Entertainment Business Puns

As a professional children's entertainer, finding the dad jokes thread has been a real blessing. I work mainly with children between the ages of four and eight, and, for obvious reasons, I need to keep my jokes clean. In my business, a groan is just as good as the laugh because it usually is accompanied by a smile!

I'm afraid I don't know who started it, but the "this paper says otherwise" is easily one of my favorites. I took the liberty of having 500 business cards that say "otherwise" on them. I use them in my performances in a variety of ways. If I see a dad after my show who looks like the type who might enjoy a good pun, I will go up to him and ask him if he thought the show was good. Inevitably he will say yes, and I'll tell him that "Unfortunately this card says otherwise." I then leave the dad with the card to use at his own behest.

Just wanted to give a big shout out and a big thank you to the Dad jokes community for inspiration. People ask me what I do for a living and I tell them I'm the Jimmy Fallon to five-year-olds. Thanks so much for contributing all you guys do!

I have written this book to sweep away all misunderstandings about the crafty art of punnery and to convince you that the pun is well worth celebrating.... After all, the pun is mightier than the sword, and these days you are much more likely to run into a pun than into a sword. [A pun is a witticism involving the playful use of a word in different senses, or of words which differ in meaning but sound alike.]

Scoffing at puns seems to be a conditioned reflex, and through the centuries a steady barrage of libel and slander has been aimed at the practice of punning. Nearly three hundred years ago John Dennis sneered, “A pun is the lowest form of wit,” a charge that has been butted and rebutted by a mighty line of pundits and punheads.

Henry Erskine, for example, has protested that if a pun is the lowest form of wit, “It is, therefore, the foundation of all wit.” Oscar Levant has added a tag line: “A pun is the lowest form of humor—when you don’t think of it first.” John Crosbie and Bob Davies have responded to Dennis with hot, cross puns: “...If someone complains that punning is the lowest form of humor you can tell them that poetry is verse.”

Samuel Johnson, the eighteenth century self-appointed custodian of the English language, once thundered, “To trifle with the vocabulary which is the vehicle of social intercourse is to tamper with the currency of human intelligence. He who would violate the sanctities of his mother tongue would invade the recesses of the national till without remorse... ”

Joseph Addison pronounced that the seeds of punning are in the minds of all men, and tho’ they may be subdued by reason, reflection, and good sense, they will be very apt to shoot up in the greatest genius, that which is not broken and cultivated by the rules of art.

Far from being invertebrate, the inveterate punster is a brave entertainer. He or she loves to create a three-ring circus of words: words clowning, words teetering on tightropes, words swinging from tent tops, words thrusting their head into the mouths of lions. Punnery can be highly entertaining, but it is always a risky business. The humor can fall on its face, it can lose its balance and plunge into the sawdust, or it can be decapitated by the snapping shut of jaws. While circus performers often receive laughter or applause for their efforts, punsters often draw an obligatory groan for theirs. But the fact that most people groan at, rather than laugh at, puns doesn’t mean that the punnery isn’t fu

(My dad is always busy with business stuff because he is on the board for some job) Dad: Hold on a board member is calling me Me: Well give him something to do so he is entertained!