Making my way down a rain slicked street the city’s light shimmers off damp centuries old cobbles conspire to make the menacing warehouse district benignly picturesque.Suddenly laughter rings out of a bar followed by the dreaded, “ RECTUM it nearly killed ‘em!” I ran into the middle of the bar desperate for the joke teller, hellbent on finally getting the setup. Realizing too late the place was empty, the octagenarian barkeep asleep at his post. It was the T.V. again. Out of the last ten encounters three had been T.V. related. I should explain myself. Promise you won’t laugh? Never mind I don’t believe you …
I’m being haunted by a punchline. No matter how hard I try I can’t discover the set-up. The priest in Rome said the only way to exorcise the punch line was to discover the set up, an exercise in futility that has engaged me for nearly ten years.
Everybody knows the punch line, nobody knows the set up.They all say “It’s so funny it don’t need a setup!”
Twenty years later and it just ain’t that funny…