Encampment

This weekend is the Knights of Lepanto Encampment, so Marc and myself will be gone for the time being. The Encampments are meant to strengthen the virtues of chivalry in young men in both a physical and spiritual way. It’s a great experience, [aside from the lousy food (ha, I won't go into details), sweat, the overly-infested amounts of ticks, the kids who don't want to work as a team, and the fact that Bryce is out to get you. ] We’re currently working on a skit, entitled: the funniest joke in the world! (To be acted out in frilly shirts…)

Wish us luck!

~Paul

Update:

Just a note. Because this Joke Parody is clean, it doesn’t mean any of the others produced by the people who made the film are. Much like an actor in a clean film, isn’t a clean actor in another. Enjoy!

Funniest Joke in the World

Opening Scene:
A bent figure huddles over a table, writing. He is surrounded by bits of paper.

Voice Over:
This man is Ernest Scribbler… writer of jokes.
In a few moments, he will have written the funniest joke in the world… and, as a consequence, he will die… laughing.

Ernest stops writing, pauses to look at what he has written… a smile slowly spreads across his face, turning very, very slowly to uncontrolled hysterical laughter… he staggers to his feet and reels across room helpless with mounting mirth and eventually collapses and dies on the floor.

Voice Over:
It was obvious that this joke was lethal…
no one could read it and live…

Ernest’s mother enters. She sees him dead, she gives a little cry of horror and bends over his body, weeping. Brokenly she notices the piece of paper in his hand and picks it up and reads it between her sobs. Immediately she breaks out into hysterical laughter, leaps three feet into the air, and falls down dead without more ado.

Scene 2:
Voice Over:
It was not long before the Army became interested in the military potential of the Killer Joke. Under top security, the joke was hurried to a meeting of Allied Commanders at the Ministry of War.

Frame1

Cut to shot looking out of slit in pillbox.

He is a bespectacled, weedy lance-corporal looking cold and miserable.
Pan across to fifty yards away where two helmeted soldiers are at their positions beside a blackboard on an easel covered with a cloth.
Cut in to corporal’s face-registening complete lack of comprehension as well as stupidily.
Man on top of pillbox waves flag.
The soldiers reveal the joke to the corporal.
He peers at it, thinks about its meaning,
snickers, and dies.
Two watching generals are very impressed.

Generals:
Fantastic.

Cut to a Colonel talking to people.

Colonel:
All through the winter of ‘43 we had translators working, in joke-proof conditions, to try and produce a German version of the joke. They worked on one word each for greater safety. One of them saw two words of the joke and spent several weeks in hospital. But apart from that, things went pretty quickly, and we soon had the joke by January, in a form which our troops couldn’t understand but which the Germans could.

Cut to a trench in the Ardennes. Members of the joke brigade are crouched holding pieces of paper with the joke on them.

Voice Over:
So, on July 8th, I944, the joke was first told to the enemy
in the Ardennes…

Commanding NCO:
Tell the… joke. (counts to three)

Joke Brigade:
(together)
Wenn ist das Nunstruck git und Slotermeyer? Ja!…
Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput!

Pan out of the British trench across war-torn landscape and come to rest where presumably the German trench is. There is a pause and then a group of Germans rear up in hysterics.

Voice Over:
It was a fantastic success. Over sixty thousand times as powerful as Britain’s great pre-war joke…

Cut to a film of Chamberlain brandishing
the “Peace in our time” treaty.

…and one which Hitler just couldn’t match.

Hitler: (possibly steven)
SUBTITLE
MY DOG’S GOT NO NOSE

A young soldier responds:
SUBTITLE
HOW DOES HE SMELL?

Hitler:
SUBTITLE
AWFUL’

Voice Over:
In action it was deadly.

Cut to a small squad with rifles making their way through forest. Suddenly one of them sees something and gives signal at which they all dive for cover. From the cover of a tree he reads out joke.

Corporal:
Wenn ist das Nunstruck git und Slotermeyer? Ja!…
Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput!

Sniper falls laughing out of tree.

Joke Brigade:
(charging)
Wenn ist das Nunstruck git und Slotermeyer? Ja!…
Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput.

They chant the joke.
Germans are put to fight laughing, some dropping to ground.

Voice Over:
The German casualties were appalling.

Cut to Nazi interrogation room.
An officer from the joke bngade has a light shining in his face.
A Gestapo officer is interrogating him; another stands behind him.

Nazi:
Vott is the big joke?

Officer:
I can only give you name, rank,
and why did the chicken cross the road?

Nazi:
That’s not funny!
(slaps him)
I vant to know the joke.

Officer:
All right. (says with fear in his voice) How do you make a Nazi cross?

Nazi:
(momentarily fooled)
I don’t know… how do you make a Nazi cross?

Officer:
Tread on his corns.
(does so; the Nazi hops in pain)

Nazi:
Gott in Hiramell That’s not funny!
(mimes cuffing him while the other Nazi claps his
hands to provide the sound effct)
Now if you don’t tell me the joke, I shall hit you properly.

Officer:
Oh no – anything but that please no, all fight I’ll tell you.

He waits expeaantly. The officer produces piece of paper out of his breast pocket and reads.

Officer:
Wenn ist das Nunstruck git und Slotermeyer? Ja!…
Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput.

Otto at the typewriter explodes with laughter and dies.

Nazi:
Ach! Zat iss not funny!

Nazi burts into laughter and dies.
A German guard bursts in with machine gun,
The British officer leaps on the table.

Officer:
(lightning speed)
Wenn ist das Nunstruck git und Slotermeyer? Ja!…
Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput.

The guard reels back and collapses laughing.
British officer makes his escape.
Cut to a film of German scientists working in laboratories.

Voice Over:
But at Peenemunde in the Autumn of ‘44,
the Germans were working on a joke of their own.

A German general is seated at an imposing desk.
Behind him stands Otto (type writer) labelled “A Different Gestapo Officer”. Bespectacled German scientist/joke writer enters room. He cleans his throat and reads from card.

German Joker:
Die ist ein Kinnerhunder und zwei Mackel uber und der bitte schon ist den Wunderhaus sprechensie. ‘Nein’ sprecht der Herren ‘Ist aufern borger mit zveitingen’.

He finishes and looks hopeful.

Otto:
We let you know.

He shoots him

Voice Over:
But by December their joke was ready,
and Hitler gave the order for the German V-Joke
to be broadcast in English.

Cut to 1940’s wartime radio set with couple anxiously listening to it.

Radio:
(crackly German voice)
Der ver zwei peanuts, valking down der strasse, and von vas… assaulted!… peanut. Ho-ho-ho-ho.

The couple looks at each other and then in blank amazement at the radio.
Cut to modern BBC 2 interview.
The commentator in a woodland glade.

Commentator (Eric Idle):
In 1945 Peace broke out. It was the end of the Joke.
Joke warfare was banned at a special session of the Geneva Convention, and in 1950 the last remaining copy of the joke was laid to rest here in the Berkshire countryside, never to be told again.

He walks away revealing a monument on which is written:
“To The Unknown Joke”.
Camera pulls away slowly through idyllic setting.
Patriotic music reaches crescendo.