There's
a long and ongoing rivalry in comedy. A friendly one but a rivalry
nevertheless, centered on a somewhat protracted and absolutely profane joke, known in the comedian's world as “The Aristocrats.”
Guy
walks in to a talent agent's office. Agent says, Tell me about the act, and the guy describes, at length, a performance of the most shocking acts of depravity imaginable. Agent says, Wow.
What do you call an act like that.
Guy says, The Aristocrats.
In
the comedy world, The Aristocrats joke is a canvas upon which the comedian's imagination is unleashed, and the punchline, when it's well
delivered, is like the final brushstroke of a work of fine art.
Like beauty, obscenity is in the eye of the beholder and before I saw The
Profanity House, I thought that was true for profanity too.
EMINEM
GETS FUCKED UP HIS FILTHY DISEASED CUNT BY QUEER BILLY GOATS WITH
RABIES YOU MOTHERFUCKING WORTHLESS CUNT SUCKING PIECE OF CUNT SUCKING
SHIT
In Allumuchy, NJ, this and many, many other obscene observations were
laboriously painted on every possible inch of the former Rutherford
Stuyvesant Estate, by someone.
Ironically, The
Profanity House is located on the grounds of what used to be the Stuyvesant family's Tranquility Farms. Now the once stately manor is tagged to the rooftop with Eat this and
Suck that, on the walls and the doors, the ceilings and floors, inside kitchen
cabinets and out to the barn.
You can see it for yourself, in all its ingloriousness, here.
It must have taken days, maybe weeks. To cover this canvas as thoroughly as he did, took skill.
But so does a mass shooting. And some will see it, or see the pictures and think, surely it's out of his system now.
It isn't.
That sort of thing doesn't
just pack up and go. Something drives it.
Something drives the need
to perfect a golf swing or a tennis swing, or deftly deliver a
punchline, too. But even in the raunchiest rendition of The Aristocrats joke, that something arcs toward our better angels.
Whether The Profanity House still stands, I do not
know. Online, it stands forever and looking at those images, some might see a man who has lost his mind.
I don't.
By design, The Profanity House arcs as far as it possibly can, from angels.
And frankly, it scares the shit out of me.