Fat Free Jokes

The punchline is the funny part of the joke. First you have the setup, then comes the punchline. It’s the destination. The setup normally exists for one reason - to lead the way to the punchline. (There are talented people who get laughs out of their setups, but that’s fairly unusual.)

Most people have probably heard someone tell a joke and include all sorts of details in the setup that really weren’t necessary. There’ve been many times when I‘ve heard someone setting up a joke and I’ve muttered inwardly, “Would you please get to the punchline?”

Something happens to an audience when there’s a long setup for a joke. The longer the setup is, the more people anticipate the punchline. In my opinion, the punchline should be a surprise, something people don’t see coming. Also, as a rule of thumb, the longer the setup is, the stronger the punchline should be.  

Many of my setups were questions that were a little off the wall to get people scratching their heads a bit. For example, Have you noticed that whenever a whale lands on the beach, people assume it got there by mistake? Or, Have you ever wondered why people ignore the limits at the express checkout counter?

When I wrote those bits, which were two of my better ones, the setups were different from what I just wrote. I started out with more and then cut the setups down to exactly what was needed to get to the punchline. No more, no less. Nobody needed to know what species of whale I was talking about. Nobody needed to know which chain of grocery stores I was talking about. Those details could only have slowed down the joke.

If a detail doesn’t contribute to the effectiveness of the joke, it simply has to go – no ifs, ands, or buttocks. You must be mindful of the fact that people have short attention spans. You don’t want members of the audience to be wishing they had a remote so they could hit the fast forward.

For more tips like this, check out Humor101: How to Tell Jokes for Power, Prestige, Profit, and Personal Fulfillment atAmazon. 

Further Reading

Laughter is the best therapy

Practice telling your jokes

How to use sight gags

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Introduction to Humor 101: How to Tell Jokes for Power, Prestige, Profit, and Personal Fulfillment

Humor101 is available on Kindle from Amazon.

Do you want to become more attractive to members of the opposite sex? A look at the personal ads shows that a good sense of humor is the attribute people desire most in significant others. Well, next to money, anyways. Do you want mental, physical, and spiritual health? Science is proving that laughter truly is the best medicine. (Which prompts me to ask, If laughter is the best medicine, why isn’t comedy part of anyone’s health care plan?) Do you want raw unadulterated power? Humor is power. A great joke can help persuade people to support your cause or to withdraw support from your opponent’s cause.

“Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.”
Mark Twain

Humor 101 is a self-study course for people who want to tell jokes effectively. You may be a public speaker seeking to improve your Likeability Quotient (LQ) during your opening. You may be a manager or business owner who occasionally has to make a presentation. You may have dreamed of being a standup comedian, like most people, but never found a way to work it out. Or you may just want to get better at telling jokes because you know there’s something very funny deep inside you that’s going to die a tragic death if you don’t figure out how to set it free.  

“I got started in show business very young. My mother swears I performed prenatally. She says I got a few laughs on the way to the hospital. It was the best womb I ever played.”
Billy Crystal from Absolutely Mahvelous

Many people have mistakenly believed the myth that a sense of humor is inborn – that it cannot be learned or taught. It’s true that few people are born with as good a sense of humor as Billy Crystal was blessed with. Even with diligent practice, few people stand much of a chance of becoming as funny as him. However, while it is true that some people are born with more natural comedic abilities than others, even people who have been clinically diagnosed as laugh-impaired can learn how to tell jokes by applying the simple techniques of Humor 101. And anyone who can tell a dozen jokes well will become the life of many parties, dazzling friends and colleagues.  

“In business, ideas presented with humor gain more support, and after five, the person who gets more laughs gets more dates.”
Judy Carter from Standup Comedy

Al Gore was a fine example. When he took office as Vice President, he was horribly, tragically unfunny. It’s amazing that he got as far as he did in politics without having a clue about how to tell a joke. By the 1996 campaign, he and his handlers realized it was a big problem, and they worked on his sense of humor. It worked! Al Gore mastered the art of self-deprecation and he learned how to tell jokes. His stiffness had been a liability. When he learned how to tell jokes, his stiffness became the setup for most of them. He’s an inspiration to all who have the hope of becoming funny.

“They laugh that win.”
Othello

Laughing and winning frequently go together. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out that way for Al Gore. However, after he lost the election of 2000, he went on to host Saturday Night Live and he did a decent job, probably a better job than he would have done as President. The point is,if Al Gore can learn to tell jokes, anyone can. As you do, you will reap the benefits that joke-tellers all over the world have been reaping since the dawn of creation. Power, prestige and personal fulfillment – not to mention truckloads of money – can all be yours when you master a few simple techniques.

But this course will not only teach you how to tell jokes. Humor 101 will also show you where to find jokes and how to pick appropriate jokes. I tip my hat to you as you strive to improve yourself. By studying this material, you’re already showing that you have the desire to tell jokes, and that’s the first key. When you learn how to tell jokes, you will not merely be improving yourself. You’ll be improving the world we all live in. I commend you for that!

“Without laughter life on our planet would be intolerable.”
Steve Allen from Funny People

Storage Auction Action: The Glory, The Glamour, and The Groupies

The participants in the “reality” Storage Wars shows are modern-day treasure hunters. As Forrest Gump would say, “When you buy a storage locker, you never know what you’re gonna get.”

I recently went to a few auctions and ran into an old comedy friend who stocks his thrift store with material he gets at the events. I was surprised to learn that there are people who go to auctions who never buy a storage unit or even place a bid on one.

These are the storage auction groupies, people who have gotten caught up in the glitz and the glamour of the lifestyle. People who find it energizing to just be around the auction tycoons. I’m more of a doer. I actually placed the winning bid on a locker. 

It only takes a few moments for the auctioneer to cut through a lock, but the odor from the grinding, which is distinctive, lingers. For people at storage auctions, that’s the aroma of possibility. When the auctioneer opened the door to the locker I bid on, it was just like Storage Wars except that nobody said, “Ooh, aah.”

I spotted something of value that nobody else seemed to notice. There appeared to be some pest control supplies! When you live in Florida, like I do, you’re going to have to deal with pests. This locker looked like a winner to me.

“Can I get twenty-five dollars?” the auctioneer asked. A guy next to me piped up, “How about ten?”

“We have ten. Can I get fifteen?” asked the auctioneer.

I waited a few moments and then said, “Fifteen.”

Silence. There was no competition.

“Fifteen going once, twice, and sold,” the auctioneer said.

I put a lock on the door and went to “pay the lady.” Then I went back to see what treasures were inside. That’s when I experienced the reality of the storage auction business. There was no red carpet. Just a gritty concrete floor. The storage auction business is not all champagne and supermodels partying in the back of a limousine.

Organizing my own junk is hard enough. Sifting through someone else’s abandoned stuff was not fun at all. I wondered what happened to the lady who had rented the unit. Renting the space and storing every item in there must have made perfect sense to her at some point.

However, I saw lots of stuff that didn’t make sense to me at all. There were bags filled with bills and receipts. Bags full of bags. Old newspapers that were not collectible. A little M&M container, empty. A small bag of potting soil, full.

One of the rules at storage auctions is that buyers have to empty their units in a short period of time. Dumping unwanted items in the facility’s dumpsters is not allowed.  When management catches someone doing that, the person is banned from future auctions. I loaded junk on a cart, rolled it down a long hallway, onto an elevator, out to my SUV, and loaded it up – about fifty times.

I began to understand why there had been no competition for the unit I had placed a winning bid on. People who understood the business don’t just look at the potential treasures. They calculate how much work it will take to get to whatever might be in a unit and to get rid of everything else. I took the stuff I didn’t want that was still useful to a nearby Salvation Army. I also hauled many loads of trash to my house. After a while, the possibility of being banned from future auctions didn’t matter to me anymore, and I put trash in the facility dumpster.

Lots of books, including a few on recovering from cancer, were among the items I had purchased. It made me wonder if the renter had gotten really sick and had fallen on hard times. There was also a treasury of books and audiobooks on how to be successful by people like Wayne Dyer, Kenneth Blanchard, Deepak Chopra, and other popular authors.  

The books and the audiobooks at least made my little adventure interesting. I’m going to listen to some of the tapes and read some of the books before I sell them. Maybe I’ll find some of the buried treasure I was hoping to uncover in one of them.

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Jokes from the Road Less Traveled.

Your Florida Dream Home! Open floor plan!

Take time to smell the humor. 

People talk about taking time to smell the roses, but I think it’s just as important to look for humor and opportunities to laugh. When people tell funny jokes, they make the world a better place for everyone. And the most likely place to find original funny jokes is your own life. If you’re a reasonably normal person and you think something is funny, there’s a good chance someone else will too.

One day I came home from a trip to the bank a different way than I had gone before. The neighborhood had trailer homes, including the one in the photo. The trailer looked absolutely uninhabitable.  I thought to myself, “What are the chances that someone would drive by, look at that place, and want to move in?”

It just struck me as very funny. When I posted the photo, I added a description. “Open floor plan. You’ll feel like you’re living in the great outdoors.” Lots of people who have seen the pic have gotten a laugh out of it.

So, when you see something funny or something funny happens to you, don’t just laugh inside and forget it. Make some sort of note, mental or otherwise, and chew on it for a few days to see if there might be a good joke or story to tell from it. Comedians and other performers do this all the time, and you can too.

One good setup can lead to many punchlines.

One of the best tools of the trade in telling jokes is getting several laughs out of one setup. Rodney Dangerfield had tens of thousands of punchlines to go with his “I don’t get no respect” setup. Likewise, Jeff Foxworthy built his early act around his “You might be a redneck if” setup. I used to do lots of Murphy’s Law jokes with the setup “You might be a Murphy if…”

Jerry Seinfeld once said, “Sometimes the road less traveled is less traveled for a reason.” I got to thinking about all the things that could go wrong when one takes the road less traveled. Here are some examples of how one good setup can lead to lots of good punchlines.

I took the road less traveled.

I haven’t got a clue where I am now.

How else would I have gotten here?

It wasn’t the best decision I’ve ever made.

It seemed like a good idea at the time.

From there, things went downhill.

I should have noticed the no trespassing sign.

I’ll be sticking to paved roads from now on.

It didn’t work out very well.

I really need to get my GPS fixed.

It led to a bridge that was out.

It led to a town less populated.

There was an unfortunate incident.

There were vultures circling overhead.

I couldn’t get a signal for my cellphone.

Sorry I’m so late.

If you can think of another funny punchline about the proverbial road less traveled, please put it in the comments. 

If you liked this blog post, you might like Humor 101: How to tell jokes for power, prestige, profit, and personal fulfillment. 

Check it out at Amazon.com.