KaraJOKE Night: Sept 27

Ok, so we'd talked about doing some kind of live event before, and even went so far as to schedule a "launch party" this past Feburary at some back-stabbing establishment we're way to classy to mention (SIP on 998 Amsterdam Ave). We even so far as to invite people to said launch party and even, yes, to show up ourselves to said launch party a few hours early to hook up a few wires and tape up some posters. Then, mere hours before we were due to embarrass ourselves in front of work colleagues, co-op board members, and long forgotten folk who lingered deep in our email address books, we were told the owners of the place "double-booked" and we were out of luck.
Ex-squeeze-me?
Yes, bad scene. But I can hear Mocha now: "You're supposed to be blogging about the party we have coming up, not the one we canceled! Besides," he's saying in my head right now, "This one is going to be WAY better because we'll have KaraJOKE," he's exclaiming in my head, "The first event of it's kind where Regular Folks Tell Jokes! The one on Thurs, September 27 at The Underground Lounge on Broadway and 107th St.," he's going on with greater and greater fervor, in my head, "not to mention a contest with two ways to win," he points out with wildly waving hands, in my head, "and the copy for the invitation," he's barely breathing now he's so excited, all red-faced and sweaty, jumping up and down, in my head, "is as follows!!!"

French Joke (South St/Battery Pk)

Allow me to turn your attention to our collection of jokes told in a foreign language! Turns out the rest of world dabbles in this little thing we at StopMe like to call "telling jokes." Now if you want dead air, just tune into the moment after a tellers from this collection drop the punchline on us uni-languaged USA-ers. Since it's socially quite lame to fake laugh when you don't speak the language (think about it), we can only smile sheepishly and offer our weak thanks for the diversity street cred. Sometimes we are blessed with a translation, but the only thing worse than not getting one is getting an ATTEMPTED translation that fizzles into general awkwardness. Case in point:

Intro to South St/Battery Pk Expedition

This is from our South St./Battery Pk. Expedition (Manhattan, 7/22/07), or Day 2 of Mocha and ‘Nilla’s overnight expedition. We were supposed to wake up in some charming beach-front motel, a little hung over but looking forward to greasy eggs, some good coffee and another breezy day scrounging jokes in the sand. Unfortunately there wasn’t a single room available in any of the beach-front motels; not that we could afford it anyway. So instead I woke up on Mocha’s living room floor staring at a cat turd, the traffic noise outside a far cry from the gentle swish of the waves you heard behind the Hamptons jokes. With a mere 8 hours in front of us to finish off this expedition we needed to stay close to home, thus the South Street Seaport/ Battery Park expedition. It wasn’t the beach, but we could see water, and we ended up with over 40 jokes, an excellent take considering the cat turd.

Vodka Piss Joke (Hamptons)

I just love getting jokes from people on the job. There's just something so Mr. Roger's Neighborhood about bumping into a real NYC native in his City Sights jumper, ready to share with us kiddies a little piece of his "world"— a joke about a guy who pisses vodka and leverages this oddity to get his wife to blow him! Would you be mine? Could you be mine? Won't you be... my neighbor!

Repeat Joke (Hamptons)

I just had to advertise how much of a moron I am.

Her: Pete and Repeat are in a boat. Pete jumps off, who's left?
Me (expert Joke-ologist): I don't know-- who?

The lesson here is if you rely on other people to make your joke work, even professionals, you're just going to end up as a filthy rich blond on a yacht.