This is from our South St./Battery Pk. Expedition (Manhattan, 7/22/07), or Day 2 of Mocha and ‘Nilla’s overnight expedition. We were supposed to wake up in some charming beach-front motel, a little hung over but looking forward to greasy eggs, some good coffee and another breezy day scrounging jokes in the sand. Unfortunately there wasn’t a single room available in any of the beach-front motels; not that we could afford it anyway. So instead I woke up on Mocha’s living room floor staring at a cat turd, the traffic noise outside a far cry from the gentle swish of the waves you heard behind the Hamptons jokes. With a mere 8 hours in front of us to finish off this expedition we needed to stay close to home, thus the South Street Seaport/ Battery Park expedition. It wasn’t the beach, but we could see water, and we ended up with over 40 jokes, an excellent take considering the cat turd.

Allow me to turn your attention to our collection of jokes told in a foreign language! Turns out the rest of world dabbles in this little thing we at StopMe like to call "telling jokes." Now if you want dead air, just tune into the moment after a tellers from this collection drop the punchline on us uni-languaged USA-ers. Since it's socially quite lame to fake laugh when you don't speak the language (think about it), we can only smile sheepishly and offer our weak thanks for the diversity street cred. Sometimes we are blessed with a translation, but the only thing worse than not getting one is getting an ATTEMPTED translation that fizzles into general awkwardness. Case in point:

I just love getting jokes from people on the job. There's just something so Mr. Roger's Neighborhood about bumping into a real NYC native in his City Sights jumper, ready to share with us kiddies a little piece of his "world"— a joke about a guy who pisses vodka and leverages this oddity to get his wife to blow him! Would you be mine? Could you be mine? Won't you be... my neighbor!

I just had to advertise how much of a moron I am. Her: Pete and Repeat are in a boat. Pete jumps off, who's left? Me (expert Joke-ologist): I don't know-- who? The lesson here is if you rely on other people to make your joke work, even professionals, you're just going to end up as a filthy rich blond on a yacht.

As I was perusing our Hamptons jokes I couldn't believe I hadn't posted this one, told from a bike (well, a dude ON a bike)! We were just getting out of our first of several Mercedes-lovin' towns when we were pleased to find ourselves behind this self-propelled, earth-friendly gent. As we passed I tapped the brakes and Mocha, perceptive team player that he is, rolled down the glass and popped the StopMe question, "Excuse me, sir. Do you have any Grey Poupon?" Actually, you know the question as well as I do, and besides, Mocha doesn't get any intuition points because I was screaming, "See if he has any jokes-- get him!!" The guy pedaled a half-dozen times, deep in thought, then Mocha got the camera going just as he came up with the Turtle Mugging Joke. A guy on the go telling a joke about two turtle muggers moving way too fast! Pure joketry (that's joke combined with poetry for you novices). Just by virtue of being on the bike he joins an elite group of StopMe joke-tellers who deliver from weird places or in weird ways. But even without the prop, it's a very worthy contribution.

Something about a yarmulke that just kinda scares me off when we go around with our frivolous request for a joke. But we were so pleasantly surprised by this exchange, which includes a translation that somehow makes this old third grade classic sound like a wise old adage.

Mocha and I had finally made it to the beach after hours of traffic and a lukewarm reception in the rather generic tourist towns along the way (sorry, Hamptons!). We took off our shoes and strolled along the water's edge, hand in hand, just being with each other. Mocha wasn't ready to take the relationship to the next level, however, so we started asking for jokes. This guy has a great Vince Vaughn vibe and seemed to be waiting for some dudes to come by with their camera looking for jokes, even if they were pretty gay. His kids shouting into the camera is a nice exclamation point at the end of a very solid joke, and they go on to tell their own jokes.

Ah, the children. Those little people with such big... heads. Turns out the Hamptons sun jogged the jokemories of the children, as the under-10 crowd makes up a good portion of this expeditions take. Now we all know the appeal of the "jokes by kids" collection is not the jokes themselves, but the charm of the tellers. The false starts, the stage fright, the oh-so-cute kid-like things those kids will do. In the case of the Smile Joke below, it's the "Hey that's not a joke" element that has us all "Awwww!", whereas when adults try this I just get pissed off. I felt bad that I bullied him into a format he wasn't comfortable with ("You say 'knock-knock' and I'll say 'Who's There'")-- not sure what my problem was-- but my sense is he's gone on to a successful life anyway. Just not as a comedian.

Mocha and Vanilla’s overnight expedition! What’s summer in NYC without sitting in LIE traffic during prime beach hours, wondering why the hell you didn’t get an earlier start? The expedition starts off in the little tourist towns (lots of Izods and ice cream) en route to the waves and ends up on the beach itself, with lots of stop-n-go traffic in between. After a day collecting jokes from rich people, though, we couldn’t get a room anywhere and ended up driving back to Manhattan in the middle of the night, crashing at Mocha’s apartment, our dreams of waking up to a Long Island Sound sunrise smothered by a crappy aerobed.

Folks, we have a real treat today for all none of you devoted blog readers: a Guest Poster, Karen (who shall be referred to by her StopMe handle, Kookie-Dough). Aside from being a devoted StopMe fan, she is also my pregnant sister, and despite her resistance is sure to get up off her fat ass and step across the room any minute now. Well, I have to say, when "Vanilla" asked me to choose an ice cream flavor just moments ago, I was actually picturing a Jetson-like apparatus that would make the tasty treat materialize in front of my "fat ass". But, alas, I am now known as "Kookie-Dough," which doesn't do a whole lot for to help with the fat ass, bloated feelings I've been having lately. I must say, I'm totally fascinated by bikinis and especially by people who tell jokes while wearing them. I mean, is it me or is it hard not to look at the bikini-wearers' breasts? What's interesting is that when we're dressing at home and we have just our underwear and bra on, we (and maybe I should be using "I-statements" here...) feel the need to cover ourselves with clothes--a shirt, maybe some pants, what have you. But with a bikini, all bets are off. You put on essentially the same articles of clothing (often with less coverage--have you ever seen maternity underwear?!) and yet it's perfectly acceptable to leave the house, see a parade, tell a joke... food for thought, eh? Speaking of food, how about that ice cream? World's Shortest Joke Bald Joke Screw Joke