Host: Sarah Austin Jenness
[Uncanny Valley theme by The Drift]
Sarah: [00:00:12] From PRX, this is The Moth Radio Hour. I'm Sarah Austin Jenness.
This episode is all about calls. Literal telephone calls and one story about a man's true calling. I must say I don't love talking on the phone. I'm a much stronger in person kind of friend. But I've been practicing phone conversations more. So, when I do call my best friend, well, after she picks up the phone and says wow, I say we're doing our favorite thing. We're talking on the phone.
So, we're doing this hour, because when the phone rings, it's like a great mystery. And remember, before caller ID, we didn't even know who was on the other line. Phone calls can change the direction of a story in an instant. They reveal things like in this first story from Susan Fee.
Susan told it at one of our open-mic StorySLAMs in Seattle, where we partner with public radio station KUOW. Her little appetizer of a story really sets the tone for this hour. You'll see what I mean.
[cheers and applause]
Here's Susan Fee, live at The Moth in Seattle.
Susan: [00:01:19] So, I'm a mental health counselor. I work with families and teens. One of the biggest questions you get is how do you know what your teenager is really thinking about you? [audience chuckle] I'm here to tell you I have the answer. You don't have to go through their room. It's not about reading text or going on the computer. I found out the hard way.
So, I'm out buying a car with my 17-year-old daughter, counselor. So, I had what I called a counselor car for many years. They don't make it anymore a Honda inside, it's a pretend Prius. [audience laughter] So, stripped down, there's nothing in this car. I'm used to that clunking along, gas mileage and all. But we're going to bump it up a little bit, and I'm going to buy this new car and my daughter is with me. We're going to learn how to buy a car. This is going to be cool. And who do I get is the sales guy is Chris, the college kid.
Chris, the college kid showing us around, showing me the new things that you can get in a car. So, I'm learning. I'm liking this car. My daughter's next to me. Chris is in the back. He's showing me how all these things work in the car. It's got Bluetooth. Well, I've never had Bluetooth. I honestly didn't know how it worked. People can hear things in their car. “This is amazing, Chris. Show me, Chris college kid, how do you use Bluetooth?” He says, “I can do this.”
So, he says to my daughter, “You got your phone?” “Yeah.” He says, “Okay, you got your phone?” I say, “Yeah, I got it.” He goes, "Okay, right now, call your daughter on the Bluetooth." Okay. I call my daughter. All of a sudden, all of a sudden, like surround, I don't even know what's happening. [sings Carmina Burana] What is happening? Now, if you don't know the song, Carmina Burana-- [audience chuckle] You do know it, because any movie that involves Satan has this song. [audience chuckle]
I do not understand what is happening right now. But Chris, the college kid in the backseat, does understand. He and my daughter understand that this is her ringtone for me. [audience laughter] I see him in the back room, and he's like-- [audience laughter] He’s trying to tell her, [whispers] "You're going back. You're not getting this car." So, I catch my breath. I try to understand. He's like, "Yeah, yeah, you called your daughter. You could have conversation now. Okay.” [audience laughter]
So, I follow up with what really only a counselor would ask. I mean, this takes training. [audience chuckle] I say, "Gabrielle, what is your father's ringtone?" [audience laughter] [audience applause]
And she comes back with The Imperial March. [audience laughter] So, bottom line, you want to find out what your teenager thinks of you? Ringtones, baby. It's all about the ringtones. Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Sarah: [00:04:56] That was Susan Fee.
[Carmina Burana by Carl Orff]
Susan and her husband live in Seattle, Washington, where she still works as a counselor. Her daughter, Gabrielle, was in the audience the night Susan told this story. Gabrielle says she remembers the incident in the same way, but says that she was totally embarrassed and scrambled to turn down the volume when her phone rang. But now, she and her mom laugh about it, and they go to Moth shows together whenever they can.
[Carmina Burana by Carl Orff]
Our next story is told by Moran Cerf. Moran is a neuroscientist and probably the fastest talker ever to appear at The Moth. He speaks so fast that the transcript of this story is also at themoth.org, if you miss anything and you want to read it later. This story is about a series of crossed wires and missed phone calls.
[cheers and applause]
Moran told it in the Adirondacks at a Moth Mainstage, produced with North Country Public Radio. Here's Moran Cerf, live at The Moth.
Moran: [00:06:00] So, I'm a neuroscientist, and I do research on people. We don't get a lot of fame doing that, but I actually got to tell you a story about how I did somehow end up being famous for that. So, in my research, I'm working with patients undergoing brain surgery. We try to do all kinds of things to help them, but we also do research with these patients.
One of the things I did in the last couple of years was a study, where we took patients who were undergoing brain surgery, and put electrodes deep inside their brain during surgery to help them with clinical reasons. But we also did something where we told them, "We're going to show you pictures and see how your brain looks when you see those pictures and we have a map of your brain when you see those pictures and then we can basically know how your brain looks when you think of those things."
So, the patient could sit in bed and think about the Eiffel Tower, we would see a pattern that we recognized from before and we would project a picture of the Eiffel Tower in front of their eyes. So, patients would basically sit in bed, think about things and we would project their thoughts on screen in front of their eyes. This was a remarkable project that took us five years to accomplish. When we finished, we were very excited and wanted to tell the world about it. The way scientists tell the world about things is by publishing it in a paper.
So, you write a paper describing everything you did. We said we could have people sit in bed, think about things and project their thoughts on a screen. And then, you send this paper to a bunch of journals, journals with all kinds of ranking. The journals basically take your work, they try to find flaws in it, and if they can't find any flaws, they publish it. That's basically what you do as a scientist. This is your career.
Now, journals get all kinds of rankings. And the highest-ranking journal in science, the one that is the hardest to get in, is called Nature. Nature is where you put your work if you really are going to change the world. To give you an example, this is where the discovery of DNA was published in the 1950s. When they cloned the sheep Dolly, it was published there. When they discovered a new galaxy, they published it there. It's really the place where you put your work if you're going to change the world.
So, we submitted our work there and it took six months where people tried to find flaws in our work. And eventually, on October 1st, I got the email saying, "Congratulations, your work is going to be published in Nature in three weeks." I was excited. This is something that doesn't happen regularly to scientists. It happens usually zero to one time in a scientist's career. So, I was really happy that my work is going to be there. I was still a graduate student at the time. I was ecstatic.
And then, they tell you that they're going to come out to your work within three weeks. So, you have three weeks to prepare things. And then, they have a press release where they announce to the world your work. Usually, those press releases don't go well. People don't get it right. So, I had this idea. I contacted the Nature and I said, "Why don't we create a YouTube video explaining the work? We're going to make a nice video. We're going to interview myself, my colleagues. We're going to show videos of the patients thinking about things and projecting their thoughts. This video is going to explain to people how it's done."
They were very happy with it. And I said, "I'm going to make it. I'm going to edit and make this movie." So, I spent the next three weeks working on making this movie. I actually worked day and night, and I learned stuff and I did a lot of cool things in the movie. I ended up working until the very last day, until the day the press release was about to happen. I worked all night. And at 08:00 AM that morning, I actually put this video out there on Nature's website and I just waited.
Now, the press release was scheduled for 01:00 PM, so I had five hours to sleep. And I said, "I'm going to go to sleep now, rest before my glorious day comes out." I put my phone on vibrate and I went to sleep to relax a little bit. I was planning to wake up at 01:00 PM to see how things come out, but I actually ended up waking up an hour before, because my phone kept vibrating the entire time and woke me up. I picked up my phone and I looked at it and I had 50 missed calls. My answering machine was full of messages, and I didn't know what's going on.
And then, my phone was ringing right away. So, I picked up the phone. And on the phone was the senior producer for BBC Nightly News. And he says, "I saw your work. I saw your video. I want to open our Nightly News with this video." Now, here's the thing about the video. In the video, I asked one of my colleagues, a neurosurgeon in our team, to explain what this work can be in the future, what could happen in this future with this work. And he says, "Well, in the future, you can use this thing to have machines work using just thoughts, using memories, using dreams." And then, the movie ends gloriously with the future and we fade out.
And the guy on BBC calls me and says, “I saw your video and I want to know about this dream recording thing that you’re doing.” Just to be clear, dream recording is not what we did. We never recorded dreams. We never did anything with dreams. We only had patients think about things and project our thoughts and just the movie ends with the final two words, recording dreams. So, he asked me about it and I say, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. What is this dream recording?” And he says, “Well, one of your colleagues in the team said something about dream recording.” And I say, “Well, I don’t think it’s true. Maybe there’s a mistake.” He says, “I don’t understand. Is it possible or impossible?” And I say, “Well, in theory it’s possible.” He said, “Thank you too.” [audience chuckles]
And so, the last thing that I said to the BBC senior producer was that dream recording is possible. And I said, “Well, that’s not a big deal. Maybe it’s one thing, one little mistake, it’s not going to be a big deal. Probably one little fluke, but doesn’t matter.” And now, it’s 01:00 PM and I look and refresh my browser to see what comes out. And the first thing is Nature having this press release describing the ability to have people think about things and see their thoughts. And the second thing is BBC with a headline, “Scientists say that dream recording is possible.” [audience chuckles] And I say, “Well, one mistake, not a big deal. No one’s going to notice that.”
I refresh the browser again. 10 minutes later. MSNBC, “Scientists have been recording dreams.” Refresh the browser. Fox News, “Scientists have been recording dreams and keeping them in storage.” [audience chuckle] Refresh the browser. What’s the journal? “Scientists are coding dream, keeping the database, they have hundreds of years of it.” The story gets bigger and bigger. Everyone talks about the dream recording. No one even mentions the ability to think of things and show them on the screen. No one even mentions that. As I refresh the browser again and again, more and more news outlets are talking about the scientists at Caltech who can record your dreams.
I’m really frustrated. I don’t know what to do. People call me and I answer and I try to explain to one by one each reporter who calls me that it’s not the case. But no one really cares. They keep talking about recording dreams. They have a name for it now, the DRM, the Dream Recording Machine. It has a price and people buy it and there’s like you can buy 10 for $8. [audience laughter] People talk about this thing. And the much I comment about it, no one really cares. I’m really frustrated, because this is my career hinges on this project and no one cares.
So, I called my dad, who’s a journalist. And I said, “Dad, here’s what’s happening. How can I kill this story, because it won’t die by itself?” And my dad, “Look, son, no one cares about science. [audience laughter] Just turn off your phone for two days, don’t answer anything and the story is going to die by itself, because no one cares about it.” And so, I do just that. Two days later, the story is number one. They have like this ranking, it’s number one. BBC, MSNBC, Fox News, Wall Street Journal, Reuters. Everyone keeps talking about this Dream Recording Machine. Because I didn’t pick up my phone for two days now, people email me.
So, I get emails from people sending me their dreams. People asking me to go to hearings with the CIA explaining how they can be. Their dreams are being recorded for years now. I get more and more of those emails. All of that of course not true. I get this chef, a famous British chef says, his dreams have been about this particular recipe and he can’t get ingredients and he wants me to put electrodes in his brain and give him the ingredients. [audience chuckle] Apple calls me and they say they want to have this machine in their next operating system and I say, “It doesn’t exist, sir. I don’t know.” He said, “Fine. You want to play it far? Okay, we can option this thing, so when you actually release this thing, then we’re going to buy it.” I say “It doesn’t exist.” He said, "Oh, you're really playing it tough. Okay, good enough." [audience chuckle]
And so, people call me and ask about it and the story won’t die. There’s like something that the Queen said and still my story trumps this thing. I don’t know what to do. I feel frustrated. My friends who’ve seen me upset for two days now, they contact me and they say, “You know, it’s Halloween now, October 30th. It’s like a fun night. Why don’t you go out with us, have a night out, forget about this thing and just go out.” And I say, “Fine, it’s a good idea. I’m going to go out with you guys.” And I do that. We go out. I dress up. And in a self-deprecating sense of humor, I dress up like Freud. I put a little beard and a pipe and I comb my hair to the side and I have these little glasses and I go out. And now, we all have a great night out in New York. They take pictures of me. And the night after, they’re putting it on Facebook and on places. And now, if you look for my name, not only do they see my work, but I also see a picture of me looking like Freud with the title Moran Cerf Can Record Dreams. [audience laughter]
So, the story gets even bigger, because everyone now knows about this thing who is actually the new Freud. That’s me. [audience laughter] And I said, “Oh, my God, this story is never going to die. I don’t know what to do.” I tried to find all kinds of tricks to kill the story by going on live shows and explaining it. It’s not the case. But now nothing happens. And nowadays people say, “You know what? It’s now October 30th. But in four days, they’re going to have the midterm election in the US, November 4th. Surely, this story is going to trump your story.”
Four days later, the House changes hands. But still, the story number two now is about the scientists who can record the dreams. Nothing will kill the story. I’m waiting. It’s been a week now, and nothing ends. I think that, wow, this is never going to happen. My scientific career is over. At the same time, there are other scientists who have been trying to record dreams, who have been commenting my work, saying that it’s impossible that I’ve been doing that, because they’ve been trying for years now. Other scientists have been competing with them, saying that of course they can do it, because I’m better than them. There’s like a battle between scientists all about my work, where I’m not involved in. [audience chuckle]
And I think to myself, wow, this is not going to end. I just have to wait and give up my scientific career, when suddenly I get the phone call. I was sitting in my office and the phone rang. It was 06:00 PM. I answered the phone and on the line was this woman. She says, “I'm going to put Chris up with you in a second.” I wait for him a second. And on the line is a person who introduces himself as Christopher Nolan, a famous filmmaker who just released a movie called Inception about the same time, about people who could do stuff with dreams. He calls me and says, “Look, I've been looking at your work now for a few days. It's great. We're going to have a DVD release of Inception in a few days, and I want you to be the face of this thing. I want you to go on a world tour with me and explain how you've been doing it for a while, so my work is going to be getting the scientific authority, the scientific stamp.”
And I say, “Well, sir, I don't know what to say. It's really a great movie, but we never did it. We never record dreams. I don't think it's possible in the sense that you think it is.” And he says, “Well, send me the paper. I want to read it.” In fact, he was the first and only guy out of all the reporters all over the world, actually asked me to give him the paper. So, I sent him the paper. He reads it and he calls me back and he says, “Look, I looked at your work. Yes, there's nothing about dreams there, but it doesn't matter. I still want you to go on a tour with me, because you're now the face of dream recording. Everyone thinks you are. Just go on a tour with me and explain how it can be done. No one really cares about details. Just go on two with me and explain how it's done.”
And I say, “Well, let me think about it. Because on the one hand lies fame and fortune. And on the other hand, my integrity and science. [audience chuckle] I need 24 hours to think about which of the two I'm going to choose.” [audience laughter] So, I spend 24 hours thinking about it. After 24 hours, the phone rings again and I pick up and I say, “As much as I would have loved to help you in this, I don't think I can go on this world tour with you and explain how dream recording is possible, given that it's not.” And he says, “Well, I understand. If you ever change your mind, we're working on Inception II.” And I say, “I'll remember and I'll call you back.” And so, all I was left was with a scientific project that gradually went the right way, and people actually now know the truth about it and a story. Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
[intriguing music]
Sarah: [00:17:49] That was Moran Cerf. Moran is a professor of neuroscience at the Kellogg Business School and a professor at the American Film Institute. Prior to his career in opening and studying brains, he worked as a hacker, a radio host and a furniture designer. Moran told the story a while back, and I asked him if people can record dreams now. And he said numerous labs are pursuing it. His lab is exploring it daily and they're getting closer and closer. He says the only difference between science fiction and science is timing. By the way, Moran said about his story, “I don't worry about time limits. If it's running too long, I'll just talk faster.”
After our break, an elevator mechanic gets an unexpected call from her mother. And then another and then another, when The Moth Radio Hour continues.
[intriguing music]
Jay: [00:19:02] The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. And presented by PRX.
Sarah: [00:19:13] This is The Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Sarah Austin Jenness. We're exploring calls in this hour.
Our next story is about a good kind of phone call. It's the kind that changes your life in a positive way. Nancy Mahl was originally part of a Moth community workshop we taught with Congregation Beth Hatikvah, a Reconstructionist synagogue, and Fountain Baptist Church in New Jersey. It was a Moth workshop that brought together two different faiths to connect across traditions. Nancy then told her story at a community showcase in Brooklyn, New York. Here's Nancy Mahl, live at The Moth.
[cheers and applause]
Nancy: [00:19:52] Thank you. It was a regular Tuesday at work. It was a beautiful day. I was standing on the roof of the New York Times building in Times Square. I was on the roof, because I'm an elevator mechanic and that's where the elevator machine rooms are. I was drinking a cup of coffee and watching the traffic below, and I heard the phone ring in the motor room. That usually is a bad thing. It means somebody stuck in an elevator or somebody's complaining about something. So, I went in to answer the phone. And it was my mother.
Now, I hadn't spoken to my mother in maybe two years. So, it was strange on so many levels. [audience laughter] It was strange that she would call me on the roof of the New York Times, that she would know that I was on the roof of the New York Times. And she said, “Are you okay?” I said, “I'm fine. Sorry I haven't called.” And she's like, “No, really, are you okay?” And I said, “I'm okay. Are you okay?” She said, “I'm okay.” I said, “Okay, that's great.” [audience chuckle] She said, “A plane hit the World Trade Center, and I was worried about you.” I said, “Well, that's sad.” And she said, “No, really, it's serious. I just wanted to make sure you were okay.” And I said, “Okay, I'm okay” and we hung up. I know how the rest of the day went.
The next day, I was back at work and the phone rang in the motor room. And it was my mother. She said, “How are you doing? Are your friends okay? Where do you live? Is your house okay?” And I said, “Most of my friends are accounted for, and the house is okay. And I'm back in Times Square. I'm safe.” And she said, “Well, how's my city?” Let me preface this by saying my mother was a New Yorker. She lived in Jackson Heights, Queens and then in Murray Hill. In 1937, she was Miss Larchmont. She'd have, you know? [audience laughter]
Well, we didn't get along. We didn't agree on really much of anything. She was a Republican and I, a Democrat, sliding toward Communist. [audience laughter] She's a devoutly Catholic person and I'm very much not. She was straight and I'm gay. She had a really hard time with that. And so, anytime we tried to talk about anything, food, movies, politics, religion, we'd end up in opposite corners of the room, hissing at each other. We just gave up, because there wasn't much in the relationship that fed either of us. Every time we got together, it ended in a terrible fight and we just let it go.
So, here she was calling me a second time. I was really touched. It seemed like she actually cared, which I did not think she did. And she said, “You know, during the war, when your father was overseas, all us ladies had to go out and keep everything open. We had to go to concerts, and sports events and museums. You're going to have to do that. You're going to have to keep my city alive for me.”
My mother had left New York, and gone out to take care of a sick relative in South Dakota and was foolish enough to marry a cowboy. [audience chuckle] So, she was calling me from the West. She hadn't been back to New York in decades, but she still thought New York was her city and she wanted to know how it was. So, we developed a kind of a rhythm. Every morning I'd get a little five-minute phone call from my mother to see how our city was. She'd asked me what I was doing. And so, I said, “Well, I got tickets to Joe's Pub, and I saw Justin Vivian Bond and they sang Benny Goodman songs to keep everyone's spirits up.”
She told me about going to the Waldorf Astoria and dancing to Benny Goodman. And she said, “What are you going to do tomorrow?” So, every day I had to come up with a little, what did I do and how was I keeping her city alive? I was going to theater and I was going to sports events, which I hate. [audience laughter] One night, I was on emergency callback, walking through Times Square, going up 6th Avenue. My little flip phone rang and it was my mother, because at this point, she'd gotten my phone number, so she could call me whenever she wanted to. And she said, “How's my city doing? Tell me about it. Hold up your phone and let me hear.”
So, I walked along 6th Avenue. She could hear the horses clapping around Central Park and she could hear the taxis honking. And she said, “What's it look like?” And I said, “Well, every taxi’s got this little plastic flag hanging out of the window. Every business has a flag on it. Even the gay bars have flags on them.” [coughs] I said, “It looks like Kansas.” [audience laughter] My mother found that touching, and she’s like, “Well, I’m glad you finally got some patriotism.” [audience laughter] She said, “I’m thinking about visiting you, so just put that in your mind.” [audience laughter]
This was a scary thought. So, I thought, I’ll just keep her at bay with a few more stories. [coughs] I got tickets to the opera. So, the opera was something I never wanted to go to. I spent four hours listening to this Mozart thing that went on and on and on. Everybody was dressed like my mother, and it was very stuffy and it was very boring. And then, at the end, this red-haired lady came out and she sang this aria and it was gorgeous. I knew nothing about opera, but I discovered that night that they sing without microphones. They’re just freaks of nature and they can fill this huge auditorium with just what God gave them. At the end of this aria, all these stiff-looking people stood up and they started pounding on the boxes, and screaming, and throwing flowers, and shrieking and stomping. It was like Yankee Stadium in the cheap seats. [audience chuckle] And I was like, “This is really raw. This is really visceral. I get opera.” [audience laughter]
So, when I told my mother about that, she said, “We’re going together. I’m coming. I'm coming to JFK, come and pick me up.” So, I drive out to the airport. I’m terrified, because we’ve been having this beautiful little relationship, where I make the city come alive for her and she makes the city come alive for me and everything’s great in five-minute increments, but now we’re going to be stuck together for a week. I don’t know how smart this is, because it’s a beautiful thing and I think it’s all going to go. [audience laughter]
So, I pick her up, I get her gigantic suitcases, I put in the car and we’re driving in semi-silence, because I think she’s also scared and she says, “So, have you been going to Mass?” [audience chuckle] I just let that sit there for a minute, [audience laughter] and I was like, “No.” [audience laughter] And then, there was silence. And then, she said, “Well, I have some things in the suitcase for you, and [whispers] I’m hoping chocolate chip cookies. Chocolate chip cookies.” It turns out the Legion of Mary went all over Sun City and bought every dust mask they could find, which was really sweet, because we had none. All of the people who were working downtown were out, and we appreciated that. And she said, “And I’ve got something else for you.”
So, we got back to Jersey City to my little skinny, 12-foot-wide house. We went upstairs to the guest room, and she unzipped this bag, and inside it was the flag from my father’s coffin. I think I mentioned he was a B-17 pilot in World War II. And those coffin flags are big and my house is small. And she said, “Do you mind if we hang it on the house? I know you’re not patriotic.” But I said, “Yeah, I would love it.” So, we opened the two windows and we dropped it down the front of the house and it basically covered the whole house. [audience laughter] So, if anybody doubted my patriotism, they doubted it no longer. [audience laughter]
And the rest of the week went really well. We had one little fight and we worked it out. We stayed away from religion, and we stayed away from politics and we stayed on culture. We went to things together, and we loved each other and we enjoyed each other. We had those five-minute phone calls for the next nine years of her life. I miss every one of them. And I have tickets to the opera for next Saturday.
[cheers and applause]
[opera music]
Sarah: [00:29:09] That was Nancy Mahl. Nancy still loves opera. In fact, she just saw Bluebeard’s Castle at the Met, which coincidentally featured an elevator shaft as a principal visual element. Nancy’s mom came to New York one more time after this story took place. She went to the New York Times to see her daughter, and meet editors and reporters and the president of the Times. Nancy said her mom wasn’t willing to ride on the top of an elevator, but she did peek down the shaft and squeal. To see a photo of Nancy and her mom, plus the newspaper clipping of Miss Larchmont at the World’s Fair in Flushing in 1939, go to themoth.org.
[opera music]
So, here at The Moth, we talk a lot about how to find a story of yours. And the start of the story or the hook, if you will, is always something that breaks a pattern. So, unexpected phone calls are a great way to look for stories. Did you get a surprising phone call, or an email or a knock at the door? If there’s a story about that, you can pitch us by recording a one-minute version of your story right on our site or call 877-799-M-O-T-H. That’s 877-799-6684. We listen to all the pitches we get, and the best are developed for Moth shows all around the world.
[opera music]
When we come back, a story from comedian and actor, Cheech Marin of the comedy duo Cheech & Chong, when The Moth Radio Hour continues.
[opera music]
Jay: [00:31:01] The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. And presented by the Public Radio Exchange, prx.org.
Sarah: [00:31:15] You're listening to The Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Sarah Austin Jenness. In this hour, all about calls.
Our last story is about a calling. It's from Cheech Marin. Some of you may know Cheech as an actor. He's one half of the hilarious duo Cheech & Chong, and they've made eight films together. This is basically Cheech's origin story. It's how Cheech became Cheech. And it takes place at the time of the Vietnam War. He told this at a Moth night in Los Angeles that was produced in partnership with public radio station KCRW. Here's Cheech Marin, live at The Moth.
[cheers and applause]
Cheech: [00:31:56] I used to be a Cub Scout. [audience chuckle] I was a Boy Scout. I was an altar boy. I sang in the church choir. I was a straight-A student all through school. When I graduated from high school, I won the religion award. I was the product of a Catholic education, and I was prepared for anything that happened here in the 12th century. [audience laughter]
My father, Oscar, was a cop. 30 LAPD. [audience laughter] He was a World War II vet, was in the Navy, saw combat in the Philippines. He never talked about it, except once he talked about it and then I understood why he never talked about it. It was horrific. He only had one rule, Oscar. And that rule was my way or the highway. We didn't get along really great. [chuckles] But it wasn't just because of that. It's because he worked me to death.
I'd wake up in the morning, “All right, make your bed. All right, make your bed again. Those corners aren't right. Go out there and cut the lawn now. Edge the lawn. Now, come in and vacuum. Now, wash the car.” “The dad, come on, man.” “Hey, listen, you're a Chicano, and you're always going to have three jobs. [audience laughter] So, get used to it.” “Oh, man.” So, when I went off to college, man, I was ready for anything. Get me out of here. So, I worked.
One night, I came home from work and my roommates had a little party going on. There was music, and there was laughter and the lights were low. It was really smoky in there for some reason. [audience laughter] And out of the blue, somebody handed me this little hand-rolled cigarette and well, I'm here to try anything. So, I took a hit and I heard my dad's voice, "If you ever smoke marijuana, you're going to turn into a heroin addict and you're going to steal out of your mother's purse." [audience laughter] So, I took another hit. [audience laughter] Looked around and what else have they been lying about? [audience laughter]
For those of you who didn't go to college in the mid-1960s, boy, you missed it, because it was happening. There was a revolution going on. There was a very unpopular, unjust, immoral war going on. They were sending thousands of young men over there to die in the jungles of Vietnam. They lied to us every step of the way. My college was a hotbed of radical activities. A string of speakers came in and riled us up. There was Floyd McKissick from SNCC. There was Reies Tijerina from the Chicano Land movement. There was Timothy Leary and his LSD became a good friend of mine. [audience chuckle] "Turn on, tune in, drop out."
Two weeks before he was assassinated, Robert Kennedy spoke at our university. Martin Luther King had been killed just before that. Now, Robert Kennedy. They were murdering our leaders. But there was one person that came to school, and he made the most impact on me. He wasn't the most fiery, he wasn't the most bombastic, he was actually the quietest. His name was David Harris, and he was the leader of The Draft Resistance Movement. He had a very simple message. "If you're not registered for the draft, don't register. If you're registered and they call you up for physical, don't go to the physical. If you've gone to the physical and they ask you to step forward to be inducted in the army, don't step forward. Refuse to be a part of this machine."
It's the only thing that made sense to me during this whole period. So, that's what I'm going to do. So, I handed in my draft card, I gave it to David Harris himself. And then, he put it on a collage that accompanied him and his new wife, Joan Baez, on a speaking tour throughout the United States. It was on the cover of Time magazine. And if you looked real closely in the corner, you could see my name. I was a revolutionary now. I was going to make a change. I was fearless.
Until about two weeks later, General Hershey, who was the director of the draft at the time, issued this proclamation that anybody who burnt their draft card or turned it in, or demonstrated in front of the draft board, would be immediately reclassified, drafted and sent to the front lines of Vietnam. And that was his fix. And I thought, it doesn't seem like it's quite so legal. But anyways, that's what he did.
So, I went from revolutionary to a little scared revolutionary. But another miracle happened at that time. I discovered that I was an artist. I couldn't draw and I couldn't paint and I couldn't sculpt. But I took a pottery class my last semester in school. And my Mexican genes came trotting out. [audience laughter] They said, "Hey, Holmes, where you been? Come on, man, let's get on the wheel. We're back ordered, let's go." [audience laughter]
I made pottery. From the time I woke up till the time I went to bed, I was a pottery-making fool. And that became my life. I found my calling. I was going to be a potter. I was going to go out and I was going to dig in the ground and make clay and make pots for the rest of my life. And then, I got another notice that I had been reclassified 1A, ready to go. I was in school. I had a 2S deferment, but they reclassified me because of my political activities. I'm like, “Oh, jeez, what am I going to do now?”
So, my pottery teacher, who was kind of hip to what I was going through, said, “You know what? I have this ex-student of mine who's a Canadian and he's very successful. Maybe you could be his assistant.” Well, that's all it took, man.” I get up, gathered all the money I could, which was 80 bucks, [audience chuckle] bought a bus ticket, got ready to leave. And before I left, I wanted to say goodbye to my mother. And my father happened to be there at the house. They were getting divorced at the time. He learned about my plans, and he said, "You know what? I don't believe in what they're doing over there, but if they called me, I would go."
Well, that's the difference between us, isn't it? I have the strength of my convictions. Didn't sit well with him. So, we didn't part on really good terms. But I was on the dog north. The last stop we had before we crossed over the border into Canada was Great Falls, Montana. We pulled into Great Falls late at night. I got off the bus bone weary, went to check into those hotels. And in the corner, there was a bar with a bunch of cowboys having a good time getting drunk. One of the cowboys looked up, "Hey, that looks like a draft dodger. You a draft dodger? You going to go to Canada? Well, you better not, because we're going to be here in the morning. We'll take care of your ass."
So, I didn't spend quite so restful a night, and I came downstairs quietly early in the morning, looked around the corner and there were no cowboys there. I guess hangover trumped patriotism. [chuckles] So, I got back on the dog and entered Canada. Now, I had a picture of what I thought Canada was going to be like. It was going to be Sergeant Preston of the Yukon with a team of dogs and igloos and Nanook of the North. Man, went into Alberta, looked like Bakersfield, [audience laughter] except really cold.
So, I met the guy, Edra Hanchuk. He had won this bicentennial exhibition award the year I got there. He was a famous potter. I became his assistant and I went to work right the day I met him. He said, "Okay, go start cleaning those bricks." And so, I worked my ass off cleaning those bricks and I worked my ass off every day. I did everything a potter should do. I dug clay, I wedged clay, I pugged clay, I wrapped clay, I just never threw clay because that was his job. I had to work my way up to it.
Eventually, I found a little cabin to live in by the river. It had electricity, had a pot-bellied stove. It didn't have any gas, it didn't have any running water. So, every day, I had to go down to the river for my water and I had to chop wood every single day. Chop wood, chop wood, chop wood. One night after work, I was out there chopping wood. It was already dark and I said, "Oh, man, this is bone weary." And out of nowhere, the northern lights appeared. They were aurora borealis and they surrounded me. I was standing in the middle of a cathedral of light with red, blue, yellow, green, orange, violet. And I thought, my God, I'll never be closer to nature than at this moment.
I went back to chopping wood, because that's what I did every day. It was the coldest winter in Alberta in 80 years. And there I was, 20 below, chopping wood. I realized at that point that I can survive anything, but I can always support myself, because I know how to work. I know how to work because I was taught how to work by-- So, I went back to chopping wood. So, I met a couple guys in town and they said, "Hey, you ever been skiing? Oh, yeah, we used to ski all the time in South Central, [audience laughter] they had some of the best hills around. Okay. Well, we're going to take you to Banff. We're going to teach you how to ski."
So, we rented some skis, went up on the hill, pointed me in a snow plow and said, "Okay, this is how you turn. This way for left, this way for right" and pushed me, right? I’m picking up speed. "Hey, this is cool, man. I look like the brown blur." [chuckles] This cool. The only thing they didn’t teach me how to do was stop. I’m going, I hit a bank, came down and broke my leg in half. [audience aww] In half, just like that. A compound fracture and I was in the hospital for a month. I was in a full-length cast with crutches for six months.
So, when I got out of the hospital, my same friends said, "Hey, why don’t you come to Vancouver with us? It’s really cool there. That’s where we’re from." So, what the fuck? [audience chuckle] They had such good advice in the first place. [audience laughter] So, I went to Vancouver. It was like San Francisco of the time, except without the drumbeats of war and the protest. It was just peace and love and sex and girls and flowers and butterflies in Stanley Park and I had a ball. And sooner or later, I met this other guy that I had gone to school with. He was in Vancouver for the same reason.
And he said, "You know, there’s this guy in Vancouver. He’s running this weird thing. It’s an improv company in a topless bar [audience chuckle] in Chinatown. Skid Row. You guys would have a lot in common." [audience laughter] So, that’s how I met Tommy Chong.
[cheers and applause]
He had come off the road with his band, and he had seen improv theater and that’s why what he wanted to do. But he wanted to keep the topless girls at the same time, you know, because we needed customers. And so, we started doing topless improv. [audience chuckle] What it was, hippie burlesque. That’s what we’re doing. We owned the club, so we could do anything. We did four hours of naked improv every single night. [audience laughter]
So, at the end of nine months, the troupe dissolved because all the members wanted to go to the hills to get their head together. My head was together. My pocketbook wasn’t together. So, I said, "Well, we got to make a living doing this. So, why don’t we just compact what we’re doing in this troupe into two guys, and we’ll go be a comedy team and we’ll go conquer the world." "Yeah, sounds good. We could go to LA, where it was warm. I knew everybody and it would be fun. Only one problem. I was wanted by the FBI at the time. [audience laughter] They were always coming around my mother’s house, according to her, seeing if I was there.”
Oh, God, how are we going to get back into the country? "Hey, I got a brilliant idea. I’ll just borrow a phony ID. Can you imagine that [chuckles] doing that today?" So, I did. I borrowed my friend Bill Nora's driver's license with a picture of Bill Knorr on it. [audience laughter] So, I went up to the immigration guy at the airport. "Hi" and I held it up like that. "Hi, I'm Bill Knorr. I'm going down to LA to do some interviews." He looked at the picture and looked at me. We were both dark. He says, "Well, welcome to the US." And I was in. [chuckles] Wow.
But still, I was still wanted and they were still coming around. So, I said, "What am I going to do?" Every time we go on stage, Tommy would say, "Hey, you know he's wanted by the FBI." [whispers] "Shut the--" [audience laughter] He's just kidding. That's not funny. And then, another miracle happened. There was an announcement in the paper that my case, along with 600 others, went to the Supreme Court. It was a class action about that illegal drafting. The case got thrown out. And so, now we're not-- [audience applause]
We were not felons. So, the government tried to redraft me the next day, [audience chuckle] three years later. They sent me a notice for physical. [sighs] So, I sent a Banff for my X-rays and went down to the induction center to stand in my underwear with my X-rays, along with a bunch of other guys. The doctor comes out smoking a cigarette, looks at me. "Hey, you with a leg. Come over here." Takes me into his office. "These are X-rays?" "Oh, yeah.” “Well, you have about a 13-degree distortion in your leg. This is going to come as bad news, but you're not fit to be in the Army. [audience laughter] [audience applause]
I know it probably breaks your heart, but you're 4-F'ed. Lucky break." [audience laughter] That's what the doctor said. [chuckles] Lucky break. And yes, sir, it was a lucky break. So, now I was free. I got free to do anything I wanted to do. Went to see my mom. "How you doing? Everything--" but had one last chore. I had to go see my dad. So, I took my buddy along with me for moral support, and we drove over to his house where he was living with his new wife.
I walked up on the porch. Before I knocked on the door, I could see him in the kitchen. He was in there and he was cooking, towel over his shoulder. I stood there for as long as I could until he saw me outside. "Mm, come in." He hadn't seen me for three years or we talked. Not one word, not a letter, nothing. So, I walked in there and he looked me up and down for a long time. "So, you hungry?" "Yeah." "Mm. Sit down." So, he sat down and then he didn't say another word for a long time. He looked at me and said, "So, what have you been up to?" "Oh, you know, just working." "Yeah." "Well, you know how to do that." I said, "Yeah, I do. Thanks." [chuckles] Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
[pleasant guitar music]
Sarah: [00:48:42] That was Cheech Marin in Los Angeles. Cheech is a third-generation Mexican American. And in addition to his notoriety for Cheech & Chong, he's directed Broadway shows, been honored by the Smithsonian and he writes children's books. His memoir, Cheech Is Not My Real Name: ...But Don't Call Me Chong, is out now. Cheech also holds one of the largest private collections of Chicano art in the world.
So, that's it for this episode of The Moth Radio Hour, all about calls and callings. And if you want to contact us, all of our information is at themoth.org. We hope you'll join us next time.
[Uncanny Valley theme by The Drift]
Jay: [00:49:48] Your host this hour was Sarah Austin Jenness. Sarah also directed the stories in the show along with Catherine Burns and Michelle Jalowski. The rest of The Moth’s directorial staff includes Sarah Haberman, Jenifer Hixson and Meg Bowles. Production support from Emily Couch.
Moth stories are true, as remembered and affirmed by the storytellers. Our theme music is by The Drift. Other music in this hour from Todd Sickafoose, Carl Orff, Blue Dot Sessions, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Carlos Santana. You can find links to all the music we use at our website.
The Moth Radio Hour is produced by me, Jay Allison, with Viki Merrick at Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. This hour was produced with funds from the National Endowment for the Arts. Special thanks to the Hollywood Foreign Press Association Charitable Trust for supporting our Los Angeles Mainstage. The Moth Radio Hour is presented by PRX. For more about our podcast, for information on pitching us your own story and everything else, go to our website, themoth.org.