Classic Johnny Carson

Two jokes from Junes long gone.

On June 14, 1985, Johnny asked the Tonight Show audience whether they had ever been to a barbecue in Beverly Hills? It's a little different from a barbecue elsewhere. "What your chauffeur does, he drives the hamburger patties over to a tanning salon."

On June 8, 1989, Johnny helpfully pointed out that the Census Bureau had taken to using combo forms for city names to describe metropolitan areas. Thus, there was the area between Chicago and Pittsburgh, known as Chipitts. "I'm not making all this up. Now, if you live exactly midway between Burbank, Gardena, Dublin, Cheeseborough, Smolensk, and Freiburg, Germany, you are in Burger-Double-Cheese-Small-Fries."

And here is a photo of Johnny in Carnac regalia, just for the heck of it.

An Old Joke

But I can't help myself.

An atom walks into a bar.

Another atom, which had been in there for awhile, shouted, "hey! that's the guy who stole my electron!"

Bartender says, "Are you sure?"

The aggrieved atom said, "I'm not just sure, I'm positive!"

(You may have to remember your junior-high-school science for that.)

Bergson and Humor

I enjoyed the recent article in SLATE outlining five theories of humor, and why none explains the field. The point, apparently, is to introduce and justify a sixth theory, one based on evolutionary biology and advocated by Matthew Hurley at al.

But I do think author Nina Shen Rastogi misunderstood one of the five, specifically the "mechanical theory." In her account, this is the view of philosopher Henri Bergson, who "believed that it is inadaptability or rigidity -- the repetitive nature of our personalities -- that is the source of humor."

Rastogi thinks this is wrong, because many examples of rigidity aren't funny at all, and because puns aren't mechanical, but ARE funny. Her example of a non-mechanism witticism comes from Douglas Hofstadter, "Email is the happy medium between male and female."

Aside from the fact that the email pun doesn't quite manage to split my sides, Rastogi is off base here. Bergson's view was that humor arises from the juxtaposition of the vital and the mechanical, the living and the routine.

Consider slapstick physical comedy. A man slips on a banana peel. He starts wheeling his arms around to try to restore his balance. That's funny. Why? Because he began the scene as a human being, a vital purposive creature, and ended it as a system of off-balance levers.

Puns are another example of Bergson's point (not a counter-example)! After all, what is more vital than language? What more mechanical than the classification of words by their mere sound, regardless of their actual meaning?

Cartoon Noted

On the backpage of The Federal Lawyer for July 2010, as part of their "Last Laugh" feature, there is the following cartoon.

Youngsters are seen emerging from a school building. One girl and one boy are walking together, and she is talking.

She says, "Reading, writing, and arithmetic are important, Kevin. You need to learn them so you can blog."

Very good.

A Story and a Joke

Thursday night, I mentioned the gist of the following story to one of my companions at the feast. I've fleshed it out a bit since.

Many years ago, my best beloved, a brave group of harried and godly folk became tired of the game known in the old world as "football."

William Bradford said, "This is a stupid game. Let us travel to a distant place, where we can invent a better game and call IT 'football' instead."

And Captain Standish said, "I will lead the way."

Then said John Alden. "When we get there, we can assign a new lame-sounding name to the game we have rejected -- but I fear I am not the right person to invent the adequate nomenclature."

Priscilla. "Don't be so timid John. I'm sure you can come up with a good idea. Speak for yourself!"

John, emboldened, said: "Ah, then, let us call it 'soccer'! And let us never play it again!"

And they all said "Amen" as they walked aboard the Mayflower.

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And as the holiday drew to a close, I watched a DVD of one of Jerry Seinfeld's old standup routines.

In the funniest bit, he talked about how sky-divers wear helmets. This seems odd to him, since in the event the 'chute doesn't open, the helmet won't save you.

"If the chute doesn't open, you're there as a cushion for the helmet. Later, all the helmets will get together and this one will tell his buddies the story. 'Yes, it was a close call. I would have been smashed up pretty awful if I hadn't had a human strapped beneath me.'"