Tag Archives: donation

Joke About the Yale School of Drama

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The joke:

After receiving a $150 million donation, the Yale School of Drama is eliminating tuition for all students. The students jumped for joy, then asked if that was too much and tried another reaction where they just clapped.

How I wrote it:

When I read this news item, the topic handle “the Yale School of Drama” immediately made me think I could use my Punch Line Maker #3: Ask a question about the topic.

The question I asked myself was, “How did the students react to the news?” The reason that question occurred to me was probably because “the Yale School of Drama” is strongly associated with “acting.” So I thought I might base a punch line on the idea that the drama students expressed their joy in a very actorish way.

I tried a few versions of the punch line before I settled on the exact wording. One version was something like “The students expressed their joy by remembering a time when they were really happy.”

But I wasn’t sure that my audience would associate the wording of that punch line with the acting technique known as Method Acting. I wasn’t even sure what Method Acting is.

So instead I thought more about what actors do when they perform and came up with the version of the angle and punch line you see here.

Then I edited my topic. To make it as short as possible–per my Joke Maximizer #1–I shortened the “current and future students” referred to in the original news story down to just “students.”

I also omitted the name of the generous donor of the $150 million–David Geffen–because the joke didn’t need that information.

Finally I used my Joke Maximizer #3–Backload the topic–by moving to the beginning of the joke the least important information remaining in the topic.

Joke About Alex Trebek’s Clothing

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The joke:

Hundreds of articles of clothing that belonged to “Jeopardy” host Alex Trebek are being donated to charity. The charity says if you’re the first one to grab a suit, you can buy it for $200, $400, $600, $800, or $1000.

How I wrote it:

This news item caught my attention because the two topic handles–“clothing” and “Jeopardy”–seemed to have enough associations to link into a good punch line.

One link came to me pretty quickly: “clothing” is associated with “buying clothing,” which has the sub-association “money.” And “money” is also associated with “Jeopardy.” So I thought I could create a punch line based on the dollar amounts of the game categories: $200, $400, $600, $800, and $1000.

But the logic of the joke isn’t completely solid: When you correctly answer a question on “Jeopardy” you get money, but when you buy a suit, you give money.

So to help the audience get past that bump in logic, I added to the angle another link between “buying clothing” and “Jeopardy,” which is “being the first to claim an item.” With that addition, I thought the joke would be clear enough that the slight defect in logic wouldn’t hurt it.

It appears that the real charity to which the clothing was donated won’t actually be selling it. But if I didn’t mention that fact in the joke, I figured the audience wouldn’t know.

Alex Trebek was a beloved figure in entertainment, so I briefly wondered whether using his name in a joke would offend a lot of people. But I decided that this joke was inoffensive because the only thing it says about Trebek is that he’s closely associated with “Jeopardy.” And who could disagree with that?

Joke About Goodwill’s Hand Grenade

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The joke:

In Florida yesterday, workers at a Goodwill store emptied a donation bin and found a hand grenade. That’s weird. Wouldn’t you donate a hand grenade to The Salvation Army?

How I wrote it:

To construct the punch line I used my Punch Line Maker #4: Find a play on words in the topic.

The first handle of the topic is “Goodwill store,” which is associated with its rival, “The Salvation Army.” The second handle is “hand grenade,” which is associated with “army.” The punch line uses the two different meanings of “army” to link the two topic handles in a surprising way.

I knew that “The Salvation Army” had to come at the end of the joke because my Joke Maximizer #2 is “End on the laugh trigger.” But to set up that laugh trigger properly I needed an angle to smoothly connect it to the topic.

My first attempt at an angle resulted in this: “Apparently competition is really heating up with The Salvation Army.” But any ruthless store competing with another store might conceivably leave a hand grenade at the rival store. So stating that The Salvation Army did so wouldn’t be very surprising. I felt that a bigger surprise for the audience would arise from their making the connection between “army” and “hand grenade.”

So I came up with a more effective angle that eliminates the competition aspect entirely. The angle “That’s weird. Wouldn’t you donate a hand grenade to…” directs the audience’s undivided attention to the wordplay in “The Salvation Army” and gets a bigger laugh.