With all that is weighing on the mind of the average American — from the war to an unstable economy, few could argue that what we need is a good laugh. Unfortunately, the one day each year dedicated to humor — April Fools’ Day — has become such a theatrical production that most ignore it altogether. Thankfully, Comic Wonder offers just what we need to get back to what April Fools is really about.

Instead of figuring out how to reassemble a car inside your boss’ office or mock-up divorce papers in Photoshop, Comic Wonder is delivering all that is needed to get people laughing this April Fools’ Day and it doesn’t require elaborate schemes or plots. Comic Wonder suggests we get back to the roots of April Fools’ Day and simply tell a good joke.

“The magic behind good humor, whether a complicated prank or just a good joke, is the element of surprise,” said Mark Metcalf, Head of Humor for Comic Wonder. “When it comes to joke telling, there’s an art to ensuring you hook your audience enough to surprise them at the end.” Metcalf is best known for his roles as Neidermeyer in Animal House and as “The Maestro” on Seinfeld.

Chris “Captainhilariousness” Cashman, agrees that one of the most important elements of good joke telling is the art of “fooling” people. “The best way to catch someone off guard is to turn a joke into a believable story,” said Cashman, a Seattle native who was voted the 2007 Comic Wonder of the Year. “I often take a joke I’ve read or heard and turn it into a personal anecdote. That way when you get to the punch line, it hits them right between the eyes. That’s the surprise I’m looking for. It’s more effective than a tired whoopee cushion or the painful ‘A guy walks into a bar’ routine.”

Cashman suggests inserting yourself, a friend, or relative into the narrative, as he did with his award-winning joke titled “Puzzled Sister.” The personalized story recounts one fateful evening when Cashman’s ditzy sister suggested an alternative activity — assembling a puzzle — to replace their weekly movie night.

To help those desperately seeking funny and surprising jokes, Cashman offers five tips to make this April Fools’ Day a success.

1. Choose Your Material Carefully

There are plenty of text jokes waiting to be brought to life by a joke-teller. Visit your inbox, Google or check out Comic Wonder’s “Joke Limbo” area to find material to work with. If you really want to fool someone, create a story that they can start to believe. If you don’t have a boat, don’t start with “I was hanging out on my yacht with the Pope … ” as this will immediately tip off the victim. And, finally, does the material have a good opportunity for a great surprise twist at the end?

2. Personalize/Localize

Instead of the obvious, “A guy walks into a bar … ” customize it to, “Last weekend, my buddies and I stopped by Chasers for a drink after the game … ” If the joke is about the debacle or debauchery of one of our fine elected public servants, localize it by using the name of a well-known local politician.

3. Transform the “Joke” into a Believable Story

Details can transform a funny “joke” into a memorable story. Use situations and details that people know. Get them nodding their head in agreement while the story unfolds. Elaborate. Instead of, “I was in an accident recently.” Try, “You’re not going to believe this. I had a car accident the other day — on the corner of Fifth St. and Main — you know that really busy intersection ….”

4. Develop Characters

Elevate your joke-telling performance by becoming the characters. Avoid the “he said, she said, and they replied” type dialogue. That won’t cut it. Develop a character voice that fits each person in the story. Now you’re acting out the dialogue instead of reading it like a newspaper story. Instead of saying “my wife was really angry with me,” act out exactly how angry your wife was using a caricature of her voice. (You may not want to use this method if you are telling the joke to your wife.)

5. Learn from Listening

Build your joke-telling skills by listening to good joke performances. This allows you to fine-tune the performance and the material. Comic Wonder has tons of categorized audio joke performances to learn from and laugh at. You don’t have to copy someone else’s style, but you can learn from, improve it and build your own joke-telling repertoire.

Professional athletes are, by virtue of their trade, good at sports. Most of them can rightfully be called “super-humans” in terms of raw physical ability; they can run faster, jump higher, and hit harder than most of us could ever imagine. If you’re an armchair quarterback and often find yourself thinking “I could do that if I really wanted to” as you watch the professionals play football on Sundays, you need only reference SpikeTV’s “Pros vs. Joes” (current season’s episodes air at 11pm Eastern Time), in which amateur athletes are matched up against the likes of Hall of Famers Jerry Rice and Bo Jackson in various competitions that simulate pro football. It’s kind of like American Gladiators, if you stripped AG of its professional wrestling theatrics (goofy nicknames, even goofier outfits) and replaced the gladiators with real athletes and not just muscle-bound steroid freaks. On the whole, the “Challengers” on American Gladiators—the amateurs, that is—tend to fare much better than the “Joes” on “Pros vs. Joes.” That is to say: the Joes usually get the shit kicked out of them.

As it turns out, most of us regular Joes—no matter how dutifully we work out—can’t hang with the Pros for more than a step or two, if that.

Unfortunately, a professional athlete’s ability often bears no correlation to his mental ability. Many pro athletes are as dumb as they are good—or even dumber if you’ve followed the headlines in the past year. There are various schools of thought when it comes to this—too much money, too much attention—but to me, it all comes down to this: one’s ability to avoid would-be tacklers while running with an oval-shaped sphere invariably says nothing of one’s ability to avoid drunkenly speeding in a Ferrari or slapping hookers. Granted, being smarter can make you a better football player, but being a better football player cannot make you smarter.

I can live with that. Pro athletes didn’t sign-up to be role-models or NASA engineers; they just signed-up to play and make millions of dollars (and slap hookers, depending on who you ask). But what I can’t stand is when professional athletes lose all sense of perspective, when forget that they’re “playing a child’s game for a king’s ransom” in the words of former NFL star WarrenSapp, and start acting like whiny turds. Which brings me to the following clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zc11PUnFgkQ.

As you just saw, this clip shows Milwaukee Bucks center Andrew Bogut high-fiving himself after making a free throw. “Is this simply an act of lunacy?” you ask. “Is this just more evidence to support the hypothesis that being born in war-torn Croatia and raised in whacky Australia will inevitably lead to an irreconcilable inner battle of Nature vs. Nurture?” No. It’s just that usually when a Bucks player makes a free throw, all of his surrounding teammates high-five him. It’s customary. But in this case, Mr. Bogut has to perform an act of congratulatory masturbation because the rest of his teammates are too busy wallowing in the depths of a another miserable loss in a long, miserable season.

This clip is funny, but it is NOT laughable. Bogut’s teammates should be ashamed of themselves. It’s okay to lose; in fact, 50% of all pro athletes are losers after any given match. But it’s not okay to lose like a Soviet athlete that must return to his Communist country bound for a life of hardship and disgrace, when in reality you’ll be returning to your Mercedes Benz coupe that has tires worth more than most of us regular Joes make in several months.

I think those turd-like Bucks players should be featured on a new show on Spike TV (that I just came up with): “From Pros to Joes.” Yeah! Try blogging for a comedy Website for a living, Mr. NBA All-Star. We’ll see how much you appreciate your little game then!

Growing up in Wisconsin it is inevitable to have people make fun of our accents (among other things). It doesn’t help that every TV personality interviews people from here that epitomize the north woods, WI accent and make us look like idiots in general. I always thought I didn’t sound like a Midwesterner - boy, was I wrong. I used to spend some time with people from Nebraska (which is actually in the Midwest!) and every time they would see me they would ask me to “say bag” and when I did they thought it was the funniest thing. They then would continue to blurt out other words and the laughter continued. Yes, I became the Wisconsin party favor.

I found this website - GoToQuiz - that is GREAT fun in finding out what American accent you have. It is fun to say the questions out loud - you will naturally anyway. It’s like those forwards where you automatically sing the song as you go and then the next line is pointing out to you that you’re probably singing. They always get me.

The last question on the quiz in particular made me smile. Here is what my result was:

“You may think you speak ‘Standard English straight out of the dictionary’ but when you step away from the Great Lakes you get asked annoying questions like “Are you from Wisconsin?” or “Are you from Chicago?” Chances are you call carbonated drinks ‘pop.’”

For the record, I call it soda!

I think I’ll stop making fun of people from the south now.

The Beijing 2008 Olympic ceremony preparation kicked off today with the torch being lit in Olympia, Greece.  Coming in August all of the summer competitions will begin.  Being that I haven’t played in a sport since last summer’s bean bag competition (unless you count darts at the bar a sport), I sit at a computer all day, and basically get tired when I speed walk - then run two minutes - then walk again, I really have no excuse for making fun of Olympic blunders of the past, so I won’t.  But - what I CAN do is make fun of idiots that do stupid stunts and then put them up on the internet, or, athletic bloopers in general.  Sometimes you have to laugh at the stupidity or unluckiness and other times, it is down right painful to watch.  Some of these people had to have lost their ability to reproduce (which may be debatable whether that’s a bad thing). 

• The 8 Biggest Idiots of the World - It’s all worth it for #5 and #8
• Funny Bloopers - not all Olympic sports - but pretty funny stuff (check out the soccer dive!)
• Funny Sport Bloopers - by the clothing these look like oldies, but goodies
• Why I didn’t make the Olympics - I promise, you will cringe through the entire video
• Running’s Greatest Bloopers - the Running Times true stories of running woes

This morning, I arose from my Easter Dinner-fueled hibernation with merely two minutes to spare before I was expected at work. But I did not panic. I simply brushed my teeth and opened my laptop. I work from home—sometimes no more than six feet from my bed. Hell, sometimes in my bed!

Maybe working from home is The American Dream 2.0, but I have to be honest: after a little more than a month-and-a-half, I’ve had enough of being a stay-at-home employee. For the sake of full disclosure, I should describe my circumstances, which are unique for a 24-year-old with a good job; since I recently broke-up with a girlfriend with whom I was living in a posh apartment, I have moved back in with my parents (to avoid several months of pricey double rent payments). So while I am working from home, I am also working FROM MY PARENTS’ HOME. And therein lies the rub.

My mom is funny… and quirky. VERY quirky. Not to mention given to fits of obscenity and utter obnoxiousness. AND she’s a nurse on a rotating shift, so many days she’s at home while I’m working here, or “trying to work here,” I should say.

When my mom is cleaning the kitchen—which is my preferred workspace due to openness, natural lighting, and WIFI signal strength—she listens to her music at concert volume. No joke: concert volume. We’re talking The Bee Gee’s, Earth, Wind & Fire, Rod Stewart, and A LOT of generic salsa music. Our kitchen sounds like a fusion of American Bandstand, a sultry lounge, and the Disney version of a Mexican Barrio. And I can handle all that, even if it’s audible in every other room of the house. But when she’s watching my 10-month-old niece, that’s when she breaks out “Drew’s Famous Sleep-over Party Mix” and “The Chipmunks’ Dance Party Mix.” Now we’re talking screechy covers of “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” and high-pitched, chipmunk-esque renditions of “I’m Too Sexy” (the latter being disturbing on various levels). I would challenge anyone, save for someone with a hearing disability, to work productively in that environment. It’s like trying to center your Chi at a Hannah Montana concert.

For some reason, the WIFI signal in my house is disabled when the microwave is active. If anyone has insight as to why this is the case, please let me know; with my limited understanding of the technologies at work, I can’t wrap my head around this apparent opposition of “wavy things.” Of course, my productivity is directly tied to the Web; I use an online program to manage my daily tasks and communicate almost exclusively vie email with the other members of my company. And it just so happens that my mom uses the microwave often because she is, in fact, a twenty-first century mom. I think you go see where I’m going with this. “You’ll have to excuse me, Mr. Vice President of Operations, we’re having BLT’s for dinner tonight and Mom likes making the bacon in the microwave. Can we talk through how my Website works another time?”

Of course I’m asked to do random other tasks, merely by virtue of my constant presence. Run to the store. Hold the baby. Get the mail. I wish I were joking, but when my mom’s home, I’m a full-time gopher and a part-time employee. Did I mention I’m 24 with a good job?

And then, even when my mom’s at work, we have the other myriad temptations of being at home. As a 24-year-old guy. Recently singled. Alone. With no one else around. On the Internet full-time. With no access restrictions like those in place at large corporations. And so many possibilities…

God bless StumbleUpon!  I was feeling really crappy tonight as I’m on day 6 of the SXSW plague.  In the seemingly hopeless pursuit of making myself feel better, I decided to do some StumbleUpon channel surfing.  Four or five sites into it, the babies (both) started crying. Turns out they and Jeff (husband/co-conspirator) are now coming down with the plague. In short, I was not in any mood to laugh.

And then I found *drum roll please*

“41 Hilarious Science Fair Experiment.”

I haven’t laughed this hard since listening to the various imitations of Sarah Lacy at SXSW. OMG. My favorite rendition was given by a dude with dreadlocks sitting behind me in the Mark Cuban/Michael Eisner presentation. Sadly, I missed the original due to my poor sense of direction. (In the spirit of fairness, here’s Sarah’s take on her interview.)

As for the Science experiments, here’s a quick snippet of my personal favorites:

Crystal Meth: Friend or Foe
Wasted
This Project Stinks
Garlic: The Silent Killer (Complete with Blue Ribbon!)
Nail that Wood
That Will Leave A Stain

and last but certainly not least…

Juicy Beans

Okay, I am crying now.  This is one of those laughing fits that physically hurts.  Maybe it’s the flu. But thanks to this site, who cares?!

While many college students are currently in the throws of March Madness (click here to see a funny video of two guys filling out their brackets for this year) and are joined together screaming at the TV, other times they actually are hard at work studying and *occasionally* taking a break and going online. Things have definitely changed since I started college eleven years ago, I don’t remember any sites like this, which - is probably a good thing. Actually - I didn’t even have a computer, so there you go.

Here are the major sites I found that college kids are active on - all have jokes, videos, pictures and a lot of college followers.  After reading the comments and videos - let’s hope some of these kids never want to become president!

• College Humor
• College Clown
• College Slackers
• Points in Case

If you’re in college and not active on these you better get going, it seems to be the thing to do.  Oh…to be in college again and get to lay around your dorm room, mess around online, drink cheap beer and eat crappy food. What a life!

Did you know that three out of every five men still tell the same jokes they mastered as a kid, yet 70% believe they have “serious comedic chops?”  Men’s Health published a reader survey this month on joke-telling, which answers such questions as: Where men get their material (Good ol’ dad and the Internet); Who is the funnier gender (I’ll keep you guessing there); And who their comic timing most resembles (Did you know that John Stewart mimics are running amok?).

If these statics are any indicator, the sad truth about joke-telling is that we tend to get stuck. When you stop to consider that 20% admit to getting in fights over jokes they have told and 50% rely on jokes about other people’s mothers, its pretty clear that our humor tends to stagnate as we age.

So, who cares if you have juvenile sense of humor?  Well, more people than you may think. When you consider that “98% of CEOs prefer candidates with a sense of humor” and 72% of women “will date a man who’s funny regardless of his looks,” this lack of evolution could cost your career and lady luck.

Moral of the story, it’s time to learn some new material boys!

This month, Comic Wonder is launching a new feature: Joke Limbo.  If you have been eager to tell a joke on the site but don’t know any decent material, this new section will cure what ails you. You can flip through jokes by category (e.g., “golf jokes“) or just browse at random.  When you’ve found one that makes you laugh out loud, click the “Tell This Joke” and off you go!

When it comes to making someone laugh, there is no substitute for practice.  May as well start practicing on strangers before bringing your new material back to the family table.  If you’re gonna bomb, do it here!

As a practicing Buddhist, you might reasonably expect me to be slightly miffed by a faux Dalai Lama blog.  Aha!  That is why I am a Buddhist.  I think His Holiness Himself would get a good chuckle out of blog posts such as:

• “Stop the violence, start the funk!”
• “I might resign if I can’t go on SPRING BREAK 2008!”
• “Richard Gere is a pretty woman”

Well, maybe not that last one.  (Then again, Tenzin Gyatso is known for his sense of humor.)

At News Groper, you can find blogs by Britney, Hilary, Dr. Phil and countless more. The faux blogs are the brainchild of Greg Galant, the founder and CEO of News Groper, which he describes as a “U.N.-sanctioned task force to foster free speech.”

News Groper’s mantra is to “create a forum where all previously misrepresented, misunderstood, censored-by-a-publicist or taken-out-of-context-while-on-multiple-intoxicants voices in the world could be heard.”

Some of the real gems lie within the funny comments.  One will quickly discover some rather, ahem, defensive fans out there waiting to take News Groper to task.

If you found solace in the musings of the Fake Steve Jobs, welcome to Nirvana.

What is the rationale of a dirty joke? People are clearly drawn to telling and listening to them, just enter it in Google and the results are endless. Mostly people tell a joke to get a reaction (the shock factor!) and if the joke is a little raunchy, it will attain this result regardless of whether it’s actually funny. Therefore, a dirty joke is a joke-tellers win/win situation. But, sometimes dirty jokes are just plain entertaining - period.  Most of our office jokes that are repeated & deemed funny are on the edgier side and we all love it!  Does prefering dirty jokes mean you are slimy & sinful - heck no!  You are just well rounded to the categories of joke-telling and open to the possibilities.  Obviously there are levels to the madness though - and many of us have our stopping point.  The difficult task a joke-teller must accomplish is accurately determining how far he/she can go with the audience and the jokes they tell.

So, have clean jokes just become boring?  NO!  Here are some great ones from our site:

• A man walks into a bar with his newt by TommyBoy
• International beer convention by Pickles
• Wake Up Watson by Captainhilariousness
• Cannibals prefer eating readers over writers by tasteslikechicken
• Sexy voice in a bar by todney dangerfield

Are dirtier jokes repeated more because many joke-tellers are male and it just isn’t cool to hear from your buddies after you tell a joke, “oh…my wife would like that.  She would probably say it’s ‘cute’?”  Yes!  What a blow! Or, is the clean vs. dirty factor based on the company you keep?  Save the clean ones for the kiddies, parents, and maybe women, and tell the dirty jokes among friends. Most certainly, and if you are not following this perhaps you should take a look at your audience the next time you tell a joke!

Finally, what constitutes a “clean joke” vs. a “dirty joke”?  According to Websters,

• Dirty Jokes: Morally unclean or corrupt - indecent, vulgar
• Clean Jokes: Free from offensive treatment of sexual objects and from the use of obscenity

Now, go out and find your audiences comfort level and tell some great jokes!