Jokes are such delicate things. Frail, even, in the sense that they have to be written just so and delivered in exactly the right way or they’ll collapse into embarassment. One thing they have to do at the start is convey a sense of basic cultural normality — they can’t start out sounding too clever or dumb. I’m saying this to explain how the joke on page 53 in the current Esquire (whether or not it came from the mind or mouth of Gillian Jacobs) dies immediately, during the first sentence.

How dumb to you have to be to not know that La Jolla is pronounced with a soft j that sounds like an h? What kind of mongoloid wife or husband would argue on behalf of a hard j pronunciation? What kind of idiot would start a joke with a debate about how to pronounce La Jolla, which implies it’s not an entirely settled issue and that reasonable people might have differing opinions? How funny could a joke be if it starts with the following: “A tourist couple sharing a hamburger start arguing about whether McDonalds burgers are made from the meat of domestic house cats or rare tropical birds”? Or: “A tourist couple start arguing about whether Bono played bass or drums for the Rolling Stones”?

Christmas lights not adorning department stores and muncipal streets usually go up a week before Thanksgiving, and sometimes a tad earlier.

Southwest corner of Central Park, opposite the Pierre — Sunday, 11.15, 11:10 pm.