I love a good joke. Really, I just love any joke, a little raw unit of comedy that carries its own context with it, that any old idiot can tell and that doesn’t require context or brand or narrative. There’s something that feels tangible and fungible about them, and that can be refreshing and comforting in a “creative” world where it’s easy to wonder whether you’re touching anything at all or just floating through space.
I really love when I’m given a context to just crank out jokes, but I also just enjoy reading them, especially if they’re bad and I can take no responsibility for them. Reading bad jokes with comedians is one of my favorite ways to pass time, and I’ve tried to capture a little bit of that with my podcast “Monday Joke Book,” the first episode of which I just released today.
Here’s that opening episode, guest starring Jesse VandenBergh
It’s about an hour long, and if you want to just skip my explanatory intro and get right to the jokes and the guest, you can jump ahead to about eight minutes (8:34 to be precise, I think).
The joke book the series is based around – 2,000 Sure-Fire Jokes for Speakers – is pretty outdated. It’s from 1971 by a comedian/magician who later wrote for Gerald Ford, so it’s more cultural artifact than a real joke source. Each guest picks one chapter (Jesse picked “Human Relations,” a comically small chapter for what could theoretically be an expansive category) and we read all the jokes and comment on them. Technically it’s sort of called “Monday Morning Joke Book,” but I said it was “coming soon” back in May so promptness isn’t exactly my wheelhouse. Anyway, I hope you enjoy it, it is “not safe for work” but I yam what I yam and that’s all what I yam as that famous spinach fiend once said.