Refuge in Audacity/Jokes


 * Richard Pryor's career.
 * And Redd Foxx's career (stand-up wise)
 * A man gets pulled over for speeding. The sheriff ambles up, asks for license and registration. "I'm afraid I don't have it," the man replies sheepishly. "Why not?" asks the cop. "I, uh, think I left it at the bar. I get forgetful after a couple of drinks." "Sir, I'm going to need you to step out of the car." "No can do, sir. I stand up and the .45's gonna fall right outta my waistband." The cop is almost livid by now. "Son, what is wrong with you? What are you carrying around a loaded gun for?" "Well, the hooker's not gonna force herself into the trunk now, will she?" By now the sheriff is on the horn for backup, and half the city has arrived, complete with swat team and the Chief. As they've finished tearing his car apart and the guy is face down in the road in handcuffs, he turns to the Chief and says "Lemme guess. He probably told you I was speeding, too?"
 * From George Carlin's album "What Am I Doing in New Jersey?": "What are they going to do, give me a ticket? Some people live in fear of getting a ticket! They don't know how to handle it. You just got to be firm with the policeman. Be firm with the policeman. Policemen respect strength. While he's writing out that ticket, you gotta give him a BAD LOOK. Then, JUST before he finishes writing it out, tear it out of his hands, tell him you're gonna check it over for mistakes. Take a good, long time reading the ticket, and then crumple it up, throw it on the floor and say, "Fuck you *and* your ticket too, you asshole in a hat! I've got eight or nine of these things floating around here, you think I've got time for yours? Say...don't my taxes pay your salary? You're a public servant: go get me a glass of water. You pinheaded prick! I got a party to get to, I've got a trunk full of heroin here, get out of my way!" He'll like that. He'll be appreciating it *all* the way downtown...to the *maximum* security penitentiary where you'll spend life with no chance of parole and no conjugal visits. Except from some big guy you don't want one from."
 * So, that would be a subversion then?
 * The entire point of "The Aristocrats" and The Film of the Joke. The exact contents of the joke vary from comedian to comedian, telling to telling, but all involve filling in as much Squick and Refuge in Vulgarity as possible before reaching the punchline of what such a combination of vile acts should be called - "The Aristocrats!" Search the term on YouTube at your own risk.
 * In particular was Gilbert Gottfried's version done at a Comedy Central Roast for Hugh Hefner, where he had to repeatedly assert "I'm not finished" because everyone was laughing so hard at it. This was in response to calls of Too Soon when he opened with a 9/11 joke. The link is so NSFW that you'd be invariably fired if a supervisor heard it.
 * The point of anti-jokes:
 * What's worse than a worm in your apple?
 * Why did the boy drop his ice cream?
 * What does a blind, deaf, mute, and crippled girl get for Christmas?
 * Guy on the frontier orders a mail-order bride. Picks her up at the train station, gets in his wagon with her. The horse isn't paying attention. The man goes "one". The horse later slows down to look at a mare in the field. The man goes "two". The horse stops to eat some grass. The man goes "three", gets off the wagon, and shoots the horse without a word. The new bride says "What'd you do that for! That was a perfectly good horse!" The man looks at her and goes "one".
 * It was Ambrose Bierce than first defined chutzpah as that attitude embodied by a boy who murders his entire family, then makes for a mercy plea in court (for a lighter sentence) on the grounds that he is an orphan.
 * In one of his stand-up routines, John Mulaney says that Law and Order Special Victims Unit must have this because even though other shows get attacked for merely cussing too much, SVU regularly says stuff like "The victim was sodomized by a tire iron" or "We found feces and semen in the victim's ear".