I like funny things. I work with a bunch of funny people all day. Everyone in my family tells jokes. I like watching funny movies and TV shows and listening to funny podcasts. I’m very, very simple.

I also like funny books. Not books about comedy, or memoirs by funny people — I like funny novels. Funny stories with funny characters and good dialogue. I want books that are as funny as Ghostbusters or The Simpsons.

That’s why it’s so frustrating that, unlike movies and shows, it’s almost impossible in this world to find funny damned novels. If you’ve ever spent time in a library or bookstore looking for a reliably hilarious novel, you already know what’s annoying about it.

#5. The “Humor” Section at Every Bookstore Is Terrible

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Have you ever been to the humor section at a Barnes Noble? It’s a freaking nightmare. Sure, some books that end up in it might be pretty funny (and one book found in the humor section in particular is not only the funniest book ever written, but also remarkably affordable), but for the most part, you’ll find old comic book anthologies, books full of funny party jokes that are, without exception, horrendous and small coffee table books that started out as Internet blogs/memes.

You might find some (terrible) books that try to teach you how to be funny, but you certainly won’t find any funny novels there. You’ll find musings from Larry the Cable Guy and pictures of cats making stupid faces (these, in fact, might be the same book), but nothing that would make you say, “Hey, wow, this is like Wet Hot American Summer, but in book form!”

That’s because they don’t put novels in the humor section. Even if they’re hilarious, they stick them with every other novel. And if you’re digging through just the general fiction section, you’ll have a hard time finding funny books, because …

#4. “Funny” Is Slapped on the Jacket of Almost Every Novel Ever Written

No novel ever written is completely devoid of jokes, so, as a result, the description on the back or inside cover of almost every novel says something like “At equal times heartbreaking, intense and totally funny, this book is a must-read” or “Exhilarating and sexy, with a great sense of humor!” Go into a bookstore and pick up any novel, and I guarantee you one out of every three will have either “surprisingly hilarious” or “flat out funny!” slapped on there. The government should honestly be able to step in and legislate the number of times publishing houses can advertise their books as “funny.” The back of my copy of Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections says “surprisingly funny,” and I guess there are a few funny lines, but at the end of the day, it’s a book about Parkinson’s disease and an entire family that suffers from depression.

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I don’t know what the criteria is for getting “funny” slapped onto the back of a book, but I have to assume it’s “having a number of different words,” because that’s the only thing that The Great Gatsby (heartbreaking and brutal) has in common with Christopher Moore’s Lamb (almost impossibly hilarious), both of which have the word “funny” printed on the back cover.

Almost every truly funny book that I’ve found was discovered by accident. I’ll go to a bookstore and pick something out either because of its cover (this is a good thing to do, children) or because the description on the back sounds like it might be funny. Since every description tries to make every novel sound funny, it’s a total crapshoot. For every time I blindly stumbled into a Lamb or a Tricky Business or a John Dies at the End (now a major motion picture that just debuted at the Sundance film festival!), there were plenty of times where I ended up with a bunch of novels that were terrible that I won’t mention by name because that would be rude (except for About the Author, which was so terrible that I’m still mad that I read it six years ago).

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Give me back the money that I didn’t spend on this because I got it from the library, you stupid jerk!

Publishing houses don’t know what funny books are, so we’re forced to look out for authors on whom we can rely. Which is always tough, because …

#3. Comedians/Comedy Writers Would Rather Write Memoirs and Essays

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Tina Fey, one of the best writers to ever come out of Saturday Night Live, Paul Feig, creator of Freaks and Geeks, The Office’s Mindy Kaling, Michael Ian Black and Patton Oswalt are all very funny, and they’ve all written memoirs or books of essays. And that’s fine, because those books are great, but, again, if you’re looking for a Simpsons episode in book form, you won’t find it (except, perhaps, for that one written by a Simpsons writer, which is actually very good).

There are a few exceptions. Steve Martin writes novels and Hugh Laurie wrote The Gun Seller, one of the coolest and funniest books I’ve ever read, but for the most part, you’re left wandering around bookstores, hoping that this random book that has “funny” in the description actually means it, because at any given time, the No. 1 book on Amazon in the category of humor is probably just a bunch of stories about Chelsea Handler (CENSORED)ing.

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Every generation claims to have suffered more than those that follow. “Oh, in my day, we had to walk three miles to school; we fought in a war; we died of dysentery drinking well water that hadn’t been boiled sufficiently.” Blah. Blah. Blah.

But I do want to impart one completely legitimate gripe to our younger readers: do you know how much harder it was for junior high school kids to find spanking fodder before the Internet? Seriously. Shoplifting Playboy, buying black market VHS (CENSORED)s copied from some dude’s older brother, and engaging in herculean leaps of imagination to animate J.C. Penney catalog underwear models. Occasionally, however, Hollywood would release an R-rated movie you could get on VHS, tape off cable or carefully commit to the spank bank for later use. Movies like The Big Easy, 9 1/2 Weeks and Body Heat were a horny boy’s very best friend.

Unfortunately, because mainstream media is not (CENSORED)ography, many of these TA films had to combine some of their hottest scenes with dramatic or comedic content that may have furthered the purposes of the film but absolutely destroyed its orgasm-producing potential.

Here are five of the biggest ruined orgasm moments in modern (pre-Internet) film.

#5. Private School

In 1983, Hollywood released an incredibly awful movie about a bunch of horny boys thinking about breasts and how they could see some breasts and touch breasts and then do something with their penises. I think that was the plot of Private School. Not sure. I do know Phoebe Cates was in it, and that was a great start. After all, Phoebe was kind enough to teach me how to use my penis at 13 with her Fast Times at Ridgemont High performance.

Thanks, Phoebe!

But catching young Gladstone’s eye even more than Phoebe was bad rich girl Betsy Russell.

True or false: in the first few months of puberty, this image was semipermanently freeze-framed on my basement TV. (False. Our TV was in the den.)

The Sexy Bait: Betsy Russell Striptease

And wouldn’t you know it, Ms. Russell gets kinda naked and sexy in an attempt to seduce Matthew Modine. So what’s the problem?

The Erection-Destroying Switch: Sweaty Matthew Modine in Drag

The problem (masturbatorily speaking) is that this is a scene where Modine pretends to be a woman to get into the girl’s dorm, so each shot of Russell and her vanishing underwear is chopped up with a shot of a clammy Modine in drag. (BTW, Clammy Modine would make an awesome college band name. Get on that, kids!)

Some of you might be thinking, “Just ignore Modine!” While that may have been easy for Hollywood to do from 1987 onward, it’s a lot harder for a kid. Something to remember about 13-year-old boys: they’re stupid. Like really incredibly stupid. And somewhere in the back of their minds they believe that if they’re engaging in an act of self-love and somehow reach climax at the exact moment the camera switches to a dude — especially a dude in drag — they’ll turn gay forever.

#4. Basic Instinct

Everyone remembers the seminal scene from Basic Instinct: Sharon Stone at the peak of her hotness flashing her clammy modine at Michael Douglas.

And yeah, that’s pretty great. But not even 13-year-old boys reach climax that quickly, and no one’s hoping for just one still picture. We wanted to see sexy ladies not wearing clothes and, y’know, moving around all sexy-like. And the good news is Basic Instinct had lots and lots of sex.

The Sexy Bait: Sharon Stone Sleeps With Everyone

Stone’s character is a dynamite-looking, promiscuous, bisexual lady, so my friends and I headed to the theater (place you used to watch movies that wasn’t your phone) expecting to see one hot escapade after another. What we got, however, was this:

The Erection-Destroying Switch: Sharon Stone Brutally Murders People With an Ice Pick

I don’t have a great clip, but check out the beginning of this trailer. Much like the second entry on this list, this movie thoroughly enjoys mixing sex and violence. Accordingly, the opening scene features hotness and an ice pick. A really, really, really nasty way to go, and so traumatic that I remember not being able to get into any of the sexiness that followed. It was like my junk had developed a Pavlovian fear response to Sharon Stone. It would take another 10 years for the rest of my body to follow suit.

#3. Blue Velvet

Back in junior high school, when most little boys were pining away for Heather Locklear or Elle Macpherson or Madonna, I was focused on a classier pursuit: Isabella Rossellini. And when I say pursuit, I mean using telepathic mind control to get Ms. Rossellini to pick me up at my parents’ house and drive me away in her sex limo.

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Still waiting, Ms. Rossellini.

Needless to say, when I found out that there was movie I could rent called Blue Velvet in which she played a sexy lounge singer and got naked a lot, I was pretty excited.

The Sexy Bait: One of the Most Beautiful Actresses Ever, Naked

In some ways, Blue Velvet delivers. After all, Rossellini does lose her clothes a bit and often wears little more than a kimono. She also sings in a sultry cabaret voice. And no matter what, Isabella Rossellini always conveys the most attractive combination of grace, intelligence and sexuality.

The Erection-Destroying Switch: Dennis Hopper and David Lynch’s Circus Sexuality

The bad news for your penis, however, is that Blue Velvet was directed by David Lynch, and it has become increasingly clear during Lynch’s long career that he apparently lost his virginity after dropping acid at a carnival as part of a snake boy/bearded lady sandwich. Sex is not so sexy in David Lynch’s world.

First off, through the glory of hair and makeup, he turns Isabella Rossellini into Rocky Horror Tim Curry.

I will get you for this, Mr. Lynch.

And then there’s the bigger problem of Rossellini’s sex happening at the hands of a drug-addicted, unhinged criminal with mommy issues.

The only thing from the ’80s to kill more erections than Dennis Hopper’s performance was Mrs. Garrett from the Facts of Life.

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Serves you right for dropping trou to Tootie!