The Aristocrats

This article is about the world's dirtiest joke. For information about the social class, see Aristocrats (class).

A social gathering in the 1950s is enlivened by a telling of the “Aristocrats” joke.

'The Aristocrats is reputed to be the world’s dirtiest joke.^[who?] There are many variants of this joke, though the overall structure of each variant is the same. The beginning of the joke begins with a man discussing an act with a talent agent. The punchline at the end is “The Aristocrats!” Many variants, and a comparative analysis, follow.

Example A

One day this talent manager goes to visit a booking agent.

“Have I got an act for you!” he enthusiastically tells the booking agent.

“But every act you bring to me is terrible!” retorts the booking agent.

“This act is different,” says the talent manager. “It's a family act. Let me describe it for you.”

The booking agent nods to say yes, and the talent manager launches into his description.

“OK, first the father comes out wearing a tux, and sings a romantic song. Part way through the song, the mother comes out in a beautiful gown, and the song becomes a duet. When they are finished, the lights dim, and when the lights come on, then the three young daughters are on the stage. They’re very young, twelve, nine, and five, but they're very cute. They begin singing a song about their parents, and how their parents don’t let them stay up late. It’s really cute. Audiences love that part. Then the family dog comes on stage, and at first appears very agitated. One of the little girls produces a tennis ball, and it seems that this is what has gotten the dog all excited. He wants the girl to throw the ball so he can go fetch it. He begins prancing on two legs trying to get the girl to throw the ball. Then each of her sisters produces a tennis ball, and the dog goes nuts! He’s hopping all over the place, terribly excited. The two youngest girls toss their balls to the oldest who starts juggling them. Then from off stage, someone throws two sets of balls to each of the younger daughters, and they begin juggling. The dog is totally going crazy, practically running in circles at this point. Finally, one of the girls has mercy on the dog, and tosses him a ball. But instead of catching it he bounces it on his nose. No, not balances, bounces, like he's a soccer player. All the daughters toss their balls to the dog, and he's juggling nine balls by bouncing them off his nose. A very talented dog! He then bounces them back to the girls who continue juggling until the dog has no balls left. They stop while the orchestra does a big ‘Ta-da!’ and they bow.

So, what do you think?”

The booking agent looks at the talent manager for a moment and then declares, “That is the most terrible thing I've ever heard. What do they call themselves?”

The talent manager says, “The Aristocrats!”

Example B

Did you hear the one about the talent agent who was offered a chance to represent an incredible new act? No? Well, this man walks into a talent agent’s office and says, “I've got this incredible new act for you. It’s a family act!” The talent agent replies, “Sir, I've seen too many family acts lately, and none of them are too good. I don't want to be bothered.” The man then says, “But wait! You have to see this. Give them a chance. Let them demonstrate their act.” He then brings in the family.

Nine people come marching in through the room: an older gentleman, his young wife, a 16-year old daughter (going on 17), a 14-year old son, a 13-year old daughter, an 11-year old son, and 3 more daughters of the ages of 10, 6, and 5. They are wearing lederhosen. The father, a distinguished looking man, steps forward. He has a guitar. The father proceeds to sing a song about a mountain flower called Edelweiß. Late in the song, he pauses and seems to forget the lyrics. Then his wife steps out, sets his hand on his shoulder. They sing the song together. As an encore, the whole family comes out and sing about the clock chiming. One by one they leave the stage, kicked unceremoniously on the behind. “So long, farewell,” they sing loudly. At the end of the act, the talent agent says, “That's one hell of an act. What do you call it?” The man says, “The Aristocrats!”

Example C

A talent is enticed to see an “Amazing New Act” promised by a talent scout, but is chagrined to find that the group that shows up is a family of four plus dog.

“I'm sorry,” he says, “but we don't take family acts.”

The father raises a hand and says, “Just give us five minutes… just five minutes.”

The Agent capitulates, and leans against the edge of his desk.

First, their budding 12-year-old daughter begins to slowly strip before him, inching her way out of her tight clothes, to reveal a modest leotard underneath with “Dad's #1 Daughter!” stitched crudely on it in felt. The father, eager to get started, begins to paw at his wife's clothing, but she pushes him away and quickly slips out of her overcoat, revealing her slim figure, also clad in a modest leotard. The dog now comes over and begins to sniff at the older daughters pants, so she begins to fiddle around in her pocket. The father offers an apology as “We haven’t done this sort of thing very often in front of someone.” The younger daughter goes out to retrieve a boom box, and hits ‘play.’ George Michael’s I Want Your Sex begins to play. The mother moans and rolls her eyes at her daughter, who blushes red and flips the tape over, rewinds, and hits ‘play’ again. For a moment there is silence. The two daughters kneel before their father and purse their lips. The mother gets behind him and kneels, placing her hands on his hips. The dog rears up and puts his paws on her back.

As the music starts, the elder daughter finally produces a dog treat from her pocket, which the dog comes and gets, then returns to his spot. The music builds up, the father spreads his arms and his wife lifts him up on her shoulders. He begins to sing along to It's a Beautiful World. Below him, his daughters harmonize with his tenor in soprano. He leans down, and they grab hold of him and stand on their mother's shoulders. The mother gingerly steps up on the dog's back, and, struggling, it holds her. The dog begins to slowly spin around and the entire group spins in his office, the daughters inflating and fashioning balloon animals, as It’s a Beautiful World reaches its crescendo. They smartly dismount, and the stunned Agent says:

“That's one hell of an act. What do you call it?”

The father replies “The Aristocrats!”

Example D

A man walks into a talent agents office with a dark black, beaten leather satchel, and an oily mustache, which he twists nervously between two fingers.

Approaching the talent agent, he says in a tremulous, weasely voice, “Have I got a show for you! It involves me and my family, who are waiting just outside your door. It's guaranteed to make you rich! What do you say, would you like to see it?”

The talent agent is delighted at the proposal and, with an “Of course, my good man!”, he steps out from behind his desk and walks towards the hallway. He feels a sudden, sharp blow on the back of his head, and immediately loses consciousness.

He awakens, blinking furiously, in a forest clearing. It's twilight, and he's both warm and damp, as he's been placed on the ground. He doesn't recognize the area at all. He tries to move, but his arms and legs are tied tightly by coarse rope, and he tastes blood in his mouth.

Arranged like spokes in a wheel, the badly decomposed body of a woman in a floral print dress is placed touching the heads of three little girls, a young boy, and a dog so badly rotted that the talent agent can partially see the Golden Retriever's rib-cage.

The man with the leather satchel is squatted a few yards away, grinning at the talent agent and licking the sharp edge of a knife, and he is dressed like an old Vaudevillian in an antiquated suit. The talent agent sees with alarm that his face is powdered white, and he is wearing a human nose, painted red, atop his real one.

“Holy sweet Jesus on a stake!” screams the talent agent, struggling vainly against the ropes restraining him. “Who are you?!”

“We,” says the man, as he walks over to the talent agent and begins tugging off his shoes, “are the Aristocrats!”

Example E

One afternoon, a talent agent goes to visit his wife’s cousin's family.

The father of the family asks the talent agent if he could show him an act his family had been practicing. The talent agent agreed to watch, and the show began.

The lights dim slightly, then the youngest of the two daughters begins to shift her eyebrows up and down, and as she does so, a musical beat is heard, exact to her eyebrow twitching. The father and mother then start to dance in a ballroom style around the young girl, and suddenly they stop and the mother looks down at her husbands pants, where a bulge in his pocket is vibrating.

“Oh,” he says while pulling out a cell phone from his pocket, “I forgot to turn that off.”

The cell phone is tossed onto a table, and the dance begins again. A young boy then enters the scene with an impressive break-dance routine, while singing The Yellow Rose of Texas flawlessly. He then begins removing his shirt slowly, squirming in a seemingly seductive manner. He suddenly then stops and removes an ant that was crawling down his back, then returns to his dance routine.

The older daughter then enters, wearing a schoolgirl skirt and blouse, and begins an inspiring hip-hop routine. As she begins to gyrate her hips, he skirt begins to slowly fall lower and lower, until her underwear is visible.

“Oops,” she says. “I forgot to put an extra pin in.”

The older daughter then steals a pin from a nearby table and fixes her wardrobe malfunction.

The family’s act finishes with brilliant choreography, including their tap-dancing chinchilla, Snorky. The whole family strikes a tableau pose, and the younger daughter's eyebrows stop twitching.

“Wow, what do you call the act?” says the talent agent.

The father smiled brightly and boldly stated, “The Aristocrats.”

Example F

The talent agent is sitting at his desk when his secretary opens the door. "Your 11:00 is here" She says.

The Talent agent asks her to show them in, and is shocked to see a wretched family of four come in, trailing a mangy dog.

“I’m sorry,” he says hastily, “but we don't do family acts.”

“But, sir,” says the father, coughing phlegmatically, “We just need a few moments…” as his daughter, wearing a grubby, torn pink tutu, comes forward with a little tape player.

The talent agent looks at his watch, then at the pitiful sight in front of him. “You know what?” he says, “I just remembered I have a lunch meeting.” He begins to walk out, shouldering his way past the wife and son, who already are beginning to weep silently. “I’ll have to cancel this appointment. Call us back tomorrow.”

The Agent rushes to the elevator, escapes his building, and hurries down to the local bistro, where he gets his usual seat facing the window. He orders a whiskey sour and a porterhouse—rare. The waitress brings by a basket of buns, and as the agent is buttering one, the family from his office shuffles by the window, then stops. The agent is terrified, paused, bun-in-hand, but they don’t look in, instead they cross the street to a dark alley, where he sees them gather before a pile of cardboard boxes. He can see the mother say something to the father, who then falls to his knees, puts his head in his hands, and begins to sob uncontrollably.

Luckily, a delivery truck parks in front of the restaurant, blocking his view of the awful scene. Just then, the agent’s wife calls him and offers to meet him for lunch. He orders the halibut for her, and she arrives just as the entrees are brought out. They have wonderful conversation and decide to catch a cab back to their apartment to make love before they have to be back at work.

As they’re laying in bed in post-coital glow, the agent's wife turns to him, ever so slightly breathless and says "Wow, that thing that you did just now, with the… wow… that was one hell of an act. What do you call it?” The agent turns to her and says, “The Aristocrats.”

Example G

A talent is enticed to see an “Amazing New Act” promised by a talent scout, but is chagrined to find that the group that shows up is a family of four plus cat.

“I’m sorry,” he says, “but we don’t take family acts.”

The father raises a hand and says, “Just give us five minutes… just five minutes.”

The Agent capitulates, and leans against the edge of his desk.

The father reaches into his breast pocket and produces a kazoo, while the mother produces a swanee whistle from her handbag. Together they begin to play a surprisingly harmonious swanee-kazoo version of A, You’re Adorable, as their daughter clad only in a pink tutu, leotard, jumper, Rasta hat, dungarees and ski-mask, slowly pirouettes her way to her brother, who sits cross-legged on the floor charming a snake from a basket. She takes the snake, tossing it to the family cat, who manipulates it into a position where it is eating its own tail. The snake consumes itself and disappears, as the daughter's pirouetting becomes faster and faster - soon she is a blur of dungaree and Rasta hat. As she slows, it becomes clear that the blurred figure is not, in fact, the daughter at all, but the son. The Agent looks, bemused, at the place on the floor where the son was sitting as he charmed the snake, and is surprised to see the cat there instead, dressed in a loincloth. Meanwhile, the daughter is on all fours in the corner, eating catfood.

The stunned Agent says:

“That’s one hell of an act. What do you call it?”

The father replies, “The Aristocrats!”

Example H

A family walks into a talent agent's office. The father says, "Have I got a great act for you! It's the greatest act you've ever seen!"

The agent asks, "What do you call yourselves?"

And the father says, "The Aristocrats!"

Example I

An agent hears from a talent scout about a great new act, and schedules an appointment. When they show up, he’s troubled to find a family of four: A father, mother, son, daughter and dog.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I don't do family acts….”

“Please sir, just… give us a minute,” the father says.

The agent capitulates, and sits down.

The father pulls out a kazoo, the mother produces a trumpet, then, all together with the daughter, the dog, and the frailty of human existence, twelve months silence falls across the endless expanse of wonder. Five presidents dine on words, but small ones, radiology and finance forgotten amongst the sudden explosions of light and isinglass isn't glass at all. Someone shuffles by, carrying a unicycle, wearing a shirt that says “kiss the cook” in Urdu. Ages pass, crystal fissures encroach on the ancient ice sheets of Thought. Red. Red and blue, surely not yellow. Colorless, yet green, these ideas furiously sleeping are awakened by greyscale dolphins to drip drop flip flop chowder buckets full. Nothing comes to a point. Points rise, then converge. Long numbers divided by zero spray forth marigolds, goldilocks, foliage unseen in shadowed glades, where treefall and cries of “wolf” go unheard. Across the interzone, in the longfall forests, lumbering beasts are seen for the first time in ten million years, withers to sky. Dropped from skyhooks, astronauts sell ice cream by the sea, in delicate seashell china white cups to undercover lovers. And then, at the penultimate moment, as the Möbius strip returns to the beginning of track Number Nine, the father bows.

The agent says, “Wow. That’s one hell of an act. What do you call it?”

The father replies, "The Aristocrats!"

Example J

A nervous looking Bob Saget walks into a talent agent’s office in a rumpled shirt and sporting three days’ growth of beard. The agent eyes him with distaste, but agrees after some grumbling to hear him out.

He then proceeds to pitch a Family Act to the agent. Saget’s role is as a sports broadcaster, who later becomes a morning talk show host, named Danny Tanner. His wife has been killed by a drunk driver, so he needs help raising his three little girls, D.J. (Donna Jo), Stephanie, and Michelle Tanner. (In a twist, the youngest daughter is actually played by a set of twins who will later develop very public and disgusting eating disorders.) Danny needs some help raising his girls, so he asks his rock musician brother-in-law, Jesse Katsopolis, and his comedian best friend, Joey Gladstone, to move in with them. Many lessons are learned, and each half-hour segment of the show is usually directed toward some overarching moral lesson about growing up in the late 1980s.

The jaded, bitter talent agent wipes a single tear from his withered cheek. “What on Earth do you call that touching, magical act?”

Bob Saget shakes his head wearily. “Full Hou—I mean, the Aristocrats.”

Example K

Knock, knock!

Who's there?

The Aristocrats!

Example L

In summer 2005 a Hollywood talent agents arrives just in time at Luton Airport in order to witness the marriage of Ms. Camilla Parker-Bowles and the Prince of Wales at Luton town hall.

Deeply impressed by the cermony he asks a bystanding father of two:

“How are these people called?”

Replies the father: “The Aristocrats.”

Example M

A talent agent is sitting at his office when a family walks in. “No, not another family act,” he says. The father replies, “But this one is special, just watch, okay?” The talent agent mumbles, “Sigh… okay. Go ahead.”

The father pulls out a guitar and the mother draws a flute. They begin playing a lovely little ditty that is seemingly a tribute to old fashioned ragtime. A couple minutes into the song two daughters swing into the scene from a trapeze. A little boy later comes in juggling three flaming bowling pins. The act is spectacular. The song changes into a fast rock and roll tune and the mother exchanges her flute for a drum set. The talent agent is very impressed. Suddenly one of the daughters does a triple flip in the air while the little boy throws her a bowling pin. She catches it! At this point the talent agent is standing while cheering them on. The mother and father smile at their children. They are obviously very proud of them. The other daughter is about to jump into a double front flip when her foot slips and she comes crashing just inches away from the father. Her lifeless body is lying on the ground in a bloody mess. The mother screams. This scream startles the boy and he drops his pins casting him in a deadly flame. The mother faints at the smell of her son's burning flesh and her body falls from the stage. A crack! is heard from the impact. The father at this point is sobbing uncontrolably while the older daughter is in a complete state of shock.

“Holy! What the hell are we gonna do?!” yells the talent agent.

The father replies, “We’re the Aristocrats!”

Example N

A talent is enticed to see an “Amazing New Act” promised by a talent scout, but is chagrined to find that the group that shows up is a family of four plus dog.

“I'm sorry,” he says, “but we don't take family acts.”

The father raises a hand and says, “Just give us five minutes… just five minutes.”

The agent tells the family to go away, and calls in the next act. He mutters to himself, “Who do they think they are? Aristocrats?”

Example O

In Soviet Russia, Aristocrats call YOU!!

Example P

We're the Aristocrats!

A talent agent is sitting at his office when a family walks in. “No, not another family act,” he says. The father replies, “But this one is special, just watch, okay?” The talent agent mumbles, “Sigh… okay. Go ahead.”

First the father stands up and begins to warn the agent that it wouldn’t be prudent to begin a policy of unnecessary taxing of the United States only to spend it on “way out, far out” types of expenditures. He is then joined by the white haired woman, the Matriarch of the family who walks up carrying her Springer spaniel and begins to start calling everybody “bitch.” When the father asks her who she is talking about, the Matriarch changes her vocabulary and states that she meant to call everybody a “witch” and announces that she will start to read aloud from the book that her dog wrote.

Next, their son Neil comes up and admits to having a sexual addiction to Asian women. Two other children, a grown man and a grown woman, attempt to approach the stage but are tackled by the Secret Service and sent away because they're really just after-thoughts.

This is followed by the second eldest son (who is named after a Confederate General) and his Hispanic wife who shows off her arrest warrant for shoplifting. She in turn calls up their daughter who proceeds to start blowing snow up her nose while popping prescription pain pills.

This really riles her Uncle, who approaches the edge of the stage to the dulcet tones of “Hail to the Chief”. He wrestles the mirrored surface away from his niece. The he sticks a rolled-up brand new counterfeit proof ten dollar bill up his nose and begins to create a blizzard of his own inside his head where the brain should be, while farting Nearer My God to Thee in the key of “F”.

The family is now joined by the wife of the eldest son who, drags their twin daughters up on stage. One of the daughters is drunk and has a boob hanging out, and the other daughter who does nothing, but blankly stare at the agent. The wife begins to admonish them all, but soon joins in the fun, belching out the Lord's Prayer, and the act continues until January, 2009.

Finally the agent, who has been held in place with a ball gag in his mouth by three guys named Antonin, Dick and Clarence, breaks free. By now the agent is starving and can't afford food, or pay for the medical condition that needs attention, and is also late for his own gay wedding says “What in the hell do you call that act?”

The eldest son steps forward and announces that name of the act is the Aristocats, adding "Ta Da!"! His friend Dick gets up on stage, walks over to the man and whispers something in the man’s ear; the man opens his mouth and says that the “name of the act is the Aristcatics, er, um, the Aristocrats!”

Example Q

A bored Hollywood talent agent is sitting in his office when in walks a group of not-so-funny-since-the-early-90's comedians led by Penn and Teller.

The agent says "hold up a minute boys, your magic shows were ok but since Bullshit you've been unbookable."

Penn says "no wait you've gotta see this, it's something special," and the agent leans back, lights a cigar, and mutters something about Adam Sandler.

Penn and Teller introduce the family of comedians; the old timers come on first, Robin Williams and Whoopi Goldberg, riffing on themes of being black and Jewish and covered with hair and just how much fun it is working with children. Then in come the C-list actors who see doing Pixar voice-overs as the highlight of their careers, doing impersonations of people who were funny in the 80's. Finally in come the new breed, who juggle scissors and a copy of Love All The People and rearrange the scraps on the floor into new old jokes. The entire family competes to see who can laugh loudest and longest at their own joke, and the agent sits there looking confused.

"What do you call this cunt-peelingly incomprehensible babble of baby's-anus-fistingly-bad has-beens and never-will-bes?" he asks.

"The Aristocrats!" says Teller.

Example R

A man walks into a talent agent's office, and says, "We're a family act, and we'd like you to represent us." The talent agent says, "No". So the man walks away, starts crying, and gets kicked in the groin by Gary Coleman. The Aristocrats.

Example S

A guy walks into a bar. He sets a talking frog on the counter. The frog asks the bartender if they have any grapes. The bartender says "No".
The frog asks the bartender if they have any pears. The bartender says "No".
The frog asks the bartender if they have any apples. The bartender says "No".
The frog asks the bartender if they have any bananas. The bartender says "No".
The frog asks the bartender if they have any watermelons. The bartender says "No".
The frog asks the bartender if they have any peaches. The bartender says "No".
The frog asks the bartender if they have any oranges. The bartender says "No".
The frog asks the bartender if they have any fruit at all. The bartender replies "The Aristocrats!"

Example T

A junkie stops in a dark parking lot, the insides of his elbows covered with the tell-tale marks of intravenous drug administration. A man emerges from the shadows with the pocket on the inside of his jacket bulging. The junkie hands the man a wad of 20 dollar bills and walks back to his car, salivating in the expectation of shooting up back on his couch.

The man arrives at his house to the familiar sight of his rotting family, a sight he has faced every day since last Tuesday. Horrible flashbacks of grabbing the shotgun and blasting his family to hell come into his head, but are quickly suppressed by the soothing rush of the heroin coursing through his blood.

As the explosions of happiness slowly began to dissipate into stress, the man prepared to inject another tide of glee into his arm when the flashbacks reappeared, worse than ever. Amidst intense loneliness and self-hatred, the man then realized what he had to do. He trudged across the blood-stained carpet, grabbed the 12-gauge shotgun, and put the barrel in his mouth. Bang. Freedom. Salvation. Closure.

A week later, the landlord came to the room in search of his long-overdue rent. A rush of nausea filled his body as the sight of the huge insects feasting combined with the sweet stench of an old death to attack his senses. Nonetheless, the landlord continued towards the man's nightstand, as times were tough and he needed the rent money more than any dead man possibly could. The landlord found a wallet and grabbed the money out of it, but also found a note, which he figured as a suicide note. The landlord, terribly overcome by the overwhelming despair encased by the note, grabbed the shotgun. As he clenched his teeth over the tip of its barrel, his daughter entered into the room, just in time to see her daddy's head explode into a mess of blood, brains and chunks of bone all over the walls, ceiling and floor.

The words, written sloppily, simply read, “The Aristocrats!”

Example U

Q: What's brown and sticky?
A: The Aristocrats!

Example V

A man goes to a talent agent's office wearing a bowler hat. He says to the talent agent, "I got a family act for you!"
"Not another one of these family acts! Rejected!" says the talent agent.
"The Aristocrats!" shouts the man.

Example W

There was once a wealthy, unmarried man who moved to Utah to get away from the big city. One day a man knocked on his door. "Hello," said the one at his door. "My name is Joseph Brigham Young Nephi Lehi Smith. I belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day-Saints, also known as Mormons. Would you be interested in more info?" "No," said the man. He started to close the door but Smith held it open. "Oh please," he said. "As a sign-on bonus you get your choice of beautiful women. I'll even let you look at my own daughters right now." The wealthy man consented and Joseph Brigham Young Nephi Lehi Smith brought in his oldest daughter. A 16-year old beauty queen walked in and slowly undressed for the man. Ogling her, he began to get a massive erection. Next, Smith brought his 13-year-old. She also slowly undressed for the man, whose erection had grown even more. He now began to undress himself. Finally, Smith brought in his youngest- only 10 years old. She, however, was fairer than both her sisters and as she undressed, his erection became too big to handle. As soon as they were both finished he thrusted into her vag, but suddenly her vag closed up and "bit" off his penis. Screaming in pain and blood mixed with semen flying everywhere, he screamed "What kind of mormons are you?!" "We, my friend," said Smith, "are the Aristocrats."

Example X

A family walks into a talent agent's office in LA, and the talent agent asks them, "Whaddya got for me?" The Father says, "Well, we've got this great act that we put together as a family. What we do, you see, is we....." The talent agent interrupts, saying "Hang on. Okay, I think I know where this is going. You start by fucking your six-year-old daughter up the ass, right?" A look of complete horror and confusion crosses the Father's face as he glances around at his equally shocked family. He stammers, "Oh.....oh my GOD, no, I....." "Then you give your dog a blow job while getting fisted by your wife and whipped by your son?", the agent adds.

The whole family is speechless with shock.

"Look", sneers the agent as he condescendingly removes his little $900.00 sunglasses and fixes a piercing glare on each of them. "Do you know where you are? Because in case you haven't noticed, this is Los Angeles. You could jerk off naked in Pottery Barn and nobody would notice. We're not even paying attention. This place does not give a rat's ass about your cute little incestuous dog and pony show. Living off the air in this place is like breathing diarrhea. I have literally fucked every single person who I ever needed a favor from. I haven't spoken to my own family in years, and we live under the same roof. When I say I'd rather be dead than doing this job, I'm not joking around like the average blue-collar schmuck, I'm fucking serious. This is the Heart of Darkness, an inescapable trap where dreams come to die and sweet little boys and girls come to prostitute themselves to the masses like a glittering herd of cattle. So you and your pervy little circus act can go back to Wisconsin or whatever cookie-cutter backwater you came from, because I have no feelings left, and you'll be wasting your time trying to shock me."

Stunned, the family staggers out of the office, and the world is forever deprived of an act that involves juggling armadillos and singing "Don't Fear the Reaper" like a chipmunk in Scandinavian: The Aristocrats!

Example Y

Two Jews walk into a bar. One says to the other: "The Aristocrats!"

Example Z

A talent agent is enticed to see an “Amazing New Act” promised by a talent scout, but is chagrined to find that the group that shows up is a family of four and a mangy looking dog.

“I'm sorry,” he says perfunctorily, “but we don't do family acts.”

The father raises a hand and says, “Just give us five minutes… Please... Just five minutes.”

The Agent grudgingly capitulates, and leans against the edge of his desk to see what they are all about.

The family consists of a Father, a Mother, their 14 year old Daughter, 15 year old Son, and the Family Dog, Kojak. All 5 of them take positions on the stage and prepare for the big show.

The Father pulls out a violin, looks over to the agent, and exclaims loudly, "Mah Fiddle!". He then proceeds to faddle his fiddle quite beautifully to the tune of Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2.

Next, the Mother pulls out a fine silver flute and proudly announces "Mah Tweeter!". She thrusts it up to her lips and quickly begins to twitter her tweeter in perfect counterpoint to her husbands bold and powerful fiddle faddling.

Then the Daughter pulls out an acoustic guitar, exclaims "Mah Strummer!", and joins her parents by strimming her strummer in harmony to the rising and falling of the fiddle faddling and tweeter twittering.

Lastly, the Son pulls out a banjo and yells "Mah Twanger!", before rapidly twinging his twanger along to the beat of everyone else.

As their performance continues to build the family starts taking it to levels the agent never could have imagined.

The son reaches over and begins banging his sisters strummer while she plunks his twanger, and the father begins to squeal on his wife's tweeter while she strokes the neck on his fiddle as he is strenuously faddling it.

The father then starts rubbing his fiddle bow across his daughter's banged up strummer while Kojack starts running back and forth licking the sons twanger and the mothers tweeter.

The agent then notices something odd out of the corner of his eye. He turns to look into the corner, and Lo and Belold! There, completely unannounced, sitting behind his piano, is none other than Marvin Hamlisch!

Sensing the agent's eyes upon him, Marvin begins fervently fingering his fortissimo to a bold and beauteous climax, the perfect finish to a wonderful exhibition.

"AHAH!!! It all makes sense now!", thinks the talent agent, "For how can one ever truly have Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 without fervently fingering ones fortissimo?"

As they complete all of their dexterous diatribes, they begin to turn expectantly towards the agent, awaiting his reaction. The stunned Agent is absolutely beside himself. "WOW!", he exclaims, "That’s one heck of an act you got there! What do you call it?”

The father turns his head to the agent, with his fiddle faddler still stroking his daughters banged up strummer, and his other hand rubbing Kojak's belly as he licks his wife's tweeter, and proudly proclaims, “The Aristocrats!”

Analysis

The narrative is stripped naked of all subtextual clothing. Instead, it thrusts exposition into the audience’s face through explicit use of language and words in a seemingly feckless manner. The imagery floats into the mind much like fucus, bobbing up and down, in the wet and moist ocean. Tension builds as the graphic words stroke against expectation — a pencil rubbing against the skin. Eventually, the tension is released in a spasm and spurt of semantic clarity. This joke in all of its forms is incredibly filthy and funny.

See also

• List of aristocrats