It Was So Hot, Weathermen's Brains Were Fried

(From The Hartford Courant -- By Pat Seremet)

You can hear him start the joke as though it were yesterday.

TONIGHT SHOW host JOHNNY CARSON starts -- "It was so hot..." He pauses, and sidekick ED McMAHON and the audience all scream back -- "How hot was it?"

"It was so hot," Carson says, "that the only way you could get a breeze was to go to STUDIO FOUR and moon THE WHEEL OF FORTUNE."

Well, Carson may be gone, but hot jokes live on, and if ever there was a month for them, it's this one. Hazy, hot, humid, oppressive with a dew point that's off the map -- that's our June.

Still, when I tried to gather some hot jokes from local meteorologists, they were not so hot.

SCOT HANEY, meteorologist at WFSB, CHANNEL 3, was quick with this one when it was freezing -- "It was so cold I saw a turkey with his capon." But when we're hitting 90 degrees, he struggled. He and news anchor DAWN HASBROUCK had been to websites to hunt them down, but found there just aren't that many hot jokes around.

The only one he found was -- "It was so hot a robin used a potholder to get a worm."

So the ever-resourceful Haney made this one up -- "It was so hot, ELTON JOHN wanted the sun to go down on him."

DR. MEL GOLDSTEIN at WTNH, CHANNEL 8, had this one at the ready, what he calls his "signature joke" -- "It was so hot that the tongues hanging in the delicatessen store window were screaming 'Seltzer! Seltzer!'"

MATT SCOTT, another meteorologist at CHANNEL 8, said he asked Goldstein to tell him his joke but that he wouldn't share.

"We're a weather team," Scott said, "but when it comes to humor, it's every man for himself."

Scott also devised his own -- "It's so hot they're hosing down TOM CRUISE AND KATIE HOLMES -- oh, wait, that's any day."

So we turned to the late-night comics:

"It was so hot drive-by shooters were shooting holes in their own cars to get the cross-ventilation." -- JAY LENO

"It was so hot TED WILLIAMS was saying -- 'Who's crazy now?'" -- DAVID LETTERMAN

"It was so hot today THE RUNAWAY BRIDE had to put sunscreen on her eyeballs." -- JAY LENO

"It was so hot today SADDAM HUSSEIN was walking around wearing a thong." -- DAVID LETTERMAN

"It was so hot in Washington that DICK CHENEY replaced his defibrillator with a dehumidifier. And the guys in TIMES SQUARE were applying sunblock before they took a leak." -- DAVID LETTERMAN

"These high temperatures pose severe health risks for the elderly. This Sunday, don't miss 30 MINUTES. -- CRAIG KILBORN