How to be funny.

Have you ever noticed that even the most hilarious people with top-notch senses of humor (like yours truly) occasionally try TOO hard to be funny? While there are a handful of professional comedians who manage to succeed at being funny on a daily basis, most of the practitioners of the side-splitting arts have to bust their asses to produce so much as a half-hearted chuckle. For us casual comedians, getting a good reaction from a joke comes down to having a quick wit, an even quicker tongue, and a hellava lotta luck. Unfortunately, I learned in Vegas that luck is a heartless bitch, prone to plopping a sack of money in your lap only to then fill it with anthrax, and bees.

Telling a spur-of-the-moment joke is really more art than science (mostly because it isn't science at all). Its easy to toss out french comments left and right like praise at a self esteem camp, but is it even worth it? Guy gets startled and drops a drink - "You'd be a shoe in as an officer in the french army!" These ones practically write themselves. They are quick, effortless, simple and... well they aren't actually funny either. I'll get a polite chortle, or if someone is VERY generous a full on laugh or two, but in all honesty, the french haven't been funny since their country was relevant.

The "your mom" and "your face" plan of attack works about the same. If someone finds even the slightest bit of humor in it, its only because they are surprised you even bothered to spew such trivial nonsense. You can't even call these real jokes, more like stalling tactics or so much hot air. The only reason anyone should EVER resort to such tactics is to remind people that they are still around while waiting to hit them with a REAL joke that will knock them off their chairs, writhing in (hilarious) agony while struggling to keep the air in their lungs.

The REAL jokes, those are the ones that either make you or break you. Something on this scale takes significant time to prepare, and great skill to wield safely. In the words of Ben Parker, "With great power comes great responsibility". The backlash from a failed joke can last years, even decades. They need to be uttered (or mimed, or gestured) at precisely the right moment. Explanation is the death of humor, so they must be easily understood, they mustn't take longer than the average attention span. You don't want people to think you are being serious, but you don't want them to think you are stupid either. Something like "knock knock" just won't cut it. Even the timeless poultry-highway conundrums consistently fail to yield results.

After hours of expert breath control, popping a mint every 30 minutes, surveying the room for the perfect opportunity to unleash your genius upon the world, your time has come. The stress of constant alertness has built inside you like you swallowed a crate of pop-rocks, but someone finally sets you up, a minor joke (something involving health care) creates the ideal lull in the conversation, you are ready!

Please, for the love of god, do NOT get an asinine grin on your face and say

"Yeah, I bet you need good health care cause of your diseased cooter!"

Shit.