Every Day is an Atheist Holiday!

about where the guy worked and his girlfriend and diet, but all of that would be done on the fly in Arno’s own style. The most important part of the joke was that at the punch line his voice had to go up and trail off. His right arm should go up with his voice and hang there on the ellipsis. I don’t think it matters very much for this joke whether the Playboy Channel or the Cheetos are last, as long as the audience gets to put the image together during the ellipsis. As long as the right arm and the pitch leads them to the right altitude for the punch line.

Over lunch, I had Arno tell me the joke over and over. He just kept telling it, and I kept correcting him, telling him to use more details or less and kept working on the punch line. I coached him to make sure that he had something else on the list in his mind. He had to have masturbating on the list, he just wasn’t to say it, but his voice had to lead to that. The punch line is really the silence. The punch line must be the offbeat—it’s gotta hit you where you ain’t. Arno starting taking this joke very seriously and really working on it. He had really no experience telling jokes, but he was focused and trying.

We both knew we were kidding; he had no intention of telling any joke in his Bell Labs talk at TED. That would be inappropriate, but we both made believe he was going to and really had fun pretending the dumb guy was teaching the smart guy something. Some of what I was explaining was real information and some was just fun bullshit. It was friends playing over lunch.

We went our separate ways after lunch, and I didn’t see him again until I was in the auditorium for his talk and he walked onstage. The TED audiences are heavy. I believe Steve Jobs and Bill Gates were both in the audience for Arno’s talk. Jonas Salk was there in the front row. Can you imagine being onstage with Jonas Salk in the front row? I did a fake seance and waved my arms around with Jonas looking at me. He saw me at a restaurant and complimented me on all the magic and monologues he’d seen me do. I told him to shut the fuck up, in those words. He wasn’t allowed to talk about stupid shit like our shows, when he had fucking helped eradicate polio. He laughed and talked about some bit we did on SNL. “What are you doing watching fucking TV? What, have you cured all diseases already? Fuck you, shut up, get to work.” I had to run and get my parents and sister on the phone and tell them I talked to Jonas Salk. I’ve met Lou Reed, but Jonas Salk, motherfucker. I just kept looking him in the eyes and trying to imagine what it felt like to help save that many lives. I can’t imagine it. I guess Jonas could have talked about it to Norman Borlaug, but it’s a short list. There’s a lot of debate about the Salk vaccine, but no matter whom you give what credit to, Dr. Salk was part of it. Doing card tricks for a living is stupid no matter who you’re talking to, but look Jonas Salk in the eyes, and it seems everyone else is doing stupid card tricks for a living.

Arno walked onstage with that kind of audience. I wasn’t fit to eat shit off anyone’s shoes in that crowd, but I was about halfway back on the aisle. I was still giggling about our goofy lunch when Arno began to speak. He started with something like, “I had lunch with Penn Jillette and he told me a great joke and tried to convince me to start my talk with it this afternoon.”

Jonas Salk started heckling, something like, “Tell the joke.”

Arno said that it was a great joke, and people should ask me to tell it to them during the break.

Someone else heckled him to tell the joke. Arno explained that it was an inappropriate joke and it was time for his prepared talk, which would take up all the allotted time.

Jonas Salk yelled something about not caring a bit about the same old boring Arno stuff; he wanted to hear a joke.

Arno stood onstage quietly and thought. There was a lot to weigh before the vice president of Bell Labs could tell a dirty joke onstage at TED. This was a big hairy deal. The audience was clamoring for the joke, and Arno was thinking. Salk was still heckling and being a dick about it. Jonas wanted to hear a joke.

Arno looked out at the crowd and found me. He asked from the stage, “So, Penn, can I do it?” I nodded yes, and raised my right hand in the gesture of our rehearsed ellipse.

Okay.

“A guy goes into the doctor with an orange dick.”

Imagine if Jimi Hendrix, John Lennon, and Elvis Presley walked out onstage together at a sold-out rock show at Madison Square Garden. The crowd went nuts. Looking back, I imagine I can hear Jonas whooping.

Arno told the joke. He got way carried away. During the section where the guy is getting his dick tested, Arno had details of the machines being used. When talking about the guy’s job, Arno built an entire backstory. This was the extended play version. One of the most important parts of comedy is committing. If you hold back one bit, if you give the slightest wink that shows you’re not completely in the joke, the audience leaves with you. Even if you’re dying, even if the idea isn’t good, you have to keep your heart in it completely. In acting, we all know the actors who let you know they’re above the character. These are the actors who suck dead dog cock. We know the comedian who laughs a bit at his own joke and let’s you know he’s just a regular guy talking weird shit. You might laugh at the time, but those comics will never change you. They won’t give you lasting beauty.

Arno committed. Like a motherfucker. Arno committed like Andy Kaufman. My mouth was bone dry. I was hyperventilating. I had tears in my eyes. At the time, I didn’t have children, but I felt like my mom must have felt watching my TV appearance. I was leaning forward in my seat, moving my mouth with his. I have never wanted a joke to go better in my life. I was more nervous in that TED audience than I was on Saturday Night Live live. Arno was going long. There was no doubt he was going way too long. He was putting in too many details. But this was an audience of scientists, and the details were killing. He knew the names of all the machines that would be used to test this guy’s dick. He had the doctor in the joke do a House differential on what could have caused this perplexing orange dick.

I haven’t found any recording of Arno telling this joke online, but I don’t want to. I want my memory, with all its mistakes and exaggerations. My memory is that this joke went on longer than the longest Grateful Dead show. My stomach was in knots, but the audience was right with him. It wasn’t too long. Penzias was killing. He got to the end of the orange dick guy’s day. He got to right before the punch line, and his eyes found mine in the audience, and he went into it. He started the list, his right hand and voice rose for the ellipses and he hit the punch line on the offbeat. He nailed it. Silence for a heartbeat, and then explosion.

Remember that Madison Square Garden show with Jimi, Lennon, and Elvis onstage? Kurt Cobain, Lenny Bruce, Dean Martin, Tiny Tim, and Jesus H. Christ joined them onstage. The crowd went nuts. In my memory (all of this is my memory, I didn’t fact-check, I didn’t want to), Jonas jumped to his feet. The reaction was insane.

It was a lecture hall, with a raked audience and very low stage. Arno jumped off the stage and ran up the aisle. I stood up and Arno hugged me. I was crying my eyes out. I believe if I were to win a Nobel Prize, it would be more emotional than this, but not by much. Arno was just a different person. We were all different. He finally got the crowd to calm down and went into his talk. My hands shook for the whole talk and I had butterflies in my stomach until I went to bed that night. It was an amazing moment. Payback can be a bitch, but payback can also be a super inamorata. Wow, did Arno pay me back for “LabScam.” I saw scientists in a whole different way. The separate worlds in my mind joined together. The strongest moments in my life make me feel one-nation-under-a- motherfucking-groove, and I felt that when Arno talked about the guy’s orange dick and Jonas laughed his genius ass off.

Several times during the next couple of days, speakers made references (some of them on graphs) to the orange dick. Arno had set up a runner for the conference.

Arno’s telling of the “Orange Dick” joke in that room was the platonic ideal of a joke. Brave and true, and not the least bit mean-spirited. Rebellious and shocking at no one’s expense. Uplifting and enlightening to everyone involved. Beautiful.

Think about that next April Fools’ Day when you’re thinking about putting Saran plastic wrap under the toilet seat. Get it?

Listening to: “I Started a Joke”—The Bee Gees

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

EXPERIMENTAL PROTOTYPE COMMUNITY OF TOMORROW was Walt Disney’s idea for EPCOT Center. His idea was to have a working city of about twenty thousand people where they would test all sorts of groovy future shit, like hydroponic carrots, flying cars and apocalyptic zombies from hell. When I first read about Walt’s plan, I was thrilled. I loved the idea of scientists, artists, and guys who run dry-cleaning businesses all living