  Comedy
This week: Reference Jokes Edited by: Robert Waltz  
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No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!
-Monty Python
Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!
-Horace Washburn
It's a trap!
-Admiral Ackbar |
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Reference Jokes
I'm a nerd.
Most of you already knew that. I'm not ashamed of it. I'm not a cute one like whatshisface from that TV show I don't watch, but still, I'm a fan of comics, science fiction, fantasy, role playing games, and video games.
So a lot of people apparently do watch that TV show I don't watch (something about the big bang or something like that), and they insist on quoting whatshisface (Sherman? Shepman? Something like that) around me when they find out I'm a nerd. These people are rewarded with blank stares. It goes something like this:
Them: "Ka-ching-a!" (or something like that; I don't remember)
Me: *blank stare*
Them: "It's from Monster Explosion Theory."
Me: "Is that a TV show?"
Them: "...yeah. It's about nerds. I can't *believe* you don't watch it."
Me: "I don't have cable."
Them: *blank stare* "Then how do you watch sports?"
Me: "What are these 'sports' of which you speak?"
I should note that conversations between nerds and sports fans often consist of mutual blank stares and an utter failure to grok the others' cultural references. It's not just me. Heck, they don't even know what "grok" means most of the time.
Now, my last line of dialogue there could be considered a reference joke. It may be that the earliest recorded phrase that approximates the formula "What is this x of which you speak?" was in Douglas Adams' beloved Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, where Slartibartfast says "Remember I have been asleep inside this planet of Magrathea for five million years and know little of these early sixties sitcoms of which you speak."
It may have roots coming from before that book, but I'll take the Douglas Adams origin because Hitchhiker's is one of the things we nerds quote all the time in an effort to be funny. For example, whenever someone speaks of an "answer" to something, one of us invariably shouts out "Forty-two!"
Which isn't a good use of reference humor, actually, because 42, as anyone who's actually read the book or consumed it in other media knows, 42 is the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything - not literally "everything."
On the other hand, if I know I'm around HHGTG fans, and it's Thursday, and something unfortunate happens to me, I'll say (in a lousy, fake British accent) "Must be Thursday. Never did get the hang of Thursdays." Usually good for a quick laugh.
But it's easy to overdo it. Unlike horse masks, reference jokes aren't always funny. Sometimes they're just an expected part of nerd conversation. Example:
"Wow, I wasn't expecting that."
"NO ONE expects the Spanish Inquisition!"
Yes, Monty Python is another rich source of reference jokes.
Now, I should point out that reference jokes are related to, but not the same thing as, inside jokes. An inside joke is something you make with someone you're close to, so that you can demonstrate to outsiders that you're already friends and they're going to have to work hard to catch up - if they even want to bother. An in-joke, to an outsider, looks something like this:
Outsider: "So hey, you want to get a D&D group together?"
Insider #1: "Oh, no, remember what happened the last time someone asked us that?"
Insider #2: "Frankenkender!"
Insiders #1 & #2: *massive amounts of laughter*
Outsider: *blank stare*
Note that in the above example, all three are nerds, but the two insiders have been playing D&D together for so long that the Outsider will give up soon, because all the other two can do is reference funny things that happened in previous gaming sessions.
No, inside jokes are about shared experiences between people that other people don't have even theoretical access to. A reference joke, however, relies on the listener having been a consumer of the product being quoted. While everyone, even people who have never seen Star Trek (I'm assured that such people exist), understands the "Beam me up, Scotty" thing, there are more obscure lines from more obscure shows, lines that still often generate blank stares when quoted.
But that leads me to the real point, which is that reference jokes are how nerds find other nerds with similar interests. Well, that and t-shirts. (But mostly the t-shirts are reference jokes.) Say you're a fan of the not-that-obscure Firefly, for example. You're among people you don't know well, and, say, someone is wearing a funny, gender-inappropriate, homemade-appearing hat.
Me: "Man walks down the street in a hat like that, you know he's not afraid of anything."
Female Firefly fan I didn't know before: *laugh* "You're funny, Waltz."
Me: "Yeah, I know, but looks ain't everything."
(That last line was mine. Not a reference joke. Stop with the blank stares.) |
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Some feedback from my last newsletter, "Gambling" :
Mummsy  : Oooooh, Comedy newsletter entitled "Gambling!" Must be Waltz. *clicks on email, reads . . . * MAAATH! GAHHHH! *twitches*
Math is cool.
drjim: Waltzus Americanus - you've outdone yourself, Waltz, for knowingly sending yourself to Atlantic City means you will emerge a happier, lighter person than before (counting all the C Notes you lost at the tables being the issue at hand.) We take to heart though that nothing you have divulged here is of top-secret nature, mathematics be darned, for we acknowledge that thousands and thousands read this column and in a sense, YOU are the reason why the Trump Royale has lately been bursting at the seams with clients. That guy from the Island of Krakatoa, the couple from Navarone, the Everest twins, and the bus of Fukushima college kids all made small fortunes, thanks to Waltz's Mathematical Wizardry which now is in its 100th printing! Will miracles ever cease?!? Let us be sure of one thing, your wife will know EXACTLY where you are when she tries to finger some cash you both "keep in the crisper" ....sorry, had to whisper that one.... and she'll be expecting you to carry home the moolah on pallets when you get back. Isn't this how you manage to maintain such a lavish NL while getting the bills paid working the WDC beat?
Wait, wait... I'm supposed to get paid for this?
Zheila  : Hi Waltzus;
thank you so explaining how to gamble. I went to Atlantic City and watched over the gamblers. I still did not get it. But reading your story brought back the good memory of that beautiful city. The fun part was going to shops and buying T-Shirts.
I have a feeling you went to different parts of Atlantic City than I did.
BIG BAD WOLF is Howling  : Crime is an even bigger gamble- more's on the line besides money. [Submitted Item: "Take Your Son to Work" [E]]
And that'll do it for me for September! See you in the darkest depths of October. Until then,
LAUGH ON!!! |
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Comedy: September 25, 2013 Issue [#5903]
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