LAUGH LINES : Jokes

In the news: David Letterman, on Vice President Al Gore filling in while the President is on vacation: “That means he’s busy eating fast food, chasing women and giving Bob Dole the finger.”

Comedy writer Bob Mills, on the Clintons’ vacation: “Chased indoors by rain at Martha’s Vineyard, they played Monopoly. Hillary won when she shrewdly traded Boardwalk and Park Place for cattle futures.”

Mills, on a possible U.S. military invasion of Haiti: “Knowing that victory will require superior weapons, Pentagon officials say they will use only those blessed at midnight with a mixture of pickled toad tongues, dried bat wings and chicken entrails.”

Comedy writer Tony Peyser on the bankruptcy filing last week by Superior Stamp and Coin Inc., which is principally owned by L.A. Kings President Bruce McNall: “Authorities moved in when an investigation revealed that the company’s assets mirrored its name: one stamp and one coin.”

Peyser, on fugitive computer hacker Justin Tanner Peterson, arrested Monday by the FBI in L.A. on charges that included hijacking radio station phone lines to win contests: “If convicted, he faces up to 40 years in prison. When he gets out, however, he’ll have 19 Ford Festivas and more than a dozen all-expenses-paid trips to Hawaii waiting for him.”

Comic Argus Hamilton, on word that former veep Dan Quayle will soon announce his presidential candidacy: “He will be doing this country a great service. America is sick and tired of Hillary jokes.”

Hamilton, on Tom Arnold requesting $100,000 a month alimony from Roseanne: “For that kind of money, he should have to live with her.”

A Yale scientist, infected with a rare rodent-borne virus after a lab accident, has been released from the hospital. Well-wishers feted him at home, reports comedy writer Mark Miller, with gifts of an exercise wheel and some Cheddar cheese.

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Reader file: “The Beverly Hills Philosophy,” courtesy of over-the-hill comedy writer Gary Belkin:

* Friends don’t let friends drive Yugos.

* There is no such thing as a free brunch.

* Practice random profligacy and senseless acts of spending.

* Less is moronic.

* If you give a man a fish . . . also give him a lemon wedge and basil.

From poet Rex Knowles of Claremont:

There is something wrong with the world,

Very, very wrong, I think,

When there is real lemon in my furniture polish,

And artificial lemon in my drink.

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Tom Gorman says that his daughter, Cassie, was thumbing through her new textbooks as she prepared for her freshman year in high school. When she got to her drama book, her voice suddenly raised with excitement:

“Wow,” she exclaimed, “a whole section on how to slap someone!”