Tag Archives: Putin

Joke About the Grammy Nominations

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The joke:

A former Recording Academy official claims that the nominations for the Grammy Awards are “rigged.” The claim was immediately denied by the frontrunner for “Best New Artist,” Vladimir Putin.

How I wrote it:

This was a pretty big news story at the time, right before the Grammy Awards show, so I thought a mass audience might be interested in a joke about it.

To create the joke I used my Punch Line Maker #2: Link the topic to pop culture. The topic handle “rigged nominations” is associated with “rigged voting,” so I asked myself who or what else in pop culture is associated with that in most people’s minds.

Donald Trump’s impeachment trial was underway, so Russia’s alleged interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election came quickly to mind and I decided to base my punch line on that.

But I didn’t want to write a punch line that was on-the-nose, something like “She says that the nominations were rigged by Russia.” Instead, I wanted to make the punch line more indirect by ending it on “Vladimir Putin.” Another reason to end on that name is that it sounds funny to me, thanks in part to its three stop consonants.

Finally I added an angle that connects the topic and punch line in a smooth and logical way. Because Putin is a person, I made him a Grammy nominee as evidence of Russian interference. “Best New Artist” seemed like a logical category for him.

I also had Putin deny the claim of nomination rigging, which he would do if he really were a nominee.

Joke About Russia and N. Korea

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The joke:

For the first time ever, Vladimir Putin will be meeting Kim Jong Un. It’s pretty cool. They’re meeting at a fancy hotel so the reservation will read “Putin Un, the Ritz.”

How I wrote it:

I gravitated toward this news item because the handles “Vladimir Putin” and “Kim Jong Un” both have a good number of associations that might be used to devise a punch line. Plus both of the names seem to lend themselves to wordplay.

I remembered this hilarious wordplay joke that Conan O’Brien once delivered in a monologue: “It’s been reported that in high school, Kim Jong Un starred in a production of the musical ‘Grease.’ That’s also where Kim met his first wife, Olivia Newton Jong.” So I first considered writing my own Kim Jong Un wordplay joke.

But then I noticed that “Putin” sounds like “puttin’,” which I associated with the song title “Puttin’ on the Ritz.” Then I got lucky, realizing that “on” sounds like “Un.”

Linking those two wordplays into a surprising new song title gave me my punch line, thanks to Punch Line Maker #4: Find a play on words in the topic.

My last task was to construct an angle that logically connects the topic to “Putin Un the Ritz.” The Ritz is a fancy hotel, and these summits often seem to take place at fancy hotels, so claiming that the punch line is a reservation for the summit seemed to do the job.