Complex Numbers

Where Jokes Go to Die

Let's get serious about comedy for a few minutes.

https://www.cracked.com/article_28266_5-famous-jokes-everybody-manages-to-screw-...

5 Famous Jokes Everybody Manages To Screw Up

Or -- possibly more accurately -- Cracked Screws Up Famous Jokes.

Jokes are the most important form of communication we have, and many are strongest the moment they're first told. Some get even better with repetition, and many are repeated till a single line turns into a hollow husk of a catchphrase that people apply endlessly, with all the original genuine humor lost.

Oh, I don't know. The most important form of communication we have? That would be when we meow back at our cats.


5. "It's One Banana, Michael. How Much Could It Cost? Ten Dollars?"

I'm pretty sure I've never heard this one until I read this article. I even had to follow the link, which told me it comes from Arrested Development -- a show I've always had less than zero interest in watching.

As it was the first time I heard it, you would expect, via Cracked Comedy Theory above, that I would have found it hilarious. I didn't. Mildly eye-rolling, maybe. Perhaps I would have had to understand the characters and context better.

Anyway, they bury the joke in the ground and shovel dirt over it by going on to explain it.


4. "Shut Up And Take My Money!"

Hey, I know this one. I use it myself.

Did that amazing new game get announced, and you want it right away? Or some shiny and whirring new bit of electronics? How about a proposed invention, something that might never even really come into being, but you need it, and you need it now? Only one GIF can sum up your feelings.

Hey I can do gifs too!



In the show, Fry isn't saying this about a good product. He's saying it about a bad product. The joke isn't that he's already sold on it, so he shushes the salesmen from talking it up further. The joke is that he's already sold on it, so he shushes the salesmen from explaining the bad item's flaws.

But you know what? It doesn't matter. Sure, maybe it's overused, but the mark of a good quote is that it can be used in other situations than the original writers intended. Stop telling me how to get mileage out of other peoples' creativity, Cracked. You're not my supervisor!


3. "Up To Eleven"

Okay, now you're treading on sacred ground. I'm pretty sure that this line from Spinal Tap is the most successful reference joke of all time. It has embedded itself into pop culture even more thoroughly than quotes from Star Wars, and you can't swing a lightsaber without slicing a Star Wars reference joke.

Just to give two examples of how thoroughly that single line has taken root and become part of the everyday lexicon: First, the IMDb page   for that movie has a star rating system that goes to 11. So okay, that's only to be expected, right? But that brings me to the second example: The BBC, the oldest public service broadcaster in the world, with a stuffy British management not exactly famous for its sense of humor, has its own proprietary video player on its web pages -- and its volume slider goes to 11.

No, of course "but these go to eleven" isn't funny anymore. It's too pervasive. What it is now is an idiom. And regardless of how it was used in the movie (which I first saw when it came out and recognized that scene as pure comedy gold), we can use it however we like. Cracked trying to comedysplain to us how it was supposed to be used is like... well, it's like those pedants who insist that you can't split infinitives or end sentences prepositions with.


2. "You Keep Using That Word, I Do Not Think It Means What You Think It Means"

You keep using these jokes. I do not think they mean what you think they mean.

Seriously, you're supposed to be a comedy site. Lighten up, Francis.


1. "Nobody Expects The Spanish Inquisition!"

Now, here, the discussion of this one actually makes some sense:

The basis for the sketch is the phrase "I didn't come here expecting the Spanish Inquisition," a facetious way of pointing out someone's questioning you more intently than is reasonable. Type that line into Google, and from the search results, you'd swear that Monty Python invented it. But it was already a common figure of speech before the sketch.

Which I didn't know, because the Spanish Inquisition sketch was basically before my time. It predates even Spinal Tap by something like 15 years. In other words, its original meaning has been superseded by the Python reference.

In conclusion, yes, some lines get overworked. It is, for example, impossible to make any comment, serious or otherwise, about deep philosophical questions such as: What's the meaning of life? What's the ultimate answer? without someone shouting out: FORTY-TWO!!! It gets tiring, and it's caused me to stop talking, or even thinking, about such deep questions.

Probably for the best, anyway. I'd already figured out that comedy is the true Meaning of Life.