I’m afraid I still don’t get that one.
Wait, wait…it’s because Olivia DeHavilland was in The Snake Pit , right?!Oooohh…I got a reference :).
Ok, in keeping with the OP, another on from MAD…I remember reading a parody of Star Trek…actually I think is was a thing about the untimely end of various favorite characters. In which the Star Trek crew mistakenly beams down to 20th century Harlem and Kirk is killed by a crazed black mugger. And Spock is reprting the incident and commenting that the assailent kept calling Kirk a “mother”…which confused him “as I was not aware that the captain had ever born children…”.
Well, at ten or whatever I was, I was as clueless as Spock.
And in keeping with Garfield…when I was even younger, about when I had just learned to read, my faimly went to Hackleberry State Park, were I spotted a sign partial obscured by mud (so one letter looked a bit different). Showing off my new reading skills, I said “oh look, that sign says 'No Kunting”. Wasn’t till much latter I figured out why my parents were trying not to laugh…
I took me a full minute to get this one.
It was a comic. Man stands in kitchen, wife beside him. He’s holding up a spaghetti strainer ad he says “I don’t know how people tell the date from this.” Wife: :smack:
Soon after the Charles-Diana wedding, Andy Warhol via film clip was on Saturday Night Live telling his favorite joke. “Where did Prince Charles spend his honeymoon? Indiana.”
My reaction- “that’s stupid!”
About five years later during a repeat… “OOOOOH!” :smack:
Followed by a week in Izzit Conneticut at the “Izzit Inn”.
In the 1960s, my parents had Redd Foxx albums, which they used to play at parties, after they’d put the kids to bed, but we used to sneak out and listen to them playing. (The house was split level, with a staircase leading down to the room with the stereo; we’d tiptoe to the balcony and listen from there.)
In one of them, he talked about kids playing “Button, Button – here comes my father.”
I was in my twenties before I realized what he meant.
I am definitely Jewish and grew up in a mostly Jewish suburb back East. ;j
I moved out to California in my mid-20s, but most of my friends were either non-religious or Jewish. Maybe in the late 1980s/early 1990s I used to see on mail threads/BBS the sig "When I find myself in trouble, I ask myself, “What would the Lone Ranger do?”
I thought this was mildly funny, but a bit out in left field. Couldn’t figure out why someone would use that as a “funny” sig.
Only about 6 years ago did I hear about the famous acronym WWJS.
NOW I get it! :smack: Talk about being not in the mainstream!
Fortunately, Google has helped me figure out such arcania as p//n4a3, pr0n, and cameltoes.
Sturgeon was right!
From Monty Python and the Holy Grail:
“We apologize for the fault in the subtitles. Those responsible have been sacked.”
Not being familiary with the British idiom “sacked,” meaning “fired,” I envisioned something involving marauding barbarian hordes. Which, come to think of it, would actually be funnier.
I only recently learned that the song in the Family Guy episode where the Griffins inherit Lois’ aunt’s mansion is a parody of “I think I’m going to like it here” from Annie. The way I learned this was by actually seeing a grade school production Annie. Which is why I was laughing whenever the little girl who played Annie sang- I kept imagining her singing “my God this house is freakin’ sweet”!
Another MAD memory.
I remember one of their early primers. One panel showed the 2 main kids with another funny-looking one between them who seemed to look a bit like Frankenstein.
I bought a compilation a while ago and the same primer was included. Now I recognized the kid as a miniature version of Marlon Brando in “The Wild Ones”! I also now understood what the primer meant when it mentioned “reefers”!
When I first read the joke, the only interpretation I could think of was that the one guy was so above Superman that he used him as a cigarette lighter. I don’t think I’d ever get the true meaning on my own. “Match” is never used in that context where I’m from.
Don’t forget Rebecca and The Shining.
When I was a kid, I used to love riddle and joke books. Even at that young age (up to about age 11), I got the majority of the jokes in the books. Here’s a couple I didn’t get for years:
Sign on nuclear scientist’s door:
GONE FISSION
I knew nothing about nuclear science.
Man: Say, buddy, how do I get to Carnegie Hall?
Buddy: Practice man, practice.
I was a kid growing up in the southeast, what did I know about Carnegie Hall (or New York, for that matter)?
Have you guys seen those green camo. shirts that say “Ha, now you can’t see me”? Well, there a version that goes, “Ah crap, it’s snowing.”
This guy wore that to class one day, and I sat there, for almost an hour, trying to figure out what it was. About five minutes until the period was over, I finally got it. I stood up and yelled “I GET IT NOW.” I was so proud of myself. Kinda sad really.
When I was about ten, my younger brother told me a joke I didn’t get for at least two years:
Two Indian braves are walking along. One suddenly points to the ground and says, “Look. Big black bug.”
The other one says, “Squash it.”
The first replies, “No; big black bug.”
He’s never let me forget it, the little twerp.
DD
Today I heard a joke that I took an embarassingly long time to figure out.
Q. What’s brown, sticky, and falls from trees?
A. A stick.
“If I said you had a beautiful body, would you hold it against me?”
For the longest time, I thought the humor was just in the stereotypical sleazy guy delivery.
{sigh} I don’t get it.
I still don’t think you get it.
I thought the man WAS Hitler.
There’s always been rumours that Hitler isn’t dead but is living in South America somewhere.
IIRC the age of the man in that episode would be that of the ‘real’ Hitler not a clone.
In college, I saw “Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey” in the theater, and was mildly amused by the scenes where the heroes play Clue, Battleship, and electric football against the Grim Reaper.
Just a few weeks later, my film class showed Bergman’s “The Seventh Seal”, and I broke out in giggles at the chess game.
(P.S. to RandMcnally: “Squash it” sounds like “squaw shit”.)