Two Jokes

There are really only two kinds of jokes in the world: the kind you tell and the kind you play.

I once made the terrible mistake of telling a fellow writer, as a joke, that I had recently been paid an insanely large sum for writing a half-hour comedy script. I actually named the figure – it was about ten times the going amount at the time – and held my face in a blank and emotionless expression as the fellow writer’s eyes popped nearly out of his skull...