I suppose I owe it to you to explain the origin of the term "cucka joke."

Back in late 2003, when I decided to learn stand up, I had the chance to observe some comedians working a coffee house in Winter Park. I saw the flyer advertising the event and I showed up and sat off in the corner. I did not introduce myself to them because I did not want to presume to be in their class; they had been working their trade for several years, whereas I was just an aspiring comedian. One of them had even worked comedy clubs in Los Angeles. I was just there to respectfully observe their methods.

Someone had an uproarious routine about what if Santa Claus was a pimp. The punch line involved him saying "Ho ho ho." If we take the time to deconstruct this veritable study in humor, we see that the laughs come from the "Ho ho ho" being very similar --some kind of homonym or whatever-- to the word "ho," which is a street term for "whore," or "prostitute." And if we care to examine this to its end, we would see that Santa Claus --as a pimp, as he has been posited to be, for the purposes of the joke-- would have prostitutes, or "ho's." And that's where the mystery all comes together, like some kind of Agatha Christie whodunnit.

And another one had a routine where he was making like he was the guy on TV who draws the winning numbers for the night's lottery. But the novel angle to the whole thing is that instead of drawing the numbers from one of those tumblers with all the numbered ping-pong balls in it, he shoots them out of his ass.

If you're a comedian, one of the tricks of the trade that you will learn is that you can make funny sounds by moving the microphone closer to your mouth. So the Lottery Man would bend over --like he was going poopoo-- and he would make a fart noise with his mouth into the microphone and out from his ass would fly the imagined, numbered ping-pong ball. "It's a five!" And then he'd repeat the noise and catch the next imaginary ping-pong ball and read it. "It's a two!" And the next one "is an eight!" But then the Lottery Man made a quizzical look on his face and acted like he was shining the ball up on his shirt and then looked at it again. "I'm sorry, folks, it's a three!"

A comedian --in crafting a piece-- will often rely on context, or "prior knowledge." He must at all times be aware of the level of his audience's prior knowledge, or else he won't know what punch line will provide the proper resolution to the set up.

The prior knowledge that is incumbent upon the audience to possess is that cuckas get on things. It is also necessary that the audience come to the performance with the prior knowledge that an eight and a three look similar, like this:

8 3

So you can see that if cuckas were to get on a ping-pong lottery ball that was really a three, it could easily be mistaken for an eight.

And therein lies the (cucka) joke.

And I now understand that he has a development deal in the works. I will not say with what network, but the name of the show is "Bumbum Pants." It uses a live studio audience and when the contestant loses the round of competition, the camera pans over the audience and they all shout in unison, "We see London! We see France! We see poopies in your bumbum pants!" and then they laugh and milk shoots out of their noses and they all blow their heads off with shotguns.