Joke Contest Results!
Who won our Jordan Joke contest?
Last week we visited Jordan, a country with the remarkable quirk: whatever you ask them for, they give you half. A six-course dinner has three courses, a two-hour hike lasts one hour. This sparked the first (and last) contest of this Substack — I asked you to send in Jordan jokes based on this remarkable property.
I was astounded at the number of entries that came pouring in: eleven. They came from a small but prestigious group: comedians Jackie “The Joke Man” Martling and Christine Blackburn; “Cheers” actor Paul Willson; and Brian Scully, the brilliant writer for “The Simpsons” and “Family Guy”. His submission? “Schindler’s Post-It Note”.
Two college pals entered, as did my funny brother Steve, but his joke was more Iraqi than Jordanian: “Is it a cottage industry to look for large Kurds?”
Amazingly the contest winners were not professionals or even relatives of mine. They are the rare people who read this column, even though they’re not my personal friends.
Honorable Mention, winning a prize of nothing, is someone called Someone. I was impressed how brainy their Jordan jokes were:
Would a weed conviction in Jordan qualify for a royal pardon? No, but a Hashemite.
Why can you not find low upholstered seats without a back or arms in Amman? King Abdullah I revolted against Ottomans.
They had more, but I didn’t understand them.
Runner-Up goes to Brian (not Scully) who submitted these three solid entries:
What’s Jordan’s favorite TV show? One and a Quarter Men!
Baskin-Robbins features 15 1/2 flavors!
What do they put in their coffee? 1/4 and 1/4!
But the big prize — a lifetime premium subscription — goes to Lairbo. He submitted a lot of jokes, they all fit the format, and they were all great:
Around the World in 40 Days
500 and 1/2 Arabian Nights
The Three and a Half Habits of People Who Are Sometimes Successful
It’s a Mad Mad World (would be half as long)
The Lite Monty
The Adequate Gatsby
As for everyone else, if you want a Premium subscription you’ll have to hit this button and pay $5 a month:
Or just buy my book. “Bad Trips” contains 52 crazy travel tales and doesn’t nag you for money.
Could it really be too late to enter that French tabloid, Le Demi-Monde? I suppose so.
These are all great, but I gotta say your brother Steve's gave me the biggest laugh! Also, just for reference: there ARE Kurds in Jordan so I give him my first prize. Fun facts: Turkey is gold medalist with 15-18 million Kurds; Iran wins silver (7-10 mil); Iraq goes home with the bronze (5-7 mil). The off-podium list of 22 countries is topped by Germany of all places (~1 mil) but Jordan makes an appearance with about 30,000 Kurds, and, following the "50% off" rule, the Jordanians will tell you they have 60,000.. ;-)