monologue Archives - Joe Toplyn

Joke About Squirrels and the Coronavirus

Posted on April 6, 2020 by Joe Toplyn

The joke:

In New York City, there’s a new field hospital for coronavirus patients in Central Park. It has the squirrels so concerned that they’re rubbing Purell on their nuts.

How I wrote it:

This news item caught my eye because it had to do with Central Park. More on that later.

To write the joke I used my Punch Line Maker #1: Link two associations of the topic. One topic handle, “coronavirus,” has the association “Purell.” The other topic handle, “Central Park,” has the association “squirrels.”

My punch line links those two associations by stating that the squirrels are rubbing Purell on either their food or their genitals, depending on how you interpret the wordplay.

This joke is a tribute to the Central Park squirrel jokes that Dave Letterman often told in his “Late Show” monologue. This joke is typical: “It was so hot in Central Park today, I saw a squirrel rubbing sunblock on his nuts.”

For more of Dave’s squirrel jokes, here’s a short video of celebrities retelling some of them:

Part of the fun of Dave’s squirrel jokes is that “nuts,” in the context of the joke, can often only mean “genitals.” For example, nuts such as acorns don’t need sunblock no matter how hot it is.

But I like the fact that in my joke, the wordplay punch line really does have a double meaning. In this pandemic, people are not only rubbing Purell on parts of their body, but also on objects they touch frequently. So in the case of anthropomorphic squirrels, those objects could conceivably include the food they’ve gathered.

How to Pick a Good News Item for Writing Jokes

Posted on August 17, 2014 by Joe Toplyn

Some news items are easier to write multiple jokes about than others. Monologue writers like those news items because cranking out several jokes about the same news item takes less time than hunting down other promising news items and then writing jokes about those.

So what makes a news item a good candidate for multiple jokes, or, as I say, fertile?

The answer lies in the handles of the news item. The handles are the most attention-grabbing words or phrases in the news item, those details that stand out the most.

Take this headline that I saw recently on the ABC News website:

“Spain: Woman Arrested With Coke in Breast Implants”

One reason that headline lit up on my joke topic radar was because it has two handles and each handle has a lot of associations, which are words or phrases that come to mind when you think about something. Two handles with a lot of associations make a news item fertile because linking handles using their associations is one of the main ways to create punch lines. So the more associations, the more possible punch lines.

Here’s how that principle works in practice. In the above news item the two handles are “coke” and ”breast implants.” The associations of “coke” include “Colombia,” “snort,” “Coca Cola,” and lots of others. The associations of “breast implants” include “D cup,” “silicone,” “Pamela Anderson,” and many more.

Linking associations like those using Punch Line Maker #1, described in my book, I wrote this joke and posted it on Facebook:

“In Madrid, police arrested a woman with 4 lbs. of cocaine hidden in her breast implants. Her bra was from Victoria’s Secret Stash.”

Then I added a pop culture association to the mix, used my Punch Line Maker #2, and posted another joke:

“In Madrid, police arrested a woman with 4 lbs. of cocaine hidden in her breast implants. The good news: she’s now engaged to Charlie Sheen.”

My comedy writer friend Gabe Abelson supplied a third punch line, this one using my Punch Line Maker #4:

“The good news about keeping four pounds of cocaine in your breast implants is they’ll stay up for about 50 years.”

And another comedy writer friend, Wayne Kline, also turned to Punch Line Maker #4 for this one:

“The clever DA lowered the thermostat in the trial room so the evidence will stand up in court.”

The point is that jokes flowed freely from that news item because it has two handles with a lot of associations. So focus first on news items like that when you’re hunting for possible joke topics.

Learn more about my six Punch Line Makers in my book Comedy Writing for Late-Night TV.

Seth Meyers Did Not Steal My Joke

Posted on June 5, 2014 by Joe Toplyn

Ideas get stolen in show business all the time but less often than you might think.

I teach a class in comedy writing for late-night TV. A couple of nights ago I was giving my students some practice in turning newspaper articles into monologue jokes. Toward the end of the session I mentioned an article with the headline “Ladykillers: Hurricanes with female names may be deadlier.” I suggested that a joke based on that story might go something like this:

“Researchers at the University of Illinois say that hurricanes with female names may be deadlier. The researchers are particularly worried about the next hurricane, Solange.”

The next day I Googled “late night jokes” to see a sampling from the previous night’s monologues. Here’s a joke that Seth Meyers told on “Late Night” the same night I taught my class:

“A new study shows hurricanes with female names are more fatal because people subconsciously assume that they are less dangerous. Though I’d bet people would evacuate pretty quickly for Hurricane Solange.”

If I were a freelance writer who had emailed my hurricane joke to “Late Night” and then watched that night’s monologue, I might have been outraged. The show stole my joke! But the fact is, professional monologue writers on different shows inadvertently write similar jokes all the time. But given all the thousands of possible topical jokes that can be written each day, how can that happen?

It can happen because all the writers on staff at all these shows use the same formulas to write their jokes. In the case of the hurricane joke, that news story had all the characteristics that a professional writer wants to see in a joke topic. For example, the story was likely to capture most people’s interest and nobody died.

And the punch line involving Solange was created using a proven pro writing technique: linking an association of the topic—“dangerous females”—with a high-profile event in pop culture—Beyonce’s sister assaulting Jay Z in an elevator.

So just because two late-night hosts deliver similar jokes doesn’t mean that some writer is a thief. It means that both shows’ writers are working from the same playbook.

For more about that playbook read my new book Comedy Writing for Late-Night TV.

Postscript added October 4, 2014

Here’s more evidence that professional comedy writers use the same playbook. Yesterday afternoon, October 3, 2014, I posted this joke on Facebook and Twitter:

“Teresa and Joe Giudice of Real Housewives of New Jersey are going to prison. So now Mr. Giudice will also have a chance to be a housewife.”

Later that evening, Jimmy Fallon told a few monologue jokes on Tonight that culminated with this one:

“And Teresa’s husband, Joe, was actually sentenced to forty-one months in prison. But on the bright side, now he’ll get to be someone’s housewife.”

Those virtually identical jokes were written using my book’s Punch Line Maker #1: Link two associations of the topic.

Post-Postscript added January 20, 2015

Here’s even more evidence that professional comedy writers all use the same techniques for writing jokes. Yesterday I posted this joke on Twitter and Facebook :

“The NE Patriots are accused of using deflated footballs in a game. But the Patriots insist that their only deflated balls came from steroids.”

A few hours later, Jimmy Fallon delivered a joke on Tonight about the same topic that ended with basically the same punch line:

“The first time there’s been a sports controversy about deflated balls that doesn’t involve steroids.”

Both of those punch lines sprang from my book’s Punch Line Maker #4: Find a play on words in the topic.

But notice that my version of the punch line takes a shot at the Patriots. The Tonight version not only doesn’t refer to the Patriots, it doesn’t even refer to professional football, despite past scandals involving steroid use by NFL players.

Why did Tonight take that more conservative approach to the joke? Possibly because the writer and producers heeded my book’s Comedy Quality Test #2, which states: “Imagine the host delivering the joke.” A Patriots version of the punch line may have seemed too mean, and therefore out of character, for Jimmy Fallon.

And any NFL punch line may have made it tougher to book NFL players on Tonight. Comedy/talk shows need comedy, but they also need high-profile guests for the “talk” part.

Post-Postscript added March 8, 2018

And this article describes a particularly extreme example of the phenomenon I’m talking about. On March 7, 2018, five late-night hosts told essentially the same joke about President Trump and porn star Stormy Daniels.

Article about five hosts telling the same joke