18 Jokes for the Hall of Fame, October 3, 2023

18 Demetri Martin on Soap

“My friend has hand soap that smells like coconut. It’s nice. Unless your hands are dirty from coconuts. Then it’s the worst soap possible: ‘I can’t tell if I made any progress in this situation. This is how I started out. This sucks.’”

17 Kyle Kinane on the Lottery

“I don’t understand why the people that play a lottery aren’t more afraid of lightning. Like if you believe in those odds, shouldn’t you? ‘Hey, I’ve got 20 bucks on the Pick 5. Is that a storm? Oh, shit!’”

16 Wendy Liebman on Preparation

“I start decorating my house for Halloween in August — by not dusting and vacuuming.”

15 Jim Gaffigan on Fashion

“I’m aware that not being into fashion is a fashion choice. How annoying is that? ‘Oh, you’re not into fashion? That means you’re into normcore.’ Why can’t I wear clothes to cover my disgusting body?”

14 Jen Kirkman on Traveling Alone

“I travel alone; I went to Italy by myself this year. And it invoked a lot of reactions from people. You would have thought I said, ‘Hey, I started a race riot this year.’ People were like, ‘What?! You did what?!’”

13 Shane Torres on Cocaine Careers

“I saw a guy quit his job the best way ever. I was working at a restaurant in Fort Worth, Texas, where I’m from, and this manager, Pat, and this waiter, Richard, got in a huge argument in front of all the customers on the dining room floor, screaming back and forth, until finally, the manager, Pat, he just grabbed the waiter, Richard, and he just goes, ‘All right, Richard, get the fuck out. You’re fucking fired.’

“And Richard yelled back, without missing a beat, ‘I don’t need this goddamn job. I sell coke.’ Which is the best way ever to quit your job. You’re like, ‘Fuck your reference. I’m in the dope game now.’ I thought, ‘Richard’s gonna be alright…’

“He wasn’t. He got shot. Coke dealer.”

12 David Alan Grier on ‘Dating’

“I couldn’t get a date the entire freshman year of college. The whole year I spend… Well, they call it stalking now. But I call it getting to know you.”

11 Laurie Kilmartin on Single Parenting

“Statistically, some of you will be single parents. Sorry, I have bad news for you: Love dies, and children live.”

10 George Carlin on Gas Station Bathrooms

“Why do they lock gas station bathrooms? Are they afraid someone will clean them?”

9 Bo Burnham on Jesus

“I stopped, and I thought, ‘What would Jesus do?’ So I didn’t exist.”

8 George Wallace on Shake Shack

“Radio Shack was smart as hell to transition to shakes.”

7 Doug Stanhope on Marriage

“If marriage didn’t exist, would you invent it? Would you go, ‘Baby, this shit we got together, it’s so good we gotta get the government in on this shit. We can’t just share this commitment between us. We need judges and lawyers involved in this shit, baby. It’s hot!’”

6 Patton Oswalt on Cynicism

“I didn’t realize how bad my outlook on life was until I went on a press tour for Ratatouille and had to talk to children’s magazines and children’s TV shows. And I wasn’t interviewed by adults; I was interviewed by actual smiling children. I didn’t realize until that point how desperately I depend on negativity and cynicism to communicate with the outside world. It’s pathetic. The Oswalt family crest should just be a pair of eyes rolling off to the side, a bag of Cheetos and then the word ‘Fuck.’ That would be our shield that you’d see retreating from the great battles of history. ‘Fuck this. Bows and arrows? Nobody told me anything about bows and arrows. Goodbye.’”

5 Gianmarco Soresi on Jeff Bezos’ ‘Generosity’

“I was inspired because I saw that Jeff Bezos donated $25 million to help the homeless. Which I guess sounds generous, but I did the math. It turns out that $25 million is .028 percent of his net worth. Let me tell you something: Donating .028 percent of my net worth is like if I went up to a homeless guy and stole a dollar.”

4 Iliza Shlesinger on Fairy Tales

“We’ve been taught this message since we were little girls: Princesses get saved. Sleeping Beauty was saved when the Prince kissed her while she was sleeping. Terrible moral. What do we take away from that? Generations of men were like, ‘No, if you just kiss them when they’re sleeping, they’re forever grateful… Officer.’”

3 Chaunte Wayans on Being a ‘Poor Wayans’

“A lot of you know half of my family is rich; half my family is poor. And I grew up on the poor side, unfortunately. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been in all their films; you just need a helluva slow-motion button.”

2 Norm Macdonald on LSD

“The hardest drug I ever did: LSD. I was told to be careful because in 20 years, I can have a flashback. I thought that sounded like a good deal. But 20 years have passed with no flashback. What a ripoff that turned out to be.”

1 Michelle Wolf on Children

“It should be hard to make a human! It’s hard to make a croissant. It takes three days to make a croissant! You can make a human in that bathroom. You cannot make a croissant in that bathroom. How many people here have successfully made a croissant? How many people here have accidentally made a human?”