He was crying softly, and he had such an interesting face that I struck up a conversation with him. He said his name was Bob Seger, “like the big rock star”. Turns out he was of mixed ancestry; one side of his family was from Thailand, and the other side was from Morocco. He said his grandmother, who had recently passed away, had perfected a fusion dish representative of both cultures. It was a Lemongrass Goat Roll, and he used to eat them voraciously when he was a teenage boy, but he was crying because he knew he would never taste it again.
“Yeah,” he said, “I miss that Old Thai-Moroccan Roll.”
Joke Poo: The Lost Widget
I encountered a peculiar gentleman at the laundromat this morning…
He was meticulously sorting socks, and he possessed such an unusual aura that I felt compelled to engage him. He introduced himself as Edgar Sprocket, “like the little gear in machinery.” Apparently, he came from a long line of tinkers; one branch of his family hailed from Switzerland, renowned for their precision clockwork, and the other from the remote highlands of Scotland, famed for their sturdy, handcrafted tools. His grandfather, recently retired, had dedicated his life to inventing, culminating in a revolutionary gadget – a self-folding laundry widget, combining Swiss accuracy with Scottish practicality. Edgar, once a keen apprentice, lamented that the design schematics were lost, along with a crucial prototype component, now irreplaceable.
“Yes,” he sighed, “I desperately need that Old Swiss-Scotch Socket.”
Alright, let’s dissect this comedic masterpiece!
Key Elements of the Joke:
- Misdirection: The setup leads us to expect a story about meeting a unique character on the subway. The “interesting face” fuels this anticipation.
- Name Drop/Association: Using “Bob Seger” as a point of reference creates an immediate association with a well-known figure, amplifying the humor when the character is clearly not the real Bob Seger.
- Absurd Detail: The elaborate and specific backstory – mixed Thai-Moroccan ancestry, the fusion dish, the grandmother’s culinary perfection, and the teenage voracity – is intentionally outlandish and unexpected. The more details, the funnier it gets.
- Puns/Wordplay: The punchline “Old Thai-Moroccan Roll” plays on “Old Time Rock and Roll,” Bob Seger’s most famous song. It brings the joke full circle and reinforces the unexpected connection.
- Over-the-top Melodrama: Crying on the subway and lamenting the loss of a specific dish adds a layer of exaggerated emotion.
Comedic Enrichment Attempt 1: A “Did You Know?”
“Did you know that Bob Seger’s ‘Old Time Rock and Roll’ was almost never recorded by him? It was originally offered to and turned down by both Tina Turner and The Doobie Brothers. Imagine a world where the definitive version wasn’t about missing rock and roll, but instead about missing a grandmother’s Thai-Moroccan fusion cooking!”
Comedic Enrichment Attempt 2: A New Joke
I saw a woman on the bus arguing loudly with her phone. Turns out, she was trying to order a custom-made piñata for her nephew’s birthday. It needed to be shaped like a narwhal, filled exclusively with sugar-free gummy bears, and painted using only shades of beige.
When I asked why so specific, she sighed, “It’s a beige narwhal, no sugar, custom made piñata. It’s for my beige narwhal, no sugar, custom made pinata deficit.”
Comedic Enrichment Attempt 3: Witty Observation
The humor in this joke highlights our inherent desire to find connections and meaning, even in the most random encounters. We’re primed to look for narrative threads, and the joke expertly manipulates this, leading us down a winding path to a delightfully absurd conclusion. The crying man on the subway is really just a vehicle for a pun and a wonderfully strange culinary backstory. This says a lot about how eager we are to over-interpret the world around us, finding depth where maybe there’s just a guy with a slightly runny nose mourning the loss of goat.
Why these enrichments work:
- ‘Did You Know?’ reinforces the connection to Bob Seger’s original song and adds a layer of meta-humor by highlighting the serendipitous nature of art.
- New Joke: Uses the same structure of misdirection, absurd specificity, and punning/wordplay for a similar effect.
- Witty Observation: Provides a higher-level analysis of why the original joke is funny, encouraging a deeper appreciation of its comedic craft.