JOKES AND HOW TO TELL THEM

Every once in a while, a successfully employed comic gets the fallacious notion that joke telling is like cooking -- just a matter of finding the right recipe. This is the worst effort yet. After the adjuration that you must know your audience lest you offend, one offensive story follows the other, the subject matter leaning to the Jewish accent yarn, the religious and racial theme and the homosexual flip. These are sprinkled with all the verboten words, although Adler's follow up analysis of each joke (talk about beating a molecule into the ground with a pile driver) makes the point that these words are not necessary to humor. As a joke-teacher, Adler plays fine harmonica.