This is what I think about when I’m not asleep:

One of my favorite comedy lines is from an episode of South Park, called “Not Without My Anus”. It is actually the April Fool’s Day episode from early on in the series and doesn’t feature any of the series regulars but rather those of the show-within-the show, Terrance & Phillip. The episode features the players Terrance, Phillip, Celine Dion, Scott, Saddam Hussein, and Ugly Bob. The line is said by either Terrance or Phillip (they’re deliberately interchangeable) to Ugly Bob in regards to his appearance and is as follows:

“Ugly Bob, your face looks like someone tried to put out a forest fire with a screwdriver.”

What makes this line so funny is how often it revisits your brain for comedic effect. When you first hear it, it is completely nonsensical and so you laugh at it. Then the portion of your brain that demands reason gets upset with you, and so you try to make sense of it. This causes you to visualize someone trying to put out a forest fire with a screwdriver which is ostensibly ridiculous and so you laugh again. Then you try to translate that into a remark about someone’s appearance and it doesn’t so you laugh again. Then you realize you’re trying to make sense of this completely nonsensical line and you laugh at yourself. And then you realize that the writers probably knew all this would happen and you have to marvel at their comedic mastery and you laugh again. At this point, you’ve already laughed at the joke five times.

Then you have to imagine a horrid man with deep divots in his face from screwdriver stabs and you feel awful for having laughed, and then you think that can’t be the image that the writers meant to convey, nor the logical conclusion of any sane person in trying to make sense of it, so you return to the notion that the line was always meant to mean nothing and you frankly shouldn’t have thought so hard about it. Then you laugh.

So, yeah, that’s the funniest line I can think of in a comedy vehicle.

Here’s a video I made.