Ever heard or said anything during a party, pub conversation or other discussion that has suddenly made the whole party fall silent out of bemusement, as the tumbleweeds drift by and a church bell tolls in the distance?

tumbles across the plain, winds blowing

In summertime, crickets chirp just a tiny bit louder to add to the awkward silence...

[DONG]

A colleague was in a pub with his mates and talking loudly to make himself heard over the din. With perfect timing the background noise in the pub subsided just as he uttered the words 'large breasts'.

I always thought the correct thing to do at this point would be to say to the crowd 'Now that I have your attention, can I interest you in some religious pamphlets?'

There was a tv commercial in the US ten or more years ago, wherein a young man is chatting up a young woman at a loud party. When he becomes aware that she can't hear a thing he's saying, he starts commenting about how beautiful he thinks she is, finally culminating with "In fact, I think you are [music stops at this moment] SO HOT... in here, isn't it?" I think he may have continued saying how "it's not so much the heat as the humidity," or something, to which the woman rolled her eyes and moved away.
I have no idea what the ad was for.

I was at the Ohio Renfair with my wife and some freinds one day when my wife had to go to the privy. So my friends and I went on to go see the swordsmen (A mighty fine act thank you) and let the wife catch up. She didnt see us oddly enough and so I didnt think and yelled out hey. This is in a crowd of around 30+ people in the area. Fortunately I was in costume and it was fool's weekend so I just fisnihed up by going "Everybody enjoy the show! Thanks for Coming" and set down mighty fast as everybody had turned to look. I even got complemented by one of the character performers about being such a good fool. :-)

Way back in my first year of university, towards the summer exams, we were all gathered together (about 30 of us at a time), about to go into the exam room when, just to defuse the tense atmosphere, myself and two even more mad people (both of whom are now house officers) decided to recreate the opening to Queen's "Flash Gordon" theme ("FLASH!.... AA-AAAAHHHHHHHH!" etc.). As we started our, er, rendition, the entire room fell silent with disbelief. The only thing that prevented us from hearing the sound of crickets, blowing tumbleweed, and that distant church bell, was the sound of one of these two other colleagues collapsing in an uncontrollable fit of laughter, almost to the point of turning blue with asphyxia, and requiring ten whole minutes to recover. (Incidentally that was the first, the best, and not the last, time he got himself in that state.)

I have no idea where else to put this.
Sam Adams product testing

Hitler was a vegetarian.

I was at a netball game and I went up to my favourite player to get her autograph. As she was signing I said the mosy utterly s t u p i d line ever- "Geez you're tall!". Without batting an eyelid and in full sight (and earshot) of a filled grandstand she replied "No, I'm not tall, you're just really short".

Ok this was most definately something that fell into this category.

I had the misfortune to be trapped driving a bunch of salesmen in a van to another dealership. They started in making jokes and wisecracks about different stuff. Some of them rather crude but one of the guys actually got everything to drop so dead silent that I almost think I heard the next car over's radio without it being a system.

Before I tell the "joke" I'll tell you the salesman who said it is Jewish and has joked about stuff like this before somewhat just this came a bit unexpected. What he said was "What's the difference between a jew and a pizza? The Pizza wont scream when you throw it in the oven."

It was about a mile before anyone managed to say anything after that.

Very inappropriate, yet for some reason that very inappropriateness made it funny. At least for me.

Kind of a so bad it's good type thing. It's so horribly unfunny, that it's funny.

Hey guys, you didn't think of any conversation stoppers in the past four years??!!
(Not that I'm complaining but still...)

In response to that pizza joke, it would be interesting to suggest replacing the word "jew" with other terms like Nazi...

By the way, in response to a previous post, I read Hitler wasn't actually a vegetarian, he just was willing to go without meat if there wasn't any to be had. I don't know how accurate that is.

hey, well,I seem to stop any conversation I seem
to be in, everyone or anything seems to go
silent....

i'm not that bad am I ?

hello hal do you read me?

A friend of mine used to do this one when we were in bars together. He'd wait until the ambient noise level just dropped a bit and than scream "so than I stabbed the B***h!" as though it was part of some story he was telling. It would always get us some strange looks from those around us.

say Brian, can you remember your first Trek, how old and what got you hooked?

What did the big chimney say to the little chimney? Your too young to smoke!

Your too young to smoke!

Actually, it should be "you're", not "your".

I know, picky, picky, picky!