Over lunch recently, Jeff mentioned the joke behind the title of Lynne Trusse’s book Eats, Shoots and Leaves, which goes a little something like this:
A panda bear walks into a bar and orders lunch. He sits quietly munching his food, and after he finishes he wipes his mouth with his napkin, pulls out a gun, fires into the ceiling and walks out.
“What was that all about?” the bartender asks the waiter.
“Oh, that’s what a panda bear does. Eats, shoots and leaves.”
(Obviously, this joke really only works when it’s spoken: “eats, shoots and leaves” sounds just like “eats shoots and leaves.”)
Later in the week, as we were talking about this joke and others of the [fill-in-the-blank]-walks-into-a-bar genre, I said that it seems to me that people don’t really tell jokes so much anymore. I proposed a contest, or party game, in which people challenged each other with the front end of a joke, requiring the other participant to complete the joke. Whoever could do so in the shortest amount of time would win.
Jeff proposed, “A panda bear, a fox, and a gorilla walk into a bar.”
I proposed, “A three-legged sled dog walks into a bar.”
So, can you finish these jokes?
Last week, I should have mentioned Garrison Keillor’s annual joke show – two hours on or about April 1 every year devoted to jokes. Selections from the shows are collected on an audiobook called Pretty Good Jokes and A Few More Pretty Good Jokes. In our experience, they are excellent listening for a long drive in the car.
The panda joke is missing a crucial line to understanding the joke:
The panda pulls out an encyclopedia and points to the “Panda” entry. “See,” the panda says, pointing to the first line, “it says it right there. ‘Eats, shoots and leaves.'”
The joke revolves around the importance of proper written punctuation (since orally, the phrase sounds the same with or without the comma).
People, people, people! It’s a contest! I had a conclusion to both of these jokes in under 5 minutes. Get in the game and start playing!
A three-legged sled dog walks into a bar and announces, “I’m lookin’ for the man who shot my paw.”
That it?
I can’t find the other one on Google yet. ;>
Ah, I should have been more explicit: the contest requires you to make up the second half of the joke.
Drat! And here I was thinking how great the Internet was for those of us who are really bad at remembering or telling jokes…
OK – here it goes:
A panda bear, a fox, and a gorilla walk into a bar, order dinner, sit down, eat. The gorilla turns to the fox and says, “wow – the guy who made the first comment on this entry really missed the point didn’t he….” The fox replies “He sure did.” Then the fox thinks for a minute, turns to the gorilla and says, “You know, this still isn’t really a joke is it?” The gorilla replies glumly, “No I guess not.”
Sorry G – it’s the best I could come up with…..
LOL!
…and the bartender says to the rabbi, what is this, some kind of joke?