My chest hurts.

At my age, that’s not the best way to start polite conversation, but Casa Escamoteurettes isn’t exactly known for its politeness, now is it. Just to settle the nerves of the three of you I may have concerned, the pain isn’t due to cardiac what-not. I finished listening to Michael Close’s audio book, That Reminds Me: Finding the Funny in a Serious World.

I had planned to order the book from Lulu.com but my friend Jim Sisti suggested a few reasons why the audio book might be the better way to go.

For one thing, reading jokes can be fun (and funny.) But there’s a lot to be said for experiencing the delivery and timing, which often takes a joke into the stratosphere of laugh-out-loud funny. By way of example, reading the Congressional Record isn’t nearly as absurdly funny as watching my two favorite soap operas: CSPAN and CSPAN2.

Hearing Close’s delivery and timing should help my own. For instance, here’s a joke of mine:

I just drove in from Houston and boy is my truck tired.

(Go ahead and laugh, but it kills ’em in redneck and hillbilly country.)

The book is only $20, and the audio book instant download (definition of instant relating, naturally, directly to how fast your broadband connection happens to run) is only $29. So, from where I sit, I paid $9 for Michael to hurt me. Where can you get a deal like that in Vegas, I ask.

Get it here.