I Might as Well Explain the Joke
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A Peanuts strip where Spike wakes up after a party with a lampshade on his head.

Wearing a Lampshade on Your Head

The Setup “The third generic type of humor with a reputation for being inappropriate is the practical joke … To be labeled as a real practical joker is a career-demolishing fate. It brands one as a lowbrow possessing a lampshade-on-the-head sensibility–someone to be avoided at all costs.” –The Light Touch:

By Grayson Davis 04 May 2026
The South Park kids dressed as metrosexuals.

Metrosexuals

The Setup A feminized society instructs us to abandon all precepts that our thoughts, desires, and delights are any different at all from those of a woman. Do this and we are bestowed the title of society's flaccid favorite, the metrosexual. The newly favored man is not really

By Grayson Davis 06 Apr 2026
Laughing conventioneers in Sons of the Desert (1933)

Horny Conventioneers

The Setup You can probably name a few stock joke characters off the top of your head: the man who walks into a bar, travelers stranded on a desert island, those sorts of guys. You can probably name one or two that stick in your brain despite being long obsolete,

By Grayson Davis 02 Mar 2026
Ziggy talks to a college registrar: "I'm sorry Ziggy, but underwater basket weaving doesn't qualify you for a liberal arts degree!"

Underwater Basket Weaving

The Setup "The bride is a graduate of Prairie Dog Tech, where she received her degree in underwater basket weaving. Her other pursuits of study were familiar bird calls, Egyptian folk dancing and men." –1952 April Fools' Day article announcing "Chlorophyll I.S. Green Marries Ima

By Grayson Davis 02 Feb 2026
Newspaper headline: Gangway--Time For 'Coffee Break'

Coffee Breaks

The Setup “In some government offices there are so many coffee breaks that the employees can't sleep at their work.” –Evan Esar, 20,000 Quips & Quotes, 1968 This is, fortunately, not an essay about jokes like “Don’t talk to me until I’ve had my coffee.

By Grayson Davis 05 Jan 2026
Weekly World News headline: $2 million lawsuit over bad hairdo!

Frivolous Lawsuits

The Setup Let’s get it out of the way because you’re probably thinking about it. This is not going to be about Liebeck v. McDonald's Restaurants, the infamous 1994 lawsuit where an elderly woman sued McDonald’s after burning herself with hot coffee. You know that

By Grayson Davis 01 Dec 2025
Crop of a comic where Bill Clinton sees Elvis.

Elvis Is Alive

The Setup “5. Elvis Is Living in My Bunker (Baghdad Enquirer)” – From David Letterman’s “Top 10 Headlines in Today's Baghdad Newspapers,” February 1, 1991 Elvis Presley suffered a ghoulish revival in the late 80s that detached him completely from his career as a musician. The conspiracy that

By Grayson Davis 03 Nov 2025

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Welcome to I Might As Well Explain the Joke

Welcome to I Might As Well Explain the Joke

I Might As Well Explain the Joke is a monthly blog where I write about popular jokes in American history, the kind that seep into the culture at large and get repeated on TV and in the funny pages and by everyday people. Each post will discuss one joke, its

By Grayson Davis 28 Oct 2025
I Might as Well Explain the Joke
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