LAUGH LINES : JOKES

In the news: Jay Leno, on the controversial slave auction re-enactment in Colonial Williamsburg: “It was so realistic, Jesse Helms threw his shoulder out waving his gold card.”

Leno, on the popularity of the O.J. mask for Halloween: “Here’s my question: When Mom drives the kids around trick or treating, does she have to wear the Al Cowlings mask?”

Comic Argus Hamilton says President Clinton is starting to like foreign policy: “He has stopped Iraq cold and overthrown the Haitian generals. If he’d known it was this easy, he’d have gone to Vietnam.”

Comedy writer Bob Mills, on a fitness review board finding that some New York City cops can’t perform simple exercises: “Such as sit-ups, chin-ups and lifting your ordinary bag of payoff money.”

Comedy writer Leslie Coogan, on how NYC can solve this problem: “You have postal workers become police officers. They are fit from walking and they have better weapons than the cops.”

Comedy writer Alan Ray, on Evil Knievel’s arrest for assaulting a woman companion: “His next stunt will be exciting. He’ll try to see if he can jump bail.”

Comedy writer Tony Peyser, on L.A. County leasing two Canadian firefighting planes: “The Super Scoopers can also be used to clean up the mud from the Feinstein-Huffington campaign.”

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And the winner is: Mills, on two American doctors winning the Nobel Prize for their studies of G proteins in human cells: “Runner-up was the doctor who developed the pre-admission wallet X-ray.”

Among David Letterman’s Top 10 signs you’re not going to win a Nobel Prize:

* You think the capital of Sweden is Sweden City.

* You built an artificial heart, but it’s the size of a bread truck.

* Closest you’ve ever come to doing a scientific experiment: Putting a sleeping friend’s hand in warm water.

* Your theory of relativity is E = MC Hammer.

* You’re known around the university as “Professor Gump.”

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When the traveler entered the small-town bar, patrons were watching a presidential news conference on TV. He listened a few minutes, then blurted out: “Boy, Bill Clinton sure is a horse’s rear.”

Suddenly, nearly every person in the bar beat him to a pulp. Dismayed, the stranger got up and said, “Wow, this must really be Clinton country.”

“Nope,” responded the bartender. “Horse country.”

--Alan Weiss, Santa Monica

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When reader Mary Weaver of Manhattan Beach became president of a local women’s group, her family made a big deal out of it. But her grandson, 3, had only one question:

“Grandma, now that you are president, when do you get your picture on the money?”