short funny jokes, part 4

Short Funny Jokes: The editing process...

Now comes the fun part. You're gonna edit your joke down. Don't feel that you're not qualified. You are don't worry. As long as you can speak and paraphrase you're gonna be fine at editing a joke. A word of warning though: this blog won't make you Dane Cook or Eddie Izzard or Mel Miller, just so you know. Becoming a comedian like that is a whole other ball game.

Make sure you're on your own. Like... sitting in fron of your computer. Yeah, that's a good idea. Okay say take your joke and say it out loud:

"One day the teacher asked her students to use the word "contagious" in a phrase. Sarah lifts up her hand and says, "Teacher, teacher I got one!! A cold is contagious!" The teacher is very happy. Tom lifts up his hand and says, "Teacher... yawning is contagious" "pretty good Tom!!"

Finally, little Johnny lifts up his hand and says, " Oh...Oh...I got one...The other day, as my mother was mowing the lawn, my father looked out the window and said it will take that contagious to finish!!" "

It won't feel comfortable somehow. Most jokes that appear in joke books like

Thats Comedy

or get forwarded to you are written to be read and NOT spoken. What? I'll say it again, most jokes that you receive from a book or via the web are written to be read and not spoken.

The two are completely different. When you write something to be read it has to make sense with its sentence structure. Most jokes have a small story element to them and so that's what's included. For example:

"One day..." or "...and says". Those are structures that we are used to and help us when we are reading the joke.

But they are not at all helpful when you have to deliver that joke.

So read the joke out loud a few times to familiarise yourself with it. Then put it to one side and repeat it a few more times. Just give yourself a bit of "rehearsal" with it. what will begin to happen slowly is that you'll forget bits of the joke and, as a result, paraphrase the joke into your own words.

You'll naturally make shortcuts. Believe me, this is not a bad thing.

this is exactly what you want to happen.

as you do this try to cut out the storytelling elements. so for instance, with my joke i'd start it straight aweay with:

"A teacher asks..."

i also think it's better to keep the joke in the present tense. even if it's happened in the past. you'll say something like "last year..." then the tense will immediately change as if it's happening right now. that joke has got to unfold in front of your audience like it happening in the here and now. it makes it more immediate and, here comes the wanky bit, puts you right in the middle of the emotion.

i know, i know. that's the old actor in me. well, there's not an old actor in me right now... but have tread some boards in the past and performed Shakespeare. but i got some help, i worked through it and i'm over it now.

okay, just know that keeping a joke in the present tense keeps it more alive. so: "i'm walking" or "i walk" is better than "i walked". (i know "i'm walking" is not strictly in the present tense, but work with me here).

pair it right the way down so you are left with enough key elements to make the joke work. how do you know what will make the joke work? well, for starters the punchline is pretty damned important. the set-up is important as well, but that can usually do with a bit of trimming. the punchline's the bit at the end that gets the laugh. sorry if i'm stating the obvious for some of you, i just wanna make sure we're all on the same page.

in the case of my joke the punchline is:

"my father looked out the window and said it will take that contagious to finish!!" "

the other kids names aren't necessary to my joke either. their superfluous. their parents might not think their superfluous, but they are in my joke and that's what matters. the important kid is the one who gives us the punchline. naming the other kid's just provides extraneous information that just distracts from the story.

that's when you start getting into that dangerous territory, like when someone tells a joke and they start filling in irrelevant details:

"One day the teacher, Mrs. Slackjaw... at least i think that was her name. Maybe that name just sounds too jokey... um... Mrs. Robinson... Ah, see, now you're thinking of The Graduate. I did like that movie. Anyway, okay, not Mrs. Robinson. Mrs... um..."

Whoa, hold on there. too much information. i've just walked out the room and thrown myself under a bus 'cos you were taking so long.

so when you're saying the joke out loud, make sure that you try to use your everyday colloquialisms. so maybe you take the line:

"Sarah lifts up her hand and says"

and edit it like this:

"another kid puts her hand and says"

or even:

"another kid's like (then you put your hand in the air pretending to be the kid)".

with that last line we're beginning to borderline with delivering the joke.

that's not a bad thing because the editing and delivering the joke are fused together at the hip. what do you think you've been doing when you were saying the joke out loud to yourself? you were delivering it.

okay, so you had no audience but you were delivering it all the same.

short funny jokes, part 3

Short Funny Jokes: The Selection process...

So you've got

Thats Comedy

- your short funny jokes resource - and you want to try out one of the gags. Before I continue let me just say if you're an experienced comedian or comedy writer reading this blog then you may want to skip this post because I'm going to go through a process which you already know. This is just for the newbies and people who say they aren't very good at telling jokes. Any experienced people you might wanna make yourself a cup of tea, go to the movies, pay for love or whatever it is that you do when you have too much time on your hands.

Okay, to select a joke I'd think carefully about the type of environment you're in, or person you're planning to tell a joke too. Is it a friend, a work colleague, your boss, your mother, your grandmonther? Defining who your "audience" is, and yes they ARE and audience, will allow to to make the appropriate joke selection.

You probably don't want to be telling your gran a dirty joke. Unless she's anything like my 85 year old aunt who actually tells me dirty jokes. Maybe i'll post some of hers one day.

Like I said in a previous post, in the

Thats Comedy

joke books there are a wide variety of jokes on different areas. There are crude ones, clean ones, blonde jokes, ethnic jokes, irish jokes, yo mamma jokes and on and on. It's probably best not to tell an irish joke, for example, unless you're irish. that way you could be ironic or self-deprecating. if you're not irish then by telling an irish joke you could either offend someone through political correctness or you may in fact offend a genuine irish man or woman. Sorry, fifth generation americans don't count as irish in this instance.

At last count, and it's probably gone up or down since I wrote this, there were 23 bonus books available to you in a big bonus package. that's not including the original set of bonus books, gag gifts and gag recipes. You don't have to go through them all, stick to one of the main books for now.

One thing I would say is that it might be advisable to pick a shorter joke rather than a long one. Hence the title of my blog being short funny jokes. The reasons for not out-staying your welcome should be obvious. Not only that but it will make your job editing the joke a hell of a lot easier. Did I just say editing the joke? Yes I did. But what if you're useless at telling jokes? Well, hold your horses sparky it ain't as difficult as it sounds.

I'll end this post with a joke that I've selected for the purposes of showing your how to edit one. I'll get on to editing then delivering the joke in the next few posts. By the way, it's not exactly clean:

"One day the teacher asked her students to use the word "contagious" in a phrase.
Sarah lifts up her hand and says, "Teacher, teacher I got one!! A cold is contagious!" The teacher is very happy. Tom lifts up his hand and says, "Teacher... yawning is contagious"
"pretty good Tom!!"

Finally, little Johnny lifts up his hand and says, " Oh...Oh...I got one...The other day, as my mother was mowing the lawn, my father looked out the window and said it will take that contagious to finish!!" "

Told you didn't I...?

Short Funny Jokes, part 2

As I said in my last post I discovered a great resource for finding short funny jokes (and long ones) on the internet and it's called...

Thats Comedy

So how is this different from all the other jokes websites you might come across? Well, for a re start there are two joke books both over 400 pages in length. Not only that there are some pretty damned good bonuses too. At the time of writing this blog there's one called 101 Practical Jokes which allows you to "punk" your friends. Which to me is a weird phrase. In order to "punk" somebody don't you need to give them a moichan and ripped jeans?

So that's there if you're that way inclined. And there's also one called "Gag Gift Recipes" so you can give your loved one a gag gift on a special occasion like their birthday or maybe an anniversary. Hours of fun. And arguments probably.

There's not really a lot I can say in a review about two large jokes books. Obviously there're gags which are going to make you laugh and other that will make you groan. But there will probably be a few other sounds along the way. I am in no way responsbile if you are offended by any of the jokes contained within the volumes of

Thats Comedy

At the end of the day a joke's a joke and it's up to you if you want to get offended. So you have to be prepared that some jokes may not be suitable for minors. Or other people who work underground.

You can read the joke books all the way through like a regular book, although you'd probably be a bit weird if you did. Or you can dip in and out of them like I do, mainly because I have bad reading habits.

There are other unadvertised bonuses too. There are usually a tonne of these. Although again this is subject to change because they guy is constantly updating this bonus package - adding and removing stuff. The bonus package usually ranges from more joke books but by other people, a couple of bonuses by a professional comedian and a book on becoming a paid professional humorous speaker. All in all it's a pretty darned good deal.

So if you like short funny jokes, or even long ones, there are plenty of humorous lines contained within the main volumes as well as the bonuses.

Thats Comedy

Short Funny Jokes

Short Funny Jokes

I've got a love-hate relationship with jokes, I think that's the best way for me to describe it. I love short funny jokes because they are the reason why I became interested in comedy and ultimately became a comedian.

When I was at school kids would tell me jokes and there were some comedians on T.V. at the time who were doing the same thing. They weren't quite in the "knock, knock" realm more the anecdotal kind: "there's an Englishman, Irishman and a Scotsman..." or "this fella walks into a pub..." So far, so funny.

But there was a also a new breed of comedian on T.V. in the U.K. not just delivering the short funny jokes, but somehow doing something more. They were talking about themselves. They were observing the world around them and commenting on it in a funny way. They were doing routines and stories. This was something that I wanted to be a part of.

In the U.K. comedy scene of the 1970s and 1980s they was a split in the comedy scene. There still is to a greater or lesser degree. The "old guard" would tell jokes that were pretty interchangable amongst other comics. Whereas the new breed that had sprung up were doing comedy routines that were personal and not interchangeable with other comedians. It seemed as though what The Beatles had done when they wrote their own songs in the 1960s had finally happened in comedy.

That said I still have an amount of affection and love of the telling of a joke - or street joke as I've heard it defined. A street joke is exactly that - a joke that someone tells you on the street. There is no ownership of that joke, unless it has come from a comedian and is being re-told by a regular person. Then that's a whole other can of copyright awkwardness.

As a comedian myself I don't mind my friends telling me short funny jokes. Or slightly longer ones. They usually see me as a friend first and comedian second. Whereas if I meet someone new for the first time, either in a social situation or after a gig, they will insist on telling me a joke. Despite the fact that I don't perform jokes on stage. I do routines and stories.

When this occurs I feel uncomfortable because inevitably it's some racist or sexist joke, which again, surprises me because I am neither a racist nor a sexist comedian. So why I would a) use one of their jokes and b) why would I include that type of material in my act when I obviously don't ever perform it?

Maybe a scientist will one day research this phenonenom instead of conducting important research like... working out the scientific possibility of Santa Claus.

Strangely, people don't tell me jokes any more.

So I thought I'd search for jokes on the internet, which helps pass the time when I have to occasionally frequent crappy office jobs. The problem I found with a lot of joke websites is that they are not updated that often. So once you've read the jokes and return a couple of months later, you're still reading the same ones. Yes, I have put way too much thought into this.

Or what sometimes happens is that someone will forward you a joke via email and it will look something like this:

>A
>>man walks
>>>into a bar
>>>>and

How irritating is that? It's a pain in the buttski to forward that on because you invariably get loads more arrows. And it's just far too time-consuming to edit the arrows out before sending it on. Especially if you're supposed to be typing up the minutes from the meeting you just fell asleep in.

Sometimes you just want a short funny joke. You get it, laugh and get out with minimal casualties. And you can forward it on if you wish with a spring in your step and a glint in your eye and your line manager need never know.

So you can imagine my little comedy anorak being filled with joy when I discovered...

Thats Comedy

Short Funny Jokes

Short Funny Jokes

Welcome to my short funny jokes blog. Here you will learn where to find decent short funny jokes (and a few long ones) and how to deliver those funny jokes... if you're lucky. Or you may just get the ramblings of a comedy anorak (or comedy geek if you're reading this in the U.S of America).