elfs | I lack stereotypes.

Today, for reasons that don't merit too close an investigation, I was sitting on a park bench in downtown listening to the couple on the next bench over, and I realized that the young man was an aspiring stand-up comedian and the older woman with him was his test audience. When I was there, he was discussing mostly the business and process of writing for the Seattle audience.

He was complaining that he couldn't do ethnic jokes. Anywhere else, a joke about Arabs would get a laugh, but not in Seattle. Tough crowd. And then he said, "I came up with this: I have a Japanese-Jewish girlfriend. She's 50%--" And just then a truck rolled by and I missed the punch line. She said something and he continued, "Yeah! I could never tell that joke in Seattle. Someone would stand up and shout, 'Well, 50% of me is offended by that joke!'"

For the next hour, I racked my brains trying to figure out what stereotypes about Jewish women or Japanese women could be juxtaposed in a funny, even offensively funny way. I'm sure I know the stereotypes as well as anyone else (I'd better; I watch too much anime and my biological family is full of self-professed Jewish-American princesses), they just don't easily come to my forebrain.

I take that as a good sign. Still wish I'd heard the joke.