A while back, my wife and I got invited to a "joke party." A joke party, I found out, is a party where everyone tells jokes, with prizes going to the funniest. My initial revulsion at going to this kind of party was tempered by the prospect of winning the funniest joke prize. "After all," I said to myself, "if I, the host of The World's Only Comedy Site, cannot walk away with the amateur joke-telling prize, then I am a hypocrite and a failure, just as the inner voices tell me relentlessly day and night."
The night of the party, we arrived to find everyone sitting in the living room, drinking beer and eating chips. At a certain point in the evening, our hosts laid out the ground rules: everyone could tell up to two jokes. After the jokes, they'd take a show of hands, then award a grand prize and a runner-up. The grand prize was not revealed, but we were promised that it was good.
Folks started telling jokes. Some of them were good, as one might expect, and some of them sucked. Some people had the gift of joke delivery, and some did not. We had heard about a half dozen jokes when it was my turn.
Now, I'm not exactly sure why I chose this joke, because everyone has heard it before, and the punchline is a pun. Most people hate puns. The joke can be told very quickly, but one year at high school summer camp, I knew a very funny kid who told this joke, and he really stretched it out. I mean, it went on for about five minutes, and all of us were like, "Come ON, get to the punchline already." And then he finally hit the punchline, which was already a groaner, but the fact that he had made us wait so long to get to the pun made us all kind of mad. But at the same time, it was kind of funny. It was like the anti-joke.
Anyway, I told that joke, except that I really stretched it out. I mean, I went on, no kidding, for ten to fifteen minutes. Several longtime ZUG fans have observed that my comedy career is marked by a habit to take a routine to excess, so much that it becomes uncomfortable, then excruciating, until finally the bit blows up in my face. I cannot think of a more accurate depiction of what went on during my joke. Practically everyone already knew the punchline, and they were all just like, "Please get to the end of this hellish nightmare." And still I went on. I mean, I really went on too long. It was interminable. Maybe if I keep adding sentences to the end of this paragraph, I'll be able to convey how much longer I went on than necessary. I thought about writing up the way I told it, but my computer doesn't have enough hard drive space to store the complete joke.
When I finally got to the punchline, there was almost complete silence. I mean, two or three people kind of made a nervous chuckle, but only to fill the awkward space. My wife looked mortified. And she had every right to be. It was terrible. I had told the worst joke of all.
We went around the room, and everyone finished their jokes. The hosts then asked if any of us would like to tell a follow-up joke. I raised my hand. Everyone looked at each other nervously, and a few excused themselves to get more liquor. And then I told the joke that made it all worthwhile. The joke, which I stole from my friend Moses Blumenstiel, goes like this.
A local psychiatrist recently decided to have a Halloween party for his colleagues. Since many of his guests worked in the mental health field, he asked everyone to come dressed as their favorite emotion.
The night of the big party arrived, and the psychiatrist answered the door to find his first guest, a burly male dressed up in drag, wearing a woman's dress accented by lipstick, earrings, and a beard. "And what emotion are you?" asked the psychiatrist. The guy said, "I'm in distress."
Several minutes later, the doorbell rang again. The psychiatrist answered to find a woman dressed up as a giant pear-shaped fruit. "What are you supposed to be?" asked the psychiatrist. "I'm in despair," she replied.
When the doorbell rang a third time, the psychiatrist answered to find one of his colleagues naked, his flaccid penis resting in a bowl of tapioca pudding. After he overcame his initial shock and revulsion, the psychiatrist said, "I give up. Explain your costume."
The man replied, "I'm Frost-ing disgusted."
When I say the room broke up, I mean that chunks of plaster were falling off the ceiling. When I say I brought the house down, I mean the very foundation of the building began to crumble. People were laughing so hard that some required emergency oxygen treatments, and one woman had to be wheeled out for surgery. (Trust me, it tells better in person.)
You see, I had set it up perfectly. By making my first joke the worst joke, I set the expectation that I sucked. And you know what? I didn't suck. I won the grand prize, mothaFrostahs.
The grand prize, by the way, was a book of jokes.
 
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