Funny Friday

 

A little boy is excited because the circus has come to town. They had a parade with a band and animals and clowns! Oh, the clowns were fabulous! He was so excited that he got a ticket right away.

The show began and there were stunts and people on the high wire and trained animals. Then out came a tiny car and out from it poured a endless stream of clowns who did the funniest things you ever saw. It was absolutely hilarious. Then all of a sudden the clowns stopped and started looking around, all puzzled. They searched high and low and still they kept going. Finally one clown stopped and addressed the audience, "we seem to have lost our horse and we need help finding him. Would the person in row 32 seat H please stand up?" The boy notes that he is in that seat so he stands up! The clown says, "Ah! We've found the horse's ass, now we need to find the rest of the horse!"

The audience roars with laughter and the boy turned beet red. He tore from the tent in humiliation, mostly because he didn't know what to say! He decided that would never happen to him again. He pulled out his most recent copy of Boy's Life and found an ad for a book for snappy comebacks, so be bought it. It arrived and he proceeded to memorise it in its entirety. He had the local librarian borrow similar books that he also memorised.

As he grew up, he practised his snappy comebacks, but was he ready? No! He went to a college that allowed you construct your own major, so he majored in Snappy Comebacks. He studied Moliere, Shakespeare, Henny Youngman, Phyllis Diller, all the greats. He earned his major. Was he ready? No. He went on to get a PhD in snappy comebacks. Was he ready? No. He started publishing papers presenting a full taxonomy of snappy comebacks, classifying them by type, cultural reference, social import and final impact. Was he ready? Yes.

He returned to his home town and waited for the circus. When it arrived, they had a parade with a band and animals and clowns! Oh, the clowns were fabulous! He got a ticket right away for the same seat.

The show began and there were stunts and people on the high wire and trained animals. Then out came a tiny car and out from it poured an endless stream of clowns who did the funniest things you ever saw. It was absolutely hilarious. Then all of a sudden the clowns stopped and started looking around, all puzzled. They searched high and low and still they kept going. Finally one clown stopped and addressed the audience, "We seem to have lost our horse and we need help finding him. Would the person in row 32 seat H please stand up?" The boy notes that he is in that seat so he stands up!

The clown says, "Ah! We've found the horse's ass, now we need to find the rest of the horse!"

And he says in a loud, steady voice, "FUCK YOU CLOWN!"

 

 

The above item is what is known as a shaggy dog story, a long involved story that ends without any point, sometimes a pun or an anti-climax.  Another example is the item posted two weeks ago about the monk and the strange sound. 

The first recorded use of the term is in 1937 when the following appeared in Esquire magazine:  Esquire magazine, May 1937: "One of the more sporting ways of finding out which ones are not [sane] is to try shaggy-dog stories on them."

The term is believed to have originated from a story where a young boy enters his dog into a contest to find the shaggiest dog.  He wins the local contest, then the regional contest and so on, winning bigger and bigger contests.  Eventually he makes it to the world championship for shaggy dogs.  When the judges had inspected all the dogs they said to the boy about his dog “He’s not so shaggy.”

It may not be funny but that is the point.  A shaggy dog story story builds an expectation that is either not met or is met in an unexpected way.

Corn Corner:

Two old men, one a retired professor of psychology and the other a retired professor of history, had been talked into taking a holiday by their wives.  Whilst sitting on the porch of the hotel watching the sun set, the history professor said to the psychology professor, "Have you read Marx?”  The professor of psychology replied "Yes, I think it's the wicker chairs."