"As a humorist, what do you think the funniest thing you've ever written is?"
Actually, calling me "a humorist" is probably funnier than anything I myself have ever said. Bennet Cerf was a humorist (I mean, he published Ayn Rand and James Joyce; he must have had a sense of humor). I'm just a guy who comments on comics, which are themselves (appropriate to their name) intrinsically funny.
But, if I had to answer the question, I'd say the funniest things I've ever written were these sentences:
- "Black Lois cannot be taxied." and
- "I love you, tiny red pony."
I still can't say that last one out loud without laughing my arse off. You had to be there, I guess.
But it's an interesting question for anyone, "humorist" or not...
What's the funniest sentence you've ever written?
37 comments:
Might not be *the* funniest, but the one *I'm* proudest of is:
"Smell my oxygen mask while I leak cocoa butter out my eyes."
"I can TASTE it with my SNIFF-SNIFF!"
All-time favorite.
Gail
"The academic community is a pack of clowns and vultures waiting for Harold Bloom to pitch over and die so they can squabble over his legacy. "
It was Usenet; you pretty much had to be there. Believe me, grad students laughed and laughed.
>>Bennet Cerf was a humorist.
Word.
I can't judge my own funniness but the funniest thing I've read recently was a sort of epitaph for Steve Irwin: 'the man died doing what he loved best, molesting dangerous animals for the infotainment of the masses'.
Green Lantern's Black Hand versus Giant Sized Man-Thing.
Let THAT be my legacy.
From a one-act play about a closeted movie star:
"I'm not gay -- I just like to exchange handjobs occasionally!"
I can't recall from memory any one line that I would deem my funniest, but I did instantly think of the following paragraph that appears in an article about the films of Hal Needham I wrote for an Oklahoma zine called "Hitch" (it's in reference to the director's magnum opus The Cannonball Run):
"All snarkiness aside, the film is not a complete disaster as it does make frequent and intelligent use of the God’s great bounty that was Adrienne Barbeau’s early-eighties cleavage. But even this sumptuous sight is somewhat bittersweet, as it reminds us that--like Communism--Adrienne Barbeau’s breasts were always better in theory than in practice. Here in this film they were the best breasts our imaginations could ever have devised, but once we all saw them fully unleashed in other films, we learned the sad, disappointing truth. In this way, one could consider The Cannonball Run a spiritual heir to Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin and October, where the uplifting images of the worker’s revolution are undone by the sad realities of Marx and Engel’s great social experiment."
I dunno, but there's something about how I used a b-movie actress' rack as a means to compare a Burt Reynolds car chase movie to the great masterpieces of silent soviet cinema that I find highly amusing, but I admit that may not translate well to others.
Oh, and if anonymous Gail is who I think she is, then let me say that she should also be v. proud of "I should NOT have called the redhead's chicky a SLUT."
That made me very happy.
I'm a humor writer, yet I find myself to not be that funny. It's weird like that.
From a movie I wrote that's being edited together as we speak:
"Everyone's nervous their first time. When Grover Cleveland was first elected president he was nervous as all hell."
Ok, it's funnier in context.
-Billy
Depends...would my job description count?
In reference to a fish-and-chips shop:
"This is no plaice for a girl like you."
"Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin"...
which contains one the funniest things I've ever read, by the way.
First time, I'm watching this, I'm a high school senior, and the 10,000 soldiers have all stepped on the little child, whose lifeless body the mother cradles like a broken action figure, saying, "My child is ill," an understatement I would usually have chalked up to translation except that is EXACTLY what the Russian title said ("Moi dyet bolen").
Damn near fell out of my chair laughing.
"'the man died doing what he loved best, molesting dangerous animals for the infotainment of the masses'."
Word.
"Damn near fell out of my chair laughing."
Not a lot of people know that Eisenstein had always dreamed of being the next Buster Keaton, but he stifled his comedic ambitions because...well...he didn't want to get shot in the back of the head.
Still, he managed to find his moments.
(It SO could be true!)
Not written, but spoken, and probably not the funniest thing I've ever said, but this jumped to mind:
My friend and I were watching the Incredible Hulk tv movie in college (bought on VHS for $1.99), and there was a scene in which Bill Bixby is gettiong frustrated because he can't figure out why people got stronger in desparate situations, but he didn't.
Bill Bixby (throwing a fit): "... WHY?!? WHAT IS THE COMMON DENOMINATOR?!?!?!"
Me: "Three."
My friend fell off the chair laughing. Keep in mind, this was college...
"(The series ends as) T-Wolf is stuck a thousand years in his past. That last one's probably as much fun for him as it would be for you or I to go back to the year 1006: everyone smells, everyone is full of barbaric and stupid ideas, and the pornography is vastly inferior to what you're used to...wait..."
Boy, I loved that line, and it died out there. Sometimes, a line or phrase can strike you just right, and utterly miss everyone else.
This is line one of my favorites, but the set-up was courtesy of my roomie being annoyed by a person on the phone.
My Roomie: Do you want to talk to a soda (holds soda up to phone)?
Me(loudly enough person on phone can hear it): It's the only one listening.
Three people in the room, and we all erupted with laughter.
The person on the phone hung up. I guess they didn't think it was funny.
The one that got the best reaction was a few weeks ago:
"this is how Axl Rose must feel all the time".
People really seemed to like that.
"John Byrne = Dr. Doom"
It's funny because it's true!
I'm insanely curious about the context for "I love you, little red pony." I'll totally paypal you a dollar if you tell me.
(For the record: I could do a top fifty funniest Absorbascon posts list fairly easily, but my absolute favorite post here is "Can Wonder Woman dance?"
"What? You want me to march in it? Why, yes! Yes, I'd be honored! No, no thank you; I brought my own cape. Oh, and don't worry; let me break the news to Supergirl; it'll be ... easier coming from me. Strike up the band!"
P.S. I haven't written anything funny.
P.P.S I did co-write a play about the history of the Universe. Dave Powers, the guy I wrote it with, did THIS bit...
*Curtain Opens. It's Dark. LARE SIGN Drops down from the rafters, reading "THE DAWN OF CREATION: 6 BILLION BC. *SIGN* holds for a minute, then retracts. "
BOOMING VOICE: LET THERE BE LIGHT!
*Lights ON*
BOOMING VOICE: LET THERE BE DARK!
*LIghts OFF*
BOOMING VOICE: LET THERE BE LIGHT!
*Light*
BOOMING VOICE: HEY! THIS IS FUN!
Might not be the funniest, but I *do* like:
"F#$*in' Eggos. F#$*in' good."
Relationship advice given over the internet: 'So you want to know how to break up with your oppressively jealous boyfriend, who's a cop and into S&M? Easy - change your DNA and move to another planet'.
"my absolute favorite post here is "Can Wonder Woman dance?""
Thanks, Markandrew! That's easily one of my favorites. Sometimes I still find myself giggling randomly at "Little Miss Marchy Boots".
From a comic-script-in-progress, where two mercenaries discuss a fallen comrade:
"You slept with him?"
"It was a long campaign. Besides, he was kind of cute, in a 'still had most of his teeth and fingers' sort of way."
This year I graded some standardized tests for 10th grade students (15-year-olds). This was one of my favourite answers:
"The best invention in the world is bears and lions because some people have bears or lions where they live so they can see them sometimes."
And one by me, for which there IS a context, which I happily do not provide:
"I have difficulty imagining a hormone for 'fear of orientals'.."
Man, tough one, but I'd have to go with this from my 3/3/06 post on the Demon Druid's hat:
"Press one mouse skull eyeball, it plays "Nearer My God To Thee"; press the other, it plays "My Humps."
From my own personal blog...
"It's amazing how many women will ask to be spanked when you're dressed like a nun and carrying a wooden ruler."
Trust me. You don't want to know...
I posted this on boardgamegeek.com describing the wonderful awfulness that is the Ungame.
"My wife purchased this. Here's the coversation when she brought it home:
She: "Look, I bought a game."
Me: "No,, you bought an UN game."
She: "Let's get the boys & play. It'll be fun."
Me: "But if it's an UN game, won't it be UN fun?"
Now we are playing, two boys and two adults.
She: "This is nice, we get to sit around talking about these questions."
Boy 1: "Can I make Joel go to that cabin? It looks dangerous, like a monster lives in the water."
She: "If Joel goes there he has to answer a question about his feelings"
Boy 1: "OK I'll make Joel go there. That'll get him mad."
She: "It's not a punishment. Nothing bad will happen."
Joel (Boy 2): "Will I have to answer a question?"
She: "Yes."
Joel: "Then something bad is happening." Punches brother in arm.
Me: "How do you win this game?"
She: "There is no winner.."
Me: "Then there is no game."
She: "You're not being very supportive. That hurts my feelings."
Me: "Well you can't talk about your feeling right now because it's not your turn. You'll have to wait to draw a card. Right now we're punishing Joel."
She: "It's not punishment!"
Boy 1: "Have you ever played Axis & Allies?"
She: "No."
Boy 1:"If you had, you would know that this is punishment."
Things got worse after that."
Going just from blogosphere stuff, my funniest moment would be my haiku response to this post from this blog, which shows the enlightening power of the Absorbascon.
Outside of the blogosphere would take way too much explanation. So I'll sum it up with the two key words from that moment.
"VICTORY SEX!"
Ken Lowery is probably the only person in the comics blogosphere that will get that reference. But trust me, it was funny at the time.
"I do."
Oh, wait, written, not spoken...
By far the funniest thing on this site was Killer Moth's "How Not to Get Caught By Batman". I still start laughing when I think about how great it would be if everyone in the world owned a shirt with Batman getting clonked in the head with a corndog, in the hand of one very angry Purple Robed Pansy.
Franny!
Where the HECK have YOU been?
Sorely missed, I daresay.
"Damn you Justin Timberlake.... Damn you and the groove you rode in on!" was the most recent one that made Mrs Sivana laugh hard enough to cry...
But that may have been due to all the emoting and fist shaking going on...
"I'm only 75% like Iron Man beause I drink a lot."
From my, *shudder* MySpace profile.
Hello, BTW, I absolutely love your blog (just read it all today) but suffer from an all-encompassing dread about commenting on it so I thought I'd leave something here because a) this thread is old and no-one will see it, b) I can contribute something to it which I am not able to do on other posts because everyone is so much funnier/insightful than I am, and c) I can assuage (is that even a word?) my guilt about reading something without ever giving props where props are due.
Keep up the good work, it's a pleasure to read.
I see you, JYD. Thanks for reading and commenting.
"I'm insanely curious about the context for "I love you, little red pony."
MarkAndrew,
Many years ago I used to have to illustrate dog-related facts by drawing cartoons. One of the running characters was a sassy red Dachshund who was always in the cartoon even if he were not a direct participant in the action. One of facts required a horse to be in the drawing and the horse, apropos of nothing, was saying to the dog,
"I love you, Tiny Red Pony."
The absurdism, in context, was killer.
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