Tag Archives: Joke

California’s Lawyer Problem

Nationality: American
Age: 50
Occupation: Lawyer
Residence: Oakland, CA
Performance Date: March 17, 2015
Primary Language: English

Informant: Why did New Jersey get all the toxic waste and California all the lawyers?

Informant: New Jersey got to pick first.

The informant (my dad) is a particularly self-deprecating lawyer. While he does take pride in his work, he often admits that he only went to law school because his father had been a lawyer, and the informant had “no idea what to do with [his] life” after he graduated from college. The informant currently works at a law firm in San Francisco, CA (he recently changed firms, after his former firm became too large and very corrupt. I suspect the series of lawyer jokes he told me were told with some of his old colleagues in mind.) This joke was told to my family over the dinner table, and was very much enjoyed by my mom (also an attorney).

This joke in particular is one the informant might connect to because he is stationed in California (the same state in which his wife works as a lawyer and his father worked as a lawyer). He is also very aware of the negative stereotypes surrounding his profession, and finds enjoyment in laughing about how truly awful some of the people he’s had to work with have been (though the informant also admits that many lawyers are, in fact, “extraordinarily decent people”). This joke seemed to be particularly active in California; the informant said it’d been told to him by three different colleagues on three separate occasions.

In addition, I discovered this joke was published (word for word) in a joke book.

Citation: Arnott, Stephen, and Mike Haskins. Man Walks into a Bar: Over 6,000 of the Most Hilarious Jokes, Funniest Insults, and Gut-busting One-liners. Berkeley, CA: Ulysses, 2007. Print.

Matamoros Fire Department

Nationality: American
Age: 49
Occupation: Lawyer
Residence: Oakland, CA
Performance Date: March 16, 2015
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

Informant: The Catholic church in the small, South-Texas town of Brownsville went up in flames late one evening, after mass had finished. It was a 5-alarm fire, and all local fire stations were called on to help save the little church. The Brownsville fire department arrived first at the scene, but the flames were too intense for them to do anything other than stand by and watch the—the devastation. No more than two minutes later, the Matamoros, Mexico fire department arrived, engine going full, top-speed and lights blaring. The Brownsville firefighters stood back and watched in awe while the Mexican fire department drove their truck right into the flames and managed to put out the fire, saving this historic church. As a token of appreciation, the citizens of Brownsville collected $5,000 and, in a ceremony, the Brownsville Fire Chief handed the Mexican Fire Chief the check and asked him, asked the Mexican Fire Chief, to say a few words to the crowd. Well, he didn’t speak much English of course, but The Chief—in his best English—thanked the crowd for the money and said, thank you, but really, they had just been doing their job. When someone in the crowd shouted out, asked what the plans were for the money, the Chief said, “Well, de furs’ ting we gonna do… we gonna buy new brakes for de fire truck.”

The informant (my mom) was born in Texas but spent most of her childhood traveling from country to country, specifically in South America and regions of southeast Asia, due to her father’s work as a banker. Her first language was Spanish, and today she is fluent in both Spanish and English.

This joke was told to the informant by her mother, who was born and raised in Texas. Brownsville is located on the southern tip of Texas, directly across the boarder from Matamoros, Mexico. The joke plays on economic disparity between the towns, as well as some of the racial bias Texans may have towards Mexicans (this racial bias seems especially prevalent in the punchline, when the performer uses an over-the-top Mexican accent to imitate the Chief of the Matamoros Fire Department).

Three Old Ladies

Nationality: American
Age: 83
Occupation: Retired English Teacher
Residence: San Francisco, CA
Performance Date: March 21, 2015
Primary Language: English

Informant: Three ladies were visiting with each other, and one lady said, “I just don’t know what’s happening to me. My mind wanders. I tried to put a broom in the refrigerator the other day!”

The other lady—the second lady—said, “I know what you mean! I was—my husband and I were watching television the other day and I wanted to say something to him, but I couldn’t remember his name!”

The third lady said, “Well, thank goodness nothing like that has happened to me.”

[informant leans forward to knock on wooden table—knock on wood]

“Yes, come in!”

The informant (my grandmother) was born and raised in Texas. She spent many years moving from place to place across the world with her husband, a banker, before settling in Connecticut long enough to work as an English teacher at the Greenwich Country Day School. She currently lives in San Francisco, CA.

The informant told me that this joke had gone viral at the old person’s home in which she lives. I believe that this joke might be popular with such an audience because they can relate to the troubles the three aging women face—deteriorating memory, both short term and long term. The punch line of the joke is that the woman who claims to be the most mentally competent and unaffected by aging is, in fact, the one who can’t tell that her own knock on the wooden table isn’t a knock on the door. The joke assumes that the audience knows what the practice of “knocking on wood” means.

The Mathematician, The Physicist and the Engineer

Nationality: Caucasian
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 4/29/2014
Primary Language: English

The Mathematician, The Physicist and the Engineer

Informant: I’m a math-econ major so I was always highly interested in math, science, and engineering. I heard this from one of my math professors in high school. Weirdly it was one of my math professors or my religion teacher. So basically you have a mathematician, a physicist, and an engineer. And so they are all in separate classrooms and a fire breaks out in their rubbish pails simultaneously. Uh . . . I can’t remember which one was which, but the physicist calculates the exact amount required to put out the fire and then put outs the fire with very little mess. The engineer just dumps water on it to put out the fire and makes a huge mess. The mathematician on the other hand starts writing on the board, fills up one board, goes on to the next, fills up that one, goes on to the next, fills up that one, puts down his chalk and says, “it can be done, it can be put out”. And that’s basically the joke; it plays off of stereotypes of physicists, engineers, and mathematicians

Interviewer: How old were you approximately when you first heard it?

Informant: I was in high school so I was around 16-17 in Washington D.C

Interviewer: Do you tell it to other people?

Informant: Not really anymore, because I don’t remember it properly. I found it hilarious when I first heard it because I found it so true.

Interviewer’s notes:

This joke is a type of Blason Populaire. The humor of the joke plays off of the stereotypes of physicists as precise, engineers as messy, and mathematicians as over -thinkers. It is interesting to note that the informant is in the same field of study of the subjects of the joke which is indicative of why the informant is compelled to proliferate the joke. For the informant, the humor is enhanced by her ability to relate.

“You Swallow a Knife and It Explodes.” – Jokes on Critical Failure

Nationality: White American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Torrence, CA
Performance Date: 4/6/2014
Primary Language: English

About the Interviewed: Max is a twenty year old college student at Pasadena City College studying Architecture and Fashion Design. His ethnic background is remotely Swedish, though his family has been in America for a couple generations.

My subject, Max, plays tabletop Role-Playing Games (RPGs) . He discussed a joke tradition with me among RPG gamers that I found quite humorous.

Max: “When you play D&D [Dungeons and Dragons, popular tabletop RPG] you get into a lot of situations where you get stuck and have to make a “Skill Check”. In a “Skill Check” you roll a die and check your result to see if you overcome the challenge. It’s a twenty sided die, a d20 for short. You roll your die, and the number you get determines the outcome. 20 is the best. If you roll a twenty, that’s called a critical success, a critical hit. That’s really good. But if you get a 1, if you get the lowest number, that’s bad. Really, bad. That’s called a Critical Failure. When you land one of those, something really bad has to happen.”

I ask what that is.

Max: “Critical Failure means that not only does the opposite of your goal happen, it happens so badly it screws you over. Players like to think of creative ways for the screwing to happen, but most times people just get silly.”

“For example”, he goes on:

“Let’s say your character is fighting a wizard. Like, an evil wizard. And he summons a rain of knives to fall upon you. You’d have to make a Dexterity Check [type of skill check] to see if you dodge. You roll the dice and OOP. You got a 1. So what happens?”

“You swallow a knife and it explodes. You die forever. Game over. (laughs) Your character may not actually die, he’d probably just get stabbed a little. But the joke is the same. You miss. Bad thing happens.”

“There’s a ton of examples of these. They just sort of come-up during games.”

A short time after this meeting, I met with my D&D group and asked them to come up with/ remember their best crit. fail stories. Here’s what I got:

1. You try to unlock a door

>CRIT FAIL

– You miss and the door unlocks you instead.

2. You try to slay a vicious goblin.

>CRIT FAIL

– You miss and stab yourself. Multiple times.

3. You scan the darkness to search for traps.

>CRIT FAIL

– The darkness sees you and gets very angry.

4. You try to climb a rope.

>CRIT FAIL

-The rope is now 500 snakes.

(and etc.)

Summary:

Players of the game “Dungeons and Dragons”, as well as similar RPGs have a tradition of jokes surrounding the concept of the “Critical Fail”, the worst outcome of a single dice-roll.

I find that a lot of these jokes take a form of dark comedy, which can reflect the overall mood of failing a crucial roll. Taking something serious and making it silly may seem trivial, but they’re a way that players enrich in the fun of the game. This is a trend that has been observable since the dawn of pen and paper RPG’s in the mid 1970’s.

You can find more of them here and here:

What is your funniest Critical Failure story?
byu/JPNerd inrpg

http://www.myth-weavers.com/showthread.php?t=26674