What’s So Funny?: A Finance Officer’sSearch to Find the Funniest Things Ever Said
Good morning. I am Keith Herrmann, Deputy Finance Director for the City of Durham.
The organizers of the NCGFOA summer conference wanted to have a motivational speaker who would deliver an entertaining and humorous speech.
Unfortunately, due to budget constraints this year, they could not afford to hire anyone.
So that’s why they asked me.
My attitude has always been to “seize the day.” I hope you enjoy my speech. It’s what happens when you ask a Finance Officer in the NCGFOA to try and entertain an audience of his peers on a Tuesday morning. The title of my presentation is, “What’s so funny?”and the subtitle is, “A Finance Officer’s search to findthe funniest things ever said.”
Here are my desert-island, all-time, top nine most funny, side-splitting things ever said. Let’s get started.
#9: Disease fatigue
With so many massive challenges confronting us all at once, it’s easy to understand why a sort of crisis fatigue has set in. Not long ago, comedian Daniel Tosh captured the mood with his comment: “I hope we find a cure for every major disease. I’m tired of walking 5K.”
#8: Paul Lynde on the Hollywood Squares
Hollywood Squareswas a television game show in which two contestants played tic-tac-toe to win cash and prizes. The "board" for the game was a 3 × 3 vertical stack of open-faced cubes, each occupied by a celebrity or star seated at a desk and facing the contestants. The stars were asked questions and the contestants judged their answers in order to win the game.
The actor Paul Lynde was the star who often occupied the center of the board. On one occasion, he was asked the question, “Why do the Hell’s Angels wear leather?”
His answer: “Because chiffon wrinkles so easily.”
#7: Going the distance with Muhammad Ali
The rich-and-famous don’t always succeed in flaunting the rules, as the world-boxing champion Muhammad Ali learned on one flight. While the aircraft was pushed back, the flight attendant asked him to buckle his seatbelt.
The champ replied, “Superman don’t need no seatbelt!”
Without missing a beat, the savvy flight attendant replied, “Superman don’t need no airplane, either!”
The boxer buckled up without another word.
#6: Lily Tomlin and the Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe
During 1986, Lily Tomlin performed a one-woman play on Broadway entitled, “The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe.” “Language,” she said, “developed out of our deep inner need to complain….What’s reality, anyway? Nothing but a collective hunch.”
Among much else, she said, “I worry if peanut oil comes from peanuts and olive oil comes from olives, where does baby oil come from?”
#5: Double negative
A few decades ago, the Oxford philosopher J.L. Austin was giving an address to a large audience of his fellow philosophers in New York. In the course of this address, which was about the philosophy of language, Austin raised the issue of the double negative.
“In some languages,” Austin observed, “a double negative yields an affirmative. In other languages, a double negative yields a more emphatic negative. Yet, curiously enough, I know of no language in which a double affirmative yields a negative.”
Suddenly, from the back of the hall, came the comment, “Yeah, yeah.”
#4: Tom Morris at last year’s NCGFOA Summer Conference
Speaking of philosophy, many of you might remember that the keynote speaker at last year’s summer conference was Tom Morris. Among other things, he wrote a book entitled, If Aristotle Ran General Motors. Morris described what would happen if one were to mix ancient philosophy with modern business. He said General Motors would benefit from Aristotle’s insights on Truth, Beauty, Goodness and Unity.
I found If Aristotle Ran General Motors contained wonderful theories, but I suspect that Aristotle would do a terrible job of running the auto giant. Business and classical thinking do not mix. The results would be as bad as what might happen if Lee Iacocca set out to rewrite The Republic.
However, Morris’ premise is so intriguing that it got me wondering what might be the topics for a series of related books that would be funny. How about:
If Descartes Ran Pontiac. I Think, Therefore, Grand Am.
If Paul McCartney Ran a Car Company. Let it B.M.W.
If Aesop Ran Miller Brewery. He’d know how much a Bud in the hand is worth to Anheuser-Busch.
#3: Jack just wants his toast
For the past several years, the City of Durham has been trying to create a culture of service and to instill in all of our employees a positive and friendly attitude. It is often difficult to define exactly what this means. However, it is easy to spot when someone is not living up to our expectations. My next example is of someone who embodies the exact opposite of the attitude that we are trying to achieve in Durham. It is a film clip from the movie Five Easy Pieces, and Jack Nicholson just wants his toast.
[Toast scene from Five Easy Pieces]
#2: I read it on the North Carolina Finance Listserv
To help me find the funniest things ever said, I turned to a resource that is readily available to us all. The North Carolina Finance list serve provides an effective and efficient opportunity for communication between local government finance officers throughout North Carolina. Members of the list serve can talk to their colleagues about common interests, concerns and questions through the use of e-mail. If you are a member of the North Carolina Government Finance Officers Association you may subscribe to this list. Subscribers are able to communicate via e-mail with other subscribers and receive messages sent to all subscribing members.
At its best, the list serve is an effective and efficient tool that provides immediate access to people who are a source of information we need. However, it is often a patchwork of the serious and the inane. And with the list serve, we can reveal in an instant, to a large audience of our colleagues and associates that we can say some of the funniest things ever said. To illustrate this point, I have slightly modified a selection of messages posted on the Finance list serve during the past year. At this time I would like to read them to you:
From: Ted, Town of Low Point. Message: We have a grant that has 12 cents still remaining in it. Does anyone have any ideas about what we can purchase for 12 cents to close out the grant?
From Tony, Town of Biscuitville. Message: Residents here complain about all the potholes around town. Can anyone provide a definition of what is a pothole? I think that we have pits, basins, bowls, trenches, pavement failure, a collapsed culvert, and a crater, but I don’t think that any of these are potholes and we don’t have to fix them. Please advise.
From: Amy, Town of Humdrum. Message: I have to prepare an RFP or an RFQ for our ERP. I asked the SOG and the LGC and they said I was SOL. Can someone please help -- ASAP?
From Cindy, Town of Redboro: Message: I’m not 100% sure, but I think that the Town Manager said we need to hold a Public Herring. Is a herring a type of fish? Does anyone know of a good fish store, or should I piggyback on the state contract?
From: Michelle, Town of Box Springs. Message: I am currently out of the office and will return in two weeks.
From Boopsie, Town of Tarboring. Message: Hi Mom, Here is the recipe for biscuits you and sis wanted. Be sure to sift the flour before adding the water! Love, Boopsie.
From Lynn, Town of Linoleum. Message: I would be interested in that information, too.
From the North Carolina Organization. Important Message: Please be advised that we have moved our fax machine from the first floor to the second floor. Keep this in mind when communicating with our office in the future.
From: Michelle, Town of Box Springs. Message: I am currently back in the office but I will be going away in two weeks.
From Brandy, Borg County. Message: Can a fixed asset be broken? And if it’s broken, how can it be fixed?
From Martha, Town of Little City. Message: How can we implement a “smoke free” policy in the Fire Department? We have found that where there’s fire, there’s smoke.
From Sampson, Town of Delilah. Message: At the agenda review for the Work Session, Council members said they were going to “pull my item.” According to my wife, she is the only one who should pull my item. What can I do?
From Glen, Town of Redboro. Message: Cindy, I lost my car keys. Have you seen them?
From the North Carolina Organization. Important Message -- Revised: This is to let you know that the previous message about the fax machine is incorrect. The fax machine is still on the first floor and has not been moved. Please disregard the earlier message about the fax machine.
From Ken, Bedrock County. Message: Are the Sunshine Laws contributing to global warming? Can anyone enlighten me?
From Michelle, Town of Box Springs. Message: I will be out of the office for the next five minutes. I am going to the bathroom. If this is an emergency, you know where to find me.
From Michael, Town of Bluesboro. Message: How do I do my job? My boss told me I wasn’t doing my job and I need to do better. Can anyone please tell me what is my job? And what does he mean by better?
From Glen, Town of Redboro. Message: Cindy, I found my car keys. Never mind.
From Micheal, Town of Bluesboro. Message: I’m not sure if my e-mail is working. Can anyone out there hear me? Please let me know.
From Boopsie, Town of Tarboring. Message: Mom, I haven’t heard back from you and sis, and I’m worried. Don’t like the biscuits recipe I sent? Ha ha only fooling. Oh, and please write to me – my job is soooo dull….
#1: A great speech?
But seriously, last but not least, from Keith, City of Durham. Message: Whenever you use the list serve, please keep in mind the impression you are creating on all the other subscribers. You probably don’t want to unintentionally end up on a list of the funniest things ever said. In general, if your message or reply is short there is little harm in sending it to everyone: it does not take much time to discard a message that is not interesting. However, I implore you, always think before sending any message!
Ask yourself a few simple questions. Carefully check who you are sending the message to, and make sure this is where you want it to go. It is easy to press the wrong key or otherwise do something that will make your computer send the message to the wrong people. I have found that it is best to type a message and pause, just before sending it, to consider whether you are doing this in the general interest. Before hitting “send” it is a good practice to review your e-mail text as if you were a recipient receiving this e-mail from someone else. Would you want to look at this message? If not, you’ve still got some work to do.
This morning I did have a message to deliver about the use of the list serve, and I used humor to act as a little bit of sugar that will perhaps make the medicine easier to swallow. This, however, is not the note I want to end on.
I believe that one of the funniest things ever said was when they asked me to deliver a humorous speech to all of you. I’m an accountant, not a comedian, and I know I should stick to my day job. For the final words, I want to leave you with one last video clip. It is from the movie City Slickers and stars Jack Palance and Billy Crystal.
[One Thing from City Slickers]
That about sums it up. The difference between searching for the right direction and moving in the right direction is your ability to maintain focus on your vision. What is my vision? To try and always remember that government is for the people.
And there’s nothing funny about that at all.
Thank you and I look forward to hearing from you soon.
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