While comparing the text message jokes from last weeks Last Comic Standing, I have realized that I have read better jokes from my popsicle sticks. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone over at NBC was eating a popsicle one afternoon when they read the joke about the the tortilla walking on the tightrope. Then came the brilliant idea: We could put the joke on the show, but not give the punchline. Everyone would be dying to know the answer. We could get people to text for the answer and get a 99 cent charge on their bill while their at it.

I hope the popsicle-eating employee got fired for the dumb idea. I am still waiting to hear from that one person who sent 3 text messages last week for punchlines, laughed at all 3, and is currently waiting anxiously for the next set of jokes so they can happily send another $3. If that person is out there, let me suggest a small investment in a box of Laffy taffy. You will have more jokes to read that are even more hilarious than the ones from the show.

To the rest of you, I sympathize. I have heard of far too many people who were suckered out of their dollars unnecessarily. I understand the dilemma. How can you go to bed without knowing first what the tortilla said at the end of the tightrope. I am making it my goal to put an end to the nonsense. When the Last Comic Standing announces their jokes, I will be typing the answers right here in as near to real time as I can. I will be awarding prizes to the Tortilla Joke Contest on Wednesday both here on my blog and at tortillajoke.com. If any money is to be spent on jokes, I think it should be for decent punchlines. Because of that, it is likely that there will be another contest for improved punchlines as well as a new contest for more images. I’ll decide on that Wednesday night.

If I thought they would be used, I’d set up separate forums and dedicated blogs (rather than just a dedicated category on my personal blog) for these stupid jokes on http://tortillajoke.com or http://wasteofadollar.com and would sell T-shirts there too. Would you go to the site to mock stupid jokes with me? Ultimately, I’d like to see people going to a source for free information rather than succumbing to the price gouging from text messages. I hate the entire practice of text messages in my TV shows. What do you think I should do with my new domains? Right now they are just set up for new punchlines and for announcing winners for contests. Got any ideas? Leave me a comment or send me a message to tortilla@misterrandom.com

Ok, so 6 hours ago I struggled to stay awake to clumsily add some thoughts about the Tight Rope Tortilla joke that was on Last Comic Standing last night. For those who didn’t want to spend a dollar or scroll down to read yesterday’s post, the joke was: “What did the tortilla say when it got to the end of the tightrope?” The severly overpriced $1 punchline was: “tos-TADA!”

Out of curiosity, I checked my website statistics because I’m a geek that way. The total number of unique visitors last month was 143. As of 6 AM pacific time, that stupid tortilla joke put my unique visitor count up to 176 for the month of June. A full 135 of those visits occurred between midnight and 6 AM. To those people who have discovered my disaster of a blog (still in development), welcome. With the demand of a stupid punchline that high, I think I will take one for the team each week and post all punchlines for the stupid text message jokes on Last Comic Standing to save you money. In fact I’ll create a category just for those stupid jokes right now. The punchline each week will be here: http://www.misterrandom.com/category/bad-jokes/

Now that I’m visualizing a tortilla on a tightrope again, I would like to ask two things of you. Number one: help me come up with a better punchline than tos-TADA. I’ve seen suggestions such as “That’s a wrap” or “that was chEASY” but I think we could come up with something better about a burrito or something. Got a good punchline? Post it in my comments and if I think it’s the best, I’ll paypal you $5. The other thing I think I need is a good image of a tightrope walking tortilla. If you’re a bored artist, send me an image of the tortilla in the joke in jpg or gif format. If it’s my favorite, I’ll put it on the border of my site and will paypal you $10. Can I really use paypal as a verb? I love verbing my nouns. Anyway, just feeling generous this morning. If I get any submissions, I will post them all and announce a winner after the next Last Comic Standing post. Submissions can be emailed to tortilla@misterrandom.com. Let’s say that the deadline is before Last Comic Standing airs next week here on the Pacific Coast.  Contest information here.

One more thing, thought this was funny. Six people got to my post last night with the search term: “what did the tortilla say?” and five with the term “tortilla tightrope joke.” Before today, the most popular search term leading to my site was “mister random” and I’ll bet four of those were from me. Before yesterday’s show I’m sure there were a lot fewer people who cared enough about what the tortilla said to turn to google to find out.

UPDATE: Went a little overboard and registered two new sites. The first is www.tortillajoke.com, dedicated to the stupid tortilla joke that inspired my last couple posts. The other site is www.wasteofadollar.com which will be more about not paying for stupid punchlines in general. Both are still under development but there is a little something on each already. Can’t have too much up there yet. I do still have a day job.

So I was watching Last Comic Standing tonight and at the commercial breaks, they had these stupid jokes that they asked where you were supposed to send a text message to get the punchline. One of the “jokes” asked “What did the tortilla say when it got to the end of the tightrope?” It didn’t take more than a couple of seconds for me to realize I didn’t even care. Then it started bugging me. What is a tortilla doing on a tightrope anyway? Is this the beginning of a Taco Bell commercial or something?

So the other two jokes they had on the show were dumb and very easily googled:

What is orange and sounds like a parrot? A carrot.

How much does it cost a pirate to get his ears pierced? A buccaneer.

I just HAD to google the tortilla joke. The only result I came up with was a blog entry asking if anyone new the answer to the joke. Finally after several comments about people saying they ended on the blog because they were looking for the punchline, somebody broke down and paid the dollar to find out. What a disappointment. What an anticlimatic catastrophe. The $1 answer was “tos TADA!” That comment was followed by others who were amazed that they weren’t the only ones googling a punchline to avoid the cost of a text message. Then there were the sympathy comments for losing a dollar so tragically on a painfully stupid punchline.

So there it is. My wife write’s reviews about TV shows on her blog. I write reviews about comments from a blog entry about gimmicks from TV shows.

If there are people willing to pay a dollar for a bad punchline, I think I will try to tap into that market. I’m really good at wasting dollars. If you have ever had buyers remorse from a wasted dollar on a bad text message punchline, send me a dollar instead. Rather than just a punchline, I will gladly send you a report of exactly how I wasted your dollar. If you like the stupid jokes I will text you one of those too. All for just a dollar. I promise it will be more entertaining than the stupid tightrope tortilla joke. This idea would work better if I had more than 2 readers.

I just re-read my blog posting. What a dumb post.

UPDATE: Went a little overboard and registered two new sites. The first is www.tortillajoke.com, dedicated to the stupid tortilla joke that inspired my last couple posts. The other site is www.wasteofadollar.com which will be more about not paying for stupid punchlines in general. Both are still under development but there is a little something on each already. Can’t have too much up there yet. I do still have a day job.