Category: Quotes

KILLER JOKES
THE 50 BEST BITS, GAGS AND QUIPS THAT CRACK UP PRO COMICS – AND MAY HAVE YOU SPLITTING YOUR SIDES
To assemble this collection of jokes, The New York Post contacted dozens of comics, ranging from top-dollar headliners in Vegas to regulars on “Late Night” and “The Daily Show” to up-and-comers who do alt-comedy at local bars. They asked them to tell us the best gag they’d written in the past year and their favorite punch line delivered by another comedian. So according to some of the funniest people on earth, these are the 50 most hilarious jokes of the last 12 months, whether they were told in nightclubs, on television or around a platter of fries at a late-night diner meal. Feel free to incite your own laugh riot.
Roseanne
A doctor tells a guy: “I have bad news. You have Alzheimer’s, and you have cancer.” Guy says, “Thank God I don’t have cancer.”
Jackie Mason
Hillary Clinton says she’s the most qualified because she was married to a president for eight years. Now let me ask you, if a brain surgeon quit his job, would everyone in the operating room say, “Wait, let’s get his wife.”
Lisa Lampanelli
I was watching Gene Simmons’ TV show, “Family Jewels.” Or as it’s known in the business, ” ‘The Osbournes’ Without the Talented Father.”
Laura Kightlinger
After miraculously surviving two heart surgeries, pneumonia and a mild stroke, at 82 my grandfather was no longer able to care for himself. Now he lives with my aunt who spoon-feeds him, takes him to the bathroom, etc. Proof that what doesn’t kill you makes you a burden to someone else.
Bill Maher
Barack Obama bowled a 37. Is he black enough for you now?
Bobby Slayton
I got a teenage daughter and a menopausal wife. One’s getting breasts, one’s getting whiskers. My life is over.
Jeffrey Ross
John McCain is so old that running for President is on his bucket list.
Tomi Walamies
My uncle is in a coma – he’s living the dream. (Paul Provenza’s favorite)
Nick Dipaolo
I think I might vote for Barack Obama. Because I live in New York City and have been giving black guys change for the past 10 years. I want to see what it feels like for a black guy to give me change.
Artie Lange
Alex Rodriguez never gets clutch hits in October, yet his fans insist on comparing him to Babe Ruth. So A-Rod tries to get as close as he can to Ruth-type achievements. Before the playoffs last year, A-Rod went to a hospital and promised a dying kid that he’d ground out to second Base for him. And I was at the game, people, it’s true – A-Rod pointed to second Base.
Triumph the Insult Comic Dog
At the Tony Awards: I’m here with Harvey Fierstein, nominated tonight for the “I Hate Vagina Monologues.”
Seth Herzog
I took nine years of French, but I can’t remember any of it. I realized on the plane ride over that if someone doesn’t ask me what color my hat is, I’ll have nothing to talk about for two weeks.
Earthquake
You know why the US can’t find Osama Bin Laden? They’re using the wrong agency to look for him. Don’t send the Army, Navy, Marines or the CIA – send Child Support!
Harland Williams
I was eating an orange the other day and a friend said, “Did you know nothing rhymes with ‘orange?’ ” So, I threw the orange at his head and said, “Now your face is swollen red ’cause I just threw an orange at your big fat head. Does that rhyme with ‘orange,’ you jackass?”
Conan O’Brien
To America, there’s just something about Charlie Sheen working with children that “feels right.” (Bill Maher’s favorite)
Wendy Liebman
My husband wanted one of those big-screen TVs for his birthday. I just moved his chair closer to the one we already have.
Seth Meyers
During a “Weekend Update” segment about Eliot Spitzer: And you wanted to have sex with a hooker but you didn’t want to wear a condom? Really?!? That might not be scary if you were client number 1, but you were client number 9. I wear a condom if I’m ninth in line at the deli. (Robert “Triumph the Insult Comic Dog” Smigel’s favorite)
Hannibal Buress
I got a fortune cookie today. It said I should invest in something fun on four wheels. I don’t know if that meant I should get a new car, or a prostitute on one roller skate.
Louis C.K.
On his daughter’s diaper: There was so much poop. It didn’t look like a baby’s poop. It looked like a 55-year-old alcoholic took a dump. (Nick Dipaolo’s favorite)
Emo Philips
Cellphones are like a dog’s nipples. You don’t have to shout into them!
Nick Thune
Tupac Shakur’s mother was a Black Panther. His father was a regular panther. (Russell Peters’ favorite)
Jonathan Katz
I was a kid during the height of the Cold War. If I did something wrong, my parents just accused me of being a communist.
Jim Florentine
I’m sick of Heather Mills. Now that she’s divorced, let her go marry the drummer from Def Leppard. They can rub their stumps together.
Ophira Eisenberg
I’m still in my first marriage. I know, it’s wrong to talk about it so temporary like that. My current husband hates it when I do that.
Jim Norton
I never liked Eliot Spitzer until he got busted with a hooker. Then I was sorry to see him leave office. I felt like there was finally someone in the government who represented my interests.
Sean Keane
My girlfriend said, “I hate it when you finish my sentences.” So I said, “Period.” (Harland Williams’ favorite)
George Carlin
Why do they put alcohol on the arm of a death row inmate before they give him the needle? Are they afraid he might get an infection? (Jackie Mason’s favorite)
Greg Proops
They say Hillary Clinton has a bad personality. Really? I forgot about Dick Cheney’s wow factor.
Robert Duchaine
Almost all serial killers are men. That’s ’cause women like to kill one man slowly over many, many years. (Bobby Slayton’s favorite)
David Brenner
Gasoline prices are highest in Hawaii, closing in on $4 a gallon. President Bush said, “See, I told you it wasn’t only in our country!”
John Oliver
One hundred and fifty years ago, England was fueled primarily from burning Catholics. It’s a naturally renewable resource. (Seth Herzog’s favorite)
Liam McEneaney
They say gay people have “gaydar,” which lets them figure out who else is gay. Waiters in expensive restaurants have something similar, called “poor-dar.” They always know I shouldn’t be there, and I can tell by the way they talk to me: “Sir, can I take your coat – out back and burn it?” “Can I call you a car – or will you be riding a boxcar out of town?”
Carolyn Castiglia
My mom says to me, “Honey, I don’t want you to think I have diabetes because I’m fat. I have diabetes because it runs in our family.” I said, “No, mom, you have diabetes because no one runs in our family!” (Adira Amram’s favorite)
David Wain
Have you heard they’re doing a sequel to “Brokeback Mountain?”
No, what’s it called?
“Brokeback Mountain 2.”
Desiree Burch
I don’t wear vanilla-scented lotion or perfume. Most girls love that crap, but I can’t do it. ‘Cause I can’t be the fat girl that smells like Rice Krispie treats. Can’t do it. People are all like, “God, Desiree! Did you eat again?!”
Marc Maron
It’s significant Barack Obama is running. I think it’s important for black people to have a chance to be misrepresented by one of their own. (Greg Proops’ favorite)
Todd Levin
I just got engaged. My fiancÈe won’t take my name because “Lisa Levin” sounds awful. So she’s just going to remain Lisa Hitler. I understand – it’s a family name.
Josh Comers
I had a bully as a kid. He was dyslexic, so he used to stick “Me Kick” signs on my back. Then everyone thought I was the bully – with bad grammar and the courtesy to give a heads up. (Liam McEneaney’s favorite)
Freddie Roman
A couple is married for 47 years and the woman dies. At the funeral, the pallbearers swing the coffin, which hits a wall. From inside the coffin, the woman yells, “Oh, my God!” She lived another four years. She dies again. The pallbearers are swinging the coffin. The husband yells, “Watch out for the wall!” (David Wain’s favorite)
Dave Attell
I hate to travel. I guess it’s because my father used to beat me with a globe. (Todd Levin’s favorite)

“Yes, I rather like this God fellow. He’s very theatrical, you know, a pestilence here, a plague there. Omnipotence. Gotta get me some of that.”
ó Stewie Griffin, from Fox’s FAMILY GUY

Stars and Stories From Golden Globes
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. – William Shatner will forever be Captain Kirk to most, or a bombastic lounge singer to a musical cult following. But it’s Denny Crane that’s winning him some hardware.
Shatner picked up a Golden Globe for his performance as boastful lawyer Crane on “Boston Legal,” a few months after winning a guest actor Emmy for the same character in “The Practice” last year.
“I’m truly thrilled,” he said. “I really wanted to win.”
He wasn’t buying any backstage talk of a comeback. “I don’t feel I’ve ever left,” he said. “I’ve been gainfully employed all these years.”
It would be just like Crane to ask for a raise for his work.
“And so will William Shatner,” he said.
___
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. (AP) ó “Wouldn’t you like to know!” a saucy Anjelica Huston replied when asked backstage about what a woman over 40 knows that a woman under 40 doesn’t.
She turned serious, however, when she talked about Hollywood life for a maturing actress. She picked up her first Golden Globe award after eight nominations for HBO’s “Iron Jawed Angels.”
“I spent a lot of my youth feeling insecure,” said Huston, 53. “I look back at those pictures and think, `What was wrong with you?'”
Huston had been considering wearing a daring white dress designed by Stella McCartney, but figured it was a magnet for red wine. So she wore a simple black Calvin Klein.
“Maybe that’s one of the things you learn after 40,” she said. “You don’t show too much skin.”
___
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. (AP) ó First-time attendees trekked down the red carpet taking in the glamorous gowns, screaming fans, camera flashes and long line of journalists.
“It feels like we’re going to somebody’s wedding or a prom,” said Denis Leary, nominated for best actor in a dramatic series for “Rescue Me.”
Another rookie was Thomas Haden Church, nominated in a supporting movie role for playing Paul Giamatti’s vain actor sidekick in “Sideways.”
“I’m just moving along in a herd of famous people. Whenever they go to water, I’ll go to water. When they go to feed, I’ll go to feed,” Church said.
Sharon Warren, who played the mother of a young Ray Charles in “Ray,” worked the carpet on her own. Without a publicist hovering nearby, Warren introduced herself to reporters with a firm handshake.
“I’m from Alabama,” she said. “The South is debutante balls, teas and luncheons. This is like debutante balls, teas and luncheons rolled into one with famous people.”
___
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. (AP) ó The storms that battered Southern California cleared out several days ago, but there was a flood on the red carpet.
A barrel containing bottled water fell over with a thud while being wheeled toward the end of the carpet near the entrance to the Beverly Hilton. Water from melted ice gushed out, creating a flood that workers feverishly tried to blot with white towels.
“This is what counts as a disaster in Hollywood,” joked actor David Cross of Fox’s “Arrested Development.”
The Globes not only escaped the rain that has been the rule in Southern California lately, but with temperatures pushing toward 80, the day felt more like summer than midwinter.
___
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. (AP) ó “Desperate Housewives” co-stars Eva Longoria and Marcia Cross shared a true Hollywood moment, exchanging air kisses and compliments on their dresses as they passed each other heading in different directions.
Enjoying her first major success on the ABC series, Longoria said she knows why the show has been a breakout hit.
“People were tired of reality TV and crime dramas,” she said. “It was something different and new and it was accurately what women go through today.”
___
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. (AP) ó Raquel Welch remembers when stars played it fast and loose with their outfits on the red carpet.
“In the ’60s, people were not so careful. There were a lot of different faux pas,” she said. “They dressed like they felt. They would do outrageous things. We never talked about the labels. It was considered gauche.”
Welch said Hollywood’s younger stars should take some fashion risks.
“I’m over-the-hill,” she said, “but I’d like to see people be a little less conservative and let it hang loose. We’re actors in Hollywood, not the first lady.”
Welch, 64, won a Globe in 1975 as lead actress in a musical or comedy for “The Three Musketeers.”
___
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. (AP) ó What was Kathy Griffin thinking?
The comedian, doing red-carpet reporting duty for E!, made repeated and apparently joking references to 10-year-old actress Dakota Fanning entering drug rehab. She even went so far as to ask Michael Cera and Alia Shawkat, teenage co-stars on Fox’s “Arrested Development,” if they had any words for Fanning as fellow young people.
Messages left for Fanning’s representatives were not immediately returned.
Griffin co-starred with Brooke Shields in the ’90s sitcom “Suddenly Susan. Her other credits include TV’s “Celebrity Mole: Hawaii” and the role of “armed female” in the 1999 movie “Muppets From Space.”

Musicians’ best quotes of 2004
Here are some memorable quotes – for good and bad reasons – from musicians in 2004:
NO CRYSTAL BALL
“It would be nice to win one before I’m on the wrong side of the grass.”
— Rod Stewart on his Grammy hopes (Feb. 4)
“You never know truly how serious that support is until the s— hits the fan, really. And they’ve been there.”
— Janet Jackson on getting fan support following Nipple-gate (May 6)
“I assumed that they were a bunch of beer-swilling idiots who make loud noise.”
— Metallica: Some Kind Of Monster documentary director Joe Berlinger on his mindset before meeting the band (July 11)
“Am I just a guy with a beard now, and hair? Maybe I am that guy.”
— Scruffy but cute Sam Roberts on whether he’ll ever be clean- shaven again (Aug. 1)
“My life is so clearly not what I thought it was going to be. I just need to make that clear. I have no answers.”
— Gwen Stefani on not having yet procreated (Nov. 21)
HUH?
“I still have to go and pick my own melon. Or the art won’t come.”
— Jill Scott on staying down-to-earth for the sake of her music (Aug. 29)
“It just becomes excessive self-destruction, inhaling pain slowly, until it manifests in a waterfall of nosebleeds, self-mutilation, and three-way sex scenes with men … I know that sounds absurd — if I threw an elephant in, it would probably seem completely unbelievable.”
— Marilyn Manson on the unrated video for (s)Aint, off his greatest hits DVD collection (Sept. 26)
“I love you! God bless you! Papa’s Got A Brand New Bag! It’s A Man’s World! Get On The Good Foot, because I Feel Good!”
— James Brown’s parting words after a fairly coherent 30-minute phone interview (Nov. 28)
MEMORIES ARE MADE OF THIS
“He was just LSD’d out of his mind and reeling like a drunk, singing like Betty Boop, and refusing to be correct, basically. And I thought, ‘This is great.’ ”
— Iggy Pop on seeing Jim Morrison at a University Of Michigan homecoming dance when he was just 19 years old (Jan. 11)
“All my clothes smell like beer, so it went really well.”
— Sarah Harmer on her stint at South By Southwest in Texas (March 23)
“I was crapping myself for that one.”
— Sam Roberts on playing SARS-Stock in 2003 (Aug.1)
“Hollywood people are so retarded! They’re ridiculous! … Girls get jealous. And they’re mean.”
— Ashlee Simpson on the behind-the-scenes drama while attending the Teen Choice Awards (Aug. 13)
“He said, ‘Well, who do you want to play you?’ And I said, ‘I want Halle Berry.’ And Ray said, ‘I’m not that blind, Ruth!’ ”
— Blues legend Ruth Brown on Ray Charles talking to her about his upcoming bio-pic, Ray, before his death (Sept. 16)
“All I had to do was slap Jude Law around a little bit and get mad at him. It was fun.”
— Shania Twain on her cameo in I (Heart) Huckabees (Sept. 18)
“She said to me, ‘You remind me of my ex-boyfriend.’ And I said, ‘Is that good or bad?’ And she said, ‘He gave me VD.’ ”
— Marilyn Manson on recording an unreleased duet with Garbage frontwoman Shirley Manson (Nov. 12)
NIPPLE-GATE
“The only thing I think that Janet did wrong was in only airing out one. It gets musty. The other one should have come out too.”
— Gene Simmons (March 24)
“If people accept me, great. And if they don’t, then that’s fine too. Not everybody is going to love me.”
— Janet Jackson on refusing record company requests to change some of her sexually explicit lyrics on her latest album (May 6)
SHOOTING FROM THE HIP
“We hate each other’s guts! No, we’re like the battling Bickersons. We would just bicker, bicker, bicker and nitpick, and pick each other to death.”
— Bette Midler on why she hadn’t worked with original piano accompanist Barry Manilow in 30 years until her latest album (Jan. 7)
“I think I’m probably a lot more relaxed. I don’t have to get s—faced drunk anymore, like we used to in The Faces.
— Rod Stewart on how his approach to performing has changed since the ’60s (Feb. 14)
“It’s just a record. It’s a bunch of songs. It’s me and my band. I’m not the second coming.”
— Norah Jones on her much anticipated sophomore album (Feb. 17)
“It’s funny how some things just vanish as part of your daily life — like hockey and balanced news.”
— Hip guitarist Rob Baker on recording their latest album in the U.S. (June 27)
“I gave this big power point presentation … I get this impression that not many artists bother with that kind of s—. They said if my CD didn’t go well, they’d offer me a position at Sony!”
— Newcomer Nellie McKay on convincing record label reps to release her debut as a double CD (March 25)
“I’m feeling great — just mean, a little ornery.”
— Loretta Lynn, dismissing tabloid reports she was on her death bed from her second bout with double pneumonia (Aug. 26)
“I thought I’d sound like Carol Channing, but I’m actually quite soft-spoken. ”
— Rufus Wainwright on seeing himself on screen playing himself opposite Glenn Close in the upcoming Merchant-Ivory film, Heights (Feb. 4)
“But a lot of people hate us up here too, okay? … They do. And it’s cool. We’re not for everyone you know.”
— Tragically Hip frontman Gord Downie dismissing why questions linger about the band not making it in the U.S. after two decades (Nov. 24)
STRAIGHT FROM THE HEART
“If anything would stop our band now, it would be just us deciding that we don’t have anything else to say together, which I find highly unlikely, but you never know. If I’ve learned anything from that terrible period, it’s that you can’t assume anything. You never know what life is going to throw at you.”
— Rush singer-bassist Geddy Lee on the band almost breaking up during a five-year hiatus as drummer Neil Peart grieved the loss of his daughter in a car accident and his wife to cancer (Aug. 22)
“During the hardship of my childhood, Dolly Parton was such a staple of my life … And so to have her there, it was just really weird and it was very emotional. It was a personal moment, that’s what it was, and it was on TV.”
— Shania Twain on crying on Oprah during an appearance with Dolly Parton (Oct. 29)

Susan Sontag, Writer and Critic, Dies at 71
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Author and social critic Susan Sontag, one of the most powerful thinkers of her generation and a leading voice of intellectual opposition to U.S. policy after the Sept. 11 attacks, died on Tuesday at a New York cancer hospital. She was 71.
Sontag, who had been suffering from cancer for some time, was known for interests that ranged from French existentialist writers to ballet, photography and politics. She once said a writer should be “someone who is interested in everything.”
She was a lifelong human rights activist and the author of 17 books, including a novel, “In America,” that won a U.S. National Book award.
Her work has been translated into more than 30 languages. Among her best known works was a 1964 study of homosexual aesthetics called “Notes on Camp.”
Fellow author and friend Salman Rushdie described her as “a great literary artist, a fearless and original thinker, ever valiant for truth” who insisted “that with literary talent came an obligation to speak out on the great issues of the day.”
Sontag was among the first to raise a dissenting voice after Sept. 11, 2001, in a controversial New Yorker magazine essay arguing that talk of an “attack on civilization” was “drivel.”
A tall and imposing figure with white-streaked, long black hair and a severe demeanor, Sontag was a fixture on the New York intellectual scene. She played herself in Woody Allen’s 1983 comedy “Zelig,” and directed four films of her own.
She ignited a firestorm of criticism when she declared that the Sept. 11 attacks were not a “cowardly attack” on civilization but “an act undertaken as a consequence of specific American alliances and actions.”
With much of America still too shocked to consider such views, she was vilified in some quarters. An op-ed piece in the Boston Globe contended the comments confirmed what many already thought about her: “high IQ, but a few quarts low on compassion and common sense.”
Sontag has since been an outspoken critic of President Bush over his response to the Sept. 11 attacks and particularly the U.S. war in Iraq.
In May this year she wrote an essay in the New York Times about the prisoner abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib jail in Baghdad, arguing that the shocking photographs of the abuse would likely becoming the defining images of the war.
The piece prompted an editorial writer at Britain’s Financial Times newspaper to describe her as “the liberal lioness … the pride of hand-wringing elitist liberalism.”
Novelist E.L. Doctorow described her as “quite fearless.”
“She was engaged as a writer. I remember she went to Sarajevo to do theater while the fighting was going on. She just marched right on in there,” he said.
Born in New York in 1933, Sontag grew up in Arizona and Los Angeles before going to the University of Chicago, and later Harvard and Oxford. She wrote novels, non-fiction books, plays and film-scripts as well as essays for The New Yorker, Granta, the New York Review of Books and other literary titles.
“She was brilliant and put her brilliance to work on behalf of human rights and creativity for everybody else,” said Victor Navasky, publisher of liberal weekly magazine The Nation.
Sontag was married at the age of 17 to Philip Rieff, an academic in Chicago, with whom she had a son in 1952.
A longtime opponent of war and a human rights activist, Sontag made several visits to Sarajevo and staged Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot” there under siege in the summer of 1993.
From 1987 to 1989 she was president of the American Center of PEN, an international writers’ organization dedicated to freedom of expression, where she led a number of campaigns on behalf of persecuted and imprisoned writers.
Rushdie, current PEN president, expressed his gratitude for her support over the fatwa issued against him in 1989 for his book “The Satanic Verses.” “Her resolute support, at a time when some wavered, helped to turn the tide against what she called ‘an act of terrorism against the life of the mind.”‘

“I remember another gentle visitor from the heavens. Who came to earth… and then died… only to be brought back to life again. And his name was: E.T., the extra-terrestrial. I love that little guy.”
ó Rev. Lovejoy, Fox’s The Simpsons

“I love the video. I’m not impressed with the music. Call me, Britney. We’ll get together, and I’ll show you how to really do it.”
–Bobby Brown in Star, showing us he still thinks it’s his prerogative

[during a company sexual harassment training video] Narrator: Remember, nothing says “good job” like a firm, open-palm slap on the behind.
ó From Fox’s FAMILY GUY

“Silly customer, you cannot hurt a Twinkie!”
ó Apu, Fox’s The Simpsons

“Here’s to those who wish us well, and those who don’t can go to hell.”
ó Elaine Benes, from SEINFELD