10 replies on “Nerding Day: Jokes, Puns & Riddles”
is this the origin of that “ask siri why fire trucks are red” answer from a couple years back or am i too young to know that this is an established riddle (???)
We just ignoring that it was so, so almost seanbaby that was a defective detective?
I feel this was actually written by a very poorly programmed AI, then was thrown back in time to the 60’s in the hope people would at least be dumb enough then to think the book’s gibberish was jokes.
The artist behind this, Lionel Kalish, is actually a pretty impressive guy.
He churned out unbelieveable amounts of commercial art and took on a bunch of kids books like this on a contract basis, sort of like Gahan Wilson also did kids books along with ads to go with his cartoons. Odds are he knocked out the illustrations during a 15 minute cigarette break in between other assignments.
I *did* dig the art (especially the cover; the cover is flippin’ great), and I did get a Gahan Wilson vibe from it.
I’ve got a Classics Illustrated adaptation of The Devil’s Dictionary with Wilson art around here somewhere.
I’ll have to look for that. I would love to see Bierce illustrated 🥰
The good news is, no one EVER thought this was funny.
Reviewing the book for the New York Times on June 16, 1968, Jerome Beatty Jr. (he of the Matthew and Maria Looney series) wrote “If there are non-books in the children’s field they are the ones in which are assembled crazy questions, or riddles, or something that’s silly enough to make a kid laugh if everyone’s in a funny mood and they are read out loud. That’s a rather lame description of what we have here.”
“One has to admire the dedication of David Allen Clark, who has collected what appears to be every clean joke you ever heard or told throughout your adolescence, and perhaps your second childhood, too.”
30 November 1950, The Morning Herald (Uniontown, PA), “It Happened Last Night” by Earl Wilson, pg. 4, col. 2:
TODAY’S BEST OLD LAUGH: Eddie Cantor says he originated psychiatrist gags a decade ago, this way: “Doctor, my son thinks he’s a chicken”…”Bring him in and I’ll look at him”…”I would, but we need the eggs.”
So was written down at least as early as 1950, and described as a decade old then…
Ancient Sumerians drank beer from communal pots through a straw centuries before the invention of pants. That dog was sucking a dick.
This is an interesting departure from the joke books that usually end up here–the ones lurking in Seanbaby’s Library Of The Damned that are usually 99% puns about whatever pop culture IP was profitable at the time…
You get the sense that some of these are near-jokes.. like maybe they were hilarious on David Allen Clark’s home planet and in his native language.
There was an episode of Stargate SG-1 where Teal’c told a popular Jaffa joke (kinda just to prove there was such a thing). He laughed his ass off, while his human friends were utterly dumbfounded.
That’s how these jokes feel to me…
…minus the ones that are just crap. That crocodile routine is not only older than God, it’s an intentional groaner: quite possibly the worst subgenre of “humor” to ever exist.
1-900-HOTDOG
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10 replies on “Nerding Day: Jokes, Puns & Riddles”
is this the origin of that “ask siri why fire trucks are red” answer from a couple years back or am i too young to know that this is an established riddle (???)
We just ignoring that it was so, so almost seanbaby that was a defective detective?
I feel this was actually written by a very poorly programmed AI, then was thrown back in time to the 60’s in the hope people would at least be dumb enough then to think the book’s gibberish was jokes.
The artist behind this, Lionel Kalish, is actually a pretty impressive guy.
He churned out unbelieveable amounts of commercial art and took on a bunch of kids books like this on a contract basis, sort of like Gahan Wilson also did kids books along with ads to go with his cartoons. Odds are he knocked out the illustrations during a 15 minute cigarette break in between other assignments.
Here’s a poster he did for the ACLU in the 70s,
https://www.chisholm-poster.com/posters/CL28246.html
another that appeared in Time in the 60s
https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-QO6vmCJZqzc/Uv6YjnCk1FI/AAAAAAAADIs/MSb2nkaWFYI/s1600/Lionel-Kalish—Time-ad.jpg
and a hilarious interview where he wonders if he set a record for being fired from more jobs than anyone else ever.
https://ironinkbooks.com/lionel-kalish/
I *did* dig the art (especially the cover; the cover is flippin’ great), and I did get a Gahan Wilson vibe from it.
I’ve got a Classics Illustrated adaptation of The Devil’s Dictionary with Wilson art around here somewhere.
I’ll have to look for that. I would love to see Bierce illustrated 🥰
The good news is, no one EVER thought this was funny.
Reviewing the book for the New York Times on June 16, 1968, Jerome Beatty Jr. (he of the Matthew and Maria Looney series) wrote “If there are non-books in the children’s field they are the ones in which are assembled crazy questions, or riddles, or something that’s silly enough to make a kid laugh if everyone’s in a funny mood and they are read out loud. That’s a rather lame description of what we have here.”
“One has to admire the dedication of David Allen Clark, who has collected what appears to be every clean joke you ever heard or told throughout your adolescence, and perhaps your second childhood, too.”
From https://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/we_need_the_eggs_joke
30 November 1950, The Morning Herald (Uniontown, PA), “It Happened Last Night” by Earl Wilson, pg. 4, col. 2:
TODAY’S BEST OLD LAUGH: Eddie Cantor says he originated psychiatrist gags a decade ago, this way: “Doctor, my son thinks he’s a chicken”…”Bring him in and I’ll look at him”…”I would, but we need the eggs.”
So was written down at least as early as 1950, and described as a decade old then…
Ancient Sumerians drank beer from communal pots through a straw centuries before the invention of pants. That dog was sucking a dick.
This is an interesting departure from the joke books that usually end up here–the ones lurking in Seanbaby’s Library Of The Damned that are usually 99% puns about whatever pop culture IP was profitable at the time…
You get the sense that some of these are near-jokes.. like maybe they were hilarious on David Allen Clark’s home planet and in his native language.
There was an episode of Stargate SG-1 where Teal’c told a popular Jaffa joke (kinda just to prove there was such a thing). He laughed his ass off, while his human friends were utterly dumbfounded.
That’s how these jokes feel to me…
…minus the ones that are just crap. That crocodile routine is not only older than God, it’s an intentional groaner: quite possibly the worst subgenre of “humor” to ever exist.