Category Archives: Humor

Bosco Tjan

Nationality: American
Age: 21
Occupation: Engineering Student
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Performance Date: 3/29/2018
Primary Language: English
Language: Bengali

Item (direct transcription):

So, the professor was something like a computer visions expert, right?

So the joke was, if he’s such a visions expert, why didn’t he see this coming?

Background Information:

The informant read this joke on Facebook; it was posted by someone from USC (the University of Southern California).

Bosco Tjan was a USC professor who was murdered by one of his students in 2016. The joke refers to those events.

Contextual Information:

The informant expressed that he would only tell the joke to someone he knew well and thought wouldn’t be offended.

Analysis:

This joke fits the common pattern of jokes forming in response to tragic events. Interestingly, though, in this case the event was not a national or widely publicized—it would only make sense to members of the USC community.

Thus, the joke is a counter-example to Christie Davies’ hypothesis from “Jokes That Follow Mass-Mediated Disasters in a Global Electronic Age” (from the book “Of Corpse: Death and Humor in Folklore and Popular Culture,” 2003). Davies claims that jokes about tragic events form as a counter-impulse to hegemonic pressure from the mass media (particularly television) to feel sorrow for strangers. There was no such hegemonic pressure after the murder of Bosco Tjan, yet this joke formed anyways.

Lobster Joke

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Sacramento, CA
Performance Date: April 23, 2018
Primary Language: English

Main Piece:

The following is transcribed from a conversation between the performer (EC) and I (ZM).

EC: My favorite joke of all time…I think I told this on the Weekender. I tell it every year on the Weekender, but…What’s the difference between a dirty bus stop and a um lobster with implants? …One’s a crusty bus station and the other’s a busty crustacean.

ZM: (laughs) That took me a while. Did you come up with that one yourself?

EC: No, I saw it on Tumblr in like 2000 something (laughs)

 

Context: This was recorded after I asked EC if she knew any good jokes.

 

Background: EC is a sophomore studying at the University of Southern California.

 

Analysis:I liked the interplay between the Internet and oral tradition. A lot of the time I think of how oral tradition is transferred to the Internet but not really about how it could go the other way. In this case, EC read a joke on the Internet and continued to spread it orally for years.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Disneyland Folklore: The Jungle Cruise

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: California, United States
Performance Date: April 4, 2018
Primary Language: English

Transcription: “At the end of every night, the Skippers yell, “Goodnight, Jungle Monster.” If you are a new skipper, you must throw a banana over the gorilla camp as a sacrifice. It used to be an actual garbage-panda-possum. Now, we think of it as a spirit…There is even a blog called, ‘Capturing the Jungle Monster’ where people can post stories about the Jungle Monster.” You also don’t want to scare the Jungle Monster by talking too loud or coming into your shift late. Whenever something bad happens on the ride, it is because someone angered the Jungle Monster.”

 

My informant used to be a cast member on Disney’s Jungle Cruise. As one of the park’s oldest rides, the attraction is associated with several forms of folklore. I asked my informant to describe the folklore. The ride takes visitors around to look at animatronic animals. However, the ride is also said to feature a specimen that is neither animatronic nor a visible. The creature is known as the Jungle Monster. Over the years, the myth of the Jungle Monster has varied. Originally, the creature was thought of as a hybrid animal, but the folklore has since evolved into spirit.

The folklore is lived out on a daily basis when at the end of each day, one lucky cast member gets to whisper goodnight to the Jungle Monster. My informant mentioned that saying goodnight to the Jungle Monster was seen as a privilege because it demonstrated seniority. The myth of the swamp monster has also become an initiation ritual. When a new skipper is added to the team, he or she must throw a banana into the gorilla camp as a sacrifice to the Jungle Monster. Once the new skipper completes this task, they have become an official Jungle Cruise skipper.

As with other mythical subjects, the Jungle Monster becomes a way to explain the world, in this case, the Jungle Cruise. Whenever something Malfunctions on the ride, the skippers reason that someone must have upset the Jungle Monster. One can upset the Jungle Monster by lacking on their duties or forgetting to say goodnight.

Disney Folklore: Naming Animatronics

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student, former Disneyland cast member
Residence: California, United States
Performance Date: 4 April 2018
Primary Language: English

Transcription: “All the animatronics in Disneyland have a name. For example, the snake in Indiana Jones is named Fluffy. The Yeti in the Matterhorn is named Harold. Cast members aren’t supposed to pose with the animatronics, but we do and post them in our Facebook groups.”

The naming of the animatronics signifies a way to give life to the mechanisms. Similar to the way we use human names, the rides become more personalized when an individual knows the names of the machines contributing to the ride’s atmosphere.

By giving each machine a unique and specific name, the cast members can create a dichotomy. Those who know the names are on inside the group, while those who do not know the names are outside the group. Overall, knowledge of the animatronic’s names evokes a sense of group identity. The cast members can exemplify their group identity by name dropping the machine’s name.

As Van Gennup said, transitional or unsettling moments in one’s life often become paired with jokes. The ironic nature of the names function as a joke shared between cast members. For example, the snake on the Indiana Jones ride is supposed to jump out and scare people. However, with a name like Fluffy, the snake can hardly be considered daunting. The joke counteracts the tension created at the moment the snake appears.

During times when the ride is powered down, cast members pose and take pictures of each other with the animatronics. The behavior qualifies as breaking the rules, but the cast members are not deterred since it has become apart of their group culture. Not only are their pictures a form of rebellion, they are shared over social media. The Facebook groups on which these photos are shared facilitate the multiplicity and variation of the folklore.

 

Sore Tooth Joke

Nationality: USA
Age: 29
Occupation: Agriculture
Residence: La Quinta, CA
Performance Date: 2/23/18
Primary Language: English

The following story is a joke collected from an older cousin during a brief car ride to a hiking area. Instead of turning to music or media-based entertainment as means to pass and occupy time, my cousin and I tend to exchange long dialogues of personal philosophies and other similar thoughts. Because these types of conversations tend to last for extended periods of time, and given that this car ride would only last about ten minutes, we instead opted to share our favorite ‘dirty jokes,’ ie, anecdotal passages of humor that typically rely on sexual topics as their main basis of humor.

The joke goes as follows:

“So this man, just your average joe, he’s driving around in backwoods Louisiana, taking in the manner of the country and whatnot, looking for some local character.

He comes up on a bar, this nasty old shack of a place right on the water. Rickety, pieced together, looks like a hell of a time if you can manage to handle it. Anyway, he walks up to the front door with a few hints of second thoughts and then sees a bright yellow notice posted on the front. Big capital letters, reads: ‘Lifetime of Free Beer for anyone who completes the Three-Tier Challenge.’

So the guy shrugs and goes on in. Place is a madhouse, needless to say. He doesn’t fit in at all with his office drone attire compared to all these boondocks Louisiana maniacs.  Sure you can picture that pretty easily. Anyway, he goes up to the bartender and tells him he’s interested in the Three-Tier Challenge.

Guy looks at him like he’s crazy. ‘You sure?’

The man nods, and the bartender tells him the details:

‘Alright, well first, you gotta down a bottle of our specialty flaming pepper tequila. Without crying. Second, there’s a mean ol’ fifteen foot alligator out back with a sore tooth. And once you get that tooth out, you gotta head upstairs and take care of the roughest, toughest hooker in all of Louisiana.’

The man nods. And he goes ahead and starts.

He gets set up with the pepper tequila, and after a few long and painful minutes, he gets through the entire bottle without a single tear. Everyone’s impressed.

He stumbles out the door, drunk as shit, where the alligator’s waiting for him. Closes the door behind him. Everyone inside thinks ‘oh boy, this guy’s a goner’.

And then they hear the sounds. Thrashing, roaring, the most terrifying shrieks imaginable. Noises they don’t think could possibly come from either the man or the alligator. Even the toughest souls in that saloon are haunted to the core. The noise stops. Everyone’s quiet.

In walks the man, his outfit torn to pieces, covered in blood. He looks at the bartender and asks

‘ALRIGHT! WHERE’S THAT HOOKER WITH THE SORE TOOTH!’ ”

This particular joke certainly shows the effectiveness of using the combined surprise of subverted expectations and abrupt endings as a comedic tool. In this instance, the listener is expecting to hear the encapsulating line to the joke following the patron’s completion of the third task, but instead, his faulty (and cringe-inducing) completion of the second task serves to cut the joke short without leaving anything unresolved.