NON-FICTION – ESSAY – HUMOROUS: Rabbi Sol Solomon’s Rabbinical Reflection #188 (6/22/2024): THE NEW ARISTOCRATS JOKE

RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #188 (6/22/2024): The New Aristocrats Joke

airs June 22, 2024 on Dave’s Gone By.  youtube: https://youtu.be/7MDjLR7zDuE

Shalom, Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for late June 2024.

Just like new plots for movies, there’s really no such thing as a “new” joke, just old jokes packaged in a different way. For example: Why did the fireman wear red suspenders? Because he was shopping at Kohl’s, and it was all they had — plus it was on clearance. Why did the chicken cross the road? Because he heard all these people telling jokes about him and he got curious. 

Old Manischewitz: new bottles. So here’s a naughty little joke called “The Aristocrats” that’s been around for decades. Gilbert Gottfried made it famous, and they even did a documentary about it. But I doubt you’ve heard my version.

A guy goes into a talent agent’s office, and he says, “Buddy, have I got an act for you!” 

And the agent says, “Don’t waste your time. Novelty is dead. Nobody watches “Got Talent” anymore. I’m sorry, but — ”

“No, no, no,” says the guy. “This is huge. My family, my friends, strangers — it’s spectacular!”

“You’re wasting your time,” says the agent. “I’m not interested.”

“You will be!” says the guy. “Just gimme a chance. Please!”

The agent sighs and says, “All right, fine. Show me what you got.”

“Thank you!” says the guy. “It’s incredible, I promise!”

So the guy claps his hands, and shouts, “Allahu Akbar.” Suddenly thousands of Arabs appear. He blows a whistle, and the Arabs start attacking Israel. They’re firing rockets, they’re launching missiles, they’re hurling bombs and grenades.

Meanwhile, one group of Arabs go to an Israeli kibbutz where they’re having a music festival. And the Arabs start mowing down Jews with machine guns and rifles. They’re killing women, they’re hacking up children, dogs, pets, birds. And they’re shooting the men and then defiling the corpses and cutting off heads and pissing down the necks. Another group is taking hostages. And they’re torturing them, punching and kicking and stabbing and dragging and frogmarching them into tunnels.

And the women hostages are getting raped. Oh, they’re fucking these women with gun barrels and fists and korans. And they’re fucking the child hostages, too. They’re using dead kids as dildos to ass-fuck the live ones. So there’s blood and cum and baby teeth spraying every which way.

Meanwhile, the living hostages are dragged into daycares and hospitals and elementary schools, where the hidden Arabs are firing rockets and explosives to kill more Jews. This while thousands of other Arabs are butchering and killing and shitting on synagogues and smearing themselves with IDF soldier blood.

“But wait, there’s more!” says the guy to the talent agent. “That’s when all these college students come out and they run on campus with tents and banners and costumes. And they’re all screaming, `Death to Israel’ and `Free Gaza’ and `Stop the Palestinian Genocide’ while dancing around and crying and fucking each other even though they haven’t bathed in a month. And some of them break into hundred-year-old buildings and smash windows, trash furniture, crap on books. And then campus presidents come over, and they just watch. They don’t do anything; they just stand there like a 19th century French tableaux.”

But meanwhile the hostages are still dying in the tunnels, the Arabs are slaughtering every Jew in sight, the students are blocking highways, vandalizing Jewish homes, and jumping on subways to threaten anyone who looks like a kike. That’s when all these other countries around the world come in and start sanctioning Israel and banning Israelis from having passports. And the left-wing media applauds this and weeps for the refugees whose vote for a terrorist government started all this shit in the first place. 

And meanwhile the terrorists murder and torture and rape and kill and kill and kill and kill in a ritual orgy of sadism, savagery, and Islamic frenzy. 

With that, the guy in the office blows his whistle and says, “Well, what do you think?”

The talent agent sits for a minute and finally says, “Wow, that’s quite an act. By the way, what do you call yourselves?”

The college students all start cheering as the guy straightens himself up, Jewish blood still dripping from his sleeves, and says, “Hamas!”

Funny joke, ha? This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches in Great Neck, New York.

(c)2024 TotalTheater. All rights reserved.

—> https://davesgoneby.net/?p=83531

-> https://youtu.be/7MDjLR7zDuE

—>  https://shalomdammit.wordpress.com/?p=2653

–> https://wordpress.com/post/davelefkowitzwriting.wordpress.com/10739

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REVIEW – THEATER: Aristocrats (1989 off-Broadway)

ARISTOCRATS

**3/4

(reviewed off-Broadway in September 1989 by David Lefkowitz. This review was first published in the Sept. 28, 1989 issue of the Long Island Examiner.)

Do you get the feeling that if an Irish theater company were to mount a production of Neil Simon’s Barefoot in the Park, everyone from the dramaturg on down would come up with a thousand political subtexts? “The title,” they’d say, “represents Ireland walking with bare feet on the treacherous ground of English law. And the newlywed couple really stand for Northern Ireland and the Irish Free State, split apart by outside forces. And what about the foreigner (PLO) who seduces Cory’s mother (ITA), huh?”

People read what they want to into art, often arriving at little more than highly personal Rorschachs, but occasionally shedding light on a new dimension to the work in question. Irish playwrights seem to work overtime stuffing their plays with loaded metaphors, perhaps more as a defense mechanism than anything else. After all, an audience may think the dialogue slow and mundane, but maybe they’re missing a whole other level of the play. “These aren’t two characters talking to each other,” contends the playwright. “They’re two ideologies.” “Oh,” says the chastened audience, “we’ll play closer attention.”

One affords such concentration to Brian Friel’s 1979 drama, Aristocrats, not only because its political subtext is intentional, but because much of the writing is skillful. The play spends a long weekend with the O’Donnells, a disintegrating family living in dilapidated Ballybeg Hall, a once-impressive home in the County Donegal. We see the family through the eyes of Tom Hoffnung (well-played by the Richard Thomas-like Michael O’Neill), a visiting American writer whose work in progress charts the inevitable demise of old Irish Catholic families.

Material for Tom’s book abounds, as playboy Eamon (John Pankow) beats up his alcoholic wife Alice (Maryann Plunkett), timid Uncle George (Thomas Barbour) wanders about like a mute ghost afraid to respond to the living, senile Father (Joseph Warren) bellows into his intercom, pathological liar Casimir (Niall Buggy) imposes his dreamworld on everyone else, and stoic Judith (Robin Mosely) half-heartedly tries to hold the clan together. Brian Friel allows us to use Tom’s western eyes as binoculars, but he doesn’t focus the lenses. Tom falls into the background, and we’re left with a gaggle of unfortunate characters, talking each other to death.

Again, much of the talk has the ring of authenticity, and there’s a stunning monologue by Judith about the meaning she extracts from her ordinary routine—a superb reading by Ms. Moseley kicks the entire production up a notch—but there’s still too much blarney. The play’s denouement almost parodies itself as the collected characters steadfastly refuse to stop sighing their goodbyes and just go.

Thank goodness Aristocrats’s ensemble cast makes us feel we’re eavesdropping on an unhappy family rather than a long-winded dramatist. John Pankow, though a mite uncomfortable with his Irish brogue, accentuates Eamon’s likable qualities, leaving the womanizer’s ugly side to our fervid imaginations. Maryann Plunkett, in a real change of pace from her Tony-winning Sally in Me and My Girl, conveys resigned bitterness—though not quite enough fire—as acid-tongued Alice. As the insufferable Casimir, Niall Buggy carries a reminder of every stunted victim of loveless parents ever born. He makes Casimir’s joy in trivia (recognizing classical piano pieces, assigning spurious histories to family artifacts) and ingrained paranoia both annoying and pathetic.

Subbing for John Christopher Jones, Graeme Malcolm made a handsome, prototypically Irish Willie Diver, Judith’s love interest, while Tracy Sallows’s Claire is all deliberate naivete. 

On first glance, John Lee Beatty’s excellent set is a grand mix of plush greens and antique furnishings. Only after looking closely do we notice the pervasive shabbiness.

Whether the O’Donnells represent the crumbling fabric of Irish life, a culture that folds in on itself and talks endlessly because action is pointless, or whether the play merely tells the story of a particular, fictional family, Aristocrats would benefit from serious paring and a decision on Brian Friel’s part as to which character merits the most concentrated attention. Only then will the playwright’s many promising scenes reach their full potential for irony and poignancy. Not to mention political resonance.

*

(Staged by Robin Lefevre, Brian Friel’s Aristocrats played April 11-Sept. 24, 1989 at off-Broadway’s Theater Four.)

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