LAUGH LINES : Jokes

In the news: Comedy writer Bob Mills reports that striking L.A. bus drivers had to cancel a scheduled picket line when they all showed up late.

Jay Leno, on the MTA strike: “They’re asking for something like an additional $20 million a year. And they are demanding exact change.”

Leno, on Madonna getting a restraining order against a man lurking around outside her house: “If you’re a Peeping Tom, why pick Madonna? What part of this woman haven’t you already seen?”

Mills, on the opening day of the Whitewater hearings in Washington: “White House aides predicted that President Clinton would be totally exonerated once the DNA test results are in.”

Rep. Toby Roth (R-Wis.) says he doesn’t like the rules for the Whitewater hearings: “Had these ground rules applied in the O.J. Simpson trial, you couldn’t ask him about the knife, you couldn’t ask him about the glove, you couldn’t ask him about the blood. All, under these ground rules, you could ask is, ‘So, O.J., how was your flight to Chicago?’ ”

Comedy writer Tony Peyser, on the Harvard study that says 6.6 million senior citizens in America are over-medicated: “It’s bad news for them, but it does give aging Grateful Dead fans something to look forward to.”

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Health care update: U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.), on the Clinton Health Security Express: “I think some in the Administration might declare this caravan business a success if all the buses can just get back to Washington on the same day.”

The President, who loves to display his genuine compassion for the common folk, recently told a health care rally in St. Louis that he hears the little voices that his opponents never hear. “Of course,” says comic Argus Hamilton. “But so did Jack Nicholson in ‘The Shining.’ ”

On the other hand: Reader George Kiseda of L.A. is waiting for Bob Dole to explain “why Republicans think universal health coverage is OK for Congressmen and convicts, but not for the rest of us.”

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A golfer teed off into a foursome finishing up on the green, and his ball hit one of the men in the groin. The man dropped to the ground, writhing in pain. The astonished golfer ran down the fairway from the tee and found the man screaming: “I am going to sue you for $10,000. You hear me?”

The golfer replied: “But I yelled fore.”

Said the man in pain: “I’ll take it. I’ll take it.”

--Peter L. Eilken, Monrovia

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Reader John Hudson of Redondo Beach swears that he overheard the following conversation when a fellow flight attendant told a man boarding the aircraft with a huge trunk that it must be checked in:

Passenger: “Well you can take this plane and shove it up your. . . .”

Attendant: “If you can do that with your trunk, you can bring it on board.”