Over at McSweeney’s, Mark Peters is doing a deft job of analyzing comedians, and their best jokes ever, in a recurring column called “Best Joke Ever”. Far from killing the humor, Peters has managed to isolate and preserve it, while improving our understanding of it as well
In reference to Mitch Hedberg’s classic escalator joke1, Peters had this to say:
The beauty of this joke is that it sticks with you forever, objectively making your life better. Once you’ve heard the joke, I defy you to see a broken escalator and not think of it. This is an accomplishment: to write and tell a joke that can get in people’s heads and cheer them up during one of life’s annoying little moments.
In my case at least, he’s nailed it:
Mitch Hedberg was wrong?!
Footnotes:
It seems ridiculous to even quote the joke, as if a reader of this site could somehow have missed it. Nevertheless, here is Hedberg’s gem: “I like escalators, because an escalator can never break: it can only become stairs. There would never be an “Escalator temporarily out of order” sign, only an “Escalator temporarily stairs. Sorry for the convenience.” ↩︎
