I heard from Penn & Teller that it’s like the dirtiest joke around. In fact, they’re going to do a movie about it where like some large amount of stand-ups (like 100) are all going to tell the same joke in their style. I’ve googled everywhere, and I can’t find it. What is the joke?
It seems only appropriate that I, OneYogini, a legal assistant, found the right answer to post to Lawboy’s question! lol! Here ya’ go sir…
On Saturday, Sept. 29, Freddie Roman, the dean of New York’s Friars Club, stood before audience members in the Grand Ballroom of the New York Hilton and asked them to familiarize themselves with the fire exits.(TheFrontPage)
New York Observer, The, Oct 8, 2001Continued from page 4
When the booing started, Mr. Gottfried responded: “Awwwwwww, what the fuck do you care?” Silence fell once more.
Mr. Gottfried had his answer. Up on the podium, he began making strange movements with his arms, as if he was working some sort of invisible machine that could take him back in time to the moment right before he had pushed too far. Seconds passed.
“O.K.,” he continued. His voice was not so loud.
"A man–a talent agent is sitting in his office. A family walks in. A man, woman, two kids, their little dog, and the talent agent goes, ‘What kind of an act do you do?’
"At the father’s signal, Mr. Gottfried said, the family disrobes en masse. “The father starts fucking his wife,” he said. “The wife starts jerking off the son. The son starts going down on the sister. The sister starts fingering the dog’s asshole.” Mr. Gottfried’s voice was growing stronger. “Then the son starts blowing his father.”
The Hilton’s ballroom filled with the sounds of sudden exhalations. The comedians on the dais were bug-eyed with laughter and recognition. Some of the men had dropped to all fours.
Mr. Gottfried was beaming.
“Want me to start at the beginning?” he asked.
He kept going, turning the joke into an extended bacchanal of bodily fluids, excrement, bestiality and sexual deviance. Mr. Gottfried plumbed the darkest crevices he could find. He riffed and riffed until people in the audience were coughing and sputtering and sucking in great big gulps of air. Tears ran throughout the Hilton ballroom, as if Mr. Gottfried had performed a collective tracheotomy on the audience, delivering oxygen and laughter past the grief and ash that had blocked their passageways.
Then he brought it home.
“The talent agent says, ‘Well, that’s an interesting act. What do you call yourselves?’”
Mr. Gottfried threw up his hands. “And they go, ‘The Aristocrats!’”
There was a sound in the room that went beyond laughter.
Mr. Gottfried had gone to “The Aristocrats,” the comedy equivalent of the B-flat below high C that Leontyne Price had sung at Carnegie Hall on Sunday. “The Aristocrats” is one of the definitive inside jokes among comedians. It is so definitive that comicPaul Provenza and performance artist Penn Jillette are making a digital documentary about the joke. “Every comic makes it their own,” Mr. Provenza said. “The set-up is the same and the punch line is the same,” but the comic puts his or her “own stamp” on the material in between.
Mr. Gottfried had used it to save himself, but also to lift the crowd to another place.
A few minutes later, Alan King paid him a high compliment.
“Forgive me,” he said. “I’m just still a little touched by that asshole Gottfried.”
BTW - I googled it!
Yogini 
I don’t get it. Is the joke just that the family’s behavior is totally unlike aristocrats?
Eh.
Hmmm…I don’t get it either. Btw, I don’t think that’s the full joke. The article refers to Gottfried’s delivery of the joke and gives a couple of lines (some of the set up and delivery, but not the actual joke), but, as you can see, most of the joke is relayed through the crowd’s reaction. Good try, though, better than what I got. But, like I said, I don’t think that’s the full joke, or this business of law has really soured my sense of humor.
I guess the joke is that the punchline is a non-sequitor, kind of a grossout shaggy dog story. You just listened to the most unlistenable story imaginable and the punchline is that there isn’t one, so “joke’s on you!”
I guess it’s one of those jokes where you “had to be there”.
<sigh>
You younguns don’t remember vaudeville.
Every family act had a name like ‘the aristocrats.’ That’s because, in a family act, everything was so clean and proper (cause of them kids).
And so, here’s a family act that’s the mega opposite of clean and proper, and yet, they call themselves ‘the aristocrats.’
Now, that alone would only be worthy of a Saturday Night Live skit if these family members were simply foul mouthed or uncouth, but no, the family in this joke are perversely foul and disgusting beyond belief. Which makes it such a fun joke to tell and watch audience reaction.
It’s a joke that comedians really enjoy. Screw the rest of you.
Now, that’s comedy.
Peace.
Beats a clown with its pants falling down.
Which family member did that?
:eek:
I am very, very sorry. I couldn’t stop myself.