So I have one little seven page-- seven minute
thing, if you want me to just-- it's
going to be in the New Yorker next week,
and this'll be the first time anyone has ever seen
or read it, if you don't mind.
I don't want to be one of these people who--
well yeah, like I said, but what could you say?
No, no!
No, really.
All right.
So listen, I was saying to the students earlier that I had--
I have a production of about two stories a year
no matter what I do.
So I started writing.
I did the screenplays.
I did the kid's books.
And I also started doing these little humor pieces
for the New Yorker magazine.
So this, I think, should be in next Wednesday, or maybe
the Wednesday after that.
I just turned 47 this year, so this is kind of a, I think,
a pretty serious reflection on that.
It's called "Nostalgia".
The other day, I was watching TV,
and it occurred to me that I've become a prude.
The show in question was innocuous enough--
nothing shocking.
Just an episode of Hottie Leaders,
featuring computer simulations of what various female world
leaders would look like naked and in the throes of orgasm.
But somehow, between that and the Pizza Hut commercial
where Paris Hilton and Jessica Simpson engaged
in some girl on girl action in a vast field of pizza sauce,
something snapped.
I mean, I know what the problem is, I'm old.
I came of age in a simpler sexual time.
Back in those ancient prelapsarian days, girl on girl
hadn't even been invented yet.
And at that time, girl on guy had only recently
been discovered.
I remember my parents and their neighbors standing in the yard
with a pair of crude human figures made of wood
trying to work out the details.
Sometimes a couple would get all worked up
and forget where things were supposed to go,
and the husband would have to call a friend.
Only, phones were new too.
So sometimes you'd go over to visit a pal from school,
and there'd be his dad just standing there naked,
phone in hand, and totally flummoxed.
And women could get pregnant from merely
watching a kiss in a movie.
Girls, or at least the good girls,
would go to movies blindfolded.
I remember once in fourth grade, I
had to get engaged to a girl whose coat I'd brushed up
against in the cloakroom.
They were simpler times, but in some ways,
I think better times.
Same deal with violence--
I remember how shocked we all were when the Cain and Abel
thing happened.
What?
We kept saying, he bludgeoned his brother with a rock?
I remember the first time a severed limb was shown on TV.
People were running out of their houses screaming.
And it was just a fake leg in a cartoon.
Imagine how shocked those screaming people would be now.
And for example, you can log on to the "evidence
of evil" evil website, and they'll
send you a box full of bloody prosthetics--
which you can reassemble into a crack addicted whore.
Who will then admit some clues through her computerized voice
box.
And when you think who murdered her,
you enter the name of the killer on the website.
And if you're right, you get to see a short porn
clip of her making love with her killer moments
before he hacks her to bits, while she
has a flashback of her mother beating her with a chair leg.
I mean, OK, there was violence when I was a kid, sure,
but nobody really talked about it.
If you got strangled and dismembered,
you just got up the next day whistling a happy tune
and went down and did some riveting for the war effort.
As for computer simulation, sorry, we had no computers.
All we had was sketch pads and pencils.
If we wanted to see what various female world leaders looked
like naked in the throes of orgasm,
we had to use a little thing called the imagination.
Plus all the world leaders were men back then.
And believe me, once you've drawn Richard Nixon naked
and in the throes of orgasm, you never
have quite the same interest in using your imagination again.
And every time you even see a pencil, you get a little puke-y
and have to sit down.
Whenever I talk to young people, like
some of the teenagers in my neighborhood,
or this one toddler Maxie, or, even
a couple of fetuses I run into occasionally--
I say to them, trust me, you guys, enjoy your youth.
Because the level of sex and violence
is going to continue to escalate, and by the time
you're my age, the world of your youth
will seem like a distant, innocent paradise.
The teenagers and the toddler, Maxie,
sometimes they seem to get it.
But the fetuses-- well, you know fetuses, they're arrogant.
To them, it's always going to be a soft, gentle ride
in a warm, comfortable space, right?
And I'm like, OK, smart guy, call me in nine months,
and we'll talk.
Or I will.
You'll just be lying there pink and newborn
with a terrified look on your face realizing I was right--
apologizing to me with those little, shocked eyes.
I don't know.
Things just keep getting worse.
I suspect that in 40 years, when I'm 87,
I'll look back at the present level of sex and violence,
and go-- huh, you call that sex and violence?
That was nothing.
That was Puritanism and pacifism compared to now.
But then I'll have to go, because it
will be stripper night at the old folks' home.
I'll have to find the costume and my back brace.
But on the way there, I'll be killed
by a mysterious old folks' home invader, who
actually works for Fox.
And is committing and filming my murder
for later broadcast on, "When Codgers on Their Way to Strip
Look Terrified".
Same with music though, right?
I used to love music, back when it had
melody and chords and lyrics.
But now, it has no melody and no chords, just thwack thwacking.
And they even seem to be cutting back on the thwack thwacking,
so now it's sometimes just thwa.
And as far as lyrics, do you consider these lyrics?
Hump my hump.
My stumpy, lumpy hump.
Hump my dump, you lumpy, slumpy dump.
I'll thump your hump, and then just hump your dump!
You lumpy frumply clump.
I'm sorry, to me, those are not lyrics.
In my day, lyrics were used to express real emotion--
like the emotion of being totally stoned.
And trying to talk this totally stoned chick into sleeping
with you in the name of love--
which lasted forever, if only you held on to your dreams.
These kids today, I don't know what they believe.
I mean, I don't even know what I really believe anymore.
But one thing I don't believe, is
that watching Paris Hilton and Jessica Simpson roll around
in pizza sauce is helping our youth
as they go forth and try to figure out what they believe.
Scientific evidence suggests, that even the fetuses inside
of mother's watching that commercial
are getting one, dumber, and two, little baby boners.
I don't go for that.
I think that when a fetus is in the womb,
it should just be floating around
with his undersized, arrogant head empty,
and his little, nascent penis just, you know, inactive.
They grow these kids up too fast.
And next thing you know, out come
the Indian and the Chinese fetuses,
and they start taking away the jobs of our Homeland fetuses.
And why?
Because the foreign fetuses aren't jaded.
They're innocent, like I was-- like my whole generation was,
when we were fetuses--
back in those long, forgotten, idyllic days
when American fetuses walked the Earth like happy,
unsoiled giants, doing algebra and reading the classics.
And yet, I don't like the fact that I've become a prude.
Life expectancies being what they are,
I may be only halfway through my life.
And who wants to live out half one's life as a prude?
Not me.
I want to live about 1/10 of my life as a prude--
that last tenth, when I'm inert and confused and immobile
anyway.
So I decided to start prude proofing myself,
via a series of daily micro-immersions in sex
and violence.
Last week, for example, I sat on my couch looking at a bra
for over an hour.
Then I forced myself to watch a video
of a duck being hit by a car.
Then I tried listening to the sound of the duck
on the video being hit by the car while looking at the bra.
Next, I turned up the sound while looking
at a slightly sexier bra.
Then I watched the duck being hit while I
ran my hand over the bra.
Then I had my wife put on the bra, which
was a very effective technique because as I
tried to run my hand over the bra,
my wife nailed me with an ashtray--
just as the duck was hit by the car, one
of the best micro-immersions in sex and violence
a guy could ask for.
And tonight is my biggest de-pruding test yet.
I'm going to, while hitting myself with a brick,
and begging my wife to walk by in her bra,
watch an episode of "Dream Your Final Dream".
On which a contestant selected from a field
of more than 5,000 applicants will
be granted his final dream--
which, in this case, is to be beaten nearly to death
with a tire iron, so that Carmen Electra can come in naked
and give a lap dance in the final moments of his life.
I have high hopes.
I know I can do this.
And if I succeed, our whole culture
will once again be open to me.
And who knows, I may even go see a movie.
Thank you very much for your time.