Sunday, February 26

A joke I heard last night

Trevor's vaudevillean comment on my last post reminded me of a joke I heard last night and since it was sort of lengthy, I've decided to post it as a separate post altogether. The joke was from a recent movie--a documentary, I think. I can't remember what the movie was called, but the joke, as was told in the movie, went something like this:

A family vaudeville act goes to a manager, looking to get hired.

The manager asks, "So, what do you do?"

The husband says, "Well my wife, kids, dog, and I--we have a very, um, unique act. Maude--my wife--and I first go onstage dressed in our finest evening clothes. She's wearing an elegant silk number and I'm dressed in a top hat, tweed pea coat, with woolen slacks. We are in the drawing room and through the window it can be seen that the Adirondacks are within view. It is winter and snow is resting majestically on the mountaintops. I am seated in my exceedingly large Admiral's comfort chair, adjusting my monocle as I read from Captain John Smith's Generall Historie of Virginia, New England and the Summer Isles, and my wife is in the kitchen fixing a pot of grey tea. She brings it into the drawing room, and we sit, sipping the tea as delightful Baroque music pipes in from the gramophone--something perhaps by J.S. Bach or Handel.

Our children, Stuart and Cornelia, then enter, dressed in splendid matching boy/girl sailor outfits. The emblems on their nautical caps have been painstakingly rendered by our veritable fleet of maids and manservants, and their dress whites have been sun-bleached alongside the bones of unwanted children.

Stuart and Cornelia are followed by the family dog, a joyful beast we have named Mortimer J. Adler--he, of course, is a pure-breed--like his owners. Playfully, they (including Mortimer) demand a story, chanting (Mortimer, in his case, howling) in high, cherubic tones, 'Story, Mumsies! Story, Popsies!'

The uproar is enough to rouse Mogwai, our helper-monkey, who rushes into the drawing room on all-fours, demanding what the fuss is about, while intermittently playing with himself and flinging excrement onto our priceless oil-paintings and high-ceilinged walls.

Hiliarity ensues.

After a sufficient amount of guffawing and tut-tut-ing has occured, Maude and I then joyously lift the children into our laps--Stuart, the male, into mine, little dah-ling Cornelia, the female, into my wife's. Happily, we oblige them with a story. The story, of course, is about our favorite mischievous mirth-making simian, Mogwai."

Perplexed, the manager asks, "And what is it you call this act?"

To which the husband responds, "The Aristocrats!"

The manager is even more perplexed. He says, "I expected something entirely different."

#

Or did it end like this:

Perplexed, the manager asks, "And what is it you call this act?"

To which the husband responds, "The Aristocrats!"

The manager is even more perplexed. He says, "I expected something entirely different."

"Oh?" says the husband. "What, did you think we were going to perform gruesome (and streneous) live sex acts onstage while yelling things like 'Andy Dick!', 'Bob Saget!', or 'Aflac!'? Or that after pooping into each other's mouths, my wife and I would then proceed to have incestous relationships with our own young, prepubescent children--pausing only to engage in bestiality with our own pet (dear Mortimer)? Or that after doing it with both animal and child, we would then allude to Hitler favorably, The Holocaust negatively, make light of the survivors of 9/11, draw cartoons of Muhummad, subsequently publish them in a Dutch newspaper, encourage the unethical treatment of animals, finally concluding with a rousing number where we wear blackface and perform minstrelsy numbers about the eating of aborted fetuses? Is that what you thought would happen??"

"In a word," the manager says, "yes."

#


Bob Saget (a.k.a. Danny Tanner), the only person with both a "Bob Saget is God" and a "Bob Saget is Satan" webpage, which is pretty damn deep, if you think about it.

6 comments:

jenneral said...

You just heard this last night? It's the most famous joke in the world! (And the worst!) The joke (and the movie, which is about it, but which it is definitely not from) is called The Aristocrats. :D

James said...

Ah yes, I guess I should have explained where it's from. But then it'd ruin the joke.

jenneral said...

Heh, I showed that movie to a group. What a terrible idea.

*awkward!*

James said...

Probably would have done better to show "40 Year-old Virgin" or something with Owen Wilson or Vince Vaughn.

James said...

Oh, Benny, you know I don't actually read it!

[guffaws and titters abound as lips purse on cigarillo mouthpieces]

James said...

Guilty as charged.

Heart,

James