Jokes Every Man Should Know Read online

A guy enters a bar carrying an alligator

  He says to the patrons, “Here’s the deal. I’ll open this alligator’s mouth and insert my genitals. The gator will close his mouth for one minute, then open it, and I’ll remove my unit unscathed. If it works, everyone buys me drinks.”

  The crowd readily agrees.

  The guy drops his pants and puts his privates in the gator’s mouth. The gator closes its mouth. After a minute, the guy grabs a beer bottle and bangs the gator on the top of its head. The gator opens wide, and he removes his genitals unscathed. Everyone buys him drinks.

  Then he says: “I’ll pay one hundred dollars to anyone else who’s willing to give it a try.”

  After a while, a hand goes up in the back of the bar. It’s a woman.

  “I’ll try,” she says. “But you have to promise not to hit me with the beer bottle.”

  Rejected Gator Jokes Alert!

  We promised this book would selectively deliver only supreme-quality jokes. Here’s a behind-the-scenes glimpse at what we had to reject in order to keep that sacred promise.

  There are basically three known alligator jokes. There’s the one on page 26, concerning the gentleman who puts his privates into a gator’s mouth. But here are two that missed the cut.

  In one, a lady goes down South seeking alligator shoes, decides to capture an alligator herself, but keeps saying, “this one isn’t wearing any shoes either!” In another, a guy enters a bar carrying an alligator, asks if the bar serves lawyers, then orders a beer for himself and a lawyer for the gator.

  As you can see, we’re looking out for you.

  We now return to jokes worth printing . . .

  How to Tell a Joke: Eight Tips Every Man Should Know

  Learning how to tell a joke from a book is kind of like reading an instruction manual to learn how to ride a horse really fast.

  Sure, you may feel like you’re making great strides toward expertise as you progress from the beginner’s chapters to more advanced advice, from “Choosing an Awesome Saddle” to “What’s That Thing on the Underside of the Horse?” to, finally, “Gripping the Leather Strings Attached to the Horse’s Face So You Won’t Fall Off.”

  When you finish the book, you proudly display it on your dining room shelf just like a professional horse rider would. But when you get out on the track for real, as you desperately grapple to remain mounted atop a 2,000-pound behemoth that’s galloping as fast as it can toward a spiked, metal wall, it’s another story. You fumble around, you drop the book, and it just gets worse from there.

  Joke-telling can be just like that, without the smell. Yes, the eight joke-delivery tips provided here may be unbeatable. Chances are, you’ll find none better in print. But I can’t be out there with you. I can’t be controlling your mouth and your timing and your poised irreverence as you recount the wacky tale of the two friends in the fatal hunting accident. Book learning will take you only so far.

  The good news is, just as there’s no one “right way” to multiply twelve by seven, there’s no one right way to tell a joke. The homespun humorist Garrison Keillor once wrote, “Jokes are democratic. Telling one right has nothing to do with having money or being educated. It’s a knack, like hammering a nail straight. Anyone can learn it, and it’s useful in all sorts of situations.”

  Yes, jokes are democratic (I think I once voted for one). Not everyone is naturally funny, able to summon the hilarious mot juste the very moment disaster strikes. But having a portfolio of prequalified jokes at the ready, with some smart guidelines for delivering them, is a fine start. Many world-class comedians will admit under oath that to a large extent being funny is having a good memory (of funny things to say) and being quick enough to make connections. The king of one-liners, Henny Youngman, once observed, “If you knew a million jokes, you’d be funny.” That makes it sound easy, until you comprehend the backbreaking fallacy of Youngman’s perverse worldview: There aren’t a million funny jokes.

  Still, if you start with the hundred-plus in this book and add these eight delivery tips, and maybe find some scrap paper somewhere to write down other ideas you come across, you’ll be on your way to the winners’ circle.

  Know your lines.

  There’s one category of joke-telling gaffe that will incinerate any faith people have in your ability to deliver a laugh: not knowing the words before you start. Leaving out important details, going back and starting over, freezing in midsentence, and moving your head randomly like a bird—these are mortal flaws. The truth is, you don’t need to use the exact same words every time—there are a dozen ways to tell the French Toast Joke. But you have to get the key facts right the first time: names, numbers, relationships. There’s a way to do this. Make the details ring true inside your head by imagining each joke as a true story that you are recalling, as if it happened to a talking mollusk or pig farmer that you personally know. You don’t literally have to tell people “this really happened”—just fool yourself into believing it. It works.

  The more times you tell a joke, the more you begin to appreciate which words are most important, which to speak very clearly or repeat for emphasis, which to milk for laughs, and which are okay to customize to fit the circumstance.

  Know your audience.

  It’s surprising, and kind of depressing, the extent to which laughter is influenced by who’s who. A professor named Robert Provine, who wrote a book called Laughter, did some experiments and decided that laughing is a social tool, done not in response to humor but in order to get along with people we like.

  It’s a nice, cynical little theory. But it’s true that perceptions influence laughter. We laugh more heartily at jokes that reinforce our beliefs, pretending they are funnier than they are. If a comedian says one thing all night that differs with our politics, we may never laugh again at anything he says. Dennis Miller comes to mind.

  Use this knowledge. Offend only if you intend to offend. In a mixed crowd, “ordering plain vanilla” may be your safest way to go.

  Have their undivided attention.

  Jokes depend more than anything on people not missing a single word or inflection. Punch lines rely on set-ups, and set-ups are about people understanding the premise completely. There’s nothing sadder than having to say, “It’s funny because the leprechaun was standing between the vampire and the sandbag!” If your audience is in other conversations, distracted by a game on TV, half-listening, it’s not going to work. Maybe they aren’t interested in hearing a joke. Save it for later.

  Grip the leather strings attached to the horse’s face so you won’t fall off.

  Once you have their attention, and you know exactly what to say, the world is your clam. You’re Tiger Woods strutting around at Pebble Beach, the fans following you raptly as you glide from pebble to pebble. Use timing and pauses to build the story, to set up the punch: “I don’t know . . .” (wait for it, wait for it) “. . . but I definitely don’t want the fisherman’s platter.” One of the biggest laughs in the history of the world was in a radio sketch where Jack Benny was accosted by a mugger who said, “Your money or your life!” Benny, whose character was known as a cheapskate, paused for an eternity of airtime (at least thirty seconds) before finally saying, “I’m thinking!” The laughs crescendoed as he said nothing. “My pauses went over even on the radio,” Benny said. “The audience felt the pauses.”

  Don’t laugh.

  Experts disagree on this, but some postulate that laughing at your own material can be a real “Bozo no-no,” because it’s commonly viewed as what insane people do. It’s like when football defensive backs launch into over-the-top celebratory dances after making routine, bone-crushing, career-ending tackles. Come on, act like you’ve done it before! A wry smile should be enough after a good line. On the other hand, genuine laughter can be “contagious,” and expressing true appreciation for a joke can add a giddiness to the moment. The political comedian Bill Maher notably chuckles after delivering some of his pointed barbs. He gets away with it. It�
�s his way of saying, “Don’t sue me.”

  Time is money.

  “Brevity is the soul of wit,” the ancient mystics said. The longer a joke is, the better the payoff needs to be to make it worth everyone’s precious time. In fact, for many centuries, the funniest joke in the world was simply the word “a.” Sure, you can play with suave pauses and you can milk funny phrases. But as you enhance your repertoire beyond this book’s hundred-plus hand-picked keepers, choose jokes that don’t put more obstacles than necessary between audiences and punch lines. Keep in mind what the great stylist E. B. White wrote so succinctly in The Elements of Style: “Omit unnecessary words, just leave them out already.”

  Listen and learn.

  When someone else is telling a joke you’ve heard, shut up. If your goal is to ruin jokes being told by other men, that’s fine, but you’ll need to get another book to learn how to do that. You should listen and make mental tape recordings. What works? What doesn’t? You should never steal a comedian’s original material and repeat it as yours (that’s slimy). But if it’s a good old joke that’s worth repeating, take every opportunity you can to learn the best way to tell it.

  Just say it.

  Don’t say, “This one is hilarious!” Don’t say, “This one is pretty good.” Just say it. Afterward, don’t apologize. Unless you really need to.

  A magician is working on a cruise ship, but there is one problem. The captain’s parrot watches every show he does, and after figuring out the tricks, the parrot has started yelling out the secrets of how the tricks are done.

  The bird says, “Look, it’s not the same hat!” or “Hey! He’s hiding the flowers under the table!”

  The magician is enraged. But it’s the captain’s parrot, so he can’t do anything about it.

  One day on a long cruise, there is an accident. The boat crashes and sinks. The magician and the parrot find themselves clinging to the same plank of wood in the middle of the ocean. For days neither says anything. Finally, after a week, with no hope in sight, the parrot says, “Okay, I give up. Where’s the boat?”

  Two ministers doing missionary work in the South Seas are captured by a tribe and tied to stakes.

  The chief says to them, “You have a choice—death, or ugga bugga.”

  The first guy says, “Well, I guess ugga bugga.”

  The chief shouts “UGGA BUGGA!” and thirty members of the tribe attack the first missionary. They molest and sodomize and abuse his body for hours on end until he is nearly dead.

  The chief then asks the second minister, “Now you have a choice, death, or ugga bugga.”

  He says, “Well, my religion does not allow me to choose ugga bugga, so I suppose it must be death.”

  The chief says, “Very well.” Then he turns to the tribe and shouts, “Death! But first, UGGA BUGGA!”

  A guy asks a lawyer, “What’s your fee?”

  “I charge fifty dollars for three questions,” the lawyer says.

  “That’s awfully steep, isn’t it?” the guy asks.

  “Yes,” the lawyer replies. “Now what’s your final question?”

  A grandmother is watching her grandson play on the beach when a huge wave comes and takes him out to sea.

  She looks up and pleads, “Please God, save my only grandson. I beg of you, my life has no meaning without him. Please bring him back.”

  And a big wave comes and washes the boy back onto the beach, good as new.

  She looks up to heaven and says: “He had a hat!”

  A guy dies and is sent to Hell.

  Satan meets him, shows him doors to three rooms, and says he must choose one room to spend eternity in.

  In the first room, people are standing in shit up to their necks. The guy says, “No, let me see the next room.”

  In the second room, people are standing with shit up to their noses. The guy says no again.

  Finally, Satan opens the door to the third room. People are standing with shit up to their knees, drinking coffee, and eating Danish pastries. The guy says, “I pick this room.”

  Satan says okay and starts to leave, and the guy wades in and starts pouring some coffee.

  On his way out, Satan yells, “Okay, coffee break’s over! Everyone back on your heads!”

  Three men are sentenced to death and brought to face their fate.

  The executioner says to the first one, “You have a choice: You may die either by lethal injection or electric chair.”

  He chooses lethal injection. The injection is administered and he dies.

  The second man is offered the same choice. He selects electric chair. The executioner pulls the switch, but nothing happens. He tries again. Again nothing happens.

  “Well,” the executioner says, “according to our laws, you made your choice and the punishment was administered, so we are done. You can go free.” He goes free.

  Then the executioner asks the third man the same question: Lethal injection or electric chair?

  “I think lethal injection,” he says. “The electric chair is obviously broken.”

  Alternative Version Alert!

  You can find a French-Canadian version of this joke on the Internet—and in their version, the third guy is a “Newfie,” or a native of Newfoundland. Apparently Newfies are the butt of “dumb” jokes by other Canadians.

  Everybody needs somebody.

  In another version of this joke, it’s a priest, a doctor, and an engineer who are going under the guillotine. The guillotine malfunctions for the priest and then also for the doctor, and because “God has spoken,” both are set free. When it’s the engineer’s turn to place his head on the faulty guillotine, he looks up and says: “Oh, I see the problem!”

  Two guys are walking down a dark alley when a mugger approaches them and demands their money.

  They both grudgingly pull out their wallets and begin taking out their cash.

  Just then, one guy turns to the other and hands him a bill. “Hey, here’s that twenty dollars I owe you.”

  A guy tells his psychiatrist: “It was terrible. I was away on business, and I sent my wife an e-mail saying I’d be back a day early. I rushed home from the airport. And when I got home I found her in bed with my best friend! I don’t get it. How could she do this to me?”

  “Well,” reasons the psychiatrist, “maybe she didn’t get the e-mail.”

  A Jewish guy goes into a confession box.

  “Father O’Malley,” he says, “my name is Emil Cohen. I’m seventy-eight years old. Believe it or not, I’m currently involved with a twenty-eight-year-old girl, and also, on the side, her nineteen-year-old sister. We engage in all manner of pleasure, and in my entire life I’ve never felt better.”

  “My good man,” says the priest, “I think you’ve come to the wrong place. Why are you telling me?”

  And the guy goes: “I’m telling everybody!”

  A car hits an old man. The paramedic rushes over, lifts his head carefully, and says, “Are you comfortable?”

  The guy says: “I make a good living.”

  Attribution Alert!

  Comedian Henny Youngman used this joke in his rapid-fire routine.

  It is pouring rain in the flood plain of the Mississippi Valley, and the rising river begins to threaten homes, including that of the local preacher.

  When water floods into the ground floor, a rowboat with police comes by, and the officer shouts, “Let us evacuate you! The water level is getting dangerous.”

  The preacher replies, “No, thank you, I am a righteous man who trusts in the Almighty, and I am confident he will deliver me.”

  Three hours go by, and the rains intensify, at which point the preacher is forced up to the second floor of his house. A second police rowboat comes by, and the officer shouts, “Now let us evacuate you! The water level is getting dangerous!”

  The preacher replies, “No, thank you, I am a righteous man who trusts in the Almighty, and I am confident he will deliver me.”

  The rain keeps comi
ng, and the preacher is forced up onto the roof of his house. A helicopter flies over, and the officer shouts down, “Please, grab the rope and we’ll pull you up! You’re in terrible danger!”

  The preacher replies, “No, thank you, I am a righteous man who trusts in the Almighty, and I am confident he will deliver me.”

  The deluge continues. The preacher is swept off the roof, carried away in the current, and drowns. He goes up to heaven, and at the pearly gates he is admitted and comes before God.

  The preacher asks, “Dear Lord, I don’t understand. I’ve been a righteous and observant person my whole life, and I depended on you to save me in my hour of need. Where were you?”

  And the Lord answers, “I sent two boats and a helicopter. What more do you want?”

  Two birds who live in different parts of New York decide to meet in Central Park for the afternoon.

  The first one flies to the pond where they are supposed to meet and gets there a little early, so he waits. And waits.

  The time of their meeting passes, then another half hour, then forty-five minutes. Finally, the other bird shows up.

  “What happened? I thought something happened to you!” the first bird says.

  “I’m sorry I’m late,” says the second bird. “It was just such a nice day, I thought I’d walk.”

  Jesus and St. Peter are golfing.

  St. Peter steps up to the tee on a par three and hits one long and straight. It reaches the green.

  Jesus is up next. He slices it. The ball heads over the fence into traffic on an adjacent street. It bounces off a truck, onto the roof of a nearby shack and into the rain gutter, down the drain spout, and onto a lily pad at the edge of a lake. A frog jumps up and snatches the ball in his mouth. An eagle swoops down, grabs the frog. As the eagle flies over the green, the frog croaks and drops the ball. It’s in the hole.