That Reminds Me - Finding the Funny in a Serious World

By Michael Close

"This is the only joke book I own and the only one I need." Mike Caveney

Great! I found the best gift to give this Christmas. Half of my family will be thrilled because this is one funny book. The other half will be jealous because they didn't find this book first!

Great jokes - no filler. Some are quick; some are longer, story jokes. Several times Mike Close tells the same joke in different ways with different punch lines. An interesting look into the craft of what’s funny and why. Jeff Eline

I bought this book for my wife who has been going through a rough time at work and rarely seems to smile, let alone laugh these days. The first chapter on “Dad” had her cracking up; by the time she got to “Indiana” she was laughing out loud constantly. I have just started it myself – the Texas Pretzel Hold joke nearly killed me ... seriously, I was using my asthma inhaler for 30 minutes after reading it! Anonymous (Bomarfamily)

This is not your typical joke book. It’s part reminiscing, part philosophy, part comedy workshop, and all funny. Mike not only tells us some hilarious jokes, he tells us how to tell them and how to remember them. We meet the funny people who have influenced him, and learn a few lessons about how we can find our own funny material from our everyday lives.

If I had a nickel for every time I laughed while reading this book, it wouldn’t have cost me twenty bucks…I might have made a few bucks on the deal!

That said, it’s still a bargain. What’s a little joy and laughter worth to you? These jokes will stay with you long after the boost from your Starbucks triple mocha-lattes have worn off.

Buy a few and give them as gifts to people who love to laugh. John Carney

I have been collecting joke and comedy books for over 50 years. This book is my favorite of all of them. Some of the jokes I had heard before from Jay Marshall and even from Michael himself. I couldn’t put the book down until I finished it. What a collection of great stories as well as hilarious jokes. No one who enjoys comedy should be without it. Even if you don’t use the risqué material in part of the book, you can adapt the same jokes to tell the straight crowd. Don’t pass up all of this fun to avoid some off color stories. It goes to the top of my collection of joke books. I give it six stars, more if I could!!
Dick Stoner

For years I’ve heard Mike Close tell jokes and I always kicked myself because I could remember so few of them. I’ve always hoped that someday he would collect all of the great jokes he knows and put them into a book. Well, the time is finally here, and I got my copy a few days ago. It now has the place of honor in my home... on the back of the throne in the bathroom!

These are the best of the best when it comes to funny stories. Short jokes, long jokes, clean jokes, and not-so-clean jokes. But all of them are hilarious. I’ve been telling jokes to everyone I meet for the past couple of days and, while I’m not as skilled as Mike is, I’m getting great laughs.

These are as sure fire as it’s possible to be. And, Mike sprinkles in good advice on how to tell them along the way.

(When I read: “But I have to admit, that drummer was pretty good. Should we tip him? We didn’t last year.” I couldn't stop laughing for hours. You better get the book and find out why.) Dennis Loomis

I don’t usually buy joke books, but this one intrigued me because of the background of the author: musician, magician, raconteur, etc. I’m not disappointed.

I’ve read about 60 pages and laughed hysterically. Some of the jokes are old chestnuts, while others are amazingly new. I marvel at the material within these pages and look forward to completing the book – then reading it again and probably again after that.

BTW...I’ve interrupted my reading numerous times to call friends and tell them the latest laugh-creator I read.

Buy it...you won't be sorry. Adrian S. Kuiper

Rather than repeat what's been said before, I’ll just say that reading That Reminds Me was like visiting with a bunch of old friends – jokes I’ve heard in bars and clubs over the years. Mike also pays tribute to Bob Read, someone I’d never met but to whom I owe a great debt for his devotion to comedy and the cups and balls.

That Reminds Me is well worth the meager asking price. Order it today! Curt Frye

This is a wonderful anthology of great jokes, woven together with personal anecdotes and good advice, both on comedy and life. Michael Close is widely (and deservedly) admired as a magician and musician, and this book will surely win him more fans for sharing his personal collection of great stories, jokes, gags, and bits of business with a wider community. I couldn’t put it down and couldn’t help laughing out loud on nearly every page. My only regret is that it does not have an index to help me find the many jokes I want to remember, but that’s not such a bad thing either, since it forces me to search through the book looking for them, doing which reminds me of the many others that I hope to remember as well. Thanks, Mike. Richard Hatch

Mike Close has written the funniest joke book ever! Do yourself a huge favor and buy as many copies as you can afford. The book makes a perfect gift for anybody you know who thinks they are funny. Dexter Cleveland

This book should be sold with Kleenex and aspirin. I laughed so hard I got a headache! It's not for everyone, but it was great for me. Constantine Tgiros

I believe that everyone should have a good joke book. First of all, reading it will make you laugh. And if you ever need or want a good joke, you can check your joke book.

This is a great joke book. Reading it will make you laugh a lot, and if you ever need a good joke, you can go through this book and find a great one.

As a bonus, it's well written by a funny man with a ton of real world experience telling jokes. Highly recommended. Anonymous

This is not your typical joke book. Its part reminiscing, part philosophy, part comedy workshop, and all funny. Mike not only tells us some hilarious jokes, he tells us how to tell them and how to remember them. We meet the funny people who have influenced him, and learn a few lessons about how we can find our own funny material from our everyday lives.

If I had a nickel for every time I laughed while reading this book, it wouldn’t have cost me twenty bucks……..I might have made a few bucks on the deal!

That said, its still a bargain. What’s a little joy and laughter worth to you? These jokes will stay with you long after the boost from your Starbucks triple mocha-lattes have worn off.

Buy a few and give them as gifts to people who love to laugh. Anonymous

I just had the pleasure of reading Michael Close’s new book That Reminds Me. This is basically a collection of jokes that Michael has used and lived with for a number of years. In addition to the jokes, the reader gets a great insight into Michael, how he remembers jokes (something that is a challenge to many of us), why he feels humor is so important, and how to tell jokes. This is really an invaluable read - the jokes are great and I found myself cracking up a LOT - but more so for the insight into humor, how to remember jokes, and thoughts on life. If you have been fortunate enough to see Michael Close perform not only have you been badly fooled, but you have most likely laughed a LOT at the many jokes sprinkled throughout his performances. It’s always amazed me at what a resource Michael is for jokes... bring up a subject and he’s got a joke. Michael tips his mitt here with the jokes and his thoughts on how to tell jokes. I highly recommend this book. A great read, funny, and great advice. As Michael points out, laughing is very important in life. Tim Trono

You want to know something funny. Really? Then read this book. Do you like to laugh? Then read this book. Do you want to learn how to tell a joke? Then read this book. Wanna just kick back and have fun for a few hours? Then read this book. Want to learn something about how to deal with life and the twists and turns it can throw at you? Then, yes, read this book.

You won’t be disappointed. Read this book and then do your friends a favor and lighten up their lives. Tell ‘em to read this book.

Thanks Michael for making me laugh. I needed that.
Michael Bryant

That Reminds Me is arguably the best collection of jokes under one cover ever assembled.

I’ve had the pleasure of hearing many of these jokes first hand and have seen Michael bring an audience to tears (with laughter). Michael always manages to find the perfect joke for any situation. I guarantee you that you will find jokes in this book that you’ve never heard and a couple that that you may have heard before, but are presented here with a new twist or wrinkle that brings it to a new gut busting level.

If you’re a joke lover as I am, you’ll do yourself a favor and order this amazing collection. I’m already anxiously awaiting part two. Seth Kramer

I laughed. I cried.

I read the book from cover to cover at one sitting. I’ve read many gag books but never one like this. I ask only one simple favor. Please don’t sell it to anyone else so I can use ALL the material.

If you never write anything else (which would be a disaster) you can rest well at a superb work that must give pleasure and pain in the form of aching sides. Michael Woolf

I have always loved to laugh and make others laugh. When I became a professional entertainer, my sense of humor was necessary to put food on the table. I am always in a search for material and have several large joke books. This is the most consistently funny book I have ever read.

When I received the book, I put it in my truck. I read a joke at random, sitting at a stoplight. I told the joke that evening as the MC of an awards banquet and the room exploded.

The unique thing about this book is the funny and touching stories that Mike tells about some funny entertainers and interesting people. He also has some interesting information about telling jokes properly and finding funny situations in life.

Don’t make the mistake I did. I decided to use the book to read myself to sleep as I do many nights. Two hours and many laughs later, I had to force myself to find a technical manual to settle myself down.

Mom, don’t worry. I didn’t read any of the dirty ones... Unless I did not know they were dirty when I started reading them. Oh, and the ones I accidentally read, I did not laugh at them...unless I could not help it.
Doug Sparkman

Michael Close has done a beautiful thing: written a book that makes you laugh out loud, and often! I had heard a couple of the jokes before but forgotten them, and it was like visiting old friends. (I’ve been a stand-up fan for around 50 years, back before they called it stand-up). I’ve been trying out some of the many new ones on friends and getting terrific laughs. There are also a couple of fond remembrances of friends who have made Michael Close laugh, and they’re beautifully written. Get this book. Like I said, it’s a beautiful thing.
Frank Dudgeon

The post-internet world is full of jokes and we all get lousy ones every day on email from people we don't even know or want to hear from and who wouldn't know a good joke if it bit them in the ass.

Any idiot can put together a collection of jokes. But Mike Close let his own great taste guide him in assembling this collection, and it's far and away the best book of jokes I've ever read, and I'm in show business so I've heard some jokes in my day and told a few too. Pay close attention to Mike's expert Tips on Telling 'Em -- and you too could be the life of the party, at which point you can tell your internet friends to stop emailing you all the crappy jokes because you've finally got some great ones of your own. Jamy Ian Swiss

That Reminds Me - Finding the Funny in a Serious World

By Michael Close

$20.00

FULL BOOK REVIEWS

By Andrew Wimhurst

Have you ever laughed so hard you thought you were going to bust a gut? Or tried to stop yourself laughing and thought maybe you were going to have a stroke? Do you ever remember being in a classroom and some junior high wit made a comment that left you crying and gasping into your folded arms on top of the desk? Or in a really important college lecture and one of your pals pointed out graffiti on the desk or made some comment about the lecturer that totally blindsided you and you ended up having a coughing fit from trying to suppress the giggles?

I have. All of the above happened to me when I was a kid and at college. In fact it happened to me just now as I was reading through a terrific new book by the talented musician, magician and raconteur, Michael Close. That Reminds Me: Finding the Funny in a Serious World is a 200+ page softcover book that features more than 250 of Close’s favorite jokes. And boy, are there some great ones here. In fact, I’ve had the pleasure of hearing many of these being delivered by Michael in person and even rereading them sparked the same fits and gasps.

The book arrived yesterday as I was home having a tradesman replace some of the doors on my house. While he was busy working away, I was in the lounge reading through the book. When I got to the joke about the two Brits in the gentleman’s club talking about lion hunting in Africa, I suffered a major traumatic event. First, I laughed my ass off. I have a somewhat wicked laugh and soon I realized the tradesman had stopped hammering and must have been outside listening. Frankly, it was damn embarrassing. Giggling like a schoolgirl, I tried to suppress the laughter. I started gasping like a gerbil that had choked on a peanut: heek... heeek... heek... heeeek! Eee-eee-eee-eee-eee-eeee-eee! The tradesman came in and said, “You okay?” No problem, I said. All under control. And I was all under control until I flashed back to the punch line and lost it again. What else can I say? I laughed so hard I formed a snot bubble.

Now there are joke books and then there are joke books. This is not like one of those dry compilations you see in the remainder bins. Like me, you’ll probably read it in one sitting, because Close has authored it in a very personal, conversational style. The book traces the arc of Close’s experience in collecting jokes, telling them to friends, and using them professionally. You’ll read a lot of clever insights into the art of delivering a joke based on Close’s long experience and also on his observations of and stories about some highly regarded comedy magicians such as Penn Jillette, Jay Marshall and Chuck Fayne. Close includes a lot of anecdotes about family members, band mates, clients, and so on, that really bring this book to life. I especially enjoyed the section on working as a musician, as many of the observations are dead on accurate about the weirdness, exasperation, and fun of a life in music. There are lots of true and apocryphal stories sprinkled throughout the book, and I just lost it again now flashing back to the Oedipus Rex anecdote. (Sheer brilliance!)

Michael Close is a guy who loves a great joke and has an uncanny radar and impeccable taste when it comes to collecting the choicest material to help you give your friends a big belly laugh. I certainly hope you get a chance to see Mike do some of this stuff in person, but for now, this book is the next best thing to being there. Even if you’re not a joke teller yourself (and why not?) this is a book that is a pure delight to read and I think you should take the plunge.

Michael Close is a first-rate pianist and sleight-of-hand magician who is frequently the life of the party at the numerous magicians’ conventions he attends, not only for his music or for destroying well-posted magicians with some new magic trick he has invented, but because he happens to be one of show business’s premier raconteurs. Michael is proud to call himself a joke teller, and he cites joke telling as his avocation. Although he might draw a crowd with a new card trick, he is happier drawing a crowd with laughter. As someone once wrote of Johnny Carson, Michael proves that talking can be talent.

Michael’s new book, That Reminds Me, is a 207-page collection of jokes that Michael has told over the years. Jokes and the telling of them constitute happy memories for him, not only for the jokes themselves but for the associations they evoke. Accordingly, Michael has organized the jokes by those associations. Indiana reminds him of rural jokes, Las Vegas of gambling jokes. Michael’s dad, who was Polish, reminds him of Polish jokes. Michael Bryant, a fellow music student, reminds him of musician jokes. Eric Mead, a magical bartender, reminds him of bar jokes, and Aldo Colombini, a lovable Italian magician, reminds him of Italian jokes. Physician-trained Billy McComb reminds him of doctor jokes, Jewish magician Chuck Fayne of Jewish jokes (and those of other religions), and the hilarious Jay Marshall and Bob Read of, well, Jay Marshall and Bob Read jokes. A censored (by his parents) copy of Ian Fleming’s Goldfinger reminds him of salty jokes. Within all these broad genres are subgenres – drummer jokes, Heifetz jokes, blonde jokes, yuppie jokes, Chihuahua jokes, Jimmy the stock boy jokes, and many others.

“You’re not trying to escape, are you?” “I had a gig.” “He's not our regular drummer.” “Karen Carpenter.” “Were you at the first or the second show?” “You're not just here for the hunting, are you?” These words, I argue, are among the funniest in the English language when heard in the context of Mike Close’s new 207-page collection of his favorite jokes, That Reminds Me. Here is your quandary: do you buy this book for yourself and hoard the jokes – the best you will ever find – to dole out at appropriate moments, or do you buy copies of the book and give them to friends for Christmas, birthdays, whatever? At $20 the book is a steal, available at lulu.com (then search on the title or Mike’s name).

The jokes themselves are pure comedy gold, jokes you will immediately want to tell your friends. (Telling jokes is not an easy skill, and Michael sprinkles tips throughout the book on how to do it well.) On occasion the setups are so funny you just don’t care where the joke is headed. I was laughing so hard at a three-legged chicken racing alongside a car or at a deranged bear hunter that I was already transported out of the humdrum of life. (I would say that the punch lines didn’t even matter, but that bear joke punch line just may be the funniest line in the book.) Some of the laughs in the book are not jokes per se but are real lines or situations that Michael relates. I exploded with laughter upon hearing a high school classmate’s whispered definition of Oedipus Rex, upon hearing Eric Mead’s line regarding a troublesome spectator, upon hearing Penn Jillette’s practical joke on a heartsick friend.

This book is brimming with humanity. You will meet wonderful people, and you will learn a lot about Michael Close. I love the whole conceit of the book, of jokes as autobiography. For myself, many of the jokes took me back to when and where I was when I heard Mike Close himself tell them to me. So purchase and revel in this book. You will not find a funnier or warmer collection of jokes anywhere.

You hear a great joke and you can’t wait to tell it to your friends, it gets a big laugh and you continue to tell it until you hear another great joke and the cycle starts again. You’d think that after a while you would have a string of great jokes but unfortunately it doesn’t work that way. Roger Miller [King of the Road singer/songwriter]once said your memory starts to work the second you are born and it stops when a spotlight hits you.

Michael Close’s method of remembering jokes is to recall people… and that reminds him of places…. and times…. and jokes, and now he’s done all of us a favour by writing them down together with some wonderful stories of the people, the places and the times he spent there with them. I’m lucky to have met and in some cases [except for James and Michael B. and Mike’s Dad] to know well, many of the people he writes about so the fear of a spotlight hitting me has been somewhat reduced.

Now I can get on-stage inspiration from the likes of Jay Marshall, Billy McComb, Eric Mead, Chuck Fayne and Aldo Collumbini names that are legend in the world of magicians.

Not only does Mike tell you the jokes, he tells you how, and more important when not to tell them and believe me they are all “tellable” has Mike has often proved, given the right occasion.

One chapter which stands out for me, and I’m sure many others, contains no Joke “jokes”, to use Mikes own words’ but more laughs than I care to remember ,

I simply refuse to believe that there won’t be another story, another string of laughs or another beer with our mutual friend the late Bob Read.

When people ask how they can be funny I always quote Bob who said “When you know why 4x16 is funnier than 8x8”.

This book is full of “4x16” lines and stories……BUY IT NOW…I read it and laughed until the “tears ran down my leg” then I got to the chapter on Bob and I read it and wept..

That Reminds Me reminds me of a time when being offended was something one just dealt with versus hiring an attorney over and/or numbing ourselves with the latest pharmaceutical breakthrough. Heritage, race, religion, physical appearance, whatever could be joked about was, and we all laughed because everyone of us fell into at least one of these categories; no one was left out.

That period was the 1970s and every store had a rack filled with “Official” joke books. There was the Official Polish Joke Book, I’m sure the big seller of the series, and there were also Jewish, Irish, and my favorite (because of my heritage) Italian versions. I really believe that these books helped America get past Watergate and Viet Nam. We laughed again at something other than Bob Hope Christmas Specials. Well, it’s time America laughs again and That Reminds Me is a prescription you don’t need a pharmacist to fill.

Mr. Close is a multi-talented professional entertainer. He is a world class magician, jazz pianist, and is one of the funniest people I’ve seen on stage (although I don’t believe he would ever call himself a comedian). For decades, he has been compiling jokes, including old chestnuts he’s returned to relevance, jokes written by his many friends, as well as original material he has used himself or has passed on to friends to use because he knew it would work well for them. This book contains many of those jokes that he has collected over the years. But again, it’s not just a collection of jokes. As he says in the book, they are jokes that he “has a personal relationship with.” But even if that is all this book was—a collection of jokes—it would be prescribed reading.

Most chapters center on Mr. Close’s friends. He weaves stories about these people, all the while being reminded of even more jokes that fit the current theme—his method for recalling jokes. The names, such as Jay Marshall, Eric Mead, Billy McComb, Chuck Fayne, and Michael Bryant will not be familiar to the average person. Magicians will be familiar with many of the names, but not all have met these men. Michael Close introduces you to them and his stories captivate you so that personal acquaintance, while certainly helpful, is not at all necessary to bring tears—usually of laughter—to the eyes. Regardless of who these men are and what they do (or did), Mr. Close brings you into the world that he shared with them. These are brief visits to be sure, but he makes you want to meet those you still can and wish that you could have met those you no longer can.

Jokes are funny because people are funny; what they are, what they do, what they look like. Some of us are fat—just the other day I got on one of those fortune telling scales and the little card said “one at a time please”—some of us are Italian, or Polish (like Mr. Close), or golfers, musicians, magicians, blond, black, or brown, smart or stupid. Every person on this planet falls somewhere into a category that can be joked about: It’s not cruel or offensive to tell a joke about these characteristics. It’s not cruel or offensive to tell a joke about someone’s religion. Watch the evening news and you’ll see real offensiveness and cruelty in action. But better yet, forget about the day’s news, pick up a copy of That Reminds Me and remind yourself that it’s time to have a good laugh.

Mike Close is able to lure you into each chapter by making you best friends with every person he introduces you to- you're intimate, you're bonded, you're teased, and you're heartbroken, just as he is. The jokes that make the story complete are wonderful. But as wonderful as they are, they are not half as endearing as the friendships the man has maintained throughout the years with those people for whom each chapter is dedicated. The warmth transcends the humor, and the love between this man and these mentors, compadres, and miscreants, brings you to the key places in his life that changed him as a person.

You feel his world change around him, and you feel yourself change, too. You know you are now part of some experience of the sage magician and comedic master who has entertained thousands of people throughout his career. You feel the moments he is falling for his bride, and you shiver with him in the cold British Isles. You become part of Mike Close.

This is the magic of That Reminds Me: Finding the Funny in a Serious World. Yes, you will laugh. Yes, you will shed a tear. You may have a shiver or two. You will recognize yourself in his words if you're lucky. But, what is most impressive is that you will definitely feel as if you've found a dear friend in the man, even if you've known him for years, or heard all of these jokes before. This is one heck of a book, from one hell of a guy. Which reminds me.. let me know if you've heard this one...

Did you hear the one about a well-known magician who wrote a joke book?

In addition to being a terrific magician and writer, Michael Close is a superb joke teller. His mental Rolodex of jokes is seemingly endless, and he is an expert at stringing the gags together and wringing maximum laughter out of them. He knows jokes that are quick one-liners and he knows the longest of shaggy dog stories. He knows verbal jokes and puns and jokes that can only be performed by standing up and moving wildly about the room. He knows squeaky-clean jokes and he knows the dirtiest jokes around. Michael Close knows jokes.

That Reminds Me is a joke book. Books like this are not usually thought of as sources of material for professional performers, as they contain a specific variety of joke known to comedians as “take home jokes” or somewhat pejoratively, “joke jokes.” These are the jokes you hear guys telling in the bar on Friday after work, the jokes you tell your friends whenever you’ve heard a good one, and the jokes that seem so lame when they are passed around by forwarding e-mail. They are not topical, they aren’t usually personalized in any way, and in most cases it’s not known who wrote the original version.

Strange in light of the volumes of original work that he’s published previously, that this book about generic jokes turns out to be the most personal book in Mr. Close’s catalog. He tells us of his relationship with his father, growing up in Indiana, his life in music and in magic, and reveals many things that might surprise readers of his previous works. These personal stories and observations are used to frame and give context to the jokes, and end up giving real insight into the author. Magicians will be interested in the terrific profiles and remembrances of funny men like Jay Marshall, Billy McComb, and Bob Read. The chapter about Bob Read is particularly touching, with stories that will make the reader laugh out loud, and great memories of one of the best comic performers of our time. The writing exposes as much about the author as it does about Read, and in recounting something obviously emotional and difficult for him, Close releases some of his deepest feelings about humanity, about humor, and about life and death. Heavy stuff for a joke book, but it is here that Close is briefly in sight of the book’s subtitle, “Finding the Funny in a Serious World.” Since this book was obviously written for a wider audience than the magic community, I would like to have seen photographs of the funny people he profiles, but that is a minor quibble.

What about the actual jokes? Close has delivered over 250 jokes here and there are jokes of every stripe and variety. If you are offended by adult language or themes, you’re out of luck, as the system Mr. Close has chosen to organize the material does not separate jokes with blue themes or vulgar language completely from the clean jokes. As the title implies, much of the book is written in a stream of consciousness fashion, with one joke reminding him of another, which reminds him of another—just like sitting with Mike when he’s really on a roll.

What was most surprising was the quantity of jokes that were fresh. I tell jokes as much as anyone and have read dozens of joke books of varying quality, yet I’d estimate that every eight or nine pages I would come across a joke I had never heard. The discovery of new jokes is one thing, but how much more delightful to find a joke I had known for years with a subtle new turn of phrase, or trimmed down slightly in a way that would make the joke play better than the way I’ve always told it. If reading the jokes is the main event here, it consistently delivers big laughs and a constant mantra of “I need to remember that one.”

Michael Close, magician, pianist, and joke-teller, is well known in magic circles for his appearances at conventions and writing books on conjuring. He has put together a collection of more than 250 of what he considers the funniest of the jokes he has collected from his friends and told himself over the years.

It’s a superb collection. If you are squeamish about four-letter words, especially the f-word, and jokes on the deep blue side, then this book is not for you. But if you enjoy dirty jokes you’ll find yourself roaring with laughter as you turn the pages. Some of the jokes are squeaky clean, but many are not, especially those in the next-to-last chapter where Close gathered the “really dirty jokes.”

The jokes fall roughly into the following categories: Polish jokes (Close is half Polish), dumb blonde jokes, Las Vegas jokes, golf jokes, doctor jokes, Alzheimer jokes, show biz jokes, bar jokes, carnival jokes, sick jokes, animal jokes, military jokes, music jokes, religious jokes, and, of course, raunchy sex jokes. Among the book’s great animal jokes, here’s a quickie that broke me up: A grasshopper walks into a bar. The bartender says, “Wow, funny you should come in her. We have a drink named after you.” The grasshopper says, “You have a drink called Stanley?”

In between the jokes are fragments of autobiography. Magicians weave in and out: Penn Jillette, Billy McComb, Johnny Thompson, Eric Mead, Chuck Fayne, Bob Read. A chapter titled “Jay” is a fine tribute to the late Jay Marshall, whom Close often accompanied on piano during his famous Lefty routine. Movie star Tony Randall provides some of the book’s loudest laughs.

Visual jokes, requiring some sort of body movements as part of a punch line, are marked in the margins with a small eye. Close is particularly fond of jokes with punch lines impossible to anticipate, especially jokes that are unintelligible until the last word of a punch line.

In a final chapter titled “The Last Laugh,” Close turns serious. He tells about a painful illness that hit him when he and his wife Lisa were in Guatemala to pick up their adopted daughter Ava Rosabelle. He closes with this sober advice: “Life is tough. Life wants tears. Fight back; look hard and try to find the funny. I think this is one of the most important things I can teach my daughter. Fortunately, she has a head start. As I mentioned in the Dedication, she has a great laugh.”