Disgusting Humor

Several years ago, a scientific organization of some kind determined with empirical precision the world’s funniest joke. I forget how exactly they did it. I believe it involved the use of the Internet and the most important criterion was that nearly all cultures and nationalities needed to more or less agree that this was without doubt a very funny joke. As best as I can remember it, the joke went something like this:

Two hunters are tracking their prey in the woods when suddenly one of them takes seriously ill. His face turns blue, he clutches at his throat, and then starts making the most alarming gurgling sounds. Presently he drops to the ground as if felled by a sledge hammer and lays there motionless.

His companion, in a blind panic, fumbles with his cell phone and, after dropping it once or twice and cursing through several misdialings, reaches emergency services. “You’ve got to do something!” he shouts. “My buddy’s had some kind of seizure and I’m afraid he may already be dead!”

The person on the other end, needing the distressed hunter to calm down so he can follow the critical directions needed to administer aid to his stricken comrade, replies in a cool, pacifying tone of voice, “Okay. First take a deep breath and then let’s make sure your friend is really dead.”

There’s a pause on the other end followed by the sharp report of a gun.

The hunter comes back on the line and says, “Alright, now what?”

After reading this, you might be thinking to yourself, “Is that really the funniest joke in the world?” I haven’t the slightest doubt you can come up with a whole slew of jokes you might think are funnier. But you have to agree it’s a pretty good joke, and chances are excellent you could tell this to anyone and expect a laugh. I have, and believe me, I’m terrible at telling jokes. It would take a horrible delivery to not elicit even a chuckle with this one.

What separates us from the professional comedian is that the comedian can tell jokes not nearly so universally funny and get people to laugh. I’ve watched many Seinfeld episodes that have the stand-up bits in them, and I’ll honestly admit to you right now that if you dress me in the same clothes as Jerry, put me up on that same stage with the same audience and have me repeat the same material, I will not get anybody to laugh. Seinfeld has that extra something — maybe it’s the comedy gene — that makes whatever he wishes to be funny, funny. I don’t.

What would be the ultimate test for a comedian do you think? To randomly select a page from the phone book and make people laugh while reading it? Perhaps that’s a bit extreme. So how about this: choose a completely crude, tasteless joke with a punchline that stinks, and see what Comedians X, Y and Z can do with it.

That is the premise to the movie The Aristocrats. Fifteen or so comedians take a joke well-known in their circle to be very tough material — a classic comedian’s joke — and have a go at it. Common to nearly all the tellings is a simple beginning and the punchline, which is, “The Aristocrats!” It’s the in-between part that makes the difference, because each comedian has to describe in his own words the filthiest, most obscenely-imagined “stage act” the deepest, darkest recesses of their minds can conjure. It’s scatological and utterly depraved, involving incest, violence, bestiality and anything else that would make your grandmother swoon into a dead faint. Be warned if you go see it: not very many nice words are used. Even Bob Saget, Mr. America’s Funniest Home Videos, is in this one; in fact, he’s among the raunchiest. Watching him unleash is own brand of unadulterated smut is nearly as shocking as an image of Santa Claus ogling kiddie porn. In the theatre where I saw it, several people walked out during the course of the movie. It’s that bad. But as bad as it is, it’s that good.

They saved Gilbert Gottfried for the end, when, during a New York Friar’s Roast in honor of Hugh Hefner just weeks after 9/11, he impulsively resorted to the Aristocrats joke after several other jokes of his bombed. He pulled it off brilliantly. Another favorite of mine was Larry Storch, F Troop’s Corporal Agarn, who gave a relatively clean presentation of the joke (he managed to work a gorilla into it). Others were the Smothers Brothers, George Carlin, Paul Riser, Stephen Wright, Penn and Teller and a bunch more. They even had a mime do it! Plus there were a gazillion other comedians in the film, but they only offered commentary.

The problem with the movie is that it’s edited like a music video. It’s an endless series of four seconds, cut! four seconds, cut! all the way through. The filmmakers never let any one comedian tell the joke from beginning to end without interruption except George Carlin, who actually didn’t tell it all that well. I’m guessing they were afraid of anyone getting bored, so they spliced and diced like madmen. But if you can get past that and the outrageous crudity of the joke itself, it’s a movie well worth seeing, at least in this typist’s humble opinion.

While we are on the subject of disgusting humor, I’d like to bring up a blog perhaps you’ve heard of: Idiots and a Journal of the Disgusting Girl at Work. It is indeed disgusting and quite funny. Only Cotton Mather or Jerry Falwell wouldn’t think this is one of the funniest blogs out there. The author tracks the antics of the worst white trailer trash ho you could ever imagine who happens to work in his office. However, take extreme caution: the language gets a bit coarse.

I would be curious to find out if there is anyone else out there who doesn’t think this blog is entirely on the level. Many of the posts and the author’s comments attending them have the look and taste of verisimilitude, but taken as a whole, it does seem a bit much. The woman, if she truly exists, has to be the stuff of legends. I can’t help but be reminded of the Washington Post columnist who years ago won — and subsequently lost — the Pulitzer for her coverage of a boy dealing with life in the ghetto; she later confessed the boy was actually a “composite” of several children (read: an entirely fictional character). So it could be here, although several people I know feel absolutely certain that Disgusting Girl all the truth and nothing but the truth. You be the judge.