18 Jokes for the Hall of Fame, September 20, 2023

18 Demetri Martin on Swimming

“Swimming is a confusing sport because sometimes you do it for fun, and other times you do it to not die. And when I’m swimming, sometimes I’m not sure which one it is. I gotta go by the outfit. Pants? Uh oh. Bathing suit? Okay. Naked? We’ll see. Should I be swimming faster, or am I getting laid?”

17 Robin Williams on Doctors

“You don’t want a doctor who also has a hobby! You don’t want a gynecologist who’s also a magician! ‘How are we doing today, Mrs. Johnson? Oh, look! A dove! (Mimes pulling out ribbons) Oh, what’s this, what’s this, and this, and this? Is this your card?’”

16 Lewis Black on the Gray of February

“I don’t care where you are; the weather in February is supposed to be awful. The weather should be gray — rainy gray, snow gray, horrible gray, every day. It just gets grayer and grayer. You finally call up your boss and go, ‘I’m not coming in.’

“Boss goes, ‘Why? Are you sick?’

“‘No, it’s too gray. I don’t know if it’s dawn or dusk. Why does the sun bother to come out?’

“And then you wake up on Valentine’s Day, and it’s so gray out you actually look at your wrist and think, ‘Hey, maybe I should slit them to see color.’”

15 Andy Kindler on Swinging

“My wife and I want to try swapping. We want to go to one of those key parties where you put your keys in a bowl. But we just want to upgrade our car.”

14 Patton Oswalt on Hiking

“Hiking is for trudging defeatedly. We’ve all agreed to it. It’s unspoken, but it’s there. But every now and then, somebody’s gotta show up, and they gotta do that weird, extra, show-off-y workout shit. It’s not enough that they’re hiking; they gotta do that urban workout where you turn the environment around you into your gym. You see a tree branch, you jump up, and you fucking do pull-ups, yeah! Where you see a park bench, you drop, and you do crunches. Grr! Grab a possum and curl it. Everything is your gym. And the men and women who do this are already gorgeous! There’s not an ounce of fat on them; you see every rib and rivet. I don’t know what fitness level they’re going for. It’s like they’re trying to reach a fitness level I like to call ‘painful to fuck.’”

13 Michelle Wolf on Periods

“Periods are gross. I know they’re gross, but I talk about them a lot because I want men to be more comfortable. But then I was thinking how we would act if men were the ones who got periods, and you know what? I don’t think we would be very nice. As soon as a man got his period, we’d be like, ‘Get in the shed, Kevin! You’re very leaky! And when you’re in the house, you’re only on the linoleum. Don’t you dare go in my living room. That’s a new slipcover, and you’re very leaky. You’re just like your father.’”

12 Anthony Jeselnik on Baby Bathing

“You don’t know anything about pain until you’ve seen your own baby drowned in a tub… And you definitely don’t know anything about how to wash a baby.”

11 Taylor Tomlinson on Her Brief Engagement

“I got engaged, but it didn’t work out. It’s okay; it wasn’t that sad. The ring — it felt weird. It kept getting caught on stuff like sweaters and my freedom.”

10 Adam Ferrara on Catholicism

“I am a Catholic. Basically, the Catholic religion is ‘If it feels good… stop.’”

9 Chelsea Peretti on Being Late

“If you put together all the ‘10 minutes late’ to therapies I’ve done, I’d probably be cured by now.”

8 Chris Redd on Los Angeles Weather

“I realized I love this weather when I went home recently and was watching a football game with some of my homies, and I realized that there’s no manly way to ask for a blanket.”

7 Ronny Chieng on His Parents Wanting Him to Be a Doctor

“When Asian parents want their kids to be doctors, ‘helping people’ is on the bottom of the list of reasons, if it even makes the list of reasons to go into medicine. ‘Helping people’ is the unfortunate byproduct of becoming a health-care professional.”

6 Nikki Glaser on Sexting

“That’s all that’s in my phone. Texts between me and men who will never love me. And naked pictures. I send those, and I shouldn’t. The cloud is not secure. But, like, neither am I. And I need constant validation. I don’t put my face in the pictures, though. Mostly ’cause he asks for them that way. But also, that’s smart.”

5 John Mulaney on His Racial Bully Problem

“When I was in grade school, I was bullied for being Asian-American. The biggest problem with that is that I am not Asian-American.”

4 Steven Wright on His Product Battle

“For my birthday, I got a humidifier and a dehumidifier. I put them in the same room and let them fight it out.”

3 Kyle Kinane on Race Car Beds

“I know the big question on everyone’s mind tonight is, ‘Kyle, have you decided who you’re going to blame for falling asleep and crashing your 2003 Ford Focus into a wall?’ 

There are several choices. We could blame the bourbon and the amount drank thereof. We could blame the mix CD that I made of 1980s power ballads that I entitled I’m a Big Girl Now. Or we could go with the favorable choice: My parents. They were the ones who bought me a race car bed when I was a young boy. And nothing sends more of a mixed message about falling asleep behind the wheel. ‘Is it like the fast ones on TV, mom?’ ‘You bet it is, Junior. Sweet dreams.’”

2 Margaret Cho on Abortion

“Most conservatives also believe in the death penalty, but not abortion, which proves they like to procrastinate.”

1 Roy Wood Jr. on Cinna-Fuego Toast Crunch

“Do you know what spicy cereal is? Soup!”