Luv Doc Recommends: The 27th Annual O.Henry Pun-Off World Championships

If you’re like a lot of people, you’re a dork. Own up to it. You can’t be cool 24/7. If for some reason you think you are, your problem is much bigger than a little dorkiness. Those of us stumbling through life with toilet paper stuck to our shoes, hiding our Right Said Fred CDs when friends come over, secretly harboring crushes on David Hasselhoff, shamelessly addicted to Tetris … we know the score. We know your cool facade hides a deep well of dorkiness. We know you put your Star Trek underpants on one leg at a time, just like the rest of us. We know because your fly is open, there’s spinach in your teeth, monkeys in your tree, and … hey, what’s that on your chest? Psych. Admit it, the only people who are cool all of the time are dead: James Dean, Kurt Cobain, Sylvia Plath, Keith Richards (OK, maybe not Keith, but has anyone checked his pulse lately?). You can pretty much bank on the fact that if Kurt were still living today, even he would eventually do something to queer his cool … like co-starring with the Olsen twins, wearing a cell phone with a belt clip, appearing in a Subway commercial, or committing suicide. James Dean? He’d probably be shilling sausages like Jimmy Dean. Certainly there are degrees of dork, gradations of goofiness, but the thing is, everybody gets some. How you use it is the question: for good, or for evil? Many have argued (with reasonable cause) that the O.Henry Pun-Off World Championships offer conclusive proof of the existence of Satan … or at the very least, the absence of a benevolent and loving God. It’s a theologically solid argument – one worth further study perhaps, but equally telling about the theologian. Pun haters are decent enough people, but you wouldn’t want to get stoned with them. They’re not gigglers. They don’t enjoy Scooby Doo, the Three Stooges, or Monty Python. They don’t eat Funyuns. They draw circles around their sense of humor. They contend that some things are just stupid. They are not easily amused. Pun lovers, on the other hand, are humor sluts: tail-wagging, uncontrollably peeing cocker spaniels for even the most clichéd, hacked humor. They give A’s for effort and enthusiasm. They laugh a lot, often for no good reason. They forward e-mails with jokes culled from Reader’s Digests from the 1950s. In short, they are easily amused. Nothing wrong with that. In fact, scientists and physicians tell us that laughing is healthy, that we should do it more often, like exercise. This Saturday’s 27th Annual (seems impossible, doesn’t it?) O.Henry Pun-Off World Championships should, if nothing else, provide a healthy alternative to being cool. If the sky doesn’t fall, Woolridge Square Park will be full of pun lovers and wacky wordsmiths battling it out to see who can best butcher the mother tongue. Grand prize is the coveted title Punniest of Show, awarded to the contestant able to cough up the most and funniest puns in 90 seconds or less. The competition starts at 1, but if you come early you can listen to music by MoPac & the Blue Suburbans at noon. The music shouldn’t be too loud, but you may want to bring some earplugs for everything that follows.