This book is better than Prozac
Much better
I was given the best gift ever for Christmas.
Dad Jokes: The Cheesy Edition.
Actually, it was given to me as, well, a joke. The so-called White Elephant, a concept some of you may be familiar with. Little did I know how much I would come to love—and, yes, esteem—this book.
Everybody at Christmas had fun mocking the book, because they thought it was silly. However, I soon noticed they had taken to picking up the book at odd moments and reading it. And then laughing. They pretended to be “just looking.” But you could tell they were really enjoying it. And often they didn’t want to give it back to me.
“Just give me a few minutes,” my stepmother said. “I want to see what the fuss is all about.”
Twenty minutes later, I had to wrest it from her.
What’s so funny? Well, here’s a sample of the kind of jokes you find in this book:
My IT guy just asked: “How does a computer get drunk?”
It takes screenshots.
I know! Hilarious. (I’m serious.) But wait, there’s more:
You know what happens if you don’t pay your exorcist?
You get repossessed.
Ha ha. (Really.) The jokes are often puns, but they’re clever puns. (Shakespeare, we recall, was a major punster. His plays are chocked full of puns.) Sometimes, the jokes are thoughtful:
Seven has “even” in it.
That’s odd.
Did you know that 97 per cent of the world is stupid?
Luckily, I’m in the other 5 per cent.
And, finally, the jokes often make absolute sense:
What language do oranges speak?
Mandarin.
This leads me to Rodney Dangerfield and, ultimately, to Henny Youngman, both of whom I consider comic geniuses on an Einsteinian scale. What I've noticed, though, is that many people do not agree with me. Many of these people are the same people who look down on Dad Jokes. When I show them some Rodney Dangerfield jokes on YouTube, they don’t laugh. Or, as I suspect, they just don’t want to let their inner whoopee cushion out. (Fun fact: T.S. Eliot loved whoopee cushions.) Or maybe they watch, and laugh, in secret. Now, you tell me:
Rodney: “I got a dog, it gives me trouble. She’s a female dog. I tried to mate her. She wanted fifty biscuits.”
Speaking of fifty, this is a perfect transition to Henny Youngman:
“A hooker stopped me on the street and told me, ‘I’ll do anything you want for $50.’
“I said, ‘Paint my house.’”
Right?
I propose we create a three-dollar bill. I mean for real. And we put either Henny or Rodney on it, or both. That would give us such a lift.
I’ll end with a classic Henny joke:
“The food on the plane was fit for a king. ‘Here, King!’”
Come on. You know you want to laugh.