I was doing some electrial work at a customers place. Looking around for other things for me to fix, she asked me why this lamp was humming.
I was able to reply, with a perfectly straight face “Because it doesn’t know the words.”
She laughed for quite a while.
As a kid, watching a TV show with my parents
TV: “The designer of the of the Dr1 triplane overcame several aeronautical challenges with his innovative design…”
Me: “That was one smart Fokker.”
(yes, it was worth it)
We were doing The Music Man in high school. There a scene where the women are forming tableaux; the dialog was “One Grecian Urn, Two Grecian urns, Three Grecian Urns.” The director stopped the scene.
One of the woman said, “What’s a Grecian urn?”
I stepped on stage and said, “About a buck and a half an hour.”
In my dorm in college I passed by a guy on the threshold to his room, in his underwear, casually talking to two girls. As I passed them by, one of the girls said “how would you like it if you were talking to two girls in your underwear?” I said “if they were in my underwear, I’d like it!”
Years ago we were at dinner with our new department head. He was laughing and joking about and being an all around nice fellow.
Somewhere in there he mentioned his professional testimony to Congress for some pharmaceutical research topic. He said “If you Google my name you can read all about it.”
I immediately replied with a straight face: “If you Google my name you’ll find out that I’m a gay porn star.”
Indeed, there is a fellow out there with my slightly rare name who is younger and better looking and who clearly has a more interesting life.
Back in high school, I was on a date with my boyfriend, both of us schnockered, and he slurred, “Will you love me forever?” I replied, “Well, let me sleep on it, baby baby, let me sleep on it…”
I slay me.
A television program about the discovery of Troy quoted Schliemann as saying, “I have beheld Troy as Homer saw it!”
My girlfriend cried out, “Homer was blind!”
These are awesome. I don’t know if there’s anything more satisfying than when real life delivers the straight line, right to your door. And you’re ready for it.
I posted these some time ago but what the hell - I’m still proud of 'em.
I was spending the afternoon at the Steinhart Aquarium in GG Park with my friend Paul. We were strolling through the dark, inspecting all the amazing aquatic life in the tanks. Paul stops in front of a tank full of large fish and sees a huge, menacing eel poking its head with a mouth full of huge sharp teeth out of a coral cave. Paul loudly gasps “Oh my GOD, what IS that thing?!!”
I swung around and sung out to everyone in earshot with my best semi-drunken Dino impersonation “That’s Amore!”
rim shot
(Is there anything more rewarding than busting up a whole bunch of total strangers?)
Another time, I’m at my job in a college bookstore. It’s just before opening time in the morning, so the ladies’ locker room & lavatory is doing a brisk business. I walk in and take the last available stall and sit down to take a final leak before heading to my desk. I hear the door open – it’s my co-worker Karen. She quickly observes the situation and remarks “So, a full house!”
I pipe up from my stall “…soon to be a royal flush.”
Got them women going, I tells ya. Nothing like a room full of retail hags cackling first thing in the morning.
Thank you, thank you life.
My father once admonished me to not be a smarty. I replied that I’d rather be a smart T than a dumb S.
He was not amused.
(I’ve posted this before.)
I once got a pretty cool assignment for work- I got to do bald eagle surveys on an Army missile range. The first few days the actual ornithologist we had working for us took me around with him to show me the protocols.
At one observation point he spotted some speck in the sky, waaaaay off in the distance. As he was focusing his binoculars, trying to discern what it was, he was just sort of thinking aloud. He said “It’s a bird… no, it’s a plane.”
Most perfect set-up ever. I was all over it with the only possible response.
This isn’t really a punchline, but it seems like it fits here:
In one of the Navy schools I attended, the instructor was telling us about his weekend at a karaoke bar- he said he was a big hit when he sang (his words) “that song, you know, from that movie”.
And I immediately called out “Total Eclipse of the Heart”. He pointed and said “yeah, that’s it” like it was nothing.
My classmates couldn’t believe it, but it was just a lucky guess.
Year ago I used to work with this guy named Richard. He was pretty weird, and pretty full of himself. One day after work we were counting our cash. He finished first.
Richard: “Done! I’m so good, sometimes I scare myself.”
Me: “You scare us too, Richard.”
I was out to breakfast with a friend who, over the course of breakfast, was told by her girlfriend that she cheated on her and was thinking of moving out. We spent the rest of the morning wandering around, smoking cigarettes as she shell-shockedly tried to figure out what to do.
At one point she leaned over and picked up a quarter. I looked at her and said brightly, “Hey, it’s your lucky day!” She had the most cathartic laugh at that I’ve ever seen.
At one of those nature stores in the mall with my mom and sister. We find some articulated, wooden toy snakes. Mom asked, “What kind of snake is that?” I replied, “Pine.”
As little kids, I was putting away laundry while my sister watched TV. I was playing around with a sock when she told me not to stretch it out so much. I told her not to worry because, “See, it’s still a foot long.”
Mom once bought me some new gloves at the store. As I was trying them on, she asked how they fit. “Like a glove” I said.
A blond friend went to the beach with an asian-american friend and her family, and later reported that she’d gotten a lot of stares when they all went out together. I said, “Yeah, they must have thought you were an Occident.”
I got on the elevator with a coworker I didn’t know very well. He had a piece of fruit in his jacket pocket.
I said, “Is that a banana in your pocket or are you just glad to see me?”
He just about fell over laughing.
My parents had a manual transmission car and my sister used to drive it quite a bit. The clutch was going out on it and one night over dinner my mom was lamenting the fact that it would need to be fixed because my sister wasn’t very good at handling a manual transmission.
I quipped, “You mean she beat the shift out of your car?”
I found it amusing. My mom didn’t.
My son was showing a friend his Christmas present, a full set of plastic knight’s armor with weapons.
He told her, “See, I have a helmet… and a shield… and a sword… and an axe…”
She replied, “Wow, you have all the knight tools.”
I observed, “Yeah, he’s a real Swiss Army Knight.”
Just a few minutes ago…
In the lab, transferring all the contents of our old freezer into a new freezer. Way down in the bottom of the old freezer, crammed in a back corner, we see a stack of folders that have been there in the freezer for who knows how long. Someone asked “what are all those old papers doing there?” I responded “Those must be the cold, hard facts.”
It turned out the folders were full of old protein gels, if you’re curious.
In high school, our theater group went to see a performance of Marat/Sade by university students, and afterward, they did a Q & A session for us. In the play, one of the characters is flogged without a shirt on. Obviously, the whip wasn’t real leather, and the actor was not being hit as hard as it seemed, but it must have been at least somewhat uncomfortable, as his back did become quite red during this scene. So, one of my classmates asked him how he dealt with that while staying in character. He started off by saying, "Well, it was a felt whip - "
And I blurted out, “Yeah, I’ll bet it was!”
Everyone busted up.