AMERICA’S BEST COMICS TELL THE NEW YORK POST THE 50 FUNNIEST JOKES THEY KNOW
Hannibal Buress: “I can’t believe that a plane got taken down by geese. That’s got to be messed up — to be taken down by the thing that inspired you.”
Any comic who couldn’t be funny this past year should just give up and become a funeral director. The well of material has been virtually bottomless. George Bush leaving office, Obama coming into office, economic woes, scandals galore, whatever came out of Paula Adbul’s mouth — it all lent itself to wisecracking. So The Post asked dozens of comedians, both big-time and local, to pick their favorite jokes — whether they told it, or heard it from someone else — from the past 365 days. The best 50 are compiled here.
LARRY MILLER
“Is it good when banks buy each other? They make it sound like the most natural thing in the world: ‘Wachovia . . . now part of Wells Fargo! WaMu . . . now part of Chase!’ But to me, that just sounds like, ‘Poland . . . now part of Germany!’ ”
FRANK DeCARO
“I know that when someone who weighs what I do says that Aretha Franklin is enormous, it’s a case of fat-on-fat crime. But that woman has gotten huge. Sister ‘Re may still be riding on the Freeway of Love, but now it’s in a high-occupancy vehicle.”
PENN JILLETTE
“Well, Obama got his stimulus package through. He said we had to ‘act now before it was too late’ to save the economy. Last time I was told to ‘act now before it was too late,’ I ended up with five boxes of ShamWows!”
BOB NEWHART
“It’s a shame that the ‘3 a.m. phone call’ issue in the Democratic campaign was resolved after Obama’s nomination, when John Edwards was caught by the paparazzi while visiting his mistress and love child.
“Thinking quickly, he ran down several flights of stairs and barricaded himself in a stall in the men’s room until escorted back to his room by hotel security.
“It showed quick thinking, originality and inventiveness. I personally would want John Edwards there for that ‘3 a.m. phone call.’ ”
JONATHAN KATZ
“The economy is so bad that a picture is now only worth 830 words. It’s so bad, we had to lay off one of our kids.”
WENDY LIEBMAN
“My husband suffers from migraines. It sucks for him, but it works for me. I’m like, ‘Not tonight, honey — you have a headache.’ ”
JON STEWART
“If I’d just listened to CNBC, I’d have a million
dollars today — provided I started
with 100 million dollars.”
DICK GREGORY
“I’m bringing a civil rights case against Bernie Madoff. How are you gonna steal $100 billion, but not a dime from black people? That’s just racist.”
(Lee Camp’s favorite)
JIM GAFFIGAN
“I love how New York is so multicultural. I wish I was ethnic. ‘Cause if you’re Hispanic and you get angry, people are like, ‘He’s got a Latin temper.’ But if you’re a white guy and you get angry, people are like, ‘That guy’s a jerk.’ ”
(Michael Ian Black’s favorite)
ZACK GALIFIANAKIS
“You know it’s time to do the laundry when you’re drying yourself off with a sneaker.”
(Michael Showalter’s favorite)
MAC KING
“I checked into a hotel here in Vegas the other day and I asked the woman behind the counter if the porn channel was disabled, and she said, ‘No, it’s regular porn, you sick bastard.’ ”
(Penn Jillette’s favorite)
JACKIE MASON
“Eighty percent of the married men cheat in America. The rest of them cheat in Europe.”
ANDY BOROWITZ
“I’ve started using Obama’s catchphrases around the house. Like the other day, my wife said, ‘We can’t have sex tonight.’ And I said, ‘Yes, we can.’ ”
BRUCE CHERRY
“I never read books like, ‘1,000 Things You Must Do Before You Die,’ or, ‘100 Films You Must See Before You Die.’ I’m way too obsessive-compulsive. On the day I died, I would be clutching my chest saying, ‘I’m having a heart attack! Quick — somebody go rent “The Seven Samurai!” If I’m not here when you get back, I’ll be climbing the Matterhorn.’ ”
LORD CARRETT
“I learned a lot from my
divorce. Did you know they won’t sell you a gun if you’re crying?”
(Bruce Cherry’s favorite)
MYQ KAPLAN
“I’m Jewish, but I’m not uber-Jewish. I will use German to describe how Jewish I am.”
JIM NORTON
“For the ‘Miracle on the Hudson,’ let’s be honest — if Sully wasn’t a hero pilot, we’d all be looking at his creepy mustache and trying to get the FBI to investigate his hard drive.”
GARY GULMAN
“Nice to have a literate president again. A president who says a word and you have to look it up to see what it means, not to see if it’s a real word.”
JOSELYN HUGHES
“I was interested in how celebrities get so extremely skinny, and I found out they all follow this really easy diet. You start out with a few baby carrots for breakfast, you skip lunch and then for dinner you have a reasonably sized amount — like three to four ounces — of pure Colombian cocaine.”
MIKE BIRBIGLIA
“April Fool’s Day is about saying the most preposterous thing you can to someone, and trying to get them to believe it. And that’s getting harder. Like right now someone could say, ‘The US government is taking over Citigroup, and they’re going to charge $20 ATM fees, and those fees are going to be used to pay bonuses to AIG executives.’ And you’d be like, ‘That sounds about right.’ ”
OPHIRA EISENBERG
“My husband called me passive-aggressive and I told him to go screw himself. In an e-mail. Saved in drafts. But he’ll find it. Because he’s an enabler.”
DOUG BENSON
“I get upset when people type in all caps. Because I’m case sensitive.”
ROBERT KLEIN
“I’m an Obama man. But when Hillary Clinton said, ‘Who would you rather be there when that crucial call to the White House comes at 3 a.m.?’ I went with McCain on that one. He’d already be up
taking a leak.”
DEMETRI MARTIN
“You know the expression, ‘People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones’? How about just, ‘Nobody throw stones.’ That is just crappy behavior.”
(Jay Mohr’s favorite)
NATE BARGATZE
“There are two kinds of chicken — free-range and caged. I don’t want to eat the happy chicken, the chicken with a dream. That chicken was thinking about going back to school.”
(Helen Hong’s favorite)
JESSE POPP
“If you buy a book on how to pick up women, check the copy-right date first.
“You don’t want to make the same mistake I made and find yourself leaning next to
a lamppost, flipping a coin all night.”
(Tom McCaffrey’s
favorite)
STEVEN WRIGHT
“It’s a small world, but I wouldn’t want to paint it.”(Richard Belzer’s favorite)
SETH HERZOG
“Joe Biden says that offshore drilling is like ‘raping the ocean.’ Which Sarah Palin is fine with, as long as the ocean pays for its own rape kit.”
PAUL SCHEER
“I just saw the poster for ‘Fast and the Furious 3’ and the tag line is ‘New Model. Same Parts.’ Isn’t that just a crappy version of something? Who would want to buy a car like that? ‘Yes, it’s the 2009 Porsche, but under the hood all the parts are from 1986.’ ”
JERMAINE FOWLER
“The longer Magic Johnson doesn’t die from AIDS, the more I start to think that he’s an actual magician.”
EUGENE MIRMAN
“I was thinking about truth or dare, and what the first dare was. I bet it was a cave man daring a cave woman to throw a burning stick at a monster. And I bet she was like, ‘Fine, truth.’ And I bet he was like, ‘OK. What’s your biggest fantasy?’ And I bet she was like, ‘Agriculture.’ ”
DAVID LETTERMAN
Letterman: “Why exactly are you here, honest to God?”
Gov. Rod Blagojevich: “Well, you know, I’ve been wanting to be on your show in the worst way, for the longest time.”
Letterman: “Well, you’re on in the worst way, believe me.”
(Justin and Eric Stangel’s favorite)
JEFF KREISLER
“I went to the Inauguration in DC. I feel bad for Bush — I’ve had bad days, done things I’m not proud of, but I’ve never performed so poorly that when I left, they threw a party with 2 million people and Bono.”
LOUIS C.K.
“We live in an amazing, amazing world and it’s wasted on the tackiest generation of spoiled idiots that don’t care. I was on an airplane and there was high-speed Internet. It’s the newest thing I know that exists. It’s fast and I’m watching YouTube on an airplane! Then it breaks down and they apologize that it’s not working. And the guy next to me goes, ‘Pfft, this is bulls – – – .’ Like, how quickly the world owes him something he knew existed only 10 seconds ago!”
(Hannibal Burress’ favorite)
VICTOR VARNADO
“When I am making out with a girl I used to think it spoiled the mood when she would whisper in my ear, ‘Victor you’re the first black albino I’ve ever kissed.’ But then I realized that it’s way better than hearing her say, ‘Victor, you are the 43rd black albino I’ve ever kissed. I’m a collector — you’re getting sleepy because of the poison. Bye bye.’ ”
CHRISTIAN FINNEGAN
“Sometimes when you’re out on a stormy night, you’ll see a broken, mangled umbrella lying on the sidewalk. I find that very poignant. Because every umbrella corpse that you stumble across represents a truly sh – – – y moment in someone’s life. If hell exists, it consists of eternally walking up 10th Avenue in the pouring rain, on the way to a dinner party, armed with nothing but a $4 Duane Reade umbrella.
GREG GIRALDO
“Rolling Stone magazine called George Bush the worst president ever. That’s ridiculous. I’ll give them worst American president, but there have definitely been worse presidents in the history of presidents. Like in Liberia, they’ve had some pretty sh – – – y presidents — and do you remember the president of the Selena fan club?”
RALPHIE MAY
“Birds knocked that plane out of the sky. Birds. Now every terrorist is all training pigeons. ‘You are my favorite pigeon. You are going to fly on the wings of jihad to the heart of the infidel, knocking him out of the sky!’ ”
CRAIG FERGUSON
“Here’s how bad the economy is: Today ‘Sesame Street’ laid off 67 people, so tonight’s episode is brought to you by the letters ‘F’ and ‘U.’ ”
Compiled by Larry Getlen, Mandy Stadtmiller, Sara Stewart and Reed Tucker
D.C BENNY
A lady came up to me on the train and handed me a pencil with a note that said, ‘I’m deaf.’ I wrote, ‘I’m broke,’ and gave it back.”
LIAM McENEANEY
“New York City has some of the friendliest homeless people on Earth. “They’ll give you all kinds of advice without even being asked. I was walking down the street and this guy sitting in a gutter shouted, ‘My man, you gotta walk tall! You gotta show some pride.’ I said, ‘Thanks — you’re not wearing any pants.’
JACKIE HOFFMAN
“True, we are in a depression, but I do love that the hedge fund – – – holes and the rich, Wall Street banker types now know how actors feel all of the time.”
BO BURNHAM
“I’m an optimist. I don’t think of strippers as pole dancers. I think of them as confused firemen.”
MICHELLE COLLINS
“You ever sit on the train, and the conductor comes over the loudspeaker and says, ‘This train is being held at the station.’ And you just sit there, and you’re like, ‘God, I wonder what it’s like to be held?’ Because you’re so lonely.”
TOM McCAFFREY
“In fourth grade, I was voted class clown. Not because I was funny, but because I was an alcoholic and all the kids were afraid of me.”
JON FRIEDMAN
“I was having breakfast with my dad recently, who started spraying I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter all over his bagel. And I thought to myself, What more do they have to do before we don’t believe that it’s not butter?”
RYAN SHERMAN
“Michael Pelps lost the Wheaties endorsement. But he picked up Funions.”
(Wendy Liebman’s favorite)
BILL BRAUDIS
“There is a sign in my hotel that shows you how to use the stairs. In case of a fire, they show a stick figure very calmly walking down the stairs. I just don’t think that in a fire, a guy made of sticks is going to be very calm.”
(Dana Gould’s favorite)
RACHEL FEINSTEIN
“I can’t deal with the softening of the straight man. I don’t want to see any more men with their hair tousled into these ‘It’s fun to be a boy’ haircuts. No more ironic tops and shoulder totes. Soon men aren’t even going to have bodies anymore. They’ll take of their shirts, and there’ll just be a calming smear left.”
PETER KASSNOVE
On first-time parenting being like learning to drive: “First I’ll learn how to do it — and then I’ll learn how to do it drunk.”
TED ALEXANDRO
“Not only is Barack Obama our first black president — it’s the end of white presidents forever. Because you know what they say, ‘Once you go black..’ ”
JORDAN CARLOS
“I live in a bad neighborhood and the little thugs — the ‘thuglets’ — used to make fun of me. They’d say, ‘There goes Obama! There goes Obama!’ And I’d let them have their laughs, because when the condos come in, they have to leave. They have to take that bandana out of their back pockets, put all their worldly possessions in it, tie that to a hobo stick, sling that across their shoulder, get on one of those see-saw trains and get the hell out of my neighborhood, ’cause I need room my yoga. The coffee shop and organic doggy-treat bake shop can’t open til you’re gone. Holler!
DOM IRRERA
“You know you’re getting fat when you say that in front of your friends and no one corrects you.”
(Jonathan Katz’s favorite)
DANA GOULD
“There is a Dog Heaven. I’m not sure about a People Heaven. There is definitely no Cat Heaven, there is only Cat Hell — it’s called Dog Heaven.”
JACKIE HOFFMAN
(To a predominantly gay crowd) “I just got married. Because I can.”
(Frank DeCaro’s favorite)
JOHN McCAIN
“I now introduce my choice for the next vice president of the United States: Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska.”
(Andy Borowitz’s favorite)
CATIE LAZARUS
“On The White House lawn, the Obamas put up a jungle gym, to inspire kids to play and exercise. Then they planted a vegetable garden, to symbolize the root of a healthy diet. Maybe the Obama’s should set up a cubicle, to symbolize how one pays for gourmet food and playtime.”
DUSTIN YBARRA
“I used to work at Long John Silvers. I got fired because I was too honest with people. This lady was like, ‘Excuse me, sir, I found a hair in my fish.’ ‘Well, lady, you’re at Long John Silvers. You’re lucky you found fish in your fish.’ She wanted to talk to my manager. ‘I was like, ‘OK, I hope you speak Spanish.'”
HEATHER LAWLESS
“My mom tells everyone that I am a lesbian, but I know that I am straight because of the way I feel around my nephews.”
PETE CORREALE
“My wife’s grandmother came to visit us here in New York last month. She’s an 88-year-old Polish woman from Buffalo. I love this woman to death, but as you can imagine she walks like two miles per hour. She wanted to go see ground zero but I didn’t want to go all the way down there. So I just took her to a construction site in my own neighborhood.”
AMY SCHUMER
“Everyone is so hot in Miami — even the homeless people are hot. I made out with a homeless guy by accident. We were kissing on a bench and I was like, ‘Let’s go back to your place.’ He was like, ‘This is my place.’ ”
HELEN HONG
“I get really angry when I see dogs and cats in commercials. Not because of animal rights but because I’ve been trying to book a commercial for 2 years and I can speak and read.”
STEVE HOFSTETTER
“We tease the homeless constantly. We have canned-goods drives for the homeless. They don’t have can openers.”
PHIL MAZO
“Parents say, ‘Eat this — there are starving children in Africa.’ What do they say to children in Africa? ‘Eat this — you’re starving.'”
(Steve Hofstetter’s favorite)
COLIN KANE
“They call New York City the city that never sleeps. I figured out why after I got my apartment, because the heaters keep you up all goddamn night! It’s four in the morning and I got the Blue Man Group banging away on my pipes!”
MYKA FOX
“I’ve decided to start having one-night stands. It’s not that I really enjoy sex — it’s just that I don’t want the people I’ve already slept with to feel like they’re so special.”
(Myq Kaplan’s favorite)
AMY SCHUMER
“You can guess, I never got attention from guys when I was younger. But then the old story — I got the braces off..of my legs.”
(Jim Norton’s favorite)
JEFFREY ROSS
At the Friar’s Club Roast of Matt Lauer: “Matt Lauer is so bland, his nickname in high school was Matthew Lauer.”
(Barry Dougherty’s favorite)
ROBERT KELLY
“You know you’re fat when you drop something and in your head you’re like, ‘Do I need that?’ ‘Honey, if you want the baby, pick it up.’ ”
JANE KRAKOWSKI
Singing on “30 Rock” as Jenna, who scrambles the words to “Me and Bobby McGee” to avoid a lawsuit: “Synonym’s just another word for the one you want to use.”
(Judah Friedlander’s favorite)
JAY MOHR
“I don’t want to pick a favorite joke of mine because then I would hurt my other jokes feelings.”
LEE CAMP
“I put a pole in my room because I thought it would attract hot girls. Instead, firemen kept showing up.”
ABBI CRUTCHFIELD
“I like the ad on the subway: ‘If you see something, say something.’ It’s a lot better than their old ad: ‘If you see something, pee on it.'”
Categories