David Letterman does a Top Ten list that always seems to be funny. As a professional humorist, I’m interested in what I guess you could call joke architecture. There is something about the form, or architecture, of the top ten list that makes it easy to be funny. I’m always trying to spot other setups that have that same quality. I think I found another, but you have to help me test it.
A commenter on this blog, Spike, described how his wife always accuses him of going nuts if he simply states an opinion. Then he said, “I believe in her mind I have one of two states: 1) utter silence, 2) flipping out.”
I laughed out loud when I read it. It’s funny because “two states” is a natural joke form, like the top ten list. Humor is often about reducing things to their illogical least common denominator, and the two states forces you to do that.
For example, I know a few people who switch exclusively between two states:
1. Talking
2. Too busy to listen
Pick any person, or any situation, or any group, you don’t like, and see how easy it is to be funny with the “two states” setup.
Go.