Maybe a Clown Killed Jimmy Hoffa

A study has found that clowns can help relax children before surgery. Unless, of course, the child is terrified of clowns, in which case the clown will just become the beginning of one long traumatic event.

I was a failure as an astronaut. Right at launch, I’d suddenly remember I left the keys to the space shuttle in my other pants.

I continue to observe differences between dining on the East Coast and the West Coast. On the East Coast, I was dining in an eloquent restaurant that overlooked a statue of Christopher Columbus, when I overheard a fellow diner look at the statute and proclaim “that doesn’t look anything like Peter Falk.” On the West Coast, I’d see Peter Falk in a restaurant, and diners proclaim “my, he’s aged. He looks as old as Christopher Columbus.”

On the East Coast, when I order something, the wait server says something like “the gentleman has made an excellent choice.” When I order something on the West Coast, the wait server usually says something like “ewww, you actually eat that?”

I don’t understand people who wonder where Jimmy Hoffa is buried. I saw him on the news yesterday, and he’s still Teamsters President. How dumb can people get?

Speaking of food (and I’m ignoring the rumors that Jimmy Hoffa may have been ground into food: hey, when they sell Italian and Polish sausages at some places, the ingredients are actually as advertised), here is a joke we can analyze, because different people can hear two different jokes depending on their perceptions. The first person proclaims “When I was in Nam, we had to eat bugs in the forest, and we were glad to have them.” The second person states “I never knew you were in Viet Nam.” The first person responds with “worse vacation I ever had.” Now, some people see the joke as meaning the first person served in the military during the Viet Nam War, and he is jokingly calling his military service as a bad vacation. Other people see the first person as a tourist visiting Viet Nam, and that his vacation consisted of eating bugs. Which way did you see it? OK, I know: you didn’t get the joke at all. Well, then, there are three ways to perceive that joke.