It’s also possible that Kreskin was lying. It’s hard for me to believe that anyone could be scummy enough to lie about his mom’s health, even this guy who ripped off my mom and dad with his shitty little “Advanced Fine Kreskin ESP Set” and made me hate science.
If Kreskin was lying onstage in Vegas about his mother being sick, fuck him in the neck.
I hope he sues me.
“Love Theme from Superman”
—London Symphony Orchestra
“Liar”
—The Sex Pistols
Nixon the Aristocrat
I’m the right age for Nixon. He was my bogeyman. When I was a rebellious child questioning authority, the president of the United States turned out to be, without question, a lying sack of shit. I argued with my dad about Nixon. As my hair flopped in my face and my eye makeup ran with passion, I insisted that President Nixon had authorized people to break into a psychiatrist’s office and then used illegal means to cover up his illegal act. My moral righteousness was pure. There was no doubt showing in my voice or eyes as I accused Richard Nixon of crimes. My dad’s automatic defense of any president of the United States of America didn’t have a chance against my youth and fire.
How did a Greenfield, Massachusetts, failing public school student know for sure what illegal activities the leader of the free world was guilty of?
I didn’t. Like a toddler, I was just testing boundaries. Could I go off half-cocked about the president of the United States of America and get away with it? Could I listen to Neil Young and Country Joe in my bedroom, watch the Smothers Brothers on TV, and read Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, and The East Village Other, and spout that paranoid shit back at my dad and be correct? The way that father/son story is supposed to go, no. I was supposed to be wrong. I was supposed to look back years later with my dad and giggle about how wrong I was. I was supposed to say, “You know, I really believed all that shit I was spouting,” and Dad would say, “Yeah, and you were passionate about it too. You almost had me convinced.”
That’s the way it’s supposed to go. I didn’t know jack shit. It turned out I was right about Nixon, but only by random chance. The showboating angry young man is not supposed to be right about much.
When I say something crazy and hateful, I always want to be proved wrong. My dad couldn’t see doubt in my eyes (that’s my superpower under this yellow sun), but doubt was in my heart and my mind. I knew I was an ignorant young asshole, and I was waiting to be shown that the president was really a-okay. I’m still that way. When I sit on Fox, CNN, or MSNBC and spout my nonsense, I’m always waiting to be proven wrong. And I very often am. That’s the way it should be. When I carry on about our liberties being eroded and the government taking away more and more of our freedoms, I want people to roll their eyes. I want to go into the next decade with egg on my face and more freedom in my pants.
In the eighties, Penn & Teller did the Letterman show a lot. I’m still very proud of a lot of those spots. We were good because Letterman and his staff were so great. One of the people we worked with (after the brilliant Morty) was Frank Gannon. Before coming to work with Letterman, Gannon had worked in the Nixon White House and, along with Diane Sawyer, had helped Nixon write RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon. He went from Nixon to Letterman. I talked a lot to Frank about Nixon. He even suggested that Nixon would meet me for lunch, but that lunch never happened. Nixon chose to die first. Frank talked about Nixon listening to rap music, which he really did. Nixon loved the way rappers used words. Nixon loved words. I listen to the “You won’t have Nixon to kick around” press conference and now it sounds to me like Bob Dylan’s angry, surreal press conference in Don’t Look Back. Frank said Nixon was our smartest president, and I believe him. Frank didn’t change my mind about Nixon, but he opened it. He brought in more information. Nixon was no longer just a psychotic bogeyman, he was starting to become a complicated genius. I was starting to get that wonderful feeling of being proved wrong. Nixon, the broken genius, listening to rap music as he died, disgraced and proud, started to be a person to me.
Nixon said, “I’m not a crook,” and when his book came out, people protested with the slogan “Don’t buy books by crooks.” Frank had changed me. It was years after it came out, but I bought and read the massive book by the crook and it blew my mind. I learned so much from that book on Nixon. It changed me. Yup, Nixon did all those bad things, but the angry young asshole in Greenfield, Massachusetts, was wrong. Nixon was a monster, but not just a monster.
In the crook book, Nixon points out a bunch of factual and ethical mistakes that Woodward and Bernstein made in bringing down Nixon’s presidency. Tricky Dick contends that the Washington Post boys made the same mistake Nixon himself made. They thought the end justified the means. They thought that getting Nixon out of the presidency was important enough that they had to bend some rules.
The end does not justify the means. Nixon learned that too late.
Since reading the book by the crook, I’ve thought about this point a lot. The ends never justify the means. We’re all living only in the means and we don’t ever get to see the real end. We don’t get any big accounting of projects at the end of our lives. We just get our lives, day by day, minute by minute, and we have to be good. There’s no punch line.
There are no ends, there are only means.
The supposed end that did not justify Woodward and Bernstein’s supposed means was the president of the United States of America resigning on TV. I watched it live, brokenhearted. Other hippies cheered, but I so wanted to be wrong. I so wanted Nixon to be vindicated. Fuck, I want O. J. to be innocent. I wanted my hatred of Nixon to be a phase that I was going through. I didn’t want it to be an awful event the world was going through. I wanted my dad to be right.
Years ago someone showed me a videotape of outtakes from the Nixon TV resignation speech. I saw it that one time years ago and it stayed it my head; it was another piece of the puzzle in my long-term relationship with Nixon. I just watched those outtakes again on YouTube. And I watched them again. And again. The bootleg starts several minutes before Nixon goes live on the air to resign from office. It’s his last time addressing the American people as their president. The crew is finishing up with the set, the lighting, and the sound. The recording starts as Nixon walks in with his speech in hand. The speech he will use to resign as president of the United States of America. It’s a heavy speech. It’s a heavy room. A tech person gets out of the way so Nixon can sit down for the final tech tweaks before they go out live.
Nixon looks as the tech guy walks away and says with a big smile, “Hey, you’re better looking than I am, why don’t you stay here?” Nixon gives a little laugh and continues: “Blonds, they say, photograph better than brunettes. Is that true or not? You are blond, aren’t you? Redhead?” Nixon is telling the young sound guy that America would rather see an attractive young man resigning than crazy old Nixon.
Nixon then tells the still photographer to stop shooting. “I’m afraid he’ll catch me picking my nose,” he says with a laugh. Everyone in the room knows that’s the least of Nixon’s worries. His worry is that the whole world will not end before he makes this speech.
Nixon is making jokes. I think about jokes a lot. Especially jokes that cross lines. I worked on a movie, The Aristocrats, where we explored how far you can go with comedy. There was no violence depicted in that movie, there was no nudity in that movie, but there was shocking, unspeakable obscenity. It was the greatest comedians of our time showing that they could be funny making jokes about rape, AIDS, racism, pederasty, and 9/11. The comedians are amazing. Creative machines with nerves of steel. We made a movie about my heroes. My friend Emery Emery was one of the editors on The Aristocrats. I sent Emery the Nixon outtakes link and Emery flipped out. Emery knew Nixon was crazy, but man, how could he be this crazy?
How crazy was Nixon at this point? Nixon, at this point, was bugnutty, crazier than Charlie Manson’s shithouse rat, but I don’t think the jokes are
any evidence of that insanity. The jokes and smile are proof that even with all that crazy and evil living in him, Nixon was still a strong, brave, smart human being, more fit to be president of the United States than I will ever be. The ability to make jokes is self-control. The Massachusetts boy that I was would have seen Nixon’s smile as pure psycho evil; the Las Vegas man that I am sees it as superhuman strength. I see it as the best of us.
Nixon was not fit to be president of the United States of America. He had done bad things, he had violated trusts, and he had gone batshit. But no one is fit to be president of the United States of America if he or she isn’t able to make jokes in that room right before resigning. If you’re going to make decisions that are life and death to hundreds of thousands of people, and life-changing to billions of people, you had better be able to joke with more crushing pressure on you than anyone else has ever felt. I was able to make little jokes at my mom’s deathbed. I was able to do that, but I did it through choking sobs. I couldn’t have made jokes in that Nixon TV resignation room. I would have been vomiting. I might have died rather than give that speech. I don’t mean suicide. I mean my heart might have just exploded in my chest. I might have shit out my liver. I could not have made jokes. That may not be in the top ten thousand reasons I’ll never be president, but it certainly is a sufficient reason for me not to be president.
I was right as a child. Nixon was a crook. He was the president. He was not above the law, he was not an aristocrat, he was an elected official who worked for us.
But, as an adult, I know that Nixon, as a comedian, was an Aristocrat.
“Young Americans”
—David Bowie
The Bible’s Ninth Commandment
Thou shalt not lie.
If you were a man in a monogamous relationship with a woman, and you were fucking a guy on the side and your wife asked you, “Are you seeing another woman?” and you said, “No,” and felt you were telling the truth, you are a liar as sure as if your name were Liar Liar Pantsaflame!
ONE ATHEIST’S NINTH SUGGESTION
Don’t lie. (You know, unless you’re doing magic tricks and it’s part of your job. Does that make it okay for politicians too?)
In America, Noblesse Oblige Isn’t Just for Noblemen
I was on Larry King Live with Seth MacFarlane, the Family Guy guy. I like him. I like the pleasant feelings in my iPhone pocket when I’m with him. It’s the gentle vibration of women I know texting to remind me that, if I get a chance, I could give Seth their cell phone numbers.
MacFarlane is funny, smart, attractive, and filthy-dirty-corporation-richer than the god neither of us believes in. Besides being a funny rich guy, Seth is also a liberal, and some women dig that. He’s a real Hollywood liberal. Larry King brought up the Tea Party on the show. Rachael Harris, the woman from The Hangover, was on the show with us, and she explained that Tea Party people were racists. When I asked her to elaborate, she couldn’t think of a racist part of their platform (maybe partially because they don’t have a platform). Most of them are white, though, and maybe that’s what racism means now. Most of the Sierra Club is white, and most of Jon Stewart’s audience is white, but those didn’t come up.
Seth didn’t jump on board with the racism thing. Seth’s problem seemed to be that the Tea Party people were politically in favor of policies that Seth felt were against their own interests. This is a position I’ve heard others take before. Seth wasn’t hating the Tea Party people, he really wanted what he thought was best for them. His heart was in the right place. What bothered him so about the Tea Party was that they didn’t know what was best for their own damn selves. Seth is very talented and works hard, but he also seems to think he was lucky too. That seems reasonable. He had done well, and he didn’t need his taxes any lower. He wanted to pay his share, and he thought his share could be even higher. The Tea Party was pushing for things that would help Seth his own damn self and that were bad for the average Tea Party member. Seth explained that if the Tea Party got their way, Seth would, his own damn self, keep even more damn money. That really bugged him. He couldn’t dig that at all. How could these nuts possibly be pushing for things that weren’t in their own immediate self-interest? The Tea Party people were trying to stop the government from doing things that were financially good for the Tea Party individuals themselves. Seth didn’t want people who were much less well-off than he was pushing for things that were good for rich fucks like Seth. I understood that Seth thought that anyone pushing for something politically not in their own financial self-interest was stupid and/or manipulated by big corporate rich-fuck money. This was my understanding of his position; those aren’t the words that he used. I might be unfairly lumping Seth in with other people I’ve heard talk about this. This is an argument I’ve heard a lot. It’s an argument some liberals I know seem comfortable with.
Larry and Rachael were nodding. It seemed they’d heard this argument before, and it made sense to them.
What the fucking fuck?
Huh?
As I see it, any person making this argument is kind of bragging that his political position is so purely altruistic that it is against his own self-interest. He cares so much about other people, justice, and pure political ideology that he has the moral strength to argue for something that isn’t in his self-interest. I’ve heard a lot of rich Hollywood people make that argument. They seem to be very proud of it.
On the other hand, if a . . . I guess the word would be “peasant,” cares enough about other people, justice, and pure political ideology to argue for something that isn’t in his or her puny ignorant best interest, he or she is a manipulated idiot.
The problem with this argument is it’s a robot killer! It uses the claim that the speaker arguing against their own self-interest shows how strongly they believe that the other side shouldn’t be arguing against their own self-interest. Let me break it down to this: “I’m arguing against my own self-interest in saying that no one should argue against his own self-interest.” Arghhh!
The only way this makes sense is if you think that rich people can argue against their own self-interest, but less rich people can’t. Seth, I love you, but this is the United States of America—one doesn’t have to be rich to be guided by what one thinks is right. Morality can trump self-interest in good people of all classes. If it’s good enough for you, it’s good enough for them. Me, well, I’d like my position to be moral and in my self-interest—and I think those aren’t that often mutually exclusive.
I, my own damn self, am not a Tea Party supporter. I disagree with them on social liberties, our overseas wars, Obama’s birthplace, Sarah Palin, and the conspicuous absence of tea at their rallies. But I do believe if Seth dropped his fat wallet at a Tea Party rally, the person who picked it up would be very likely to give it back to him. And if one of the Tea Party people dropped his skinny wallet near Seth, Seth would give it back. It’s not in either of their immediate self-interest, but it’s the right thing to do. Seth and the Tea Party don’t disagree on doing the right thing, they disagree on what the right thing is. I just wish we all could remember that.
And just for the record, the government doesn’t stop you from paying more than you owe in taxes. If you really believe you should be paying more . . . just skip the deductions. I’m sure you can find a way to give 100 percent of your earnings to the government and not be arrested for anything . . . except vagrancy.
“Have a Cuppa Tea”
—The Kinks
Would This Seem Crazy If You Read It in a Book?
I was on the road for many years of my life. For years, I traveled most days of the week and did shows most nights. I was happy living in hotel rooms. I didn’t have children, and I called my mom and dad every day. I loved having friends all over the country and seeing them every couple of years. It’s really hard to have arguments with people you see only once every two years.
On the road, you get along with everyone. The same is true for “romantic relationship
s.” The first couple of days are the easiest in a relationship, and the road keeps everyone at the first couple days. Nothing can follow you on the road.
There was a woman who worked at a theater that we played. She was so sexy. She had an amazing body. Great writers have written about sexual qualities, and I won’t try to compete, but . . . this woman was sexy. Cartoon sexy. She looked as though a very talented sixteen-year-old boy with a hard-on (redundant) had sketched her body and it had become flesh.
As soon as I arrived, one of the local crew guys warned me she was “too crazy to fuck.” Robbie Libbon, one of my best friends, who also works on our crew and helped me with this book, took one look at her and said, “Holy fuck, she’s got to be weapons-grade crazy.” I thought for a few seconds that I should take the advice of someone who knows and just stay away from her. That didn’t last. Even in baggy clothes she was amazing, and she was smart and fun to talk to. She wrote sci-fi movies, and since way back then she’s had one of her movies hit the big screen. She wasn’t just perfect tits and a perfect ass. She was great in every way—smart, funny, cool. Yeah, you could kind of feel the crazy coming off her like stink, but how bad could it be?
We talked, and then we flirted, and then we hung out, and then we fucked. It didn’t seem there was any head room above her sexiness in a sweater and jeans, but she was even sexier when the rubber hit the road. We had a blast. What a night.
God, No! Page 19