2500 Jokes to Start 'Em Laughing (16 page)

Corrupt? This is the only town I know that goes in for fiancée-swapping!

The New Morality has really changed things. For the first time if somebody goes into the bathroom to cry—it's him!

You can always tell a straitlaced girl at an orgy. She's the one who says, “Stop that, you! Not you. You!”

What can you really say about orgies? They're like a hotbed of hot beds.

Perhaps we should examine some of our priorities. We have rugs that don't show the dirt and movies that do.

Every time I suggest we go to an adult movie, my wife starts reciting the alphabet. She says, “X? Y?”

Remember when movie stars used to wear dark glasses so they wouldn't be recognized? Now the audience wears them!

Do you realize if you ran an X-rated movie backwards, it would be a morality play?

Remember the good old days—when a skin flick was the way you got rid of a bug?

You know what I particularly hate this summer? Mosquitoes! I can't stand anything that eats more meat than I do.

That's all mosquitoes eat—meat. No wonder they're always humming. I'd be happy too!

Mosquitoes have very small brains, six legs, and they breed by the thousands. That's because they have very small brains and six legs. They keep crossing the wrong ones.

My daughter's an ecologist, so we always have religious differences over mosquitoes. Religious differences. She says, “Thou shalt not kill!” And I say, “Let us spray!”

You can always tell when the mosquito season is here because people start using four-letter words—like
OUCH
!

There's so much prejudice in this world. As one mosquito said to another while they watched a doctor of acupuncture push in his needles: “And us they swat!”

Do you know the government has no program to control mosquitoes? I guess it's professional courtesy. They both bite the hand that feeds them.

My mother only weighed ninety-eight pounds but she was a whopper. If we didn't do something the first time—whop!

My mother always used to tell me to wear clean underwear in case I got hit by a car. Remember that? In my mind, clean underwear was so associated with hospitals, I used to have a word printed across the front of all my shorts—
HELP
!… It was great for hospitals. For dates, not so good.

My mother had a thing about waxing. She claimed it saved wear and tear on the floors—and it did. You came in the front door, and by the time you stopped, you were in the backyard!

Isn't it terrible the way modern mothers worry? Years ago when a mother was introduced to her son's new girl friend, she looked at her face. Now it's her stomach.

Francis Scott Key wrote our national anthem by the light of a rocket's red glare. I don't want to start any trouble, but can you imagine if his mother was along? “Francis—you couldn't afford a bulb?”

Did I ever tell you how a den mother once cost me $5,000? It was my den she became a mother in.

We owe a lot to mothers. Why, I know a fella who became a trapeze artist because of his mother. As a kid he held on to her skirts. Then she started wearing minis!

And now, a special message for kids: May ___________ is Mother's Day. Why not do something that will really make Mother enjoy her day—
LEAVE
!

Entomology is a fascinating science. For instance, I learned that a queen termite lays 86,400 eggs a day and on Mother's Day she cries her eyes out. Not one lousy card!

The Academy Award ceremony is where the winners are saying they can't begin to name all the people who have made their success possible—and all the people who have made their success possible are sitting in the audience saying, “Try! Try!”

I saw a study film that shows the actual mating of two black widow spiders—and when it's over, the female kills the male. And all you can hear are his last dying words, “Gee, Shirley—they all can't be gems!”

I'll tell you how my career in the movies ended. We were shooting
Gone With the Wind.
The scene was set in the huge ballroom of a stately old southern mansion. Musicians were playing, champagne was flowing, hundreds of dancing couples. It was costing $25,000 a minute to shoot. I came in the door; a hush fell over the ballroom as all eyes focused on me. That's when I made my last speech in the movies. I said, “Gentlemen—they have just Sumtered on Fort Fire!”

Gone With the Wind
is the story of Scarlett O'Hara. She's sort of a Roquefort-type girl—deliciously rotten!

My hometown is so far out of it, this week they're showing a Charlie Chaplin movie—first run.

Talk about creative programming. Our local movie theater has coupled a Charlie Chaplin short with an X-rated movie. It gives you a choice of tramps.

I saw one of those foreign movies and they're so unrealistic. In the first scene the boy kisses the girl on her neck. Let's face it, who can aim this bad?

I saw one movie that was so sick, the theater didn't have ushers—it had nurses!

And now I'm going to give you my impression of the language in [
CURRENT MOVIE
]. First, I hit my thumb with a hammer.

Tell me, what has happened to the he-men you used to see in movies? Nowadays there's a whole new element in Hollywood. I could tell the minute I saw that new adventure film—
Tarzan Opens a Boutique.

When I was a kid, people were always trying to confuse me. For instance, I went to see a Western and they told me the good guys wore white and the bad guys wore black. So the first person who comes on the screen is a minister!

I took my ten-year-old to a G-rated movie and she had a wonderful time. I think she had a wonderful time. Tell me, is “icky” good or bad?

G-rated films are making a comeback. It's a question of mind over mattress.

But have you noticed a new sensitivity, a new compassion, a greater feeling of concern on the part of the big movie companies? You can tell it by little things. Like they just hired a speech therapist for Porky Pig.

It's a wonderful picture and you'll be crazy about the score. You come out whistling the machine guns.

They say it's a family-type picture. Who's the family? The Borgias?

It's a wonderful movie. I haven't seen so many people fall down holding their stomachs since the last time my kids cooked.

You can't blame Italian-Americans for being upset. One movie cut out the word Mafia and all other ethnic labels. They just show an average American fella sitting in death row eating his last meal-spaghetti and meatballs.

Isn't it eerie the way they write songs about things like air pollution, overpopulation, racial strife, nuclear warfare? Somehow it just seems wrong to face the end of the world tapping our toes.

I really don't know much about jazz. To me, W. C. Handy is a nearby washroom.

It's one of those restaurants where they have quiet background music. Well, not too quiet. The first number put ripples in my soup!

I just had an interesting experience. I sent a radio station $8.95 for an album of Oldies But Goodies. Got a nude photo of Mae West!

I always have a lot of trouble singing “The Star-Spangled Banner.” The only time I can reach those high notes is when I back into a doorknob.

I live in a very tough neighborhood. Very tough. Yesterday a guy held me up with a bitten-off shotgun!

This neighborhood is so tough it's incredible. Everybody in the building next door is paying for protection. What makes it so incredible, it's a police station!

We live in a very quiet neighborhood. Nothing but little old ladies sitting around knitting—guns!

The funny part of it is, I have an eighty-year-old grandmother and she feels perfectly safe thanks to three things—a positive attitude, an optimistic outlook, and a bulletproof shawl.

I'll tell you what kind of a neighborhood I live in. The Christian Science Reading Room has a bouncer.

Did you hear about the world's worst newspaper? It's called the House of Ill Report!

A little boy is someone who shows up once a week to collect for the daily paper he has delivered once a week.

Is this man a reporter? If he had been at the Last Supper, his biggest quote would have been: “Please pass the mustard!”

Did you see that headline this morning—
MAN HIT BY TRAIN CRITICAL
? Well, you can hardly blame him.

The nice part about reading a Sunday
Times
from beginning to end is—there's only three hours left till the next one.

A TOAST:
May 1980 be the prosperous 1979 that 1978 was supposed to be in 1977.

My wish for 1980 is that the army of the unemployed be the U. S. Army.

Spend New Year's Eve with your loved ones. The family that blasts together lasts together.

New Year's Eve is when millions of people celebrate Goliath style. They go out and get stoned!

I know a fella who always goes to a burlesque show on New Year's Eve and he says it's fascinating. The old year doesn't pass out—it's bumped off!

New Year's Eve is when a fool and his money are soon potted!

Everybody was drinking bridge table whiskey. Three drinks and your legs fold up under you!

I'm one of those sloppy drunks. I tried to drink champagne from her shoe. It was awful. It was a sandal!

I can remember when every New Year's Eve I used to ring out the old! Ring in the new! Ding, dong! Ding, dong! Now I just tinkle a little and go home!

Maybe I'm just sentimental, but there's something about going out to a nightclub on New Year's Eve that brings tears to my eyes. The price!

One club is charging seventy-five dollars a couple and the wine flows like water—in Lake Erie!

New Year's Eve always seems to follow a pattern. Across the country, a hundred million people are watching their clocks—and fifty thousand nightclub owners are watching their bartenders!

One club owner calls his cash register The Punchbowl—'cause everybody keeps dipping into it!

And now a song dedicated to all those people who polish off two
bottles of liquor at a New Year's Eve party: “You'll Never Walk Alone”!

One balloon came floating down and hit a drunk. He said, “What's that?” I said, “It's a balloon. You know what a balloon is. It's big and round and filled with hot air.” He said, “That's a balloon? You know something? I just voted for one!”

Did you hear about the nudist colony that celebrated New Year's Eve at three o'clock in the morning? No one was watching the clock!

On New Year's Day, the number of people who take Alka-Seltzer is gastronomical.

New Year's Day is when government workers turn over a new loaf.

There's an old New York proverb that goes: “A journey of a thousand miles begins with trying to find a parking space near the theater.”

Remember that wonderful old George M. Cohan song “Forty-five Minutes from Broadway”? Today, New York traffic is so bad, you know what's forty-five minutes from Broadway? Fifth Avenue!

You can't believe the traffic. This morning I sat in a cab for twenty-five minutes and the only thing that moved was the meter.

I just heard the saddest story. It's about a New York City strong man who's getting on in years but he still wants to be able to tear the telephone book in half. So he moved to Nanticoke, Pennsylvania.

I'm glad they're finally getting rid of prostitution, live sex shows, and pornographic movies in New York. I mean, what kind of an atmosphere is that for a mugger to have to work in?

I happen to know that Central Park is absolutely safe at 8
A.M.
, 4
P.M.
, and midnight. That's when the muggers change shifts.

They say Central Park is no longer dangerous but where else can you buy a balloon for your kid and it's filled with Mace?

Anyone who walks through Central Park at night has a lot going for him.

It's so sad to watch the tourists in New York. I just saw one of them standing over a sewer, trying to get a breath of fresh air.

It's hard to describe how a tourist in New York feels, but the last scene in
King Kong
comes close.

The big thing in America today is nostalgia. Like I've got a fifteen-year-old kid who gets nostalgic. About what? Last Tuesday?

My teenager read that Lindbergh flew across the Atlantic and he really was impressed—until he found out it was in a plane.

I get nostalgic myself. I was telling my neighbor, “Every time I think about my rich uncle leaving me a million dollars in 1955, the tears roll down my face.” He said, “I didn't know your uncle left you a million dollars in 1955.” I said, “He didn't. That's why the tears roll down my face.”

I'll never forget the first girl I ever danced with. I said, “You'll have to forgive me but I only know two steps—the fox-trot and the tango.” She said, “No kidding. Which is this?”

In those days, the only time a kid had his arms around a girl was while they were dancing. Today, the only time he doesn't—is while they're dancing.

I showed my teenage son a picture of the Benny Goodman band and said, “They were the smash hit of the forties.” He looked at the picture and couldn't believe it. He said, “With only one guitar?”

Remember when girls swooned over Frank Sinatra and Perry Como? Do you know those very same girls are still falling down? Every time they take off their support stockings!

If you want to feel old, watch a 1953 movie with your kids. What's nostalgia to them was prurient interest to you.