15 Colin Jost Jokes and Moments for the Hall of Fame
Colin Jost has been a writer for Saturday Night Live since 2005 and behind the Weekend Update anchor’s desk since 2014. Just last year, he broke the longest-serving Weekend Update anchor record previously held by Seth Meyers, with Jost’s current co-anchor (and co-head writer) Michael Che just nine episodes behind him for that honor.
What’s made Jost’s work on Weekend Update singular is his willingness to be the butt of the joke. His frequent Joke Swaps with Michael Che and letting Sarah Sherman mercilessly roast him being prime examples. We’d also highly recommend his book, A Very Punchable Face: A Memoir, not just because it offers many brilliant behind-the-scenes stories from SNL, but because we’ll recommend any book with chapter titles like “Okay, So Maybe I’ve Shit My Pants A Couple Times” and “Oops, I Fell Asleep in A Graveyard.”
But before you head off to your local library to (literally) check it out, here are 15 Colin Jost jokes and moments worthy for the Hall of Fame.
On Online Reviews
“I honestly feel that if you hate a place, the worst review you can give it is two stars. If you give something one star, that’s about you. Look at any one-star review, it’s unrelated to the business they’re reviewing. It’s like, ‘I was eating at Cafe Honduras, and that’s where I found out my cat had committed suicide. One star.’ For a hotel it’s like, ‘I called up this so-called hotel. They told me a room there was $300! Do you think I can afford a $300 hotel room? Do you know how many times I’ve been divorced? Photos of the lobby look pretty cool. One star.’ I went to get my hair cut the other day, and I typed in this barbershop and this was the review that came up: One-star review, all caps. It just said, ‘I HAVE NEVER BEEN TO THIS BARBERSHOP, AND I AM NEVER GOING!” I was like, ‘Cool, keep us posted.’”
His National Television Debut
For his comedy, at least — he did have one national TV credit before this, as a contestant on The Weakest Link in 2002, which he lost in the final round:
On Relationships
“Have you ever been in a relationship where the default setting is you’re fighting? Like at rest, you’re fighting. You wake up in the morning, you’re like, ‘(Yawn) WHY WON’T YOU TRY SUSHI?!?’ Just right into it.
“We would fight all the time, and when you’re fighting with the person you’re dating, it’s never anything important. It’s never like, ‘No, this is the cause of slavery.’ It’s just the stupidest shit in the world. One day, my girlfriend and I were walking down the street, and we saw a girl walking down the street barefoot. She was holding her shoes in her hand, and my girlfriend was like, ‘Well, she’s dumb and drunk.’
“I was like, ‘Maybe her feet just hurt.’
“She’s like, ‘Why are you defending her?!?!’
“We fought for an hour and a half about a stranger we would never see again. And then, you ever fight so long you just end up fighting about the fight you’re having? The original argument’s over, you think you’re out of the woods, and then she’s like, ‘You know, I wish you wouldn’t get so frustrated when we fought.’
“‘You know, I wish you wouldn’t say crazy shit all the time.’ And you’re fighting for another two hours, and eventually it’s like the movie Inception: There’s a fight, within a fight, within a fight, and somewhere the two of you are in a van falling off a bridge in slow motion. And she’s like, ‘This is your fault!’
“And you’re like, ‘But you’re the one driving!’”
His First Joke on Weekend Update
“This Monday was opening day for the new Major League Baseball season, and ‘Reopening of Old Wounds’ Day for Mets fans.”
On Quality Time
“My favorite expression when you’re dating is, ‘I wish we spent more quality time together.’
“That’s my favorite — ‘quality time.’ It’s just the best. One morning my girlfriend and I spent the entire morning in bed. We had breakfast in bed, we watched a movie, we had sex. And she was like, ‘Yeah, but that’s not quality time. Quality time isn’t when you’re eating, or watching a movie, or having sex…’
“I was like, ‘You just named literally my three favorite activities.’
“I think when women use the phrase ‘quality time,’ what they imagine in their head is just the two of you alone in an empty warehouse, sitting in two plastic folding chairs staring into each other’s eyes… just petting a newborn puppy, and every 15 minutes, you apologize for something you don’t remember doing. That is quality time.”
On School Lunches
“It was reported that students in a school district in Tennessee were served meat that was six years old, which raises the question: ‘Where’s Tyler?’”
On Drug Ads
“Ads now are just based on fear, like all the drug ads on TV. There’s so many drug ads on all the time, I feel like I need an anti-anxiety drug just to watch all the drug commercials. Like bladder-control drugs on TV where they’re like, ‘Do you have a going problem? Do you have to go to the bathroom right now?’ And it’s like an image of a waterfall — a guy’s spraying a hose into a bucket, and you’re like, ‘Oh my God, I do have to go… And I already went twice today!’”
On Gun Laws
“How is no one keeping track of how many guns people own? There is a real law in Texas that says it’s illegal to own more than six dildos, and I get why. No one needs that many. If you have more than six dildos, it’s a clear sign you’re training for something awful.”
On Who Wore It Better
Not many comics are able to say they mentioned their wife by name in a joke five years before they started dating: “My favorite section of People magazine is the one that says ‘Who Wore It Better?’, where they have the two ladies and they’re wearing the same dress. It should just be ‘Who Is Prettier?’ It’s always like, ‘Who wore this strapless gown better — Scarlett Johansson, or Darlene from Roseanne?’ And then they asked you to vote on it, just to further humiliate the less attractive woman: ‘Who wore this full body lycra catsuit better — supermodel Gisele, or Kathy Bates? You tell us. Who wore only a thong better — Kim Kardashian, or Corky from Life Goes On? Cast your vote today!’”
On Antiquities
“A man in China accidentally unearthed a 700-year-old figurine after he pulled over to the side of the road to relieve himself, and discovered he was urinating on the object. It’s a story the man loves to tell most… when people are holding the figurine.”
On Progress
“We have to remember that progress isn’t just a straight line upwards. It’s a weird roller coaster, where sometimes you’re screaming for joy, and other times you’re barfing in your own face.”
On Vladimir Putin
“There are also unconfirmed reports that Vladimir Putin will undergo cancer surgery. Wow, I never thought I’d say this, but hey, good luck, cancer!”
On Harvard
“That’s what Harvard was like: Thinking you’re pretty good at something, then meeting someone who is really good or even one of the best in the world. And that doesn’t mean they get good grades. A lot of the most famous alumni left without graduating because their work became more important than school. People like Bill Gates, Matt Damon and Mark Zuckerberg. And you know who did graduate? The Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski. The point is: Never graduate from Harvard.”
On Orgies
“A group of people in England are organizing a Star Wars-themed orgy, which is just an orgy where you find out the guy in the mask is actually your father.”
On Bullies
“As someone who was bullied growing up, I realized that it’s way easier to play into the bullying rather than fight it. If you’re better at making fun of yourself than a bully is, then the bully has no room to operate. Except punches. They still have punches. Oh god, do they have punches.”
