Have any good jokes about your rival town or school district?

July 15, 2009 2:24 PM

Jokefilter: Rival towns and school districts often have some really funny one-liners at one another's expense. Know any good ones? Some examples after the jump.

Why wasn't Jesus born in [your town]? They couldn't find three wise men and a virgin.

Why do birds fly upside down over [your town]? There's nothing worth sh*tting on.

Did you hear [my town] is getting a new zoo? They're putting a fence up around [your town].

posted by BirdD0g to society & culture (47 comments total)

[Your town]: Where men are men and sheep are scared.

(Best if rival is an ag school.)
posted by Danf at 2:30 PM on July 15

"New Zealanders who emigrate to Australia raise the IQ of both countries." - Robert Muldoon

chop/crunch/snip... Shelbyvillians who move to Springfield raise the IQ of both towns.
posted by -harlequin- at 2:37 PM on July 15 [1 favorite has favorites]

It was a visual, but when my home state started issuing alumni license plates for the state universities, I received a postcard ad for the plates that showed a shiny luxury car with my school's plate on it, and an old junker with the rival school's. And I'm almost positive there was an ad reversing this, aimed at alumni of the rival school.
posted by padraigin at 2:38 PM on July 15

Slightly off-color warning:

Q: There's a river of sh*t between [my town] and [your town]. How do you know which side is [your town]'s?

A: Your side has diving boards.
posted by sesquipedalian at 2:43 PM on July 15

I'm pretty sure I got this from Metafilter somewhere. (I'm in Denver and a Broncos fan, so it's a pretty handy one to know.)

So:

Al Davis and Tom Cable are sitting on the couch at home watching the Broncos beat the Cleveland Browns again when Al says, “Tom, I'm sick of this—we both know how it's gonna end. Here, let me see the remote.” Al flips through a few channels and ends up lazily on CNN, where they're broadcasting live footage of rising turmoil in Afghanistan. Al and Tom don't watch much news, and the picture's shaking and reeling a bit, so it takes them a moment to figure out what's going on: a reporter is trying to get a closer look at an Al Qaeda stronghold, but the Al Qaeda goons keep hurling hand grenades out the windows at city square below. All of a sudden, Al points at the screen and shouts: “Look!”

In the corner of the frame, they watch as a young man, tall, lithe and athletic, reaches out and actually catches on of the hand grenades as it makes its long arc toward the ground; then, not missing a step, he turns, winds back, and spirals the grenade perfectly right back through the fifth-story window from which it came. An explosion rocks the compound, and Al and Tom look at each other in shock.

“Well…that had to be a fluke. I mean, that kinda thing can happen to anybody once, right?” says Tom.

So they keep watching; and suddenly, just as before, the kid, about fifty yards away from this building by now, catches another live grenade and tosses it right on back, this time into the sixth-story window. Al and Tom are flabbergasted and stunned when he repeats the feat a third and a fourth time: this is possibly the greatest quarterbacking arm of the decade! Then and there, they agree: he must become a Raider.

Flash forward a year, and they've done it: they flew to Afghanistan, hired translators and bodyguards at great expense, hired the kid and made him their quarterback. In fact, he's the best quarterback LA has had in decades; they're delighted to discover that he hardly ever gets arrested. He's enjoying his life a great deal, too. However, one day, he gets a phone call from his mother…

‘Hey, mom! How are you?’

‘Terrible, son. Life just seems to get worse and worse and worse—the turmoil on the streets is appalling, and I find it unbearable to go on here knowing what danger my family is in!‘

‘That's awful, mom! What happened?’

‘Well, just the other week, your brother was walking to school when some boys beat him and stole his lunch!’

‘Well, mom, they're boys—they'll do things like that, I guess.’

‘Oh, I know they're boys, but they didn't have to break both of his legs. But that's not even the worst of it! The other evening, your sister, who's been having to work late at the sweatshop in order to earn food money for the family, was walking home when five big men pulled her into an alley and raped her!’

‘Oh god! Mom, that's terrible! Is she alright?’

‘Oh, I think she'll be okay; they weren't as rough this time as they were the last four or five. But even that's not the worst of it! Yesterday, your father was coming home from work and a bunch of hoodlums beat him and stole all of the family food money; and as if that weren't enough, they killed him and left him there on the street for dead!’

‘Oh mom…I…I'm going to have to spend some time processing this…what a terrible thing to happen! Jesus…’

‘Yes, it's tragedy after tragedy! I'm telling you, son, I will never forgive you for moving the family to LA!’
posted by koeselitz at 3:38 PM on July 15 [4 favorites has favorites]

Rival colleges, rather than towns:

Question posed by cheerleaders at a football game at Soldiers Field (Mass.) back in the day:

Q: What's the color of shit?

A: Brown!

The local, not-so-Brown students shouted out the answer with greater gusto than did our visitors from Providence, if I remember correctly.
posted by Rain Man at 3:47 PM on July 15

If you're a University of Washington Husky, and someone asks you how to get to Pullman (Washington State University campus home), you say "Go east til you smell it, south til you step in it."
posted by vito90 at 3:47 PM on July 15 [1 favorite has favorites]

How do you get a WSU Cougar off your porch? Pay him for your pizza.
posted by vito90 at 3:48 PM on July 15

Q: Why can't they make ice in ________?
A: They lost the recipe.

Also, there are Aggie jokes you might be able to paraphrase.
posted by davcoo at 3:52 PM on July 15

oh my my, what's that smell? we must be in chickendale!

(yes, regionally specific - chickendale = springdale, ar - home of tyson's chicken plant)
posted by nadawi at 3:56 PM on July 15

How do they know the toothbrush was invented in _____?
Because if it was invented anywhere else, it would be called a teethbrush.

Why does {schoolname} start classes in the fall?
Because that's when the rivers are low enough to herd their cheerleaders across.
posted by joaquim at 4:01 PM on July 15

I heard this one from my Iowan cousin.

Q: What's the difference between a bag of trash and a girl from Minnesota?

A: A bag of trash gets taken out once a week.
posted by hydrophonic at 4:01 PM on July 15

there are some of rhyming one-liners about universities in Ontario...

[examples:

if you can hold a knife and fork, you can get in to York!

if you can walk and talk, you can go to Brock.
(if you can walk faster, you can go to McMaster)]


one of my favourites is about the University of Waterloo and Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, ON. UW is the top Engineering school in Canada, and Laurier is more of a liberal arts school... my friends who went to Laurier often joked, "you meet your friends at Laurier. you meet your husband at Waterloo."
posted by gursky at 4:05 PM on July 15

"Kiss me where it smells," she said, so I took her to Allston.

/DFW
posted by logicpunk at 4:05 PM on July 15 [1 favorite has favorites]

My overly-intelligent, underly-athletic NYC prep school used to have the following cheer when facing the slightly-less-intelligent, slightly-more-athletic (by fractions in both cases, mind you) school down the road:

"That's all right, that's ok, you'll all work for us someday"

That was about the extent of our school spirit.
posted by swngnmonk at 4:27 PM on July 15

Why do all the trees in Missouri lean North? Because Iowa sucks.

It's a broader geographic area than you're interested in, but I love that joke.
posted by Science! at 4:41 PM on July 15

How do you get the ______ off your front porch?

Pay them for the pizza.
posted by Confess, Fletch at 4:50 PM on July 15

Our cross-town rival high school had good athletes, but we were far superior academically. At all our sports competitions, our side would start chanting, "S-A-T's... S-A-T's... S-A-T's..."
posted by NotMyselfRightNow at 4:56 PM on July 15

The best thing that's ever come out of Melbourne? The Hume Highway.

Ava Gardner apparently didn't deliver the archest putdown ever about Melbourne, but anyone from Melbourne will gleefully retell the joke. I think it's an insecurity thing.

In NSW, a very short skirt is a "Gosford" skirt. (Gosford is just south of The Entrance, another town on the Central Coast).
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 5:18 PM on July 15

You know they invented Halloween in ____________?
Yeah, they still only like to pump kin.
posted by geekyguy at 5:39 PM on July 15 [1 favorite has favorites]

They are going to combine the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul into one city Called Minnehaha. Minne for Minneapolis and haha for Saint Paul
posted by Xurando at 5:42 PM on July 15

In Cambridge, England, there is a college by the name of St John's College. The "other place", namely Oxford, is (mostly in jest) held to be in less repute than Cambridge. Hence the song, "I'd rather be at Oxford than at John's."
posted by alaaarm at 6:00 PM on July 15

Man Has Derogatory Nickname For Every Neighboring Town
posted by llin at 6:18 PM on July 15

This is very region/name specific, but if your rival town has a "c" that makes a "k" sound, this is my favourite -

"Carleton, where the K stands for Quality"
posted by Phire at 6:27 PM on July 15

Berwyn: The town so nice they named it once.

Also: Iowa got its name because it stands for "Idiots Out Walking Around".

** Disclaimer: I actually love Iowa.
posted by TheClonusHorror at 6:44 PM on July 15

What's the big 'N' stand for?

Knowledge.
posted by ctmf at 7:07 PM on July 15

The best dig I've ever had thrown at me was:

him: so where do you go to school?
Me: university x
him: oh, sorry. I'll talk slooower.
posted by clearly at 7:44 PM on July 15

Back when I lived in North Carolina, while driving to work every morning on the 15-501 I would pass a house with a sign on which was written "BEET DOOK." It's a clever self-effacing dig by the state school UNC against it's athletic rival, the prestigious and private Duke University a few miles away.
posted by billtron at 8:06 PM on July 15

Another college one I feel bad about posting but I don't think it'll work with anywhere else.

"Can't read? Can't write? Kent State."

Helps if you've got the sort of accent where Can't and Kent sound the same when spoken quickly, clearly.
posted by Solon and Thanks at 8:31 PM on July 15

Rival colleges, rather than towns or school districts, but:

A Harvard man and a Penn man are out to dinner. After the meal, the Penn guy says to the Harvard guy, "Did you possibly attend Harvard?"

The Harvard guy says, "Why yes, I did - how did you know?"

The Penn guy says, "Well, you ordered in perfect French, you always used the exact right fork with each course, and you knew how to pair wines perfectly with every dish."

The Harvard guy smiles and says, "Indeed. And by any chance, did you go to Penn?"

The Penn guy, taken aback, says, "I did! How did you know that?"

"I saw your class ring when you picked your nose."

***

A Harvard guy and a Penn guy are in the restroom at the urinals. As the Penn guy finishes his business, he proceeds to head straight out the door. Disdainfully, the Harvard guy says, "At Hahhhhvahd, we learned to wash our hands after we... urinate."

"Oh yeah? Well at Penn, we learned not to urinate on our hands."
posted by Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o'Dell at 8:42 PM on July 15

If Oakland is the asshole of the Bay Area, then Piedmont is the shit coming out of it. (Piedmont is surrounded entirely by Oakland).

The only thing to do in Alameda/Piedmont is to drive to Oakland. (Alameda is an island town in the bay just off Oakland's shore).
posted by clorox at 8:48 PM on July 15

There's an apocryphal story about H.V. Evatt, when he was Secretary-General of the United Nations, having trouble counting money in the dark to pay a cab driver in New York. He says:

"You know, in Australia we have different coloured notes so people can tell them apart".

The cabbie replies:

"Pal, in America people can count".
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 8:56 PM on July 15 [1 favorite has favorites]

Person1: So, where are you from?
Person2: City A.
Person1: Sorry?
Person2: City A.
Person1: Yeah. I'm sorry.
posted by erikgrande at 9:08 PM on July 15

Not a rivalry joke, but the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, or UAPB, is a predominantly African-American school. It's nickname is You Are Probably Black.
posted by zardoz at 9:20 PM on July 15

A guy from Ventura, a guy from Oxnard and a guy from Lompoc are in a car together, who is driving? The policeman.
posted by Iron Rat at 9:46 PM on July 15

Some for you, vito90.

Why don't they have any ice at UW?
The guy who had the recipe graduated.

How do you know when a Husky has done a crossword puzzle?
All of the squares have been colored in!

What do they call a good looking girl on the UW campus?
A visitor.


Go Cougs :)
posted by Amanda B at 10:06 PM on July 15

Like the first one, but not: "Scranton, where the men are men and the women are too!"

I heard it from my first summer camp roommate, a guy from Northern PA - but not Scranton area. I've only met one person from Scranton since then, and he'd never heard it before.
posted by knile at 10:13 PM on July 15

Several of these jokes (e.g. koeselitz's one about LA) are also Liverpool jokes so here is a Liverpool one not given here.

Bob Hope, as an old man, comes to Liverpool, where he meets Cilla Black. She says she has always admired him and would like to have sex with him. They go to his hotel room and have passionate sex. Cilla is surprised that a man of his age can perform so well and tells him so. He replies, That's nothing. Give me an hour's rest and we'll do it again but, meanwhile, I want you to put both your hands on my [intimate parts]. After an hour, same thing and again he replies That's nothing. Give me an hour's rest and we'll do it again but, meanwhile, I want you to put both your hands on my [intimate parts]. She responds that she understands the need for the hour's rest but why does he want her to put her hands on his [intimate parts]. He replies, Last time I was in Liverpool someone stole my wallet and I just wanted to make sure it didn't happen again.

Loads more Liverpool jokes and don't even get me started on Manchester jokes.
posted by TheRaven at 12:53 AM on July 16 [1 favorite has favorites]

The Scotland Maths paper always raises laughs:
http://www.scotster.com/forums/jokes/Scottish-maths-exam.1746.html

There are a load of good "If Star Wars was set in" ones (Glasgow and Barnsley being the ones I know well enough to comment on the accuracy!)

How many St Andrews students does it take to change a light bulb?
None. That's what servants are for.
(also told for Edinburgh Uni)

How many Dundee United fans does it take to change a lightbulb?
Two. One to change the bulb, one to revive him after he's smelled his own armpits.

How many Rangers fans does it take to change a lightbulb?
50. One to change the bulb, one to buy the official Rangers lightbulb changing shirt, one to buy the official Rangers lightbulb changing DVD (etc)
(exactly the same joke is told about Celtic)

How many Leeds United fans does it take to change a lightbulb?
Dunt matter, they're condemned to eternal darkness.
(another one I've heard for other clubs, usually ones at the bottom of the table)

What do you call two Man Utd fans going over a cliff in an Espace?
A waste of space. Could have got eight of the buggers in there.
posted by Coobeastie at 3:48 AM on July 16

Hockey games at my alma mater were loaded with barbs towards... well, everyone. We could have been Philadelphia fans except for the lack of batteries being thrown on the ice. Anyway, one chant that always started during the game was "Harvard Rejects!" This worked two ways, since the chant started up whether we were playing Brown, BU, or... Harvard.

Not directed at any one team in particular, but whenever an opposing team's player was mentioned on the PA he got a "sucks!" appended to his name by the crowd. For example:
Announcer: "Penalty, number 17, John Smith"
Crowd: "Sucks!"
Announcer: "...Two minutes for-"
Crowd: "Sucking!"
posted by backseatpilot at 5:37 AM on July 16

There is also a poem around the Boston area for the city of Lynn:

Lynn, Lynn, the City of Sin, you never come out the way you go in.
posted by backseatpilot at 5:39 AM on July 16 [1 favorite has favorites]

Our cross-town rival high school had good athletes, but we were far superior academically. At all our sports competitions, our side would start chanting, "S-A-T's... S-A-T's... S-A-T's..."

Our athletically-challenged prep school has a similar chant for when we would lose games:

"That's alright, That's okay,
You'll all work for us someday!"
posted by Asparagirl at 9:12 AM on July 16 [1 favorite has favorites]

The town of Athol, Massachusetts requires no joke to be hilarious, just a slight mispronunciation.
posted by dizziest at 9:58 AM on July 16

What does [rival city across the river] have that [our wonderful city] doesn't?

A beautiful city across the river.
posted by SomePerlGeek at 1:41 PM on July 16

George McDonald Fraser's line on Rugby School, put into the mouth of his character Flashman:

you took your choice of emerging a physical wreck or a moral one, and I’m glad to say I never hesitated

Aside: I'm really impressed how frequently people are posting US college rivalries. I honestly thought that was a bit of pop culture manufactured by comics and National Lampoon, but I see it's got a basis in social fact. I'm very glad that for once my television hasn't lied to me
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 2:37 PM on July 16

I live in Arkansas. Where I am from we have two high schools - one that is racially diverse and one that is um, not so much. I went to the former and when we played the latter people would chant "Go back, go back, go back to the woods! You ain't got not blacks and your whites ain't no good!"

*cringe* Yeah, I know.
posted by CwgrlUp at 4:56 PM on July 16

Q: How many ____ does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A: At least two, but only if they're very small.

My high school also had a chant-- "Corn, beans, broccoli, peas! We have better SATs!"
posted by lolichka at 6:17 AM on July 17