Untitled Document

18 July 2005

The Aristocrats

It was almost too hot to sit by the pool yesterday. I think it is the first heat alert of the year. The heat index will be over 100 degrees through today and into tomorrow.

I am praying that the air conditioning keeps working. If it doesn't, I am going to have to find an all-night movie theater and take my sleeping bag.

I would remember if this wasn't the first alert of the summer, since I use the ensuing widespread panic as an excuse to wear seersucker exclusively at the office. "Hot enough for you?" get old fast, so I would rather sweat in a modicum of comfort.

The boys from the North Carolina office think I look like a small-town lawyer when I do. That's OK by me. I wish I was one sometimes, and have grown out my moustache so I look a little like Theodore Roosevelt, or maybe a walrus.

Margaret and Loren were sunning, or maybe basting is a better way to put it. They had to tell old Jack to go inside in a way that didn't let on that the public health people thought the elderly were about to start dropping like flies in the heat. I saw him by the service entrance at the back of Big Pink, and he looked a little translucent but still mobile.

He was kind enough to unlock the door for me so I could get the Association's shopping cart through the door with a load of dishes and books and rugs. I feel like a refugee again, fourth move in four years, if you include the period when I was living out of the trunk of my car. He got in the service elevator with me, but got off on the second floor.

I asked him what he was up to, since his place is on eight, where they have installed the air freshener outside of his door because of the cigar fumes. After he got out I heard him start to banter with someone as the door slid closed. It was a woman's voice, of course, since Jack is still a bit of a stray cat. I wondered if he has something going with my old land-lady. Winnie threw me out of the place I rented when my year lease was up so she could move back in.

I should feel pretty good, since I now own a couple places and might be able to pay for them both. I am moving up, and the new place is coming together, though I have not cooked or slept there yet. I dumped the load on the fourth floor and hauled boxes full of ancient books smelling of mold to the truck to go to the Good Will. The ex cleaned out the basement and shipped it to me, and there was a lot of pure unadulterated crap to go through.

I don't blame her, though. Everyone has to do what they have to do.

I finally had enough of that. Sweat was rolling down my neck and soaking my polo shirt. I returned the cart to the service entrance and went to the pool for a while. The water was cooler than the air, and slightly wetter. It was comforting. There was about an hour of sun and then the moist cotton-ball clouds came in and even Loren gave up on the idea of soaking up more rays.

She is the aristocrat of the pool deck. She was wearing a white bikini that showed off her nut-brown George Hamilton tan nicely. It is pretty clear that she has wrapped up the Association tanning championship for the fifth consecutive year, and all the rest of us may as well just hang up our towels. But the joy of competition is what it is about, and so we are still hanging in there for the burn.

Between worlds, or apartments, I changed out of my sodden trunks in the poolside unit and clicked on the computer to see if anyone had checked in. There was only more trash. The news update told me a former Prime Minister had died, and a bunch of Iraqis. Saddam is going to go on trial for killing a couple hundred people in a village a decade ago, and the insurgent bastards blew up a fuel truck with a truck bomb in a crowded square. The resulting conflagration was a sort of two-fer, with a spectacular secondary explosion that they didn't have to pay for.

The secondary is what you try for when you bomb something, and speculation is that it might be a new tactic the Bad Guys are experimenting with. My air wing pilots liked to get secondaries when they bombed things. Shows you hit something with potential, all in accordance with the laws of war, of course.

I couldn't work any more and decided to really waste some time and read the movie revues. The Times seemed to be concerned about a resurgence of Christian influence in Hollywood . Apparently screen-writers are supposed to be cutting out profanity and gratuitous blasphemy. I couldn't dredge up much concern, one way or the other. The market will determine what people will pay for, and even the devout apparently like action pictures with lots of explosions.

But one of the big theater chains, one of my back-ups for air conditioned sleeping, has decided not to show a film called The Aristocrats. I thought it might be a remake of an old Michael Caine film, or a Disney animated re-release, but it is not. Apparently it is a compilation of several dozen comedians telling variations of a dirty joke that goes back to the blue comics of the Burlesque. It is apparently a famous one, and so foul in many of its variants that it cannot be printed.

That was before the internet, of course, and I had to look it up. It took Google .04 seconds to get me a gazillion hits. The joke always starts the same way:

“A family walks into a talent agency. It's a father, mother, son, daughter and dog. The father says to the talent agent, "We have a really amazing act. You should represent us."

The agent says, "Sorry, I don't represent family acts. They're a little too cute."

The mother says, "Sir, if you just see our act, we know you would want to represent us."

The agent says, "OK. OK. I'll take a look."

You can insert anything you want at that point. There were some pretty creative variation about improbable, illegal, or obscene conduct. I have been around the block and even to the County Fair, but some of the versions were truly at the outer limits even for me. The point seemed to be how outrageous the teller could make it, but within a convention. The joke always ends the same way, after the family does something truly unsettling.

For the longest time, the agent just sits in silence. Finally, he manages, "That's a hell of an act. What do you call it?"

And the father says, "The Aristocrats!"

I read several variations, and apparently the movie has a few dozen of them. I didn't get the punchline. Maybe I am too literal. All I could think of was the French Revolution, and noble people being hauled slowly in farm carts to the guillotine.

I hope the movie is a success, and they get some distribution. I support the arts.