LAUGH LINES : JOKES

David Letterman, quoting from President Clinton’s commencement address at the Naval Academy: “Although we don’t have military service in common, I can certainly relate to the idea of shore leave.”

Jay Leno, revealing the slogan for Dr. Jack Kevorkian’s campaign for governor of Michigan: “Let’s put Michigan out of its misery.”

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Fore!: White House administrative chief David Watkins, who resigned after it was revealed that he flew in a military helicopter to a golf match, would have gotten away with it, humor writer Bob Mills says, “if he’d only kept the chopper on the cart path.”

The President, Mills says, was livid when told of the incident, fuming: “They only had a threesome !”

Adds comedy writer Tony Peyser: “Considering all the gaffes there have been in Clinton’s Administration, this is literally par for the course.”

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Rim Shots, Part Deux: How can you tell a gentleman? He’s the one who knows how to play the accordion but doesn’t .

--Gillian Andrews What do you call a guy who hangs out with musicians? A drummer .

--Noreen Clark, L.A. (A drummer’s wife)

What do you say to a banjo player in the three-piece suit? Will the defendant please rise?

What’s the fastest way to tune a banjo? Wire cutters.

--Hilda Wenner, Santa Barbara *

The mortician asked the widow if her husband went to church.

“No,” she sobbed.

“Did he belong to Rotary? Kiwanis? Optimists? Elks? Masons? How about Knights of Columbus?”

All received negative replies.

“Was he a member of the Ku Klux Klan?” the mortician queried.

“What’s that?” the widow whimpered, lifting her head.

“That’s one of those devils under the sheets,” the undertaker explained.

“That he was,” the widow brightened. “That he was.”

--Argus Hamilton *

Reader Joe Hubbell of Grover Beach recalls when his daughter, 6, caught him off guard with the question: “What’s sex, Daddy?”

I launched into an impromptu, rambling discourse on the birds and the bees that I hoped was on the first-grade level. But I could tell by the frustrated look on her face that it wasn’t.

Finally, exasperated, she thrust in front of me the Barney Club membership application she was filling out and implored: “Daddy! What do I put here where it says sex? An M or an F ?”