Old Jews Telling Jokes: as Youtube series go, this one has a cer­tain con­cep­tu­al puri­ty. That its videos have become very pop­u­lar indeed won’t come as a sur­prise to any­one who grew up in a large Jew­ish fam­i­ly; you want a joke told right, you go to the top of the fam­i­ly tree. We’ve seen jokes told by den­tists, busi­ness­men and even the likes of lawyer and polit­i­cal com­men­ta­tor Alan Der­showitz and for­mer New York City may­or Ed Koch. Above you’ll see “I Want to Have a Mon­key,” one of the series’ jokes told by graph­ic design­er and New York mag­a­zine co-founder Mil­ton Glaser, cre­ator of logos for DC Comics, the Brook­lyn Brew­ery, and of course, in the form of the uni­ver­sal­ly rec­og­nized I ♥ NY, his city. You can learn more about his 60-year design career in the short doc­u­men­tary by Hill­man Cur­tis just below:

Unlike most of the videos’ stars, who stand in front of a stan­dard white back­ground, Glaser tells his jokes in a more inter­est­ing set­ting: his long­time office, of which you’ll see more in Cur­tis’ doc­u­men­tary. When the Old Jews Telling Jokes crew turned up, they found in this force of graph­ic design a ver­i­ta­ble fount of punch­lines. He demon­strates his comedic acu­men in eight oth­er episodes: “The Res­ur­rect­ing Rab­bi,” “Magi­cian and a Sledge­ham­mer,” “Two Gar­men­tos,” “Edward R. Mur­row,” “Am I Thirsty,” “Ele­phant and Croc­o­dile,” “I’d Like to Be Cas­trat­ed,” and “The Par­rot.” Here we have anoth­er les­son to take from our elders, or at least from this spe­cif­ic elder: you can’t just rise to and remain for decades at the very top of your exot­ic and chal­leng­ing field. You’ve also got to have good tim­ing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Most “Intel­lec­tu­al Jokes”: Our Favorite Open Cul­ture Read­er Sub­mis­sions

Sketch­es of Artists by the Late New Media Design­er Hill­man Cur­tis

Mick­ey Mouse In Viet­nam: The Lost Anti-War Ani­ma­tion from 1968

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Last week, we point­ed to a Red­dit thread that asked for users’ most “intel­lec­tu­al jokes.” Using that idea as a plat­form, we asked our read­ers to sub­mit their favorites, and we received a healthy num­ber of howlers (and some clunk­ers). We also got a piece of dour crit­i­cism from one read­er, who wrote, “real­ly? intel­li­gent humor means that it’s wit­ty and sub­tle, not that it’s [sic] stan­dard type of joke with ‘smarter’ con­tent..
come on amer­i­cans, you can do bet­ter.”

I can only assume two things here (per­haps mak­ing an an ass of u and me): the writer is not an “amer­i­can” and is some­thing of a con­nois­seur of what he or she calls “intel­li­gent humor.” I am very sym­pa­thet­ic. Whether this per­son has in mind the mor­dant absur­dism of Beck­ett, the tren­chant wit of Swift or Wilde, the sur­re­al­is­tic flights of farce in Von­negut, or the heights of high-toned silli­ness in Mon­ty Python, I can’t say. All of these are excel­lent exam­ples of “intel­li­gent humor.”

But I’m afraid our read­er has mis­read the prompt, which asked specif­i­cal­ly for “intel­lec­tu­al jokes”—like the ani­mat­ed New York­er car­toon above. The for­mu­la for jokes every­one knows: set­up, punch­line. The “intel­lec­tu­al” part relates, I think, express­ly to the “smarter” con­tent, but the judg­ment of such humor is sub­jec­tive, of course, and in the brief selec­tion below of my favorite sub­mis­sions, I will cer­tain­ly admit as much. My sense of humor is nei­ther wit­ty nor sub­tle; I’m par­tial to the puerile—puns, sil­ly rever­sals, broad satire. Of course, the same can be said of all of the writ­ers above to some degree or anoth­er.

So with­out fur­ther going-on about it, here are a few of my favorite Open Cul­ture read­ers’ “intel­lec­tu­al jokes” (with my edi­to­r­i­al intru­sions in brack­ets):

• Rene Descartes is attend­ing a soiree at the Palais Ver­sailles. A som­me­li­er approach­es and asks, “Mon­sieur Descartes, would you like a glass of wine?” Descartes paus­es and answers, “I think not.” And poof!–he dis­ap­pears.

[This one’s not par­tic­u­lar­ly funny—it’s cute—but I quite like the speci­fici­ty in the set­up and the fun sur­prise of “poof!”]

•  I used to be a struc­tur­al lin­guist, but now I’m not Saus­sure.

[Told you I like puns]

• Masochist walks up to a sadist in a bar, says to the sadist “hurt me.” Sadist says “no.”
• What do you get when you com­bine a joke with a rhetor­i­cal ques­tion?

[So dry and dead­pan, these two. Love it.]

• What did the indige­nous per­son say to the post­mod­ern anthro­pol­o­gist? “Can we talk about me for a change?”

[A lit­tle crack at navel-gaz­ing po-mo academics—part of a pop­u­lar genre]

• Blind guy with a see­ing eye dog walks into a depart­ment store. Guy picks up dog by the tail and starts swing­ing him around over his head. Clerk rush­es over and says ner­vous­ly “Can I help you sir?” Guy replies: “No thanks, I’m just look­ing around.”

[I don’t think the con­tent of this one is par­tic­u­lar­ly “intel­lec­tu­al,” but the style is—it’s dark and weird and skirts a line between slap­stick and cru­el­ty, requir­ing a mor­bid and elas­tic imag­i­na­tion.]

• Q: What does a dyslex­ic, agnos­tic insom­ni­ac do? A: Stays up nights won­der­ing if there’s a dog.
• JOKE: What do Japan­ese pigeons sing? Answer: High Coos

[More puns, bless ‘em]

• Argon walks into a bar and orders a drink. The bar­tender says, “sir, we don’t serve noble gasses.”
 There was no reac­tion.

[For you sci­ence types. Anoth­er read­er responds with a pun for bonus points]:

• Thanks. Now all the good chem­istry jokes Argon.

Good work, read­ers. Keep ‘em com­ing. This was fun. Remem­ber, you can scan through the oth­er sub­mis­sions here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What’s the Most Intel­lec­tu­al Joke You Know?: The Best from Red­dit (and You?)

New York­er Car­toon Edi­tor Bob Mankoff Reveals the Secret of a Suc­cess­ful New York­er Car­toon

What’s the Deal with Pop Tarts? Jer­ry Sein­feld Explains How to Write a Joke

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Long before cap­i­tal “A” Acad­e­mia became a pro­fes­sion­al net­work of accred­it­ed schol­ars and fund-grub­bing insti­tu­tions, intel­lec­tu­al dis­course con­sist­ed of near­ly as much humor—bad puns, scat­ol­ogy, innu­en­do, bit­ing caricature—as deep philo­soph­i­cal dia­logue and sparkling eru­di­tion. So-called “wits” gath­ered in cof­fee hous­es to trade barbs and bon mots and to cir­cu­late their favorite lit­er­ary satires from writ­ers like Jonathan Swift, Alexan­der Pope, and John Wilmot, the 2nd Earl of Rochester, whose poet­ic out­put was often equal parts raunchy prosody and thought­ful crit­i­cal inquiry.

In our dig­i­tal times, intel­lec­tu­al humor bub­bles around the mar­gins of high cul­ture, as much as in the oblique car­toons of The New York­er as in forums like Red­dit, where jokes can be crude, hate­ful, and bor­der­line psy­chot­ic, or gen­uine­ly wit­ty and unique. Slate recent­ly picked up on a Red­dit thread that asked users “what’s the most intel­lec­tu­al joke you know?” The authors of the Slate piece com­piled sev­er­al con­tenders (and inane­ly explained each joke with  “why it’s fun­ny” addenda—good humor should­n’t require didac­tic com­men­tary).

Below, find a sam­pling of some of the Red­dit sub­mis­sions. In the com­ments sec­tion, please feel free to sub­mit your own “intel­lec­tu­al jokes” after perus­ing Red­dit to make sure some­one hasn’t beat you to the punch­line.

• From user Watch_Closely: “It’s hard to explain puns to klep­to­ma­ni­acs because they always take things lit­er­al­ly.”
• From user Arca­di­an 5656: “A biol­o­gist, a chemist, and a sta­tis­ti­cian are out hunt­ing. The biol­o­gist shoots at a deer and miss­es 5ft to the left, the chemist takes a shot and miss­es 5ft to the right, and the sta­tis­ti­cian yells, ‘We got ‘im!’ ”
• From user shan­n­man: “Who does Polyphe­mus hate more than Odysseus? Nobody!”

And below, two of the Red­di­tors’ favorites:

• From user phattmatt: “Jean-Paul Sartre is sit­ting at a French cafe, revis­ing his draft of Being and Noth­ing­ness. He says to the wait­ress, “I’d like a cup of cof­fee, please, with no cream.” The wait­ress replies, “I’m sor­ry, Mon­sieur, but we’re out of cream. How about with no milk?”
• From user snake­sand­doves: “An Irish­man goes to a build­ing site for his first day of work, and a cou­ple of Eng­lish­men think, ‘Ah, we’ll have some fun with him!’ So they walk up and say, ‘Hey, Pad­dy, as you’re new here make sure you know a joist from a gird­er…’ ‘Ah, sure, I knows’ says Pad­dy, ‘twas Joyce wrote Ulysses and Goethe wrote Faust.’”

Some clever humor above, I’d say (and in the ani­mat­ed New York­er car­toon at the top of the post). So, you think you can do bet­ter? Let’s hear your jokes in the com­ments.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

New York­er Car­toon Edi­tor Bob Mankoff Reveals the Secret of a Suc­cess­ful New York­er Car­toon

Friedrich Niet­zsche & Exis­ten­tial­ism Explained to Five-Year-Olds (in Com­i­cal Video by Red­dit)

What’s the Deal with Pop Tarts? Jer­ry Sein­feld Explains How to Write a Joke

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness