Sunday, March 12, 2006
The Perfect Joke
Something in this morning's paper reminded me of a somewhat passive quest I've been on: I want to hear the perfect joke.
Needless to say, we need a definition here. The perfect joke isn't the same as the funniest possible joke - although that's an interesting concept. The perfect joke I am searching for (or, to be more precise, hoping to hear without going to a lot of trouble to find it) would (a) be very funny and (b) have a one-word punch line, that one word being either "yes" or "no."
My thinking is that many jokes depend on the sudden contradiction of our expectations. Henny Youngman's "take my wife...please" is funny because he builds the expectation that the phrase "take my wife" means "let's use my wife as an example" only to contradict it in the single word "please", and the half-beat pause that precedes it.
So the perfect joke would set up an expectation that we are so sure is correct that we could not entertain the possiblility that its opposite could be true. And the expectation is such that its 180 degree contradiction is actually funny.
If I make my fortune inventing dynamite or something, I will endow a prize for the creation or discovery of this joke, but meantime, email me if you've heard it. You shall be rewarded with deep gratitude.
Needless to say, we need a definition here. The perfect joke isn't the same as the funniest possible joke - although that's an interesting concept. The perfect joke I am searching for (or, to be more precise, hoping to hear without going to a lot of trouble to find it) would (a) be very funny and (b) have a one-word punch line, that one word being either "yes" or "no."
My thinking is that many jokes depend on the sudden contradiction of our expectations. Henny Youngman's "take my wife...please" is funny because he builds the expectation that the phrase "take my wife" means "let's use my wife as an example" only to contradict it in the single word "please", and the half-beat pause that precedes it.
So the perfect joke would set up an expectation that we are so sure is correct that we could not entertain the possiblility that its opposite could be true. And the expectation is such that its 180 degree contradiction is actually funny.
If I make my fortune inventing dynamite or something, I will endow a prize for the creation or discovery of this joke, but meantime, email me if you've heard it. You shall be rewarded with deep gratitude.
