Meg Lawless

Ladies and Gentlemen, what you are about to endure is sexual harassment, please enjoy another edition of the Comical Radio Blog.
PUNCHLINE UPDATE UPDATE Meg Sweeney Lawless of the non-profit Humor Commodities Institute came into the studio to deliver the Punchline Update and Punchline Forecast. Apparently, punchlines are like names for hurricanes. When one of them does enough damage, it gets retired and new ones take its place.
Four punch lines were retired this week, including these popular favorites:
1. That’s why they call it a cockpit.
2. He put the bucket on her head and hung onto the handle.
3. The morning-after pill for men changes your DNA.
And, finally: The genie thought I asked for “a 10-inch pianist.”
Those punchlines will be missed. Other Punchline observations include a spike in observational humor involving Baby Boomer music in advertising. For example, the Vera Wang commercial featuring the band America and they, quote, “been to the desert on a horse with no name.” The result is an upswing in punch lines about hippies whose values have changed as they’ve become cynical and greedy.
Ms. Lawless also reported that commercials bank on unthinking nostalgia to make sales. For instance, she forecasted that tomorrow and through the weekend, people will begin to notice David Bowie’s classic song, “Space Oddity,” is being used to sell Lincoln town cars. Although the commercial is supposed to make us all want to get into their fancy, futuristic vehicle, the song is about a guy who got into a fancy, futuristic vehicle and never came back.