I’m always coming up with really funny puns but people are always missing them. They take me seriously or just treat it like a strange, off-hand comment not meant to be understood. Or worse, I’ll throw a subtle quip out there and then some jerk will restate it blatantly, completely without taste or wit, and steal my laughs!
Ex:
::Joe conks Sally on the forehead with a half-consumed chicken leg::
Me: Well that was bone-headed.
Jerk: Literally! HAHAHAHAHAH!
Everyone else: Jerk, you’re so funny, not like Chessic Sense over there, who never tells a joke of any sort ever. HAHAHAHA!
I’ve taken to doing the dramatic pause before the punchline…
Mom in Law: How was the laser light show?
Me: It was [pause pause pause] illuminating.
…but that just makes it sound incredibly dorky. Everybody just groans instead of appreciating my sense of humor in all its splendor. I’ve tried adding “eh? eh? eh?” to the end of it but that has the same effect. I’d rather not let the antic trump the quip. So today, I tried doing nothing and just letting the sharper folks pick up on it:
Coworker: blah blah blah SAT words blah blah blah English language blah.
Me: I can’t even describe how small of a vocabulary I have.
::crickets::
So not only did everyone miss a wonderfully perfect joke but now they all think I’m stupid too. This can not stand. I need a phrase, gesture, or articulation strategy that will point out to the slower crowd that I just made a subtle joke and that they should go back and review it, lest they miss the opportunity to be rescued from their mundane, humorless lives. Any ideas?
Never EVER do this. That’s the quickest way to kill comedy.
Funny, but too subtle for the circles you run apparently run in. In fact, your entire delivery may be too subtle. Can you just be a little more obvious, maybe emphasize the funny words a bit more, or say these things with a little smirk on your face?
The problem is that being overt ruins any joke but subtlety lets it fly over everyone’s head. I need to find the perfect balance. There’s got to be some magic delivery method that makes it work, right?
After someone a saucy double-entendre last night and everyone laughed, as the laughter was dying down I laughed a little louder and said “Hehehe. We’re talking about sex.”
For what it’s worth, most puns make me groan, in a good natured way of course. That said, I think saying “Eh, eh?” is trying too hard - it falls under the Fozzie Bear category. You know, the bear on the Muppet Show that’d say “Wakka, wakka, wakka” after every joke.
Or, as tdn mentioned, your delivery is otherwise way too subtle. You need to find a good middle ground between “Eh, eh?” and the examples you cited. “I can’t describe how small my vocabulary is” was really under the radar. The smirk would’ve been useful, but without it, it sounds almost like you’re fishing for validation. Also, were you listening to the conversation? If you weren’t and you busted in with a random joke, it might simply have been the wrong time.
I would relax about it - not everyone will get your jokes every time, and when you deliver them is at least as important as how you do it - and try to make it more obvious that you’re joking. Oh, and smack the co-worker with a rubber chicken. That gets 'em every time.
Do you joke all the time? People may just be well and truly sick of hearing it. You have to dish out humor in small, unexpected doses for people to enjoy it and want more. A constant barrage of puns is annoying and dull.
Yes, you do. And I think that the direction you want to take it in is towards overt.
The vocabulary one was subtle enough that I had to read it a couple of times before I got it. A rewording would have helped. I personally didn’t care for the “illuminating” joke, but it came off as maybe a little nerdy.
As for the jerk stealing your thunder, he deserves to be hit with a rubber chicken.
Make a habit of carrying around a set of imaginary drum sticks. Make a little Buh-dum-dum gesture after every punch line. Be judicious about adding the cymbal crash though, you don’t want to overdo it. . .
And that middle ground would be…what? All you skilled punners, what’s your delivery method? Dry and deadpan? Dramatic pause? Verbal rimshot? Rubber chicken? Be specific! There’s got to be something that works more often than not. Sure, nothing perfect for every joke, but what’s the most versatile method?
Personally I go with dry and deadpan, but that’s what works for me. You’ll have to find your own style.
But if people don’t even know you’re joking, more obvious is about the only direction you have to go. Just try some different stuff out and see what works for you.
The only time it’s really appropriate to say “geddit? geddit?” after telling a joke is if it’s a particularly bad pun, deliberately delivered for a groan.
In most other cases, it makes the joke fall flat if you have to point it out - better just to smirk inwardly at your own intellectual superiority.
I agree that you need to find your own style. Mine is a Karen-esque (Karen from Will & Grace) mixture of bitchiness and deadpan, not from any overt attempt at developing it, but because I’m bitchy and have a fairly dry sense of humor. The only reason I say “Karen-esque,” by the way, is because that’s how I’ve been described by friends. Apparently they mean it in a good way. Or they say they do.
Anyway, sometimes I hit the mark beautifully, other times I’m insulting or hear crickets. It’s a crap shoot. Either way, if you’re making cracks at inappropriate times or you’ve been telling too many jokes in one sitting, you’re beating a dead horse and should ease up on the frequency. Jokes should be unexpected - you don’t want to be the guy no one wants to talk to because he can never be serious.