2014-11-09
Explanation
The Joke
A little girl asks her mother why her oldest brother is named Neil. The mother explains it is because Neil Armstrong was the first person out of the Apollo 11 lunar lander. The girl then asks why her second-eldest brother is named Buzz. The mother explains it is because Buzz Aldrin was the second person out of the lander.
The girl then asks, "So then why was I named Michael Collins?" The mother snaps: "Don't get smart with me, Cup-Had-Stayed-In-The-Command-Module-Jones!"
The punchline works on two levels. First, the girl's name is apparently not Michael Collins at all -- her full name is the absurdly long descriptive phrase "Cup-Had-Stayed-In-The-Command-Module-Jones," which refers to Michael Collins, the third Apollo 11 astronaut who stayed in the Command Module orbiting the Moon while Armstrong and Aldrin walked on the surface. Second, the mother's naming scheme reveals an obsessive commitment to the Apollo 11 theme: while the boys got the cool, simple first names of the astronauts who actually walked on the Moon, the third child got stuck with a name describing the less glamorous role of the astronaut who did not get to walk on the Moon.
The Humor
The comedy comes from the escalating absurdity of the naming convention. Neil and Buzz are perfectly normal names that also happen to honor famous astronauts -- a sweet parenting choice. But the third child's name reveals that the mother took the Apollo 11 tribute to a fanatical extreme, naming her child not after Michael Collins himself, but after his specific, less heroic role in the mission. The name "Cup-Had-Stayed-In-The-Command-Module-Jones" is funny both because it is an impossibly long and unwieldy name and because it captures the specific indignity of Michael Collins's position as the Apollo 11 astronaut who is always forgotten because he did not walk on the Moon.
References
The comic references the Apollo 11 mission (July 20, 1969), the first crewed Moon landing. Neil Armstrong was the first to step onto the lunar surface, followed by Buzz Aldrin. Michael Collins remained in the Command Module Columbia in lunar orbit and is often considered the "forgotten" member of the crew despite his essential role. Collins himself wrote about this experience in his autobiography "Carrying the Fire" (1974).