Free Every Day is an Atheist Holiday!: More Magical Tales from the Author of God, No! by Penn Jillette

and love that every second just bursts by and is gone. It’s a gorgeous, detailed, 3-D, surround sound, no-flutter-in-the-bass mural done by 10 billion artists, and it’s whipping by the car window at the speed of sound, and I’ll never come back to it. I can take pictures of it, but in the time I hold those pictures up, I’ll have missed another billion images and experiences.
    You want to scare me, Piers, try that. But no one claims god can change that. God might promise everlasting life, and the possibility of seeing my loved ones again, but he can’t promise that this life that I’m living right now won’t go by. I want every time I touch my son’s hand to never end, and I want to experience the next time I touch his hand after not touching his hand for a while.
    I want the impossible. But I’ll settle for what we have. Everything in the world has to be enough. Everything in the world is enough. I’m rejoicing that what scares me and breaks my heart is the beauty of what I have right now.
    Are you afraid of death?
    November 9, 1909.
    I’m making my mom’s birthday a holiday. I’m afraid of a life stuck in time, but so what? I’m not afraid of death.
Listening to: “Up to Me”—Bob Dylan
     
    My mom, 6 years old.
     
    Mox, age 6, and me.
     

I DEFY THE JAILS OF THE WORLD TO HOLD MY SON
     
    WHEN THE FUTURE LOOKS BACK ON American entertainers of the twentieth century, it’s all going to come down to Houdini or Elvis. A friend of mine who teaches some bullshit rock-and-roll course at UNLV was asked by a student, one who was “studying” rock and roll, who George Harrison was. A teacher at our child’s preschool had never heard of Johnny Carson. There’s your legacy—but ask anyone in America to name a magician, and they’ll name Houdini as often as anyone who’s working today. A few years ago, my buddy Eddie Gorodetsky looked at the figures and predicted that by the year 2053 every man, woman and transgendered child in the USA would be in Vegas impersonating Elvis.
    I think Houdini will win. To disappear by “pulling a Houdini” is already a phrase in dictionaries. Houdini was born in Budapest, claimed to be from Appleton, Wisconsin, and stood in front of a nation of immigrants at the sharp turn into the twentieth century and screamed, “I defy the jails of the world to hold me!” My buddy Larry “Ratso” Sloman wrote that Houdini was “America’s First Superhero.”
    Let’s forget about Houdini for a second and concentrate on my buddy Ratso. The births of my children were wonderful events, but even that joy has been eclipsed by becoming an adult who has a buddy called Ratso. My cell phone rings, the name “Ratso” pops up, and the voice of pure NYC says, “Hey, Penn. It’s Rats.” What more could a man accomplish in life than getting that phone call? Well, I’ll tell you: Kinky Friedman is a two-Ratso man. When Kinky gets a call from Ratso, he has to ask which one. Hard to beat that, but my caller ID flashes “Kinky” when he calls, so maybe we’re even.
    Most people go through a Houdini phase. They read a bio in junior high school and get caught up in the escape artist and magician. Even David Copperfield has admitted that Houdini had a great press agent.
    I read Kenneth Silverman’s book
Houdini!!! The Career of Ehrich Weiss: American Self-Liberator, Europe’s Eclipsing Sensation, World’s Handcuff King & Prison Breaker
in the mid-nineties, at a time when I was doing the Howard Stern show a lot. I was on with Gilbert Gottfried, Sam Kinison and other comedy monsters. I struggled those mornings to get a laugh in and plug the show we were doing then on Broadway.
    Since my childhood Houdini phase—watching the old Tony Curtis movie on TV and reading encyclopedia entries—I had felt a kinship to Houdini. He worked in magic, I worked in magic. He hated fake psychics, I hated fake psychics. We were both momma’s boys. I lied to myself that Houdini was an atheist not a Jew and that