Dragan,

>Elephant jokes were very popular in late sixties, and as any other wave of jokes, repeat regularly in about seven year intervals. At the time, we had madman jokes, which eventually paved the path to the doesn't-make-sense jokes and pure Monty Python style puns ("eye for an eye, paste for teeth", "he took a look at her, and another one at five o'clock" are translatable examples). However, many of these don't work when translated, because there was no wave of this sort of jokes here, so the general public has not learned to appreciate them. For a while I kept this one as my tagline, but only got a few confused questions - and jokes which need explanation are the jokes which don't work:

I still love watching the Monty Python skits and movies when I catch them on either the Comedy channel or Nick. Two of my favorites were the petshop owner trying to sell a dead parrot and the scene in "Life of Brian" where he steps up to the window naked and sees a multitude of worshippers outside. Oh - and another from "Search for the Holy Grail" I think where the knight is still trying to fight after losing all his limbs. I guess you either get MP or you don't...

>A classic madman joke would be about a guy who's painting windows in an asylum, and two inmates consider stealing a ladder from under him, but one says "won't work - he's holding to the brush". Also, a series of madman jokes was about the exit exam, i.e. "if you pass this one, will sign that you're sane now", which probably never happened, but there were dozens of jokes about it. A classic of the kind is when they ask the guy to fill a bottomless barrel, and he replies "I'm sort of tired, you fill it half and I'll do the rest". Or, when they ask him to crawl under a line chalked on the floor, "I've grown a little fat here, could you please lift it a few inches?".

These somehow remind me of Road Runner where they would run out over a cliff edge and not fall until they noticed. Or in Bugs Bunny where a hole could be moved simply by picking it up; blurring the line between the character and the cartoonist.

Renoir