Henry Cho has a closetful of old notebooks filled with the ideas that have given him a forty-year career in comedy. When he’s not touring the country, the Knoxville native performs at the Grand Ole Opry (which inducted him as its first Asian American member, and its first comedian in five decades, in 2023). Here he breaks down one of his favorite jokes, based on a true story.
Cho had the joke in his head as soon as it happened, but he sat on it for years because he didn’t want to come off as bragging about a fancy vacation: “I held back because I didn’t know how to get to ‘Hawaii.’”
He finally figured out an on-ramp: First he jokes about how his mother-in-law pronounces Hawaii as hi-war-ya. That paves the way to talk about the vacation. The pivot to the beauty of the language diverts the audience from the first mangled word before they get to the second one.
Onstage, he mimics the woman leaning over and looking down at the sign. Then he mimics himself looking over her shoulder. That tiny bit of acting sets up the punch line.
“It destroyed the first time I did it,” he says. “I mean, ginormous, ginormous laugh. Number one’s timing. Number two, it’s almost sleight of hand.” He then says his outro: “My wife and I were just standing there. I swear my wife goes, ‘Henry, don’t.’ I said, ‘I have to. It’s, like, my job.’”
Want more laughs? Find more stories from our comedy issue:
>> Behind the Curtain of Nate Bargatze’s Comedy Empire
>> Six Razor-Sharp Southern Comedians Who Are Keeping Us in Stitches
