THE MAN WITH AN ORANGE FOR A HEAD. I came across the orange head joke in this post by Andrew Klavan on the City Journal web site. Google gives a number of different versions of it. Klavan says that he thinks it’s the funniest joke he ever heard. I told it to two different groups of about a dozen people and nobody laughed. Here’s Klavan’s telling of the joke:
A man walks into a bar. He has an orange for a head. The bartender pours him a drink and says: “So—you want to tell me about it?â€
“Well, I was walking on the beach,†says the man with an orange for a head. “I found an old lamp in the sand and took it home. When I polished the lamp, a genie came out and offered me three wishes in return for setting him free. Thinking it was some sort of trick, I offhandedly wished for a million dollars. Instantly, the doorbell rang. A man had arrived to tell me I’d won a mail-order sweepstakes for exactly a million dollars. So I returned to the genie and wished I could have sex with every Playmate of the Month for last year. The doorbell rang again—and all 12 pinup girls came prancing in, at my service. I went back to the genie a third time,†says the man with an orange for a head, “and I think this may have been where I made my mistake.â€
“What did you do?†says the bartender.
“I wished to have an orange for a head.â€
Way back when we called the orange joke “a shaggy dog story.” Its humor was based on the fact that the end was ridiculous. I haven’t heard the term “shaggy dog story” for years nor have I heard anyone tell or write one until this one. Not the funniest joke I ever heard, but shaggy dog funny for sure.
Praise Google! Hail Wikipedia! I was curious enough to see what secrets the internet could reveal about “shaggy dog stories” so I searched and — ta da– Wikipedia has an article.
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