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.

Turtle Mugging (from bike!!)(Hamptons)

As I was perusing our Hamptons jokes I couldn't believe I hadn't posted this one, told from a bike (well, a dude ON a bike)! We were just getting out of our first of several Mercedes-lovin' towns when we were pleased to find ourselves behind this self-propelled, earth-friendly gent. As we passed I tapped the brakes and Mocha, perceptive team player that he is, rolled down the glass and popped the StopMe question, "Excuse me, sir. Do you have any Grey Poupon?" Actually, you know the question as well as I do, and besides, Mocha doesn't get any intuition points because I was screaming, "See if he has any jokes-- get him!!" The guy pedaled a half-dozen times, deep in thought, then Mocha got the camera going just as he came up with the Turtle Mugging Joke. A guy on the go telling a joke about two turtle muggers moving way too fast! Pure joketry (that's joke combined with poetry for you novices).
Just by virtue of being on the bike he joins an elite group of StopMe joke-tellers who deliver from weird places or in weird ways. But even without the prop, it's a very worthy contribution.

Yiddish Pillow Joke (Hamptons)

Something about a yarmulke that just kinda scares me off when we go around with our frivolous request for a joke. But we were so pleasantly surprised by this exchange, which includes a translation that somehow makes this old third grade classic sound like a wise old adage.

Technology Joke (Hamptons)

Mocha and I had finally made it to the beach after hours of traffic and a lukewarm reception in the rather generic tourist towns along the way (sorry, Hamptons!). We took off our shoes and strolled along the water's edge, hand in hand, just being with each other. Mocha wasn't ready to take the relationship to the next level, however, so we started asking for jokes. This guy has a great Vince Vaughn vibe and seemed to be waiting for some dudes to come by with their camera looking for jokes, even if they were pretty gay. His kids shouting into the camera is a nice exclamation point at the end of a very solid joke, and they go on to tell their own jokes.

Smile Joke (Hamptons)

Ah, the children. Those little people with such big... heads.
Turns out the Hamptons sun jogged the jokemories of the children, as the under-10 crowd makes up a good portion of this expeditions take. Now we all know the appeal of the "jokes by kids" collection is not the jokes themselves, but the charm of the tellers. The false starts, the stage fright, the oh-so-cute kid-like things those kids will do. In the case of the Smile Joke below, it's the "Hey that's not a joke" element that has us all "Awwww!", whereas when adults try this I just get pissed off. I felt bad that I bullied him into a format he wasn't comfortable with ("You say 'knock-knock' and I'll say 'Who's There'")-- not sure what my problem was-- but my sense is he's gone on to a successful life anyway. Just not as a comedian.

Dentist Sex Joke (Hamptons)

Something like 8 months ago I went to the dentist. He told me I had a small cavity that would need to be filled either during that visit or the next. I'm the kind of guy who likes to get things over with, but I'm even more the kind of guy that really doesn't like dental work.
In other people it's fine. When a friend says he's on the way to the dentist and is nervous I usually just say, "Oh you'll be fine," and go back to whatever I'm doing. But I've noticed when it's me who needs the dental work, my anxiety level is quite a bit higher, and I want to talk about it a lot more than when it's my friend. My wife will attest to this.
So when I said to Dr. Piatrowski, "You know what? Let's do it next time," I basically signed up my wife for 8 months of talking me down, and myself for hoping I get hit by a bus in the mean time.
Welp, buses have been swerving to avoid me and tomorrow I get my cavity filled. I realize it's unlikely this little tale of woe will elicit much sympathy, especially from all those friends I absentmindedly reassured. But maybe this dentist joke is just the thing I need to remind me that dentists are just people too, people who laugh and feel and make love and have sex and call their moms and make love and have intercourse, just like the rest of us. And when all's said and done my fear is about as justified as the chocolate milk I just drank with those two-bite brownies.

Intro: Hamptons Expedition!

Mocha and Vanilla’s overnight expedition! What’s summer in NYC without sitting in LIE traffic during prime beach hours, wondering why the hell you didn’t get an earlier start? The expedition starts off in the little tourist towns (lots of Izods and ice cream) en route to the waves and ends up on the beach itself, with lots of stop-n-go traffic in between. After a day collecting jokes from rich people, though, we couldn’t get a room anywhere and ended up driving back to Manhattan in the middle of the night, crashing at Mocha’s apartment, our dreams of waking up to a Long Island Sound sunrise smothered by a crappy aerobed.

We Submit!

Hey, someone submitted a joke to our site!... Or so I thought. Just when I thought someone beside my mom is looking at the goddamn thing, Mocha tells me it's only his college buddy Julie S. sticking her son up there, at Mocha's urging, no less. But hey,what a grand opportunity to remind you (Mom) that you don't have to wait for the StopMe crew to come beating down your door. Submit a joke yourself and take full control of your jokestiny.