Sid invited Penn & Teller to the séance, and I took Emily along (I could have said I took my wife, but I don’t remember whether we were married then). We would get to be part of the jive séance and we were going to have a chance to meet Dorothy Young. Ms. Young was the last living person who toured with Houdini. She was seventeen when she started on the road with him as an assistant. She got the job after she danced a Charleston during the audition. Dorothy died in 2011 at 103 years old. I’m so glad I got to meet her. We also met George Hardeen, Houdini’s brother’s grandson. The second half of Houdini’s career was spent busting phony spiritualists (redundant). He would send his crew in disguised, or if he could get a good enough disguise, he would sneak in himself. They would watch the séance, figure out the tricks, and explain how it was done in his show in the same town that night. Houdini was a motherfucker. Some other folks were there, but none with as much of a direct connection to Houdini. Houdini was very straitlaced and uptight about sex. One of the reasons that some of the spiritualists drove Houdini full-on bugnutty was that they did really sexy stuff. Spiritualists were way beyond Halloween slutty. Some of them would do their séances in see-through robes that were left wide open in the front and the “ectoplasm,” gooey manifestations from the other world, came out of their pussies. The sitters would reach in and feel. Yup. No kidding. I certainly could make this shit up, but I’m not. The pure sluttiness of this religion made Harry way uptight. For me, well, it could have made me a believer for a night.
Old Gregor Mendel, the father of modern genetics, may have cheated some of his genetic pea work to make it a little too perfect, but even though we got no evidence of life after death in that séance, we got a lot of anecdotal evidence for genetics. As we milled around, waiting to see if we could contact Harry in the afterworld (much less likely than Godot showing up) and chatted with the other sitters, there was George, the closest living relative to Houdini. George looked a lot like the busts of Great-uncle Houdini that I have all around my home, known as the Slammer.
Why do I have busts of Houdini all over my house? James Randi is my hero. James Randi is the modern Houdini except better. Okay, Houdini was born in Budapest and Randi was born in Canada and Randi never got quite as famous, but Randi does the busting of psychics, faith healers, mind readers and other assholes better than Houdini. Maybe Randi is able to bust a little more bullshit because he’s able to smell it from Houdini’s giant shoulders. If it weren’t for Randi, there would be no Penn & Teller. Randi taught us that you could spend your life studying how to lie and use that to tell the truth. That’s our goal. Teller and I were down visiting Randi in Florida at the James Randi Educational Foundation, and as he was giving us a tour of the library he showed us his bust of Houdini, in a sealed case. Randi bragged that this was the only bust in existence. It was a copy of the original bust from the Houdini museum in Niagara Falls. Randi had sneakily made a copy of it and then the Houdini museum burned down (Randi’s alibi checks out). Randi was so proud of this unique bust that we had to fuck with him. After Randi went home that night, Teller and I went through the Yellow Pages at our hotel (this was a long time ago) and found someone in South Florida who did plaster casting (Cindy, the plaster caster of rock star cocks—you can get Hendrix for a couple thousand bucks—was too far north). Later that night (or very, very early the next morning), we broke into the James Randi Educational Foundation, broke into the case and got our hired plaster casters to spend all night making an exact cast of Randi’s soon-to-be-not-unique Houdini bust. We were so scared we’d fuck up Randi’s priceless artwork by bringing in strangers to handle it, but… we had to fuck with him. We stayed up all night getting the cast perfect.
Morning broke, we ushered out our hired guns, cleaned up, put the bust back in the case, sealed everything up, and met Randi for breakfast. We mentioned nothing. Randi didn’t notice we hadn’t slept—we were tired from 1986 through the end of the century anyway. Teller and I got the cast secretly shipped back to Vegas and had copies made. A few years later when Randi visited us, both our houses were filled with exact copies of his unique bust. We had dozens of them all over. We didn’t say a word about them, waiting for Randi to notice. Randi never said a word. I couldn’t wait for him to ask where we got them so I could say, “Oh, those old things? They’re nothing special, you can buy them at any cheap-shit shop.” But Randi never asked. He never said a word about the busts. Never. You don’t fuck with Shady, ’cause Shady will fucking kill you. I will never beat Randi at anything.
George Hardeen looked just like that bust of Houdini, straitlaced like his great-uncle. George had no date. George was standing alone, wearing a suit and tie. He spoke of the legal work he was doing with his charity for Native Americans. He is a good man. He would have been offended if a spiritualist had stripped naked and shot ectoplasm out of her pussy. Not me. I come from different stock.
Houdini didn’t show up at the séance. Emily and I left the Houdini séance and went directly to our last fetish party to date. It seemed that the slutty dead spiritualists were more likely to show up and spew their ectoplasm at the fetish ball than Houdini was to show up at the séance, but neither happened.
Shortly after that, and not directly related to that fetish party, we had children. In the years before children seize the Halloween slutty, the holiday is all about candy, superheroes, kitty cats, and princesses. There’s a picture that news stories sometimes use for Penn & Teller where Teller is smiling like a Vegas headliner and I’m wearing kitty-cat ears and painted-on whiskers. It was taken at a red carpet at the opening of Criss Angel’s Vegas dance show. I didn’t want to go, I wanted to continue trick-or-treating with my family, but my job was to go to this press opening. I kept my kitty-cat outfit on in protest of Criss and to show solidarity with my family. Because of the pictures taken that night, some people think Teller works with the drummer from Kiss.
I liked that our family were all kitty cats. I liked that we just drew on whiskers and had little kitty-ear headbands. I liked that our whole family matched. I love dressing alike. I like it in the Penn & Teller show and I love it in families. Our children are different sexes and eleven months apart. If we had had twins of the same sex, child services would have me in custody, because unless restrained, I would force my twins to dress alike. I want our whole family to dress alike. When I went to London once, I brought back matching hats for my whole family, but I couldn’t get us all to wear them at the same time. Before I was married, after any steady girlfriend had bugged me enough to take a vacation with her, I would fly us to Hawaii, have a big fight and leave her there while I came home and got back to work. It’s a good way to break up—it’s over, she’s in Hawaii, and I’m working. Everyone is happy. Before I started the fight and got ready to split, I would always buy myself a Hawaiian shirt and my girlfriend a matching sexy muumuu (I’ve had girlfriends who could look sexy even in a muumuu) and try to get her to wear it out with me so we’d be matching. I love matching Hawaiian tourist clothes on couples. I go to Disneyland and Disney World mostly to watch my children have fun. The only other enjoyment I get is seeing the foreign tourist families all dressed alike. Fuck, I love that.
The kitty-cat year was the only year that I got my way. After that the children wanted different costumes for Halloween. The next year, my daughter, Mox, wanted to be a princess. I was on some stupid anti-commercialization-of-Halloween jag (“Let’s put the Christ back in Halloween?” What was I thinking?) and my son, Zz, and I agreed we would be simple ghosts. We would just wear sheets. I had some sort of Peanuts cartoon image in mind—just take a sheet, cut holes in it for the eyes and you had a ghost outfit. Because I’m a rich asshole, I didn’t even take old sheets. I bought a new little and a big sheet, and I made us matching Halloween costumes. Even though it was just cutting four holes in two sheets I was really proud. This was going to be a real old-fashioned homemade Halloween for my son and me. I was excited about going trick-or-treating and matching my little boy.
At this time, I had affected the wearing of a kind of straw fedora. In my head, I looked like Sinatra; in the mirror I looked like Junior Samples from Hee Haw. (Don’t you fucking knock Hee Haw. I know for a fact Bob Dylan watched it, and those Hee Haw Honeys had some serious hayracks.) What could be better? I’d just cut holes in a sheet for my eyes, put on my straw fedora, and we’d be handmade ghosts. None of this costume shop commercial jive.
That Halloween morning, I got up stupid early. When you get off work at about midnight, drive home, unwind, read a bit in the bathtub and doze off gently at about four a.m., that seven-thirty a.m. alarm comes quicker than a nineteen-year-old at his first fetish ball. I was tired, but I had promised I would go to the kids’ school and read a Halloween story to my daughter’s class. I was to be the “Mystery Reader.” The idea was that a student’s mom or dad would go in costume and read a story, and then there would be the joyous revelation that the Mystery Reader was one of their parents. I was very excited. I was sure my distinctive and street-damaged carny voice would give me away, and I anticipated watching Mox figure it out through the eyeholes of my sheet.
My children go to a bullshit fancy-ass MILF/DILF uniform private school, and I arrived at the desk. “I’m the Mystery Reader today.” I was wearing my straw hat, but no costume.
“That’s great—do you have a mask?”
“Nope, I have better than that.” I was proud. “I made my own costume, and I made one for my son too.” I indicated the sheet in my hand.
“Okay, well, put it on before you go into the class. You don’t want your little girl to recognize you.”
I took off my hat, put the sheet over my head, lined up my eyeholes, and put my hat back on. The idea of a ghost wearing a Sinatra hat thrilled me. I was a ghost with a hat. Work boots, jeans, a sheet and a straw hat. I was ready to go.
The receptionist gasped. She was horrified. I was going to say, Hey, it’s not really a ghost. It’s just me, Moxie’s dad! But her reaction wasn’t right. She wasn’t afraid of a ghost. And it wasn’t fear she was feeling; it was shock and disgust. She hated my ghost costume: what was up?
Behind the receptionist’s desk was a reflective window. Through the sheet’s eyeholes, I could see myself in costume. I had shown up at my child’s school dressed as a member of the Ku Klux Klan. Granted, my sheet didn’t have the perfectly hateful pointy pope top, but… I was wearing my hat. My straw hat, so there could have been a point there.
I pulled the sheet off. I had no idea what to say. Just then, my daughter’s teacher came out, dressed as a cute little bumblebee. She hadn’t chosen any international symbols of hate for her Halloween costume. She was not a bee with a swastika on her chest. The sheet was off by the time she saw me, so she could tell that I was Penn, not a KKK member. The cute bee beckoned me, “You all set? The children are very excited for their Mystery Reader. Mox has no idea it’s you. This is going to be great. Do you have your costume?”
“Yes, I’m gonna be a ghost. I’m a ghost. It’s a sheet with eyes cut out, I’m a ghost.”
“Great. C’mon.”
My blood ran cold. I was so embarrassed and guilty. I didn’t know what to do. “But… When a guy my size puts on a sheet… I don’t look only like a ghost… It’s a sheet, I look kind of like… Well, I’m wearing a sheet.”
“You’ll be fine, the children are excited.” She didn’t get it.
“I look kind of, you know, KKK.”
“What do you mean?”
I put on my sheet and hat and looked out the eyeholes.
“Oh my god!” She covered her mouth. The teachers at this fancy-ass school are not supposed to use the lord’s name in vain, even though that’s the only way one can use any lord’s name.
“What do I do?” I thought maybe she’d have a cuddly, non-racist bear costume for a 6'7'', 300-pound man in her crafts closet.
“The children are waiting for you. You need to come in… But why did you wear that to school? That’s not funny.”
“I’m a ghost.”
“Well, just come in, I guess.”
I followed her in. The children saw me and got very excited. I sat down and read some Disney jive about Mickey’s not-scary Halloween or something. I had to pull the sheet against my face to see the print through the eyeholes. One of the teachers reluctantly snapped a picture of me reading. I was so embarrassed by looking like a KKK member that I was sweating through the sheet. My stomach was in knots. My breath was heating up my face under the sheet. I was able to feel my blood in my face. I was blushing, which the KKK says is one of the signs of white superiority. In the Bible, Adam is able to show shame by the blood in his face, and white supremacists latch onto that. I sure was feeling shame, but there was no superiority in it.
Then I looked out and saw Moxie. My daughter had started to recognize the husky scratchy slightly too-high voice of her daddy. She was beaming. She was thrilled about Mickey, and about Halloween and about her daddy, who was never up this early in the morning, reading a story to her whole class. She squealed, “That’s my daddy, the Mystery Reader is my daddy.”
My blood went back to being evenly distributed. I took the hat and the sheet off and Mox ran into my arms and I held her. I held her and laughed and cried a little. I laughed because I loved her so much and I cried because I loved her so much. I laughed because she didn’t know anything about the KKK, so I was okay. I cried with relief and joy because these children and I had an African-American president. Then I laughed a little more because I’m such an asshole, and I cried a little more because I love my daughter so much it hurts and I hope everyone gets to feel that kind of blood in their faces.
In my head while writing this: “Alabama”—Neil Young
CANADIAN THANKSGIVING
CANADIAN THANKSGIVING IS ON A DIFFERENT DAY than Thanksgiving in the United States, so I’ll just write a lot of Canadian jokes in this chapter. It’s okay for me to make fun of Canadians, because my people are from Newfoundland (rhymes with “understand”), and that means if I make jokes about how stupid Newfies are, it’s okay. After she read Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, my mom claimed that we had some aboriginal American relatives, and some TV show recently did some genealogy research in our family background and proved she might have been telling the truth. She wasn’t really telling the truth; she was telling a lie that, unbeknownst to her, might be true. So, I can make aboriginal American jokes after the Canadian jokes.
My dad told me that I have at least one African-American ancestor. I’m a pretty direct descendant of Captain Cook, who brought syphilis to Hawaii and gave the English the name “limeys.” Statistically, the long line of sailors must have brought in most other nationalities I can think of and some I can’t. My dad worked at a Jewish school. Ethnic jokes are a wide-open territory for me.
I had a mom, I have a wife and daughter, and those are only some of the women I really care about. I’ve been in many situations in my lifetime, and you wouldn’t have to be Rick Santorum to consider some of them gay and perverted. Gender and sexually leaning jokes are wide open for me. Insult comics will use the defense that he or she is offensive to everyone and therefore not offensive at all. Equal opportunity offensiveness is the old-fashioned spin. Sam Kinison and Howard Stern often explained they were just saying what others were thinking. They were honest, and that excuses all. Lenny Bruce’s genius was carried on by George Carlin, and they both used words considered offensive as just part of their vocabulary. That sure didn’t work for Michael Richards, but Dick Gregory talked about getting over African-American slurs, and then another genius, Richard Pryor, used those slurs when he talked about not using those slurs in a casual, fun way.
Paul Provenza and I did a movie called The Aristocrats that looked into transgressive humor, and let a hundred comics be as funny and shocking as they could, as each of them told the same dirty joke. They all fascinated me, and Provenza’s direction really turned it into a study of what offensive comedy could mean—the craft, joy, and intelle
ctual content of that kind of humor. I learned a lot watching all of those brilliant minds explore what “offensive” is.
I was going to start with Canadians and build on the ethnic humor from there, but I’ve changed my mind. I’m feeling just the opposite. Bob Dylan wrote about a totally different subject (I take Bob out of context the way people take religious writing out of context): “Either I’m too sensitive or else I’m getting soft.” I believe both are true about me. I cry all the time and everything affects me now.
I read Sarah Silverman’s book and was really moved by her discomfort when someone from some eighties band “complimented” her on doing the best race jokes. It’s crystal clear with every breath Sarah takes that she is not a racist. Her offensive material is a comment on racism from inside her character. Her character is a stupid bigot; Sarah isn’t. It’s making fun of racists.
My good friend Emery Emery’s favorite joke is about the fellow with a harelip going into a bar. He orders a drink speaking with his speech impediment and the bartender answers with the same speech impediment. The protagonist gets angry, thinking the bartender is making fun of him. The bartender assures the patron that the bartender himself has a harelip, and they chat a bit, sharing that fact. Another fellow walks into the bar and orders a drink and the bartender answers the new guy without any trace of a speech impediment. The fellow with the harelip is angry and calls the bartender out on his cruel mocking of the harelip. The bartender replies, with the impediment in place, that he was making fun of the other guy. That’s the world Sarah Silverman lives in. She is constantly making fun of people who might not know they themselves are the brunt of her joke.
I have no doubt that Sarah and all the other comics who explore these areas have their hearts in the right place. I watched Bobcat Goldthwait do a wonderful hunk in his live act years ago. He asked people if they had noticed that there were no offensive words or jokes in his act (we’re not talking obscenity here; no one reading this book would consider those words offensive). He explained that he used all those words and made all those jokes with his friends in his private life. With people who knew him, loved him, trusted him and understood him, he would make racial and gender jokes, but he couldn’t risk doing it publicly and being misunderstood. What if some bigots were to not know what side he was on and co-opt his jokes for racist purposes? It was too much of a gamble for the Bobcat to take.
Every Day is an Atheist Holiday! Page 2