punjab
What amazes me about English popular culture is the prevalence of the pun. Americans don't pun very much, preferring other kinds of humor (irony, for example). This might be because we're not that clever--but it's still shocking to notice what a high percentage of advertisements, magazine articles, and photo captions in the UK rely on punning. And the results are frequently awful--it seems that your average John Bull would prefer a dim pun over a straight line.
Given this, I'd like to shout out the least clever pun I've seen this year so far. It's the title of a travel article about India in May's FT color supplement:
"Between Culture Shock and a Spa'd Place."
Now, I'm no wag--my own puns are forced and corny--but even I can recognize that this is a staggeringly bad piece of wordplay. Firstly, it doesn't scan. We don't even recognize the referent at first, because we have to stumble to get it all out; and the 2-syllable misfit between "culture shock" and "rock" is a big 'un. Secondly, there is no such thing as a "spa'd place". The fact that the author had to resort (no pun intended) to inventing new language makes it feel belabored.
The latter soundly beat the other leading contender for the year's worst pun, from Wallpaper* magazine. "Never a Dhal moment" was a the caption for a photo-piece on Mumbai's beaches.
* joshua, 6/17/2004 09:26:00 PM
