jokes – My Book Joy

Is This Anything? by Jerry Seinfeld

Recommended: sure
Do you like Jerry Seinfeld’s jokes? for a linear timeline of his jokes through decades, sourced from routines, tv shows, and never-performed material, for jokes that read almost like a story with a very natural flow and connections between them

Summary

Since his first performance at the legendary New York nightclub “Catch a Rising Star” as a twenty-one-year-old college student in fall of 1975, Jerry Seinfeld has written his own material and saved everything. “Whenever I came up with a funny bit, whether it happened on a stage, in a conversation, or working it out on my preferred canvas, the big yellow legal pad, I kept it in one of those old school accordion folders,” Seinfeld writes. “So I have everything I thought was worth saving from forty-five years of hacking away at this for all I was worth.”

For this book, Jerry Seinfeld has selected his favorite material, organized decade by decade. In page after hilarious page, one brilliantly crafted observation after another, readers will witness the evolution of one of the great comedians of our time and gain new insights into the thrilling but unforgiving art of writing stand-up comedy.

Thoughts

I went through a phase in The Covid Times of watching Seinfeld for what was my first time, barring miscellaneous episodes I saw pieces of over the years at a hotel or flipping through channels. There’s a segment in each show with a bit of Jerry doing a standup routine on a topic that usually relates in some way to the plot of that episode. In this book, I recognized some of those little segments that I had heard in the show. There is definitely material that you may have heard or read elsewhere included in this, because it’s a pretty comprehensive collection of it all. If you’re an avid Jerry Seinfeld person, this book will have some new stuff, and a lot of familiar stuff.

The organization of this made it a lot easier to read it straight through. It’s set up with jokes from each decade of his career, and this contextualizes a lot of it in ways that makes it helpful to remember. Some thoughts I had while reading this:
“Oh, this was before the internet.”
“Oh right, misogyny wasn’t seen as so socially problematic.”
“Oh, yup, 9/11 definitely changed some things.”

Continue reading →

Summary

A man walks into a bar. It’s a low one, so he gets a promotion within his first six months on the job.

Four comedy writers transform classic joke setups into sharp commentary about the everyday and structural sexism that pervades all facets of life. Jokes to Offend Men arms readers with humorous quips to shut down workplace underminers, condescending uncles, and dismissive doctors, or to share with their exhausted friends at the end of a long day. A cutting, cathartic spin on the old-fashioned joke book, Jokes to Offend Men is a refreshing reclamation of a tired form for anyone who’s ever been told to “lighten up, it’s just a joke!”

Thoughts

The title is a bit tongue in cheek, but the jokes themselves pull no punches. This collection is sometimes funny jokes, but often read more to me like social commentary on the form of anti-joke format (where it’s set up like a joke, but is actually just a fact or point instead of a traditional punchline). So yes, I had some smiles and a few laughs, but overall it was less funny and more grim. The mood is very much like when you laugh at terrible things because the alternative is to give up.

Continue reading →