What's in a Name?

07/05/07 • -1 min

Oh man, we really screwed up. In this age of Google searches, short attention spans and just way too many choices on the web, anybody with less than 7 drinks in his system is gonna keep the name of his site short, simple and to the point. Our approach? Let's think of a really long name where thewordsallruntogether and no one will remember it because there's a thousand ways to get it wrong ("what was it again, Stop Me If You Heard That One...Before?").
And hey, let's NOT put the word "joke" in the title so people won't know what the site is about until they actually GO THERE! What an intriguing MYSTERY we've created, enticing more and more people who google "jokes" to wonder what sites they're missing that aren't coming up because the word joke isn't in the title!
Sure there're nice things about the name. It's something my grandfather used to say before launching into some joke I didn't get even after hearing it about a hundred times, since he never did stop ("Two guys walking down the street. One says to the other, 'You know what time it is?' His friend shows him his watch and says 'There it is." The other guy says, "Damned if it ain't!"). And it's the name, kind of, of an old radio show where people send in jokes and win prizes if the show's panelists don't know it. That's charming! That's quaint!
But quaint never got anyone anywhere on the web, and quaint is about all we've managed to be with "Stop Me If You Heard This." Dare we change it? We own the url, TheJokeQuest.com, a much more accurate, catchy, if less quaint, name. What say? Send us your votes, suggestions, thoughts and undecipherable jokes your grandfather used to tell. We'll stay up late pouring over all the emails and letters-- Chinese food containers, the whole bit-- until at some ungodly morning hour we'll look each other knowingly and remove our glasses, rub our eyes (well, Mocha will take out his contacts anyway). We'll all start laughing because there on the table, as clear as the sky, will be the name so perfect we can only remove our glasses, rub our eyes and laugh. All over again.
In the mean time, in honor of our very long name, let us leave you with The World's Shortest Joke. (Warning: It's as bad as our name.)

Previous Episode

Pussy Pie Joke (Mermaid Parade)

In the last post I touched on what one stands to learn about oneself in the process of listening to a joke. Then there's what you learn about your friends. Let me introduce you to my good friend Mocha, whom I have known since we fronted a band way back in college called "But The Windows Are Closed." He's the guy holding the door open for you, giving you his seat on the subway and asking if your parents are busy tonight because maybe they'd want to join us. Watch him in "Bumbling Mocha Medley" and you'll know exactly what I mean. Then listen to him cackle with delight when the Pussy Pie teller drops the crudest of punchlines and you'll wonder, as I do, Who the hell is this guy?

Next Episode

Joke Analysis; What Does it Mean?

We've been playing with various ideas for developing the site. Some are clamoring for more behind the scenes while thousands of others are pushing for more stuff exploring the nature of humor and the ways StopMe joke-ologists expose the funny-vibe (sorry for all these technical terms) of a given time and place. Then we stumbled upon Lenny's Britain and his Joke Booth experiment and realized, Welp, Been Done. And been done pretty good, I might say. So for those of you interested in the sociological aspect of this grand experiment, check it out. The analysis may be from a British perspective but humor is universal blah, blah, blah. In the mean time, if you want the story of three guys on the verge of a collective midlife crisis trekking around NYC bumming jokes, well, keep it here.