18 Jokes for the Hall of Fame, October 2, 2023

18 Jim Gaffigan on Thanksgiving

“Thanksgiving. It’s like we didn’t even try to come up with a tradition. The tradition is, we overeat. ‘Hey, how about at Thanksgiving, we just eat a lot?’ ‘But we do that every day!’ ‘Oh. What if we eat a lot with people that annoy the hell out of us?’”

17 Wendy Liebman on Money

“Money talks, and it says, ‘You don’t have any.’”

16 Roy Wood Jr. on McDonald’s

“This is how delicious McDonald’s is: McDonald’s just recently gave us all-white meat Chicken McNuggets. At no point did we stop to ask what the nuggets were made of before that.”

15 Demetri Martin on Dog Clothing

“I saw a dog wearing a sweater, and I thought that it looked ridiculous. Because dogs don’t have arms. If you’re gonna put clothes on a dog, you should put two pairs of pants on it.”

14 Ron Funches on Jobs

“Jobs suck. We all know that. There are no good jobs. Even when someone’s like, ‘I got a good job,’ it just means they got a good bad thing, you know? Jobs are horrible.”

13 Fortune Feimster on Her Appearance

“Genetics didn’t quite work with me. My career options were either comedy, softball coach or UPS driver. I don’t look good in brown, so I’m a comedian.”

12 Christopher Titus on His Sobriety

“I finally stopped drinking when I hit 17 years old. Yes, imagine the fuck-up I must have been. Stopped drinking because it isn’t really good for your health — and I fell into a bonfire! Yeah, you’re done drinking then. You don’t need AA. Falling into a bonfire is a one-step program.”

11 Laurie Kilmartin on Porn

“I decided that if I ever catch my son watching porn, how I will handle it is I will sit down and watch it with him. Because what better way to deter him from watching more porn than the memory of his mother commenting on it. I will ruin it for him! I’ll be like, ‘Honey, ah, note, women don’t make that noise. If a woman ever makes that noise, it’s because she’s really behind on her rent.’”

10 George Wallace on ‘Weird’ Al

“What if we’re the weird ones y’all, and he’s just Al Yankovic? Makes ya think.”

9 George Carlin on Capitalism

“Capitalism tries for a delicate balance: It attempts to work things out so that everyone gets just enough stuff to keep them from getting violent and trying to take other people’s stuff.”

8 Doug Stanhope on Nationalism

“Nationalism does nothing but teach you how to hate people that you’ve never met. And all of a sudden, you take pride in accomplishments you had no part in whatsoever, and you brag about it. Americans will go, ‘Fuck the French! If we hadn’t saved their ass in two World Wars, they’d be speaking German right now!’ 

“And you go, ‘Oh, was that us? Was that me and you, Tommy? We saved the French? I know I blacked out a little bit after that fourth shot of Jägermeister last night, but I do know we went through the Wendy’s drive-thru to get one of them Frescata sandwiches that looked so alluring in the commercial. Then we ordered it and realized we had no money. We had to ditch out before the second window, and those douchebags in line behind us with the bass music probably got our order, and we laughed about that. But I don’t remember saving the French at all.”

7 Neal Brennan on Student Loans

“Student loans are basically small business loans, and the business is you. And you’re maybe not such a great business.”

6 Iliza Shlesinger on Drunkenness

“There’s different kinds of drunks, and people think they get a lot smarter when they’re drunk. Some people want to talk when they’re drunk. The Latin phrase for this is ‘in vino veritas,’ which means ‘in wine, there’s truth.’ Which is why when girls get drunk, we’re always like, ‘Can I just tell you a secret?’”

5 Patton Oswalt on Florida

“The only reason to visit Florida is to identify your daughter’s dead body. That’s it. The state flag of Florida should be a coroner holding up a sheet and then two parents just screaming. Then there’s a flamingo in the bottom right-hand corner with sunglasses going, ‘YEAHHH!’ And then in Latin, it says, ‘Why did she go into porn?’”

4 Hannibal Buress on Office Life

“It’s weird working in an office because I don’t know how many times we’re supposed to say hello to people throughout the day. Because I keep seeing the same people, I’m like, I saw you 45 minutes ago; should I say ‘Hello,’ or should I just grumble under my breath. I don’t know what to do. I just made a rule that if I say hello to you three times on Monday, I say nothing to you on Tuesday. You’re ‘hello’-ed out for the week.”

3 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! Kevin, get in the shed. No! 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.’”

2 Jaboukie Young-White on Bootleg DVDs

“I used to love watching bootleg DVDs. Whenever you watched it, you were never alone because you were watching it with that person. You’d be in the middle of the movie just hearing, ‘Hahahaha! That boy Nemo be crazy as hell.’ And I’d be like, ‘Damn, Nemo is crazy.’”

1 Emily Heller on Being Single Forever

“I just really like to say I want to be single forever in front of my married friends because they hate that. There’s always one that will condescend to me about it and be like, ‘Come on, single forever? You don’t know that. You can’t know you’re gonna want something forever.’ And I’m like, ‘That is an amazing point. That would be stupid of me to know I want something forever in my 20s. The only thing I can think of that might be stupider would be spending $50,000 to say it in front of everyone I know.’”