried variant” at the end of the joke.

To make sure the audience wouldn’t forget the words “state fair” by the time they heard the laugh trigger that depended on them, I inserted “because it’s a state fair” right before the laugh trigger. And in what might have been an overabundance of caution, I also used “fairgoers” instead of a word like “visitors” in the topic, and added the word “state” to “health officials.” I take my Joke Maximizer #4 seriously; it advises, “Make everything clear.”

Joke About Vegan Pepperoni Pizza

Posted on by

The joke:

Pizza Hut just added this to its menu: pizza with vegan pepperoni that’s made from rice and peas. It’s for pizza lovers whose favorite toppings are rice and peas.

How I wrote it:

This news item caught my eye because it seemed a little odd: Pepperoni is such a small part of a pepperoni pizza–just a topping. So how many new customers are likely to be attracted to Pizza Hut by little slices of vegan pepperoni?

Plus many versions of the news item referred to “plant-based pepperoni from Beyond Meat.” That wording promised numerous associations that might lead to a punch line.

But I was having a hard time coming up with one I was happy with. For example, it seemed unfair to link “Beyond Meat” to a judgmental association of “plant-based pepperoni” to get a laugh trigger like “Beyond Bland.”

So I read deeper into one news article to find out exactly what plants that pepperoni is made of. The answer, “rice and peas,” struck me as amusingly unlikely toppings for a pizza.

So I incorporated the “rice and peas” association in my Punch Line Maker #3. Specifically, I created a punch line that answers the question about the topic that I originally asked myself: Who would buy that pizza?

Then I went back and added “rice and peas” to my topic sentence, so I could use that phrase in my punch line.

Finally I wrote an angle referring to “pizza lovers” to heighten the surprise of the punch line, which describes a combination of toppings that few people are likely to love.

Joke About Wearing Masks in NY

Posted on by

The joke:

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio strongly urged vaccinated people to wear masks indoors. He said masks would help protect New Yorkers from Covid-19, the Delta variant, and Governor Cuomo’s lips.

How I wrote it:

I wanted to write a joke based on the Cuomo sexual harassment accusations because jokes about politicians behaving badly almost always have a receptive audience. Plus even prominent Democrats seemed to believe the accusations. That meant that a joke which assumed the truth of the accusations was unlikely to split my audience.

I could have made the news item about Cuomo’s alleged sexual harassment the topic sentence of my joke. By doing that, I’d be stating the news item explicitly before proceeding with the rest of the joke.

But I assumed that enough people were already familiar with the news item that I could use it as the punch line instead. I thought ending the joke with an out-of-the-blue reference to Cuomo’s alleged creepy behavior would be more surprising, and therefore funnier.

Once I decided to create a punch line about Cuomo’s alleged behavior–the suggestive comments, the touching, the kissing–I focused on the kissing. My mind associated that mental image with another New York, face-related issue in the news: Mayor de Blasio’s comments about mask wearing.

So from the idea of a Cuomo punch line I backed into the topic sentence about de Blasio. That is, I reversed my Punch Line Maker #2: Link the topic to pop culture. Governor Cuomo’s kissing is associated with “protect your mouth,” which is associated with the topic handle “wear masks.”

I considered making the laugh trigger “Governor Cuomo’s tongue.” But I decided that that wording was more likely to make my audience gag than laugh.

Finally, I connected my topic and punch line with an angle that relies on my Joke Maximizer #10: Use the Rule of Three.

Joke About American Airlines

Posted on by

The joke:

Because of fuel delivery delays, today American Airlines urged its pilots to do everything possible to conserve fuel. So if an American Airlines pilot tells you he just flew in from Phoenix and boy, are his arms tired, it’s not a joke.

How I wrote it:

This news item caught my attention because the idea of airline pilots conserving fuel seemed odd. Plus there seemed to be a lot of silly ways that pilots might do that.

While brainstorming those silly ways, I turned to my Punch Line Maker #5: Visualize the topic. I pictured an airliner cruising through the sky and asked myself how the pilot might conserve fuel in that situation.

Birds fly without jet fuel, so I warped my mental picture to show the pilot flapping his arms like a bird out the cockpit window. And I had the basic idea for my punch line.

But I felt I could do better than an on-the-nose punch line like “What’s a pilot supposed to do–flap his arms out the cockpit window?”

So I associated the pilot flapping his arms with the old “Boy, are my arms tired” flying joke; I thought I could use that old joke as part of my joke.

But I decided not to use the old joke as a punch line something like “So now you’ll hear American Airlines pilots saying they just flew in from Phoenix and boy, are their arms tired.” That’s because then my joke would be relying on an old, and therefore unsurprising, joke to get a laugh.

Instead, I worded my joke so that its punch line would make the surprising revelation that the pilot really did flap his arms the way the air traveler in the old joke supposedly did.

And why did I choose Phoenix for the city? Because my Joke Maximizer #7 is “Use stop consonants, alliteration, and assonance,” and “Phoenix” has the stop consonant K and alliteration with “flew.”