Yes, silence adds power to the
punch line because it heightens the tension.
Listeners to the joke don't necessarily bring this set of oppositions to mind, but they must recognize it if the joke is to make any sense and the
punch line is to be effective.
Basketball players complain about losing playing time; in my case I lose considerable talking time at the coffee group I regularly join because I also regularly exasperate my kapihan buddies with my forgetting the correct
punch line of the joke I dish out.
Even then the magical pause can strengthen the
punch line. When used before the
punch line a pause sets up the anticipation of "here comes the funny stuff!" Anticipation is a form of tension.
Half of
Punch Line's customers come from the Caribbean, where men get together on Fridays and Saturdays and mix up virility drinks in their homes, while other buyers are Brooklynites who've heard their Caribbean friends' boasts.
Color of wool rubs off!" (I tested it, but it didn't.) Lest the whole thing seem just too maudlin, with its ebbing and flowing "graph" of red that finally trickles to pure white, Trockel gives us a final
punch line: Ceramic dishes push their way through the wall of now-white fiber to collect a few red-flecked strands into piles, like so much cooked spaghetti.
'05), I kept waiting for the
punch line. Surely, I thought, he can't really be suggesting that the public needs to be taught what to like?
Unlike parables--stories with a moral
punch line at the end--apocalyptic revelations are specifically related to the "last things." Interpreting apocalyptic sayings is tricky because they employ stock images not meant to be taken literally.
It's not the
punch line of a joke but the findings of a social survey and therefore really no laughing matter.
WHY do politicians go onto the satirical quiz Have I Got News For You when they are subject to being the
punch line to any number of gags?
Clinton had fashioned a sort of self-directed
punch line that also had the barbs he loved.
Perhaps it was because he could punctuate any story you told with a great
punch line or an even greater laugh at your
punch line.