18 Jokes for the Hall of Fame, October 9, 2023

18 Steven Wright on Parking

“When I get really bored, I like to drive downtown and get a great parking spot, then sit in my car and count how many people ask me if I’m leaving.”

17 Paul Rodriguez on Mexican Funerals

“Our funerals are different, you know why? Because Mexican funerals are catered! A lot of homeless people go to Mexican funerals just for the food. You don’t believe me? God forbid, should your life ever go south, pick up the paper and look at the obituaries. Whenever there is like a grandma that dies, like a Garcia or a Gonzalez, you know there’s gonna be good eating.”

16 Katt Williams on Self-Driving Cars

“I’m thinking of buying me a self-driving car. I’m going to be in the back seat. You pull me over; I have no idea what to tell you. Talk to the driver.”

15 Ron White on Optimism

“I believe that if life gives you lemons, you should make lemonade — and try to find somebody whose life has given them vodka and have a party.”

14 Neal Brennan on His Funeral

“I’m going to gather my kids around my deathbed and be like, ‘Look kids, I’m going to pay for my own funeral; whatever is left over you can split up amongst yourselves. Then I’m going to have the most expensive funeral in the history of death. I’m going to have a platinum casket with my name written in diamonds on the side. My Social Security number, too, because fuck it, I’m dead now. What are they gonna do with it?”

13 Jimmy Carr on Charity

“I did a sponsored walk once. In the end, I’d managed to raise so much money I could afford a taxi.”

12 Maria Bamford on Her Late Mother

“My mom, so positive: ‘You know, the great thing about the past couple years is this is the first time in my life I’ve been below goal weight on Weight Watchers. So my membership has been gratis.’

“‘Mom, you do know that even if a coffin is tight around the hips, eventually it fits.’ But the joke’s on me because she got herself cremated, and now she’s just a pound!”

11 Robin Williams on Divorce

“Ah, yes, divorce — from the Latin word meaning to rip out a man’s genitals through his wallet.”

10 Laurie Kilmartin on Talking to Boys and Girls

“Listening to your son after you’ve spent time with a girl will make you wonder when he became Jodie Foster in Nell.”

9 Wendy Liebman on Pie

“The problem with eating pie is that everyone knows exactly how much you ate.”

8 Bo Burnham on Disney

“If Mickey’s a mouse, and Minnie’s a mouse, and Donald’s a duck, and Daisy and Goofy… If they’re all animals and they can talk, why is Pluto just a fucking dog? Did they just forget to anthropomorphize him, or worse, is Mickey keeping a mentally handicapped dude as a pet?”

7 Alec Parent on Generational Comparisons

“As millennials, we get compared to the World War II generation, and that’s not fair. These people, they fought the Nazis. I’ll fight a Nazi online, it’s not the same. These people picked up a rifle for their country; I won’t pick up my cell phone if I don’t recognize the number. Different standards of bravery.”

6 Demetri Martin on Blind Literacy

“I wonder what the word for ‘dots’ looks like in braille.”

5 Patton Oswalt on Sweatpants

“I want to apologize to anybody that I ever made fun of for wearing sweatpants in public. I’m sorry. I was wrong. You were right. They’re a miracle. I thought that the pinnacle of mankind would be Mars colonies or teleportation. Nope, sweatpants! That was it: Sweatpants. It was fire, the wheel, writing, agriculture, penicillin and sweatpants. Everything else, we’re just on the downward slope. We did it. We’re all done.”

4 Doug Stanhope on Drinking in Canada

“In Canada, the drinking age is 18. That’s unnecessary. Nobody wants to get loaded around people who have hope and their whole lives still ahead of them.”

3 Greg Fitzsimmons on NFL Team Names

“Whatever your team says they are, that’s what they should have to be. If you’re the San Francisco 49ers, your entire team should be 49-year-old men — just in the huddle complaining of hemorrhoids and bad backs. Chicago Bears should come out as real bears with helmets on, playing against 11 dolphins just dead on the field by halftime.”

2 Bill Burr on Florida State Football

“I actually like Florida State, but that tomahawk chop thing drives me nuts. It has nothing to do with the Native American thing; it’s the fact that they do it every three seconds. You know white people came up with that in the 1920s when they got sound in movies. ‘What do they sound like?’ ‘I don’t know.’ They got some moron on the set just going (stereotypical chant). ‘That sounds good. Put some rouge on his face and have him do it with an ax.’”

1 George Carlin on Abortion

“Here’s another question I have: How come when it’s us, it’s an abortion, and when it’s a chicken, it’s an omelet? Are we so much better than chickens all of a sudden? When did this happen, that we passed chickens in goodness? Name six ways we’re better than chickens... See, nobody can do it! You know why? ’Cause chickens are decent people. You don’t see chickens hanging around in drug gangs, do you? No. You don’t see a chicken strapping some guy into a chair and hooking up his nuts to a car battery, do you? When’s the last chicken you heard about came home from work and beat the shit out of his hen, huh? Doesn’t happen, ’cause chickens are decent people.”