I got out of work at 3 on Friday and had no plans for the rest of the afternoon, so I wandered down to Union Square to catch a 4:40 showing of The Aristocrats, which I’d been meaning to see for weeks. It’s hilarious. If you like movies in which famous comedians tell stories about parents fisting their children and entire families wallowing naked in their own bodily fluids, this is the film for you.
Anyway, about 15 or 20 minutes in, there’s a short scene in which five or six Onion writers sit around a conference room and analyze the dirty joke that is the subject of the film. As the scene begins, the camera is focused on a pile of stuff on the conference table. One of the most prominent things on the pile is the front page of an issue of The Onion. As I watched the slow pan up the table, it took me a second or two to realize that the Onion issue onscreen was the very issue whose cover story—“Non-Controversial Christ Painting Under Fire From Art Community”—I posed for several years ago. I’m right there onscreen for a good three or four seconds before the camera pans up from the table. Here’s the picture that accompanied the story; that’s me in front, wearing an ill-fitting jacket that makes me look twice as big—okay, maybe one and a half times as big—as I actually am.
And so I take my rightful place alongside comedy geniuses like Jon Stewart, Eric Idle, Sarah Silverman, and Taylor Negron.
Here is a video file of the South Park version of the Aristocrats joke as it appears in the film. Completely and utterly not safe for work, so take any appropriate precautions.
