Author Archives: Nicole Rodriguez

3 for a Dollar

Nationality: USA
Age: 19
Occupation: student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 10, 2015
Primary Language: English

Riddle:

A man walks in a hardware store and asks “How much are those?” the clerk says “three for a dollar.” The man takes one hundred, pays a dollar and walks out. What did he buy?

 

The Informant was a nineteen year old female friend that I had dinner with. I told her about the catch riddle we learned in class (what do virgins eat?) and she began telling me all of these riddles that she knew.

Collector: Wait, he bought one hundred of them for a dollar when only three are for a dollar? That makes no sense.

Informant: That’s why it’s a riddle, duh, but it does have an answer – in case you were wondering.

Collector: Did the man steal 97 items?

Informant: Nope. He paid for everything just fine and walked out.

(After several minutes of guessing and failing, she gave a pivotal hint)

Informant: You find these on the front of a house, and every house has this.

Answer via Informant: It’s the address on the house, the address is one hundred. Get it? One hundred has three numbers, three for a dollar? He bought a one and two zeros – for a dollar. Get it? He literally bought “100”. Three digits.

Collector: Did your high school friend tell you this one too?

Informant: Yup.

This riddle wasn’t quite as exclusionary as other riddles that require the person to understand certain references. This one was pretty straight forward with objects that everyone is familiar with .

 

 

 

A Blonde, A Redhead, and A Brunette

Nationality: USA
Age: 19
Occupation: student
Residence: USA
Performance Date: April 23, 2015
Primary Language: English

Informant was a 19 year old male student who I chatted with during our Russian Modern Art class. He’s a Film and Television Production Major.

Joke:

A blonde, a redhead, and a brunette were all lost in the desert. They found a lamp and rubbed it. A genie popped out and granted them each one wish. The redhead wished to be back home. Poof! She was back home. The brunette wished to be at home with her family. Poof! She was back home with her family. The blonde said, “Awwww, I wish my friends were here.”

Collector: Who told you that one?

Informant: My younger sister told me this joke at a party. She heard it from a friend.

Collector: Why do you think you remember this one?

Informant: I find it hilarious how much people’s greatest desires can collide with one another. It reminds me a lot of instances from my own life, conflicts I’ve gotten into with my family and so on. I also love the concept that all it takes is one incompetent person with absolute power to ruin everything. If only the blonde had gone first.

This joke also plays a bit on stereotypes, seeing as “the blonde” is the one who makes the dumb mistake. I’ve heard this joke before so it wasn’t as funny as I thought it was the first time. I suppose it does just take one really incompetent person in power to screw everything up.

A Nazi Joke

Nationality: USA
Age: 19
Occupation: student
Residence: USA
Performance Date: April 23, 2015
Primary Language: English

Informant was a 19 year old male student who I chatted with during our Russian Modern Art class. He’s a Film and Television Production Major.

Joke:

You know I find it very offensive when you talk about the Holocaust so casually. You know, my father died in the Holocaust. He fell from his Nazi guard tower.

Collector: Ookay…wow. So who told you this joke?

Informant: I heard it from a friend of mine who was well known for saying incredibly offensive things.

Collector: Oh, I see. Did it just stick in your mind because of that?

Informant: It’s an interesting idea to humanize a Nazi. While history puts a sinister face on the Nazi (and understandably so), one has to remember every Nazi official was someone’s Dad or Grandfather. The thought is strange, but still very interesting. It’s always stuck with me.

This joke is interesting because, true enough, it does demonstrate a perspective that people rarely think about. It’s not thought about because in the greater scheme of things, the acts that these people committed were atrocious, but even so, they are human and this joke reminds us of that in an offensive humorous manner. It’s the dark, death humor we discussed in class, that sometimes people joke around about serious things in order to distance themselves from the events.

53 Bicycles

Nationality: USA
Age: 19
Occupation: student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 10, 2015
Primary Language: English

Riddle:

A man was found murdered in a room with 53 bicycles. Why was he murdered?

 

The Informant was a nineteen year old female friend that I had dinner with. I told her about the catch riddle we learned in class (what do virgins eat?) and she began telling me all of these riddles that she knew.

Collector: He was a bad man?

Informant: No.

Collector: Did he steal all of the bicycles?

Informant: Nope, try again.

(After several minutes of guessing and failing, she gave a pivotal hint)

Informant: Think of Bicycles as a brand, not as objects. I told you this was a hard one.

Answer via Informant: Well, bicycles is a type of card – you know, poker cards…bicycle playing cards. You’ve heard of those, right? Yeah, yeah. And how many cards are in a deck? Yeah, 52. So the guy was cheating, he had an extra card… so they killed him!(Seemed a little too excited by this).

Collector: Where’d you get this riddle from?

Informant: A high school friend.

Riddles in general are very interesting considering that nothing is ever what it seems to be. You have to really think outside of the box in order to figure out the answer, but it also makes it difficult when a person is not familiar to something that’s being referenced, such as with the brand “bicycles”. I told the same riddle to my dad and he had never heard of Bicycle playing cards, which made it pretty much impossible for him to figure out the answer. So, it can be considered a way of distinguishing between groups: those that understand the references and those who don’t.

A Guy Walks Into a Bar…

Nationality: USA
Age: 19
Occupation: student
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Performance Date: April 6, 2015
Primary Language: English

Joke: A man walks into a bar. He says “ouch”.

The Informant was a nineteen year old female friend that I sat down to chat with. We were bored and telling each other jokes and she mentioned that she found this hilarious website while procrastinating on homework. This was one of the jokes that she decided to tell me.

 

Collector: Why of all the jokes did you remember this one in particular?

 

Informant: I don’t know- because it was funny. It was short and sweet, like “oh wow that makes sense”, you know? The guy literally walks into a bar – not inside the bar – but into it…it’s literal. You’re so used to jokes being set up like this that you don’t expect the twist. Creatures of habit, I guess.

 

Collector: I know this is a weird question, but does the joke mean anything to you? Like, on a personal level?

 

Informant: (Sarcastically) Yeah, I mean we’ve all walked face first into bars, it’s a pretty normal day thing to do – (normal voice) no. I just thought it was funny, that’s all. There’s no philosophical implications behind the joke or anything like that.

I don’t have much of an opinion on this joke. I do agree with the informant that it’s wonderful in its simplicity and in the fact that you don’t really expect it to go the way it does. It requires the audience to take the words literally, which isn’t usually how a joke works – which is why it works. It’s kind of ironic.