Tag Archives: Valentine

Joke About Putin’s Valentine

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The joke:

Monday is Valentine’s Day, and everybody’s getting into the spirit. Even Vladimir Putin sent Ukraine a Valentine reading “Won’t you be mine?”

How I wrote it:

I wanted to write a joke about Valentine’s Day because it’s a well-known cultural phenomenon. It also has lots of associations–cards, candy, flowers, Cupid, and so on–which makes it a fertile topic for joke-writing.

Valentine’s Day is such a fertile topic that when I wrote for “Late Night with David Letterman” we did a Desk Piece called something like “How They’re Celebrating Valentine’s Day.” It consisted of about a dozen jokes linking various associations of Valentine’s Day to associations of various celebrities.

Remembering that Desk Piece, I decided to use my Punch Line Maker #2: Link the topic to pop culture. Because Russia’s possible invasion of Ukraine was also in the news, I decided to link Valentine’s Day to Russian president Vladimir Putin.

To do that, I brainstormed associations of Valentine’s Day, one of which is those little candy hearts with sayings printed on them. The first such saying that popped into my head was “Be Mine.” Luckily for me, “Be Mine” seemed to express how Putin feels about Ukraine. So I had the idea for my punch line.

Mentioning the candy hearts in the actual joke seemed unnecessarily distracting. So I simplified the joke by having Putin just send Ukraine a Valentine with the saying.

But I worded the saying as “Won’t you be mine?” instead of “Be Mine.” Shorter is usually better, but I thought that making the joke clearer was worth adding two words.

If Russia does invade Ukraine, jokes like this will be trickier to pull off. But because the tanks haven’t rolled yet, I decided this joke would be acceptable to the audience.

Joke About Jussie Smollett

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The joke:

Actor Jussie Smollett faces new charges of lying to the police about being attacked. Apparently for Valentine’s Day, he told the police he was shot with an arrow by a chubby little guy with wings and a diaper.

How I wrote it:

In Touch Weekly reprinted this joke in its March 9, 2020, edition (see below).

I wanted to write about this news item because it was the latest chapter in a story that’s gotten a lot of attention. Plus celebrities who have gotten themselves into trouble usually make good subjects for jokes.

I started with my Punch Line Maker #3, asking myself, “Who else could Jussie Smollett claim to have been attacked by?” Because I think most people by now believe that he invented that original story about being attacked by two guys, I tried to come up with a new attacker who was even more obviously invented.

My brainstorming turned toward what else was happening in the world. Valentine’s Day was approaching, so I thought of Cupid and his arrows. And I had my imaginary attacker.

I didn’t want to violate my Joke Maximizer #11–Don’t be too on-the-nose–by ending the joke something like this: “Apparently for Valentine’s Day, he told the police he was shot by Cupid.”

So instead, for the punch line I wrote a description of Cupid that was phrased the way Smollett might have described his previous supposed attackers to the police: what they did, details of what they looked like, and so on.

To telegraph the punch line as little as possible, I put the most revealing details–“wings and a diaper”–at the very end. I ended on “diaper” because its two stop consonants make it a little funnier.