Philly Daily News + Joke Book Podcast

Dan Gross in The Philadelphia Daily News was kind enough to mention Jokes Every Man Should Know in his column on local names and celebs. For now I'll even excuse the way he calls the paper upstairs the Inqwaster.

Then today the Daily News put out a "PhillyFeed" podcast after Jenice Armstrong and Vance Lehmkuhl interviewed me about the book for I'd say about 12 minutes. The full, unexpurgated recording is here.

Reader Submission: a couple of Jokes Every Woman Should Know

Athena says her aunt sent her these:

WIFE vs. HUSBAND

A couple drove down a country road for several miles, not saying a word. An earlier discussion had led to an argument and neither of them wanted to concede their position.

As they passed a barnyard of mules, goats, and pigs, the husband asked sarcastically, "Relatives of yours?"

"'Yep," the wife replied, "in-laws."

WORDS

A husband read an article to his wife about how many words women use a day: 30,000 compared to a man's 15,000.

The wife replied, "The reason has to be because we have to repeat everything to men."

The husband turned to his wife and said, "What?"

The Electric Chair Joke + Bonus Alternative Version (page 41)

Three men are sentenced to death and brought to face their fate.
The executioner says to the first one, "You have a choice: you may die either by lethal injection or electric chair."
He chooses lethal injection. The injection is administered and he dies.
The second man is offered the same choice. He selects electric chair. The executioner pulls the switch, but nothing happens. He tries again. Again nothing happens.
"Well," the executioner says, "according to our laws, you made your choice and the punishment was administered, so we are done. You can go free." He goes free.
Then the executioner asks the third man the same question: lethal injection or electric chair.
"I think lethal injection," he says. "The electric chair is obviously broken."

ALTERNATIVE VERSION ALERT: In another version of this joke, it's a priest, a doctor and an engineer who are going under the guillotine. The guillotine malfunctions for priest and then also for the doctor. Because "God has spoken," both are set free. When it's the engineer's turn to place his head on the faulty guillotine, he looks up and says: "Oh, I see the problem!"

Book in Real Simple

Jokes Every Man Should Know is featured in the Father's Day gift guide in Real Simple magazine, the June issue, along with a silver bowl and some other stuff. RS reports its circulation at 1.9 million. And that's 1.9 million people!

They say: "Do the whole family a favor and put an end to Dad’s corny one-liners. This little black book offers more than a hundred alternatives (some G-rated, others requiring earmuffs)."

The Snail Joke (page 16)

Every year, Joe takes a week during the summer to relax at his friend’s cabin in the Maine woods. One night after he’s just arrived, he's sitting in the cabin when he hears a knock at the door. He opens the door and doesn't see anything -- until he looks down. On the wooden porch he sees a small snail. Annoyed, he picks up the snail and throws it as far as he can.
Three years later, Joe is back in the cabin for another summer retreat. There’s a knock on the door. He opens it and sees nothing, then remembers. He looks down -- and there’s the same snail!
The snail says: "What the hell was that all about?"

Jack Handey book review

I have sneaked a mention of Jokes Every Man Should Know into my byline at the bottom of my review of the new Jack Handey book, What I'd Say to the Martians. It ran today in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

The Handey book is hilarious.

Snubbed by Esquire -- UPDATED

Wow. Ouch. In mid-February, sent Jokes Every Man Should Know to Esquire with a nice letter. I used to know the guy who edits the magazine. Good guy. Great magazine. The May issue of Esquire arrives! There's a feature: "75 Skills Every Man Should Master." Awesome. Here's what they have in there:

38. Tell a joke. Here's one:
Two guys are walking down a dark alley when a mugger approaches them and demands their money. They both grudgingly pull out their wallets and begin taking out their cash. Just then, one guy turns to
the other, hands him a bill, and says, "Hey, here's that $20 I owe you."

That's word-for-word the way it's in the joke book. Actually, it's an old joke, but the above rendering of it is double-familiar. The way it's written in Esquire and in the joke book is exactly the way I edited it for GQ in 1999, when I did a feature, the "Funniest Jokes of All Time." It reads tersely because I had to keep each joke very short.

FOLLOW UP: I figured I had nothing to lose sending an email to Tom Chiarella, who wrote the Esquire "75 skills" package. I said I admire his writing (very true) and laid out the above info. He wrote back -- said he was sorry and understood my frustration. They wanted to do one of the 75 items about telling a joke. An intern got three jokes off the Internet, Chiarella says, and "I chose that one because it was so tightly written -- backdoor kudos I suppose.... In any case, I apologize for the overlap...I hope it seems explainable. " It does.