I got the horse right here.
Nobody tells jokes anymore. This might be due to Twitter, both because of the shortening of attention spans it has helped engender and the "everyone's a comedian" ethos that makes people save their "best" material for the idiotic mimesis that results in the rush to be the first person to say the same thing everyone else is saying about a current event or trend. Or it might be because of the contemporary attitude which people with carefully curated personas affect when they insistently inform you that they don't think things are funny, a stance I don't quite comprehend but which, to the best of my understanding, has created a whole new genre of comedy-adjacent monology to serve those who want to feel better about being completely humorless but still like to go see a show.
Whatever the reason, nobody tells jokes anymore. I don't mean the above-mentioned one-liners or the deliberately crafted narratives of stand-up routines which allow us to observe the everyday absurdities in which our hours expire as if from behind a reciprocal mirror, but the basic set-up/story/punchline format that has been the standard structure of humorous anecdote for [I dunno, probably a while, I don't have time to look it up]. You know what I mean: "A guy walks into a bar." "A rabbi, a priest and an imam are playing golf." "A bear and a rabbit meet in the middle of the woods." (There are an array of openings, but it's telling that the bar variant is generally the most popular, probably due to what the academics would refer to as "the cultural foregrounding of male spaces" in the days when funny stories were common currency. It is probably no coincidence that the joke has entered hospice care at the same time that the New York Times, the gold standard for reliable if tardy reportage on the way we live now, informs us that rich people don't drink so much anymore. A guy walking into a gym—or whatever horrific monstrosity now plays host to people who no longer choose to blunt the terrible awareness of existence with luscious, life-enhancing alcohol—surely lacks the same degree of potential for amusement, although as someone who has not stepped foot in a gym since high school I am open to the possibility that perhaps there are more interesting things happening in them these days of which I am unaware. Given the number of people I see standing outside them holding large plastic cups filled with the extracted fluids of what used to be beets and kale fronds let’s just say I have my doubts, but I’m sure we’re due for an article any day about the new gyms and the affluent fun-loving teetotalers who patronize them which will prove me wrong.) These openings would let you know exactly what was about to happen: You could relax for a bit while someone else took hold of the wheel and drove you around the block, mentally. Hopefully there was a lesson or a laugh at the end of the trip but at the very least you didn't have to worry about steering for a few moments. Now that all we do is think about steering and worry about all the steering to come it might be more important than ever for those few brief breaks from keeping our eyes on the road.
So today I want to tell you a joke. I should in the spirit of frankness which I hope you are aware is a vital precept underpinning the ideology of this newsletter inform you that my schedule is super crazy over the next week and as such I cannot fully devote the time to crafting a complete story of my own as a diversion from whatever despair you personally carry around with you, but this is not simply a case of me telling a joke to tell a joke (or get an easy edition out): The joke is an analogy and I will tell you what it analogizes at the end. Ready? (Before we begin I should warn you that this is by no means an obscure or unpopular joke and it is very likely that you have heard it before. If that is in fact the case I apologize and ask only that you not shout out the punchline to ruin it for everyone else. Against all odds a number of young people subscribe to this newsletter, and they are unfamiliar with any jokes that predate Harry Potter, which this one certainly does.) Okay, here we go:
A guy walks into a bar. (Yes! It's one of those!) He looks around and to his surprise, there in the corner, is a horse standing on a stage next to a bucket filled with a massive pile of five dollar bills. He walks up to the bar and asks the bartender what the story is.
"Well, you put five bucks in the bucket and if you can make the horse laugh the money's all yours. But I should warn you, no one's done it yet."
The guy smiles at the bartender, walks over to the stage and drops five bucks in the bucket. He leans over towards the horse and within thirty seconds the horse is cackling and whinnying hysterically. The guy picks up the bucket and, without saying another word, walks out of the bar.
Several years go by and one day the door opens and it's the same guy. He looks at the stage and he sees the same horse, this time standing next to two buckets, both filled to the top with ten dollar bills. The same bartender is working the shift, and he recognizes the guy, because everyone at the bar has been talking about him since that day years back.
"Welcome, stranger," he says with a smile. "The deal now is it costs ten bucks, and you've got to make the horse cry. But believe me, no one has even come close since we started."
The guy grins back at the bartender, walks over to the stage and places a ten dollar bill atop one of the heaving piles. He stands in front of the horse and within thirty seconds the horse is crying uncontrollably. I don't know if you've ever heard a horse weep, but it's a terrible thing, and this horse is really just snorting and sobbing to no end. The guy picks up a bucket in each hand and starts walking out the door, but the bartender runs up to him before he can leave.
"Mister," he says, "you won that money fair and square, but I just gotta know: How'd you get the horse to laugh and cry?"
"Well," says the guy with one foot out the door, "the first time I told him that my cock was bigger than his and the second time I showed him."
[PAUSE FOR LAUGHTER]
Okay, yes, great, we all enjoy a good guffaw about horse cocks, and it's nice to know that there are still plenty of jokes you can tell these days that aren't offensive to races, genders or ethnicities, unless you consider a horse to be any one of those things, in which case you should maybe think a little bit about how you view the world and how well that's working out for you. In any event, I promised you an analogy, and here it is: You are the horse. My cock is my sadness. I can make you laugh by telling you how big it is, but if I ever actually showed you, you would never stop crying.
Well, that's it for this week. I hope you appreciated the joke, and if nothing else I hope you enjoyed the line "My cock is my sadness," which works on so many levels and might be the funniest thing I've ever written. "My cock is my sadness." If any of you wind up being responsible for what goes on my tombstone I urge you to give strong consideration to that one. Thank you for your attention.