Some favorite jokes Pittsburgh is so broke we have like one pellet of salt for the whole city. The mayor says, "Push it around, it'll melt." -- Buzz Nutley You know you're from Pittsburgh if ... • You're more worried about Ben Roethlisberger's health than your own. -- Adapted from www.comedycity.com (originally, it was Jerome Bettis) • You think when people from Pittsburgh die and see the light at the end of the tunnel they slow down? -- Auggie Cook "We have the only city that has a subway system that goes a block long. When people come into town, I like to freak them out. I like to take them on the subway. Then, I say, 'I'll race you. I'll meet you down the block.' " -- Jimmy Krenn What three words do you hear after every home Pirates game? "Nice stadium, though." -- Nutley

For his latest film, Albert Brooks went "Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World." What he found is that what makes people laugh is "the other guy": Hindus make fun of Sikhs, Sikhs make fun of Muslims, on and on.

What would Brooks find if he came looking for comedy in the 'Burgh World? He'd find that we like to laugh at the other guy, too -- sorry, Cleveland -- but we enjoy a good joke on ourselves, as well.

Just try this little experiment at home. Call up Yahoo and type in "Pittsburgh jokes," and you will come up with two pages of jokes about Pittsburgh, generated in Pittsburgh. Now type in the name of a different city. Cleveland: No jokes. Detroit: No jokes. Buffalo: Nope. San Francisco: Nada. New York: OK, of course there were New York jokes, are you kidding?

Anyway, just like the Steelers, going into the Super Bowl tonight feeling like the underdog despite being the favorite, people like to think of Pittsburgh as an underdog city. Maybe it was all those "I'd rather be stuck in Pittsburgh" punch lines you'd hear from Johnny Carson and other late-night comedians back in the day.

Of course, the joke used to be how smoky the city was, but don't try that now. Not only is it not true, but people take offense to it -- especially if you're not from here. Just ask the creator of the comic "Get Fuzzy," who got thousands of e-mails a few years back for saying the city smells bad.

Smoky is out, but jokes about the roads, the accent, Primanti's sandwiches and asking for directions are all fair game.

There's the one about getting to the airport: "You take the Parkway East to Route 51 North then take State Route 60 South till you run into the airport, which is west of the city."

"You can never go wrong with jokes about the accent," says local comic Auggie Cook. "Just look at how well Jimmy Krenn has done with [his character] Stanley P. Kachowski."

Until PennDOT figures out a better formula for asphalt, we'll be stuck with jokes about the roads. A common one is that we have four seasons here: "Winter, Still Winter, Almost Winter, and Construction."

All jokes aside, though, what is the style of comedy in Pittsburgh? A lot of comics agree that there is a strong dose of Midwest sarcasm to our humor. Krenn, of the WDVE "Morning Show," says Pittsburghers get a kick out of "making fun of people who take themselves too seriously. That's why Ben Klingston, mall guard, works so well. They like the lampooning of authority and a little sarcasm. We all grew up in ethnic families -- Polish, Italian -- and we like a little bit of edge to our humor. It's from jagging around with our families."

Politics is iffy. Lewis Black is always a hit here; he has a built-in audience from "The Daily Show." But try it at the Funny Bone or Improv, or on the radio, and it might not get many laughs.

"You have to watch, because people are passionate about politics," Krenn says. "I do Bush impressions but try to take a broader perspective. You have to watch not to send a message, because that ruins the joke."

Krenn learned a long time ago to keep religion out of the punch line. The tip is particularly useful should you find yourselves doing stand-up south of the Mason-Dixon line.

"When you go down South, you can't take the Lord's name in vain," says local comic Bill Scott. "You can talk about having sex with a goat, but if you say 'gaw-damn,' they hate you. You can say whatever here."

Comedian Buzz Nutley figures that Pittsburgh comedy has "an East Coast mouth and Midwest values."

When it comes to sports, there are a few hard and fast rules. "You can joke about the Pirates, but you can't joke about the Steelers -- ever," Nutley says. "The Steelers, overall, are sacred. People like the Pirates, but I think more for the beer than the athletics. If you made a Ben Roethlisberger joke right now, you might get shot."

If you are going to make fun of Pittsburgh or any of its sports teams, you'd better be from Pittsburgh.

"As long as you establish that you're from here, it's OK," Scott says. "They have to know that. It's a club. When the Eagles were going to the Super Bowl last year, a comic from Philly came in that week between the AFC game and the Super Bowl. He said, 'How'd your team do last weekend?' I thought people were going to throw things at him. It never goes well."

Now, back to Cleveland. Pittsburghers definitely find a lot of humor in Cleveland, but mostly relating to football. Cook says he used to have a joke about the Bernie Bar, named for Bernie Kosar: "Take one bite, and you choke."

Cleveland, though, is child's play compared to our neighbors to the south.

"I can tell you one thing," says Scott. "Pittsburghers looove West Virginia jokes. They love West Virginia jokes more than people from anywhere else like regional humor. If you make a West Virginia joke at the Funny Bone, people lose their minds."

And what about the people in West Virginia?

"They love Kentucky jokes," says Scott. "There's a food chain of ridicule, and Kentucky is on the bottom."

But what about the people in Kentucky?

"If you go to Kentucky, I guess you have to joke about Mexico."