<story><title>Old jokes</title><url>https://dynomight.net/old-jokes/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>PaulDavisThe1st</author><text>These remind me of a category of &amp;quot;joke&amp;quot; that some of my middle-school peers and I engaged in: the non-joke. The only one I can remember went something like: &lt;i&gt;a man walks into a bakery and asks for two baguettes. The baker looks at him, thinks for a moment and says &amp;quot;It&amp;#x27;s OK, you can leave your bike outside&amp;quot;&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;Looking back, I think this idea was somehow rooted in the idea that jokes have &lt;i&gt;delivery&lt;/i&gt; and that if you use that delivery (rythmn, emphasis, body language) maybe you could say anything and be funny. There was also the peer effect - if you had an audience &amp;quot;plant&amp;quot; in the school yard that would start the laughter, sometimes it would catch even for these non-jokes.&lt;p&gt;Decades later, the idea I described above seems both obviously false, but also true, in the sense that a lot of modern stand up is based on &amp;quot;say anything the right way and people laugh&amp;quot;. However, &amp;quot;the right way&amp;quot; for standup is very different than the &amp;quot;telling a joke&amp;quot; structure.&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, it does feel to me at this point that this is the crux of the contemporary poetry slam: read an arbitrary text in the right way, and while it may not win any prizes, it will feel like poetry, because &lt;i&gt;that&amp;#x27;s what make it poetry&lt;/i&gt;.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>salmo</author><text>We used to really enjoy a long elaborate joke setup with a let down as the punchline in college.&lt;p&gt;My favorite was &amp;quot;A patron sees a whale sitting in a booth at the bar&amp;quot;.  You go on and on about him coming back day after day seeing the wale, describing the beverage, etc.  Just improv it.  The key is going as long as you can while keeping the audience, but still getting that frustration and tension from them.&lt;p&gt;At the end the patron gets up the courage to talk to the whale explains to the whale that he had seen him for days, was amazed, etc. Then the whale looked at him and responded [insert best whale noise impression].&lt;p&gt;Since he passed I&amp;#x27;ve seen a bunch of Norm Macdonald videos of this.  He really was the best.  The moth joke and others that go on for ~30 mins each on Conan are amazing.&lt;p&gt;He plays them dumb but is basing them off like Russian literature tropes that go way over the audience&amp;#x27;s head.  The repeated build up, let down, and then finally just a silly punch line that could have landed in 3 sentences is incredible.  And his ability to play off Conan&amp;#x27;s occasional shots...</text></comment>
<story><title>Old jokes</title><url>https://dynomight.net/old-jokes/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>PaulDavisThe1st</author><text>These remind me of a category of &amp;quot;joke&amp;quot; that some of my middle-school peers and I engaged in: the non-joke. The only one I can remember went something like: &lt;i&gt;a man walks into a bakery and asks for two baguettes. The baker looks at him, thinks for a moment and says &amp;quot;It&amp;#x27;s OK, you can leave your bike outside&amp;quot;&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;Looking back, I think this idea was somehow rooted in the idea that jokes have &lt;i&gt;delivery&lt;/i&gt; and that if you use that delivery (rythmn, emphasis, body language) maybe you could say anything and be funny. There was also the peer effect - if you had an audience &amp;quot;plant&amp;quot; in the school yard that would start the laughter, sometimes it would catch even for these non-jokes.&lt;p&gt;Decades later, the idea I described above seems both obviously false, but also true, in the sense that a lot of modern stand up is based on &amp;quot;say anything the right way and people laugh&amp;quot;. However, &amp;quot;the right way&amp;quot; for standup is very different than the &amp;quot;telling a joke&amp;quot; structure.&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, it does feel to me at this point that this is the crux of the contemporary poetry slam: read an arbitrary text in the right way, and while it may not win any prizes, it will feel like poetry, because &lt;i&gt;that&amp;#x27;s what make it poetry&lt;/i&gt;.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>stryan</author><text>&amp;gt; Looking back, I think this idea was somehow rooted in the idea that jokes have delivery and that if you use that delivery (rhythm, emphasis, body language) maybe you could say anything and be funny.&lt;p&gt;Reminds me of the Code Geass abridged series Code MENT (most famously known for the Soup Store[0] meme) which relies on this type of humor heavily. Most of the jokes in it aren&amp;#x27;t really funny on their own and are essentially just nonsensical statements delivered in strange and distinctive ways rapid fire while VERY loosely related to the plot of Code Geass. But with the right delivery the lines become hilarious and easily quotable: just look at how many Soup Store parodies there are.&lt;p&gt;[0]&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=FAUnDDTz30k&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=FAUnDDTz30k&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>