The Friars Club Encyclopedia of JOKES
The Friars Club Encyclopedia of JOKES
Over 2,000 One-Liners,
Straight Lines, Stories, Gags,
Roasts, Ribs, and Put-Downs
Compiled by Barry Dougherty
and H. Aaron Cohl
Copyright © 1997, 2009 by Affinity Communications Corp.
All rights reserved. No part of this book, either text or illustration,
may be used or reproduced in any form without prior
written permission from the publisher.
Published by Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, Inc.
151 West 19th Street, New York, NY 10011
Distributed by Workman Publishing Company
225 Varick Street, New York, NY 10014
Manufactured in the United States of America
Cover design by Daberko
Interior design by Liz Trovato
Manufactured in the United States of America
ISBN-13: 978-1-57912-804-3
h g f e d c b a
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available upon request.
A Little Credit
The Friars Club has been the bastion of laughter longer than anyone can remember. They started in 1904 and while a few people around here may think they can recall those early days—trust me, they can’t even recall the ham on rye they had an hour ago.
This private club that is home to actors, singers, dancers, musicians—and yes, even doctors, lawyers, and dentists—has been lucky to have among them the top comedians of all time. The Friars know a lot about comedy and their legendary roasts have been talked about, copied, trespassed, appalled, revered, scorned, applauded, and just plain loved for quite some time.
When the Friars first started there were no comedy clubs, no TV, no Internet—if you wanted to hear a joke you had to rely on your unfunny coworker or annoying brother-in-law. And, if you wanted to tell one, you had to remember the countless jokes floating around the atmosphere. Thankfully today, with one-stop shopping, all you have to do is pick up The Friars Club Encyclopedia of Jokes, find a joke, any joke, and viola! Instant laughs.
But while you’re telling those jokes, or listening to them, or just reading them to yourself, try to remember the men and women behind the funny. If it weren’t for these comedians and other amusing sorts it would be a very quiet read. The Friars Club is proud of its roster of jokesters who will keep the laughs intact for the next hundred or so years until they need to upgrade the yuks. It’s these brave souls who stand naked on a stage and throw caution to the wind hoping (and maybe a little praying) that when they finish talking the room will be noisy as hell from laughter.
To Ben Barto and Caleb Larson who worked their magic to research the laughs, I say—the book is out now, go buy it. To Howard Cohl, who started the ball rolling on the Friars book journey, don’t just sit there—start thinking up more ideas! To the Friars Executive Director Michael Gyure and Executive Director Emeritus Jean-Pierre Trebot who love a good guffaw—forget the Club Managers Handbook, THIS is how you run a club—with laughs.
To Freddie Roman, the Dean of the Friars Club and master joker, thank you for inspiring so many young comics to ply their trade at the Friars. The Club has opened doors and introduced recent headliners and television superstars to the general public—apologies for those with no sense of humor that don’t get the monumental significance of that. And to all of you who love a good laugh…enjoy the read.
—Barry Dougherty
Contents
Introduction
Actors and Acting
Advertising
Agents
Aging
Animals
Birds
Cats
Dogs
Insects
Armed Forces
Art and Artists
Atheism
Babies
Bachelors
Baldness
Banks
Beauty
Birth
Birth Control
Birthdays
Books and Writing
Boredom
Bosses
Business
California
Cars and Driving
Celebrities
Michael Jackson
The Kennedys
Jack Lemmon
Willie Nelson
Richard Nixon
Miscellaneous Celebrities
Charity
Children
Circumcision
College
Comedians
Conscience
Conservation and Ecology
Cooking
Courage
Crime
Cynicism
Dating
Death and Dying
Debts
Dieting
Divorce
Doctors and Dentists
Drink and Drinking
Drugs
Education
Embarrassment
Enemies
Ethics
Ethnic Specials
Experience
Failure
Faith
Fame
Family
Fashion
Fathers
Female Anatomy
Finances
Fitness and Exercises
Flying
Food
Foreign Countries
Canada
China
England
Ireland
France
Germany
Israel
Japan
Russia
Friendship
Funerals
Gambling
Growing Up
Gullibility
Guns
Handicaps
Health
Holidays
Homes
Homosexuality
Honesty
Hospitals
Hotels
Housework
Humility
Humor
Husbands
Imagination
Infidelity
Initiative and Incentive
Insurance
Jewish American Princess
Jewish Mothers
Jews and Judaism
Justice
Kindness
Lawyers
Life
Losers
Love
Luck
Lust
Male Anatomy
Male Performance
Manners
Marriage
Masturbation
Memory
Men
Middle Age
Miscellaneous
Mistakes
Money
Mothers and Motherhood
Mothers-in-Law
The Movies
Music
Nature
Negotiating
New York
Occupations
Old Age
Couples
Opinion
Optimism
Paranoia
Parenthood
Politicians and Politics
Poverty
Problems
Promiscuity
Prostitution
Psychiatrists and Psychiatry
Religion
Catholicism
Christianity
Eastern Religions
Combination Acts
Responsibility
Restaurants
Sales and Selling
School
Sex
Oral Sex
Safe Sex
Shopping
Silence
Sleep
Smoking
Space Travel
Sports and Recreation
Baseball
Football
Golf
Hunting and Fishing
Stinginess
Stress
Stupidity
Success
Talent
Taxes
Technology
Teenagers
Television
Thoughts and Thinking
Time
Tourists
Transportation
Travel
Trust
Truth
Vanity
Weather
Wives
Women
Work
Introduction
All the Friars Club ever did for me is put me on national television and tell everyone who would listen how many men I’ve had sex with. Not to mention all the times I’ve done it wearing a dress and how unfunny I am. Oh, and according to the Friars, I didn’t deserve any of my money.
Old hat, really.
The Friars Club has been roasting celebrities since 1950. You know all those Dean Martin and Comedy Central roasts? The Friars Club did it first, and does it better. Mine happened to be the first one they ever broadcast on television (dirty words and all), so a record Comedy Central audience got to hear about my appalling sexual habits and lack of talent.
So that’s what the Friars are known for. Roasting people.
What you probably don’t know is what most people do at the Friars Club. They sit around and tell jokes. Some drink, some don’t. Sometimes there’s a little dinner. But they all tell jokes to one another. And jokes at the Friars Club are like hundred dollar bills at a casino. The more good ones you have the more people like you.
You are now holding in your hands the latest edition of the best of these jokes. It’s like…oh I don’t know…one of those stupid emails that one friend of yours always sends you with all the jokes in it. But in a book.
And I’m writing the foreword to this Big Book of Stolen Jokes because the night the Friars roasted me was one of the greatest nights in my life. All the jokes about my little dick and how fat I am…I loved them. The tales of my tremendously gay oral skills and overly hospitable anal cavity were like big hugs. And the more cross-dressing they said I did, the more I wanted to lay down my life for them.
But that other stuff? Up yours, Friars. I AM funny, and I deserve every dollar I’ve ever made.
Love,
Drew Carey
October 2008
A
Actors and Acting
How many actors does it take to change a lightbulb?
One hundred. One to change the bulb, and ninety-nine to say, “I could have done that.”
—NORM CROSBY
I’m walking to work, up Sixth Avenue, and it’s a lovely spring day and I see one of those mime performers. So the mime is doing that famous routine where he’s pretending to be trapped in a box. So I stand there and watch the mime pretend to be trapped in a box. And he finishes up, and, thank God, he wasn’t really trapped in a box. And I see on the sidewalk there he’s got a little hat for money—change, tips, donations, contributions. So I went over and I pretended to put a dollar bill in his hat.
—DAVID LETTERMAN
The great actor was known for his many romances coast to coast, and over the years he was faced with many paternity suits. One day a young man came into his dressing room and introduced himself. “I’m your son,” he said.
The Great One looked intently at the youth, then exclaimed, “So you are!” He turned to his valet and said, “Give the boy a pass.”
—JOEY ADAMS
Playing Shakespeare is so tiring. You never get a chance to sit down unless you’re a king.
—JOSEPHINE HULL
John Barrymore once said, “One of my chief regrets is that I can’t sit in the audience and watch me.”
—JOEY ADAMS
The bum chose matinee time, when the streets of the theater district were crowded with people hurrying to get to the show, to do his panhandling. Sizing up a well-dressed gentleman, he lurched over and asked politely, “Sir, may I borrow a quarter?”
The well-heeled man looked over the top of his glasses at the bum, cleared his throat, and quoted, “‘Neither a borrower nor a lender be,’ William Shakespeare.”
The bum looked back at him and retorted, “‘Up yours, asshole,’ David Mamet.”
Danny Kaye noted the difference between comedy and tragedy in Russian drama. In both, everybody dies; but in the comedy, they die happy.
Did you hear that Jack Lemmon beat off a mugger with a 4-iron? How many strokes?
A number of years after he had worked on a film with a glamorous movie star, a certain cinematographer was asked to work with her again. The diva was not at all pleased with the results. “In the first film we did together I looked radiantly beautiful, and this time I look like a hag,” she complained bitterly.
“Perhaps, Madame,” suggested the cinematographer tactfully, “it has something to do with the fact that I was eight years younger then.”
An actor’s a guy who, if you ain’t talking about him, he ain’t listening.
—MARLON BRANDO
My uncle was thrown out of a mime show for having a seizure. They thought he was heckling.
—JEFF SHAW
Advertising
I saw a commercial on late-night TV. It said, “Forget everything you know about slipcovers.” So I did. And it was a load off my mind. Then the commercial tried to sell me slipcovers, and I didn’t know what the hell they were.
—MITCH HEDBERG
A wealthy computer business mogul sees an advertisement on the Internet for the world’s fastest and most expensive car, the Tri-Turbo Convertible Fantasy. It sells for $1 million. The executive decides he must have it, so he has eight of his most trusted assistants assigned to tracking down the vehicle. After months of searching, the car is located, bought, and delivered. Eager to play with his new toy, the executive takes it out for a spin.
At the first stoplight, an old man, looking about eighty-five years old, rides up to the Fantasy on an old Vespa. The old man sticks his head inside without waiting for an invitation, and says, “Quite a ride you got here, sonny. How fast will she go?”
“About 270,” the executive responds.
“Come on,” says the old man.
Just then, the light turns green and the executive decides to show the old man what the car can do. He floors it, and within seconds the car is doing 270. But suddenly, he notices in his rear-view mirror a dot that seems to be getting closer and closer, and so he comes to a stop. Then, whoooooooosh, “the thing” goes flying by! “What in the heck was that?” says the executive. “What can go faster than my Fantasy?”
Suddenly, “the thing” comes racing back towards him, and whoooooosh, passes right by. This time the executive got a better look, and so help him, it looked like the old man on the Vespa. “That just couldn’t be,” he says to himself. Then, through his rear-view mirror, he sees it again. All of the sudden, WHAM! It smashes into the back end of the car.
The executive jumps out, and sure enough, it’s the old man on the Vespa that crashed into him. “Are you OK?” asks the executive. “Is there anything I can do for you?”
“Yes,” replies the old man, “unhook my suspenders from your side-view mirror, please.”
Did you hear that Anheuser-Busch has taken over the Red Cross’s public relations?
Their new slogan is “This Blood’s for You.”
Agents
Shakespeare said, “Kill all the lawyers.” That’s before there were agents.
—ROBIN WILLIAMS
The slovenly, obese Hollywood agent got up from his seat at the comedy club to go to the bathroom. Returning with Perrier and popcorn in hand, he inquired of a young woman, “Did I step on your
foot a few minutes ago?”
“As a matter of fact you did,” she replied tartly.
“Great! Then that’s my table.”
When I first got into the business, they told me I needed a press agent. So I hired one, a hundred dollars a week. The first week, no press at all. I called my agent, said, “What’s happening?”
He said, “They’re talkin’ about ya, baby, they’re talkin’ about ya.”
Two more weeks go by, two hundred bucks more, and no press. I’m pretty mad. I called my agent, said, “Hey, what’s happening here?”
He said, “They’re talkin’ about ya, baby, they’re talkin’ about ya.”
Five weeks go by. Five hundred bucks down the drain and not a thing to show for it. I was so mortified and angry that I went down to his office, barged right in, and said, “What’s happening? What’ve I got to show for my five hundred bucks?”
He said, “They’re talkin’ about ya, baby, they’re talkin’ about ya.”
I said, “Oh yeah? So what’re they saying?”
He said, “They’re saying, ‘Whatever happened to Will Jordan?’”
—WILL JORDAN
A small-time crook spent years planning the heist of the century: robbing the main vault of the bank. It went without a hitch, except that he forgot to disable one of the security cameras, and when he got home that night to count his cash, he found his face plastered all over the newspapers and television news.
He laid low, but it was pretty obvious that it was only a matter of days until he would be apprehended. Then he was struck by a brilliant idea. He pulled his hat down low, jumped into his car, and drove to the William Morris Agency, where he forced them at gunpoint to sign him to a five-year contract.
He was not seen or heard from again.
—JIMMY MYERS
Aging
In certain parts of Miami, if everyone happens to be smiling at once, it’s automatically declared Halloween.
It’s hard for me to get used to these changing times. I can remember when the air was clean and sex was dirty.
—GEORGE BURNS
You know you’re getting old when you pick up the phone and a woman asks, “Do you know who this is?” and you say no and hang up.
—FRANKLIN P. ADAMS
“I’m doing what I can,” the doctor explained, “but I can’t make you any younger, you know.”
“The hell with that,” said the patient. “I’m not interested in getting younger, I just don’t want to get older.”
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