Yeah, but I usually tell it with a plane. The humor is in stretching out the time between the parts. I often tell part one at the beginning of a class I teach and part two at the end of the semester.
The timing bit sounds great.
One reason I didn’t link to an internet version of the joke is that the ones I found used a plane. Smoking is vigorously suppressed on airplanes, plane windows don’t open, and a dog surviving outside a plane isn’t really believable, whereas a dog running after a train is. I just thought the multitude of impossibilities would distract a listener from the essence of the joke.
That’s part of the point. It’s so ludicrous that the sensibly-ludicrous (if that makes sense) image of a dog standing on the wink of a plane smoking a cigar is such an obvious punchline.
And really build it up so that the first part falls dead flat. Look confused that people don’t get it.
Then when you hit ‘em with part 2 it’s like a Joke Grenade. There’s a blank stare on the victims’ faces, then a pause…1, 2, 3, 4…then people realize what just happened and either laugh hard or throw rotten fruit at you. Kinda like a good pun.
re the brick joke:
nice to see an old friend doing well. Although we always told it with 2 bums find a gold brick, and the dog is a pampered poodle on a private plane. Absolutely more fun to tell then to hear. Get someone on the inside to laugh with the first part, or tell a joke in between, great fun,
Larry
Like the Aristocrats joke, the brick joke is a shaggy dog story: a big, elaborate build-up to an ending that is not particularly funny.
The version I heard was that about a famous bricklayer who is renowned for always ordering precisely the right number of bricks for the projects he works on. He’s doing his biggest job ever (stretch this part out as long as you can) and as usual, he has ordered precisely the right number. As he steps back to admire the finished job, he trips over a brick. An extra brick. He’s so furious, he throws it straight up in the air.
And that’s the “punch line.” Your audience will be puzzled. And that’s the point. The first part of the brick joke is supposed to fall completely flat.
I had a friend who, when we would get into a joke telling session with some friends, would tell the first part. Then as late in the session as possible, I’d tell the second half. (Yes, it has to be a small private plane to be able to throw the dog out.) The “callback” to the earlier joke, especially since it was told by someone else, makes the second part more than doubly funny.
Try it some time.
A guy I used to hang around with would invent “monkey stories.” The same sort of build-up. But he could drag it on for 1/2 an hour, and told them so well that you were enthralled with the story.
Short sample:
A monkey walks into a candy shop, beats up the owner, and eats all of the candy. He’s laying, stuffed to the gills, when a man walks in. The man says that he’s been following the monkey for weeks. He then produces a small, obviously sick monkey. The man reveals that it’s the monkey’s sister, and that he was following the monkey so that he could give custody over to the monkey. But, since the monkey ate all of the candy, the sister monkey’s going to die.
And Paul would tell this story, and you’re just transfixed. You wait. And wait. And wait. And nothing.
No other joke to call back to the monkey story.
Nothing.
And you’ve just listened to half an hour of this.
And then you try to find someone who hasn’t heard one, and you make Paul tell them. And you sit there, and listen to another one. Just to see the other person’s reaction.
The version of the brick joke I first heard, and have been telling for a very long time, involves three guys competeing to see who can throw a brick the highest. In order that they might tell their bricks apart, they each have a different colored brick. One guy has a red one, one a yellow, and the last guy has a blue brick. The lame punchline for that joke is that when the last guy throws his blue brick in the air, he never sees it again. (Blue brick/blue sky. get it?)
The second joke is in an aircraft, with an inconsiderate cigar smoker in first class and an old woman with an athsmatic parrot. They argue, the pilot comes out and solves the dispute by chucking both the parrot and the cigar out the hatch. Of course, the lady looks out to see the parrot with a blue brick in its mouth.
Then comes the pummeling of me by listeners.
Ok saw movie, is great- go see if’n you like the laughing. 
Silvermans took the cake! Holy shit she is brilliant! Just flips it!
also the old pirate lookin guy, and the clean version with the hammer and asprin…
like to see this kind of historical investigation- good breadth of query too.
When I was in college, the guy we called “Uncle Jay” used to tell long redneck stories like that; in fact, his being called “Uncle Jay” was directly tied to his relation of “Uncle Jay Stories.” His best one was the story about him and his drinking buddy, Billy Bob Beasley from Beeville, Texas.
Jay was originally from Baytown (not too far from Houston), and he used to go drinking with this guy named Billy Bob Beasley, who was from Beeville. No matter where they seemed to go, Billy Bob always ran into somebody he knew. Baytown not being a giant metropolis like College Station or Wichita Falls, it nevertheless gave Uncle Jay something else to be pissed about.
… so they made a deal. Jay would pick the place, and if somebody there recognized Billy Bob, Jay would pay for his drinks. Otherwise, the tables were turned and Billy Bob had to buy. Jay picked some place he’d never heard of in Sugarland (also near Houston), and sure enough, the waitress had grown up down the street in Beeville from Billy Bob Beasley! Jay had to pay for the drinks, and he weren’t none too happy about that.
To get even, Jay suggested that they go to Louisiana; the deal was pretty much the same: Jay would pick the bar, and unless somebody there knew Billy Bob, ol’ BB would have to pick up the tab. Once they got across the border, though, what with Jay’s redneck driving and a tendency to drink a little to calm his nerves, they found themselves pulled over by a Louisiana state policeman…
… who recognized Billy Bob Beasley from Beeville, Texas, as the younger brother of one of his friends from high school. I guess these things go a long way back.
They finally made it to Shreveport, and Jay picked some no-name hole in the wall, but Billy Bob was able to hook up with some guys he new from his old days of shooting pool. They all knew Billy Bob Beasley from Beeville, Texas. Of course, this caused Jay consternation to no end. Not only did he have to pay for the drinks, but by now he’d paid for the gas and just narrowly avoided getting written up for DWI.
“Dammit, Billy Bob, everywhere we go, you know somebody, and I’m tired of paying for your beer. There’s gotta be some place where somebody don’t know you.”
“Well, Jay, I don’t rightly reckon so. I don’t think there’s a place we could go where I don’t know somebody.”
“Well… what about Rome? Do you know the Pope?”
At this point, Billy Bob claimed that he had in fact met the Pontiff during one of his tours to the southwestern United States. Whether this constituted “knowing” him or not he wasn’t sure – the Pope shakes a lot of hands – but he could at least claim that they’d spoken face-to-face.
Jay called BS on this, so he made Billy Bob one final bet: they would go to Rome. If Billy Bob could prove that the Pope knew him, Jay would concede, and pay for the airfare, the lodging, and (of course) the drinks. If not, Billy Bob had to pay for the airfare, the lodging, the drinks, and reimburse Jay for the trip to Louisiana.
Billy Bob took the bet and he and Jay went to Rome and to the Vatican to meet the Pope. Upon visiting, though, the cleric in charge told them that the Pope was a busy man, and that he couldn’t come down to meet with them in person. Billy Bob discussed this with him at length, so they finally reached an agreement: Billy Bob alone could go and meet the Pope, but since he didn’t have much time for a visit, they would come out onto the balcony of the Pope’s apartment together, and the Pope would wave. This would be the signal that he recognized Billy Bob as a friend, and that’s the best Jay could hope to accept.
So, here’s Jay, standing down in the courtyard waiting for the Pope to make his appearance with Billy Bob when it hit him: Jay had never met the Pope, and honestly wasn’t sure what he looked like. All Billy Bob would have to do is get one of the other priests to wear the Pope’s hat and pretend to be the Pope, and Jay would lose the bet. Sure enough, as he was thinking about this, a priest appeared on the balcony with Billy Bob and waved, indicating that he knew him.
Not wanting to lose such a big bet to what could be obvious trickery, Jay grabbed a passing priest and demanded to know how he could be sure that the man standing on the balcony wearing the Pope’s robe and hat was in fact the genuine article.
The priest pushed his glasses further up on his nose, squinted a little, and said, “well, sir, I can not be sure that the man on the balcony is His Holiness. He’s wearing the hat and the sacred vestments… but I am positive that the man standing next to him is Billy Bob Beasley from Beeville, Texas.”
OK, I just rented this last weekend from Hollywood. Um…Sarah Silverman appeared in the credits, and on the splash screen for the DVD, but **not once ** did she appear in the movie at all. I’ve heard that she was the best part by far, so what gives? Did I get whooshed, or was it edited out for DVD release?
She was in the DVD I rented. She’s lying around in a big stiped chair (about 1 hour in).
Yep, she was in there.
Uh…striped chair.
I’m not sure, but Salon had an MP3 release of it back in December. I’m pretty sure you can get it if you sit through their day-pass ad thingamabob (I’m a subscriber, so I have no idea anymore).
That, and the fact that it’s kind of a shaggy dog joke. After a long, obscene telling of the joke, that punchline falls completely flat. The longer it gets, the less the punchline measures up. That can be funny in its own way.
Hm. I guess I’ll try watching it again.
Thanks for the link, MrJackBoots.
I don’t see how you could forget her bit. It’s one of the things I remember best about the movie, and she isn’t one of my favourite comedians. She did a little bit that started off as a light anecdote about that old agent with the cluttered office (I forget his name) that got weirder and weirder until she deadpanned that he raped her. Hahahaha!
I guess you had to be there.
Good point.
But you’re still not a monk.
Joe Franklin