by Robert Orben
My wife and I had a very interesting family fight today. She claims the car is in more of our home movies than she is.
I know a fella who wants to get married but he can’t.
He’s a pacifist.
My wife and I had a rather interesting fight last night. She said it was five days since our last fight—and I said it was four.
Marriage is nature’s way of keeping people from fighting with strangers!
I’ll tell you what our house is like. We have three priests living with us who want to get married. The church sent them over to change their mind.
Some husbands complain that their wives don’t do anything when they make love. Now my wife isn’t like that. She crochets.…
You’ve heard of the rhythm method?
With us it’s knit one, purl two!
Men, when you get married, the first thing you should do is take your little black address book and burn it—into your memory!
My wife is always accusing me of running around with other women. What does she mean by that “running around with other women”? It’s like I joined the track team at the YWCA.
Believe me, running around with women will never get you into trouble. It’s the pit stops!
Fortunately, I have something that lets me see the funny side of marriage—a microscope.
I just heard an interesting conversation in the lobby. A wife was saying to her husband, “Tell me, dear. Before we got married, did you say you were oversexed or over sex?”
Kids today don’t wait. I went to a wedding where the bride was given away by her father—not to mention her waistline.
They had three figures on top of the wedding cake—
the bride, the groom, and an obstetrician.
I love to read those advice columns in the newspaper. I read one this morning. It said, “What’s the worst thing a wife can get on her twenty-fifth wedding anniversary?” And you know what the answer is? “Morning sickness!”
There’s no question that sometimes the romance does go out of a marriage. If you’ve been married twenty-five years, foreplay is a nudge.
MARRIAGE COUNSELORS
One marriage counselor doesn’t waste any time.
He has a sign on his door: KNOCK—THEN KNOCK IT OFF!
Did you hear about the couple who met in a marriage counselor’s office for an attempt at reconciliation? The husband said, “Look, we’ve both said and done things we shouldn’t have. Let’s forget about all that and go back to the way it was on our honeymoon. We’ll go home and I’ll make passionate love to you!” She said, “Over my dead body.” He said, “That’s right. We won’t change a thing!”
We should all be very grateful to our neighbors. Just think, a marriage counselor gets twenty-five dollars an hour to listen to a couple yelling and screaming and fighting. Neighbors do it for nothing.
MAYORS
Listening to the mayor talk about taxes is a preview of coming extractions.
This is the only town where if the mayor really likes you, he gives you the key out of the city!
We have a great mayor. He’s the one who took crime out of the back alleys and put it right out on the street where we can keep an eye on it.
You read some of the statements coming out of City Hall and you realize not all of the ding-a-lings are on ice cream trucks.
I once visited City Hall when the mayor was making one of his critical decisions. I didn’t actually see the mayor but I did see the coin being flipped.
MEDICAL INSURANCE
Major Medical has made it possible for millions of Americans to be ill at ease.
I’m a little worried about the mail order medical insurance policy I just bought. They sent me the policy and my mailman a scalpel.
My wife and I have a wonderful medical insurance policy. We get $750 if one of us gets pregnant—me!
Insurance is a lot like wearing a hospital gown.
You’re never covered as much as you think you are.
MEDICINE
You have to be impressed with medical science. First it was skin transplants; then eye transplants; then heart transplants; and now the most fantastic transplant of them all! I just read where a fella gave his seat to a lady!
An internist is the emcee of the medical profession. He doesn’t do anything himself. He just points to other doctors.
They say the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. I don’t know who said it but I wouldn’t want him to be my doctor!
They now have a copper band that eliminates headaches. It fits right over your kid’s mouth.
MIDDLE AGE
I’m at that in-between age. I’m too young for Medicare and too old for women to care!
Middle age is the time when what sits on your knee isn’t girls, it’s your stomach.
You know you’ve reached middle age when you want something bigger on your Playboy Calendar—the numbers.
The first time you put on bifocals you feel like a kid again. You go down stairs three at a time—sometimes on purpose.
Middle age is when couples are reaching the Playboy stage of their marriage. She’s folding out and he’s folding up!
Middle age is when, if you take the Pill before going to bed, 10 to 1 it’s aspirin!
Middle age is the most wonderful part of your life. You’re just halfway between adolescence and obsolescence!
Middle age is when you start having a lot of kidney problems. The spirit is willing but the flush is weak!
Middle age is when you begin to wonder who put the quicksand in the hourglass of time.
Middle age is when you’re beginning to wonder if, in the pursuit of happiness, you haven’t gone right past it.
Middle age is when you first begin to realize there’s one more thing in this world that’s biodegradable—you!
Middle age is when you can’t turn the TV set off or your wife on.
I’m at that in-between age—halfway between Playboy and play dead.
Fortunately I’m not getting any older. The guy in the mirror is, but I’m not!
It’s an eerie feeling turning fifty. Somehow I never figured to burn out before my picture tube did.
Never trust anyone who says he’s thirty—and then shakes up a container of milk before pouring it.
MINISTERS
A church looking for a minister has this in mind: He must have the humility of a saint, the administrative skills of an executive, the speaking ability of a spellbinder, the counseling know-how of a psychiatrist, and the wage requirements of an elephant—he has to work for peanuts.
If a church expects its minister to cut the grass, take out the garbage, and tidy up the building before the service—what they’re really looking for is a D.D. A Doctor of Demeanity.
Did you hear about the minister who felt his sermon entitled IT’S LATER THAN YOU THINK was a huge success, because people kept looking at their watches?
Happiness to a minister is someone who snores in the same key as the closing hymn.
I know a minister who paid for his seminary tuition by working for the Internal Revenue Service. He’s not much on sermons but he’s great on collections!
The problem with having a too liberal minister is, you have to remind him that if he keeps telling the congregation like it is, he ain’t never gonna get those collections like it was.
Yesterday I was walking by a phone booth; a fella leaned out and said, “I just got seven wrong numbers in a row.” I said, “Why tell me?” He said, “I’m a minister. Would you mind saying a few appropriate words?”
Did you hear about the seminary student who took out an installment loan to pay his tuition? He said, “Get me to the church on time!”
I didn’t realize how far the ecumenical movement had gone until I walked past a confessional. A voice said, “Father, I’m getting married tomorrow.” And the other voice said, “Mazel tov!”
MONEY
We were so poor it was embarrassing. Pigeons used to feed us!
Pove
rty is catching. You can get it from your kids.
We were poor. The people next door were poor. The whole neighborhood was poor. We had the only fortune-teller that read Kool-Aid.
Money does bring happiness. Send some and watch us smile!
Nowadays, money can buy happiness. What it can’t buy is anything else!
Someone once said, “Money can’t buy happiness. Money can’t buy respect. Money can’t buy love.” I don’t know who said it but he’s got to be the world’s worst shopper!
Yesterday I analyzed my paycheck. They deducted federal tax, state tax, city tax, Social Security, pension plan, medical plan, and union dues. I looked at the balance and now I know how an over-the-hill exhibitionist feels. There’s nothing left to take out!
That’s a little bit of an exaggeration. In fact, at this very moment I have enough money to last me the rest of my life—providing I walk across freeways.
They say some women get terribly excited when they hear four-letter words—like SALE!
I don’t know why they call counterfeit bills “funny money.” You get stuck with a twenty and see how much laughing you do.
I know a fella from Dallas who’s so rich he doesn’t wear elevator shoes. He just had Texas lowered.
A fella who worked on a Department of Sanitation truck won the million-dollar lottery; quit his job; bought a very expensive house in a very exclusive neighborhood; and nobody ever knew he used to work on a Department of Sanitation truck. Until one day his wife opened the trunk of their Cadillac—and from force of habit, he threw the garbage in.
MORALITY
Remember when they used to talk about something so simple, even a child could do it? Nowadays they mean sex.
Kids today have a different attitude about life. If you’re middle-aged, you worry about ring around the collar. If you’re a kid, you don’t even worry about ring around the finger.
I know a church organist who has a special tune for brides who are in their eighth month: “Love in Bloom.”
I read that in 1978 over 800,000 men married girls who were already pregnant. How lazy can you get?
I don’t know what’s happening to this world. A fella down the street is running a back-to-school sale. He’s an obstetrician.
Marriage isn’t what it used to be. What it used to be is required.
But it’s amazing how many couples today are living without “benefit of clergy.” That’s an old expression meaning: “I’m not sure. You’re not sure. So why blow the two bucks?”
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.
I went to an X-rated movie,
Embarrassed as can be;
I saw somebody who shouldn’t have been there,
I think that it was me!
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?
A practical censor, when examining smut,
Gets a good look before saying, “Tut! Tut!”
MOSQUITOES
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.
MOTHERS
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!
MOVIES
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.
MUSIC
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!