Listen and Swallow

I wrote a single joke that has been released as one of the top 10 downloadable ringtones in the history of downloaded ringtones. And it’s not even a joke really, nor a punch line, but more of a catch phrase, or a line. And it is now part of the American modern lexicon of slang and noise.

But this joke cut through the din.

This single ringtone has made me over twelve million dollars a year for the last 5 years. Yeah, I know. This one mindless thing that I recorded in less than one hour has given me an incredible quality of life, for which I am really not that grateful.

I made up the joke years ago in a shitty club outside Atlanta. I was opening for a comic magician who was a typical comic magician with a coke problem. He’d come out and try to be a stand up, try out his horrible new jokes til he couldn’t stand it and then forced to do his tricks. He ended his set each night by swallowing a table leg, the crowd would give him a standing ovation every single night. He would pick up his special magic table with the machine made cylindrical table legs and shove one of them down his throat. Standing ovation.

My joke must have originated from the disgust and contempt of that moment, night after night. Or maybe it came after the 3rd show Saturday, when I watched the drunken waitress, whom I’d been working on, escaped to the mens room with the conning conjurer. Either way, it was written out of anger and resentment.