Me and Yo Momma

Twitter had a #YoMomma hashtag (is that redundant?) going the other night. Now how could I resist posting a couple?

• Yo Momma so fat, flesh-eating bacteria passed her by because they want to enjoy their meal before they die
• Yo Momma so dumb, she thinks Facebook is something that Ed Gein keeps on his coffee table
• Yo Momma so ugly, Stevie Wonder gouged his eyes out just in case his sight ever returns
• Yo Momma so smelly, when she walks through Dog Park, people shout at Great Dane owners, “Hey, scoop up your mess!”
• Yo Momma so horny, when she approaches a candle store, the owner locks the door and hangs up an “Out To Lunch” sign
• Yo Momma so fat, she has to go to Shamu’s tank at Sea World to take a dump
• Yo Momma so inbred, she calls her grandma “Sis”
• Yo Momma so ugly, when she yawns, people cry out, “Hey, look, it’s the Goatse.cx man!” (Seriously, you don’t understand that reference? You’re one of the 3 people who missed that website? I never post disclaimers, but this is not safe for work or children. Get yourself a bucket of sand to scrub your corneas for the rest of the day, and click here if you absolutely have to see it.)
• Yo Momma so fat she got her own Occupy protest

Finally, I think I created the very first “Yo Momma so lactose-intolerant…” joke:

• Yo Momma so lactose-intolerant she get hives reading Victoria’s Secret catalogs

You’re welcome!

When I was a young composer, I entered lots of competitions. You send in a manuscript, sometimes with a recording, but it has to be anonymous, so you cover up your name on the manuscript with a fake one for identification purposes. For the longest time, my pseudonym was “Joe Momma.” And I wonder why I never won anything.

(I later switched my contest pseudonym to “No. 6.” The very first pseudonym I ever used was “Fats Waller,” which I thought was hilarious because the composition I was submitting was a brooding atonal, arrhythmic work. Looking back on my choice of pseudonyms decades later, I went from absurdity; to a lengthy period of insulting the judges; then finally to a name which suggested I was being persecuted–although at the time I swear I was just being goofy.)

Insulting another person’s mother can have serious consequences. Men routinely insult their best friends as a form of respect and competition. However, extreme caution should be exercised if the target of the insult moves from one’s friend to their mother, sister, girlfriend, or wife. If it’s not completely clear to both parties that they are entering a game of the dozens, violence may ensue.

The gang I hung around with in college freely indulged in insults to one’s self, one’s immediate family, and one’s girlfriend. A standard form of greeting between us would be, “Hey, how’s your mother in bed?” (The conversation usually got filthier from that point, sometimes ending in elaborate scenarios which resembled, unbeknownst to us, a telling of The Aristocrats joke.) The important thing to understand is that this was an established code of behavior between us. No blood would be shed because of something outrageous one of us said to the other.

So one night, I’m partying with my crowd in my buddy’s dorm room. There were a few folks from the hall floor with us as well, guys that I had met at other parties or in the cafeteria or rec room and had spoken with before. So one of these acquaintances from outside my trusted circle of nasty-tongued buddies stood at the door saying bye to everyone. When he got to me, he said, “Good night, Ugly.” No sooner had he insulted me, than I shot back, “Ahhhh, your mother’s a whore.”

His demeanor immediately changed. Every muscle in his body tensed up, he scowled and took about three long strides across the room towards where I was seated. By the time he got to me, his arm shot out and grabbed my collar and twisted the fabric until it bit down into my neck.

“Take it back!” he yelled, his face red, choking me even more as he brought up his other hand.”All right! All right!” the words somehow escaped from my gradually-constricting windpipe. “I take it back! I’m sorry. She’s not a whore!”

Eventually he loosened his grip, walked to the door, and whipped around before stepping outside, jabbing his index finger at me from across the room, yelling “DON’T YOU EVER SAY ANYTHING ABOUT MY MOTHER AGAIN!” and then left the room for the rest of the night. I think that if I had piled another mother joke on top of the unsophisticated one I first threw at him, I would have ended up in the emergency room that evening–or the morgue.

I learned a valuable lesson that day: Never insult an acquaintance’s mother, sister, or girlfriend unless I am absolutely sure that they can take the insult in the sporting manner of camaraderie in which it is intended. And never, ever insult a stranger.

Last year I made a cartoon consisting of two characters playing the dozens. It’s pretty easy to do this courtesy of Xtranormal, and I thought it came out well enough, although I should have spent more time picking better jokes (I just used time-tested ones for the dialogue). Still, hang around for the punch line.