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The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: Holiday Special 2014
00:55:47
Simon Doonan encounters challenges when called on to decorate the White House for Christmas, a man is hesitant to work with a ‘Hollywood’ style church in his neighborhood, a Jewish girl meets Santa, and a boy thinks his dreams have finally come true wh...
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- [00:01]
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Supported by SimpliSafe Home Security, the smart way to protect your home or small business. With no annual contracts and around the clock protection for just $14.99 per month, peace of mind has never been easier. Tech experts at CNET call SimpliSafe Better Smarter Home Security, get your award winning wireless alarm system from SimpliSafe and enjoy a special 10% discount when you visit simplisafe.com Mal welcome to the Moth Podcast.
- [02:00]
Dan Kennedy
I'm Dan Kennedy and I'm massively stressed out. Can you feel the pressure? It's the holidays. They're coming. They're coming for us. I don't think this is the right attitude one is supposed to have about the holidays, so I'm gonna start over here. Welcome and happy holidays. We have a special holiday version of the Moth Radio Hour for you. For instance, we've got family members of yours dropping by to give you a sweater and then judge your life. No, that's not happening. It's simply an hour of stories hosted by the Moth's artistic director, Kathryn Burns. And we'll hear stories from Simon Doonan, Mark Redmond, Ophira Eisenberg, and a favorite of mine, Taylor Negron. Taylor is going to talk a little bit about Balancing the joy of owning a monkey with his fear of Charles Manson when he's growing up in the 70s in Southern California. And I think that's the first time the sentence balancing the joy of owning a monkey with his fear of Charles Manson has been said on public radio or a podcast. Here's the Moth Radio Hour.
- [03:11]
Kathryn Burns
From prx. This is the Moth Radio Hour. True stories told live. I'm Kathryn Burns, and this is the Moth Holiday Special. The spirit moves in the megachurch. A Jewish girl from Canada pines for Christmas. A kid's terror of Charles Manson almost ruins the holidays. And first, this story from one of our longtime Moth storytellers, Simon Doonan, with his holiday story he told at the Great hall at Cooper Union in New York City. Here's Simon live at the mall.
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Simon Doonan
Jackie Kennedy's crystal balls were up here. Nancy Reagan's luscious red ribbons were down here. Barbara Bush's dangling orbs were over here. Yes, you've guessed it probably right. I was in the White House holiday storage facility where they keep all the holiday decor from White House Pass. There was. Oh, it was just beyond Pat Nixon's little beaded orbs. It was amazing. So how did I get there? In January 2009, I get a phone call from Desiree Rogers. Hello, Bonjour, Desiree Rogers. And Ellie dropped the phone, and I thought it was one of my friends pretending to be Desiree Rogers. So she said, we want you to come and decorate the White House for the holidays. We. I hope you noted the we want you. And I couldn't believe it. I thought, my God, I came to this country when I was 25 years old in the 70s, and I just had, like, a little Dorothy bag and a dream and a little bit of cash. And now I clawed my way up through the cutthroat world of window dressing and clawed my way up and wow. At the age of 57, I'm getting a call from the White House press secretary. Come and decorate the White House. I couldn't believe it. And I thought, well, I'd just become a citizen, actually about two months before the election. And I pulled the lever for Barack Obama. And I thought, finally, I'm a citizen. I pulled the lever, and now I'm going to decorate the White House. I had visions of myself showing Sasha and Malia how to thread popcorn. I saw myself. I got really carried away really quickly. I saw myself in the organic garden clutching Bo, the water dog as the first flakes of snow fell in the coming fall. So my fantasy was interrupted when Desiree said, of course we're going to have to vet you first and look through your background, everything. And that's when I thought, well, forget it then. Because with my rap sheet, that reckless driving conviction and the getting arrested on a railway station in 1968, going to a pop festival, yada yada, plus my reputation as a provocateur in the field of window dressing, I'd done all these insane things when they only have to hit Google Image, Simon Doonan, and up it's going to come all this banana stuff. I'm never going to get this job if they're going to vet me. So somehow, miraculously, I think the vetting machine must have been at the repair shop that day. But I got the job. So I went down to Washington in the spring of 2009 and went to the warehouse, rummaged around, met all my collaborators, spent days measuring things in the White House. It's so huge. I had to measure mantelpieces and windows. And I had great collaborators, great Kimberly and Sally. And we measured things and we went back and forth to the warehouse and unearthed things that we thought, we'll reuse some of these things because why not? Hello, recycling. Why not? So I'm getting more and more wound up about this project because it's so huge, it's such a responsibility. But I'm determined to do the Obama's proud because it's not about me, it's about them. It's their house. So then in the warehouse I find these crates and crates and crates of these huge plastic silver balls that are so tacky and horrible. I can only imagine that Betty Ford, bless her heart, this must have been her era because she was going to Studio 54 and she probably thought, I want some sparkle, I want some silver. But there they were, these hideous plastic orbs. In 100 million years, would you ever think, oh yes, White House holiday decor if you looked at them? So I thought, this will be great. There's so many of them. There's 500 of them. We'll take them all and ship them to community centers all over America and people can decoupage them and it'll involve America and yada yada, along with all the pine berries and pepper berries and larch things and Douglas fir this, that and the other. All the incredible things we were speccing and ordering and designing. We thought we'd have this participation component and all these 500 balls would go on the blue Room tree. So I'm obviously really wound up flying back and forth to Washington Et cetera. And Desiree says, we have to go and present all your ideas to Mrs. Obama. So have a meeting with her, which is sort of like this. Hello. And then with Desiree, hello. Staring up in the air because they are literally twice my height. And as I stood there between Mrs. Obama, so beautiful, so chic, so fun, intelligent, and Desiree, so wonderful, Incredible. Given me this job. J'adore. So I'm between the two of them, and I realize at that moment, oh, my God, I am the first elf, right? I'm the first elf. So the fall goes by in a blur of anticipation. I have to do all my stuff at Barney's. And then I get ready, because obviously, being in retail, we install the holiday decorations on about August 15th, something like that. But actually the White House is very chic and restrained, and they wait till after Thanksgiving. So after Thanksgiving, I'm all revved up, ready to go to actually install all the stuff we've been prepping and blah, blah, blah. And so I go down to Washington two days before the installation. The Salahis, yes, the chick with the sari and the iron blonde hair allegedly crashed that party. And it's like it changes everything. Suddenly there is going to be no publicite. There's like a total lockdown on any kind of publicity. Not that I cared about that or anything. The COVID of People magazine with me and Beau, the water dog and the snow falling. So there's a total lockdown on publicity. So me and all the incredible volunteers, which was many, many women in Christmas sweaters and me and incredible people, fabulous volunteers, we pile into the White House, we start installing, and, you know, Oprah's film crew comes through and we all have to hide in a cupboard because they don't want any publicity. And then HGTV comes through and we have to sneak in behind a fireplace. So at one point, I'm on a scaffolding in the blue room, and we're throwing these balls on the tree. All the ones have come in from all the community centers, and they're incredible. People have used the theme that we gave them was American monuments. So there's like, you know, the Grand Canyon and Niagara Falls, and people have done these fantastic Indian reservations. Amazing, amazing stuff that's come in. We're throwing it quickly. We have a day to do this whole installation. And I get a call from this journalist and he says, I just spoke to the press office, and they're denying that you're involved. And I, you know what? I thought this is a time to show that elves can take the high road. And as I trudged through the snow that night back to the W Hotel across the street with my little elf boots on through the snow, I thought, I don't care that much, you know, what's important is we knocked it out of the park. The whole White House looked unbelievable. It was so chic, so gorgeous and beyond. I felt really, really good. Who needs publicity when you've done such a fantastic job? So cut to December 20th. A conservative blogger who has a major conservative site sends a mole into the White House with an iPhone and take some little tiny pictures of some of these decoupaged balls that have come in from various community centers, to wit, a picture of a Pittsburgh ball. And as we all know, Pittsburgh is the birthplace of Andy Warhol. And on this ball is a tiny postage sized stamp of an Andy Warhol Chairman Mao. So that's on one ball. Then somehow or other this clever little mole gets their little iPhone and finds another ball with a drag queen on it. They find a ball with Hedda Lettuce on it. So. Hedda Lettuce? Yeah, you know those old jokes. Birth of a nation, anchovy. So they've got. And then they find a ball with Mount Rushmore and somebody has cleverly, creatively decoupaged Barack Obama's head onto one of the presidents. So these pictures are then blown up on this website and the headline is, simon Doonan introduces communist agenda and anti family values into the White House. And suddenly there's banging on the door. The doorman says, you're on Fox News. There's like streaming that thing like crazy. Window dresser introduces communist agenda. I mean, nothing could be further from a. I'm such a relentless capitalist shopping lunatic. So streaming, you know, introducing communist agenda. Then it explodes on the Internet like it's on a million websites. Chinese communist agenda. Chinese communist agenda. So at this point, I'm in the fetal position under my toadstool. It was horrifying. And there were. Then the death threat started. Yes, hello, madam. It's not that funny, is it? Now the death threat started. Somebody should bash your brains out with a baseball bat, blah, blah. And I forwarded a few of these to the White House and they, they responded, buy a helmet. So fortunately, I mean, obviously fortunately, this had a finite ending because Christmas ends. So this horrible nightmare of unwanted publicity ended. And because, thank God, there was a finite ending. It's called December 24th, 25th. Anyway, so then my takeaway from all this is that there are really two types of people in the world there are little elves that go around and make everything fabulous and brilliant and gorgeous and wonderful. And then there are people who sit blogging and tweeting about the efforts of the first group on their ever widening asses. And my other takeaway from it is that really, no holiday is complete without at least one drag queen and a bunch of elves. Thank you.
- [16:50]
Kathryn Burns
That was Simon Dooman. He's worked in fashion for over 35 years as a writer, window dresser, fashion commentator, and creative ambassador for Barneys New York. He has a column in Slate and has written six books, most recently a fashion memoir called the Asylum. Simon lives in New York City with his partner in their Norwich terrier, the Barachi. To see pictures of the White House decked out in Simon's decorations and specifically the Hedda lettuce ornament, go to themoth.org while there you can share any of the stories you've heard in this hour with your friends and family. We're also on Facebook and Twitter hemoth.
- [17:37]
Moth Radio Hour Announcer
The Moth is supported by makers 46 handcrafted bourbon finished in barrels with seared French oak staves online at makers46.com makers46 Bourbon whiskey, 47% alcohol by volume, distilled in Loretto, Kentucky reminds listeners to drink responsibly. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts and presented by PRX.
- [18:08]
SimpliSafe Advertiser
The moth is supported by SimpliSafe Home Security, the smart way to protect your home or small business. With no annual contracts and around the clock protection for just $14.99 per month, peace of mind has never been easier. Tech experts at CNET call SimpliSafe Better Smarter Home Security, get your award winning wireless alarm system from SimpliSafe and enjoy a special 10% discount when you visit simplisafe.com moth this is the Moth Radio Hour from PRX.
- [18:40]
Kathryn Burns
I'm Kathryn Burns. From the Moth Holiday Stories everyone's got them. Here's one my mother used to tell when she was a little girl. Mama's father, my grandfather, would leave their house late at night on Christmas Eve. He owned a five and dime store in the small town where they lived in rural Kentucky, surrounded by farms. Through word of mouth, her father let it be known that if there were farmers in the community who didn't have the money to buy presents for their kids, he'd meet them at the back door of his store at 9pm on Christmas Eve and whatever he had left on the shelves was theirs to take home to their families. Many of them would give him an IOU and pay him back when the crops came in that summer. Okay, so that's the spirit of Christmas. But it gets better. More than 30 years later, when I was staying with my grandmother in the summer, the doorbell would sometimes ring when you got to the door. There'd be no one there, but there'd be a big box of corn or tomatoes on the doorstep left there by the families and children of those farmers. My grandfather had died years ago, leaving my grandmother a widow way too young, and she was very happy to have those fresh vegetables. My mother always said the spirit of Santa Claus is alive and well. And I think she was right. That was my mother's story. Maybe your mother has a holiday story. If so, have her call our pitch line, which allows anyone to leave a two minute version of a story, holiday or Otherwise. The number is 877799 Moth. Again, that's 877799 Moth. Or you can pitch us the story at themoth do. Now we're going to hear from Mark Redmond, who we met when he called our pitch line a few years ago. Here he is telling the story to his hometown crowd in Burlington, Vermont.
- [20:56]
Mark Redmond
So I moved to Vermont a little over 10 years ago with my wife and child, and we bought a house in Essex. It's a town about 25 minutes from here. And right before we moved into the house, we took a little walking tour of the neighborhood and we met a neighbor and she said, oh, you're gonna love it here. There's a lot of little kids, the schools are good, it's safe. And then she asked us a question. She said, are you gonna look for a church to join? I thought this was a little unusual to be getting this question. I moved up here from Yonkers, and in Yonkers, they typically don't ask you that, but I thought, well, this is Vermont. Maybe that's what they ask you. It's a little different. So I said, well, we're Catholics, so yeah, we'll probably look for a Catholic church to join. And she said, well, if you're looking for a contemporary Christian experience, that's my church. That's the church to join. So when you move in your house and you want to learn more about my church, please come over. So we did move into the house, and then I met a different neighbor. And I told her about this neighbor kind of promoting her church. And the neighbor said, oh yeah, I know what church she's talking about. We call that the Hollywood church. Every service on Sunday is a big production. It's big screen, multimedia, big extravaganza. I said, okay. And then I met a third neighbor, a guy down the block, and I told him about this woman promoting her church. And he said, yeah, my wife and I went to that church once. We're not going back. That was messed up. So at that point, I'm like, okay, okay, I'm convinced. I'm convinced. I don't need to hear anything else. I'm getting the impression this is one of these feel good churches. And that's not me. I do go to church every Sunday. I classify myself as a peace and justice Catholic. Meaning to me, if you're going to be spiritual, if you're going to be religious, it's about helping the poor, sheltering the homeless, feeding the hungry, civil rights, saving the planet from destruction, social justice. And the people I've always looked up to are people like Desmond Tutu, Martin Luther King, Dorothy Day, the nuns on the bus. People who really put it on the line. Their faith led them to action to try and change the world. And that's how I've tried to live my life. I studied business in college. I worked for two years on Madison Avenue. I left that to start working with homeless and at risk kids. And I've been at it for 32 years here. Thank you. Here in Burlington, I'm director of sports. We work with homeless teens, kids addicted to drugs and alcohol, kids who are in trouble with the police, kids suffering from mental illness, runaways. And it's really my religious beliefs that drive why I do the work that I do. A couple of weeks later, I'm at work and I get an email. It's an all agency email from our volunteer coordinator. Coordinator. Because this church, the one I'm talking about, has contacted her because a group of kids there have collected some items to donate to Spectrum and they want someone to come that Sunday to pick up the things and say a few words to the kids. So my first reaction is, I do not want to be the one to go to this church. Even though I've never been there, I don't have a good feeling about this church. It reminds me of these mega churches you read about. But I'm the director. I live closer than anyone else in the organization to the church. It's like two miles away. I said, I'll go. So I showed up that Sunday and I went inside and I'm going in with an attitude. Are you picking that up? You getting that? Going in with an attitude? I admit that I said who I was. They said, yeah, Go upstairs. There's a classroom up there. There's a group of kids waiting for you. So I went in. It was like 20, 25 kids, little like 9 and 10 years old. So I went. And it was a couple of adults, four or five adults. So I went in and I gathered the kids around me and I told them about Spectrum and the work that we do. And they brought up this box, and I opened up the box and it had sheets and towels and soap and toothpaste. And I remember it had dental floss, because I remember taking the dental floss out and saying, this is good, because even homeless kids need to floss their teeth every night. So I'm looking at my watch and I'm thinking, wow, this is great, man. 15 minutes, I'm out of here. And the adult standing right next to me says, mark, before you go, there's a little girl here named Emily, and she has something special for you. Emily, will you please come up to the front? So this little girl comes walking up to the front dragging this black duffel bag behind her. And she stands in front of me and she looks up and says, my brother died this year and my family would like to give this to you to give to a boy at Spectrum. So I leaned over and I unzipped the bag. And it had a lot of the same stuff that had been in the box. It had soap and toothpaste and towels, and it had a Bible, a white leather bound Bible. And it had a card. So I took the card out of the bag and somebody had written an ink on the front of the card to a young man at Spectrum. So I took the card out and pre printed on the front, it said, always remember, God is watching over you. And it had a picture of her brother pasted to the inside of the card. Now, this girl's like nine years old. I'm expecting to see a little boy, but it's a young man. It's a young guy. He looks like somebody we would work with at Spectrum. And it's got the ages of his birth and his death. And he's 21 years old and he's handsome. He looks happy. He's smiling in the picture. So I leaned over to the adult who was next to me, and I whispered to him, how did her brother die? And he whispers back, heroin overdose. When I heard that man, it was like the words ripped right through me, you know? And it was like something shifted deep inside of me in an instant. And it was one of those times in your life where you see Things very clearly, like a Zen moment, a moment of awakening. And the first thing I saw clearly was my own blindness, my own foolishness, my own prejudice. And then I saw that, you know, maybe this church is not the kind of church that I prefer or the kind of worship that I would like, but there are a lot of really good people in this church, and some of them, like this little girl standing in front of me and her family, are in tremendous pain. And if this church is where they go to find peace and hope and healing, so what? So what? What right do I have to judge that? So I knelt down and I looked at this girl and I said, you have my word. I am going to give this to the right young man at Spectrum. And I gave her a hug and I left. And I brought that black bag into work that week, and I told the staff the whole story. And I said, we have the perfect person. We took this homeless kid in two years ago. He'd been living on the streets. He's been living at Spectrum ever since. He's done really well. In fact, he's gotten into college. He's moving to Vermont Technical College in Randolph in a few weeks. He's going to live in a dorm, and he could really use this stuff. I said, great, give it to him. But one condition. I'm going to find the address of this girl and her family, and I want him to write a thank you note. And I know he did that. And I thought that was the end of the story. But it wasn't. Because a few months later, I got a letter. I got a letter from the mother of this young boy who had died. And I would get this same letter for the next two or three years in a row. And every letter would start the same way. Today would have been my son's 22nd birthday, 23rd birthday, whatever year it was. And she would enclose a check for $250. And she would write in the letter her son's favorite restaurants. This one, she writes, the little Indian restaurant on North Minooski Avenue, Nectar's Shanty on the Shore. She would say, please take a group of your boys out to dinner with this money. In this letter, she writes, the thought of a group of guys going out, having a good meal together, laughing and enjoying themselves, will do me good. I wish we could be doing that with my son. But I'm blessed to be able to do this small thing in loving memory of him. The church itself over the last 10 years has been unbelievably generous to Spectrum. Food donations, money. If I emailed them tomorrow and said, you know, in about a month it's going to be cold in Vermont and we have hundreds of kids who need coats and gloves and hats and scarves, our shelves would be filled within a week. That's how good they are. And, you know, I did something I never thought I'd do. I went to one of their services. Yes, I did. They had like, a Christmas pageant, a Christmas show. Was it Hollywood? Yeah, it was a little Hollywood. They had singers and dancers and drummers and confetti and the fake snow coming out of the. You know. But it was very sincere. I found it very meaningful and very spiritual. And at the end of the night, they packed my car with wrapped Christmas presents to take back to the kids at Spectrum. Thank you.
- [31:29]
Kathryn Burns
That was Mark Redman. Mark is the executive director of Spectrum Youth and Family Services in Burlington, Vermont, where he has served since 2003. He's the author of the Goodness Reaching out to Troubled Teens With Love and Compassion. Our next story is from Ophira Eisenberg. Ophira told this story while hosting one of our open mic story slam competitions on Christmas Eve. Here's Ophira Eisenberg live at the Moth.
- [32:17]
Ophira Eisenberg
I'm doing this. I'm doing this. I have to do it. Because I was obsessed. Some of you know this, but I was obsessed with Santa Claus as a child. I really. And I'm Jewish. Ophir Eisenberg, really? Are you not Japanese Jewish? Yeah. And I wanted to see Santa Claus so badly as a kid. I thought the one in the mall was the real thing. I hated Hanukkah because Hanukkah sucks only in comparison to Christmas. It only sucks when you are in a public school and you are the only Jew and everyone else is doing Christmas and you're the only one two weeks earlier, lighting a fucking candle. And maybe your parents, if you're Jewish, gave you eight presents. But that is a choice that is not in the Torah or the Talmud. And our parents didn't do that. You just got socks one of the days. And it was random. I wanted to go see Santa because I wanted to get presents. And I knew that was the way to do it. And my mother would be like, no, you can't go see Santa. We're Jewish. And I would be like, well, who brings us presents? Because the answer, as far as I was concerned, was no, nobody. But she would make shit up. She'd be like, Moses, like, what? She's like, oh, yeah, Moses comes down the mountain every Hanukkah with a sack of dreidels. And I knew that was bullshit. So we're at the mall one day, right? Close to Christmas. And that castle is amazing, right? The castle is amazing. All the characters are so happy, and the snow has sparkles in it. And I realized what I can do can throw a fit, because my mother will be shamed. We don't look that Jewish. I mean, if I just throw a fit going, let me see Santa in the middle of a mall, she will look like the worst mother ever and have to let me go. And so I do that. And she goes, fine. Like, I'm just like, I want to go see Santa. Like, crying and screaming. She goes, fine, go see Santa. And I can't believe it. And I get in the line with all the other kids, but I don't say anything because now I'm an undercover Christian, and I don't want to blow it. So I'm very quiet. I just focus on the gift I want. I'm like, barbie Dreamhouse. And I'm just repeating. That's all you have to say. Barbie Dreamhouse. That is all you have to say. That is all you have to say. And then I get into the castle. A little elf hand beckons me in. And then I sit on Santa's lap, which is creepy because he's just a guy. Like, he's just a man. He's just an old guy. Very creepy. And he leans down to me and he says, what would you like for Christmas, little girl? The best. Best question ever. And I looked up to him, and I just went, I'm Jewish. Like, I fell apart. I couldn't handle it. I totally went off script. And he was like, that's okay. So am I. And I didn't know what to do with that information, so I just kept repeating it. Sancho's chewer, Sanchez, Jewish, Santa's Jew. And these mean elves came out of nowhere and, like, pushed me out of the castle. And kids were crying. And I. I heard an elf in a walkie talkie going, code nine. Chew in a lap. Code nine, chewing a lap. And I ran out, my mother's there. It's kind of chaos happening. And I'm running towards her, and my mother's like, what is going on? I'm like, mom, I just found out Santa is Jewish. And my mother, without skipping a beat, goes, well, of course he is. Who else do you think works on Christmas?
- [35:58]
Simon Doonan
There you go.
- [35:58]
Ophira Eisenberg
That is my holiday tale.
- [36:07]
Kathryn Burns
That was Ophira Eisenberg. She's the host of the show Ask Me Another on npr and the author of Screw Sleeping My Way to Monogamy. Coming up, a Christmas celebration involving Jim Morrison, grilled cheese sandwiches and a bullfrog named Jeremiah when the Moth Radio Hour returns.
- [36:33]
Moth Radio Hour Announcer
The Moth is supported by Sacred Heart University's Film and television master's program, a one year hands on conservatory devoted to cinematic storytelling located in Stamford, Connecticut. Learn more at FTMA Sacredheart.edu. the Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and distributed by prx.
- [37:01]
Kathryn Burns
This is the Moth Radio Hour from prx. I'm Kathryn Burns from the Moth. Our final holiday story was told in East Lansing, Michigan, but takes place in the early 1970s in Southern California. Here's Taylor Negron live at the Mall.
- [37:28]
Taylor Negron
I was born in Los Angeles in a house in a canyon that was in a nest of palm trees that casted these thin, unmoving shadows like prison bars. It was very California Gothic. I am very California Gothic. I am the child of those people that you used to see in the ads for cigarettes in the back of Life magazine, those handsome people that were always wearing terry cloth robes and penny loafers, smoking cigarettes, looking like they just heard the funniest joke of their life. The Marlboro man met the Virginia Slims woman and had me. It's very California Gothic to have your best friend's mother, who is a movie star, keep her cracked Oscar in the kitchen next to the salt and the cumin and the cumaden. It's very California Gothic to see Joan Didion crying at the wheel of her green jaguar on Moorpark below Ventura. It's very California Gothic to have a cousin who is a rock star. My cousin is Chuck Negron, the lead singer for the group Three Dog Night, and he bore a startling resemblance to Charles Manson.
- [39:22]
Kathryn Burns
All right.
- [39:24]
Taylor Negron
Now, when you were a kid like me in 1970, growing up in Los Angeles, you knew that you shared the city with Charles Manson and his family because that grisly, murderous night of mayhem and Helter Skelter was all anybody could talk about. And for those of you who are too young to know what Helter Skelter is, it's kind of like twerking, but with blood. And it was really scary, really horrifying. And my parents, they were always going out on the town. They were always getting dressed up and leaving, like in Mad Men, right? They just left me alone. They just went out. One night my father came in and he said, I want you to close all these doors and windows. I don't want These hippies to come in here and de gut you. You heard him. That was an option in my childhood to be degutted. And it left a tremendous psychic scar on my life that has stayed with me forever. And I'm still very disturbed by hippies and long hairs and headbands and large candles and beads and bandanas. I just don't like any of it. But I was only 12 years old. I was a tween, I was a changeling. I was changing into a man. But childhood is a place where your fears are disproportionate. They're huge, but then so are your goals. And that's where the magic can happen in these goals. And my goal when I was a child was to own a gorilla or, you know, a monkey or an ape, anything from the monkey, ape, gorilla family. I just wanted someone to, you know, be able to play hide and go seek with, swim, shoot, dice, light ironing. And my parents were these really emphatic kind of ghetto people from New York City, right, who didn't like animals at all. And my mother said, look, you will never ever see a monkey walk through that door. But something very magical happened that Christmas of 1970. You see, my uncle Ishmael, that was his real name, Ishmael, he was a trucker and he had. He had his own flatbed truck, which meant that he could follow other people around who had flatbed trucks and pick up what fell off of theirs. And one day he was closing down this raggedy ass circus, Vargas, in the Hollywood bowl parking lot on Highland. And he came across a monkey that somebody was throwing out. A live monkey named Carol. Two Rs, two Ls. And we knew it was called Carol because it had its own cage with its name on it. And that is what changed the deal with my parents, because they are emphatic New Yorkers. So they said, well, if it's free and it comes with a cage, what harm can it do? Well, Carol came to the house. I was so excited. Carol arrived on that flatbed truck on a pile of grapefruits in his cage. And when I went out there and greeted him and I looked into those big round eyes, I knew that I would understand everything that monkey had to say to me and that I would experience unconditional love. Well, the monkey promptly squatted, shat into its hand and then threw it into my eye underpaw. And from the shadow I heard the ice clink in my mom's drink. And she said, that's your monkey. I loved my monkey so much. And I stuck with my monkey while everybody turned against my monkey. Sometimes they even put a sheet over its cage. I stuck with my monkey when my monkey willfully and and intentionally fucked my grandmother's mink hat. And I took the blame. Carol was my most cherished early Christmas present. But Carol was not the only unexpected visitor that season. One Christmas night, the Santa Ana winds blew too hard against the glass in cold, frightening Los Angeles. I had fallen asleep into a deep Christmas sleep. And I looked out the window and I saw a van pull up in front of the house, turn off and just stop. Nothing happened. For 30 minutes, nothing happened. And I thought to myself, this is it. This is my nightmare. It's going to come true. And I thought to myself, well, at least I made it to 12. Then I looked out and the door opened up. And then finally this plume of smoke rolled out and these hippies came out on wobbly feet and started slinking up to the front of the house. And as the cast of Woodstock approached, I felt vulnerable in my Charlie Brown sleeping T shirt. And I waited for the physical and emotional attack to begin. There was a knock on the door and I heard my mother's voice, muffled. I knew she was dead, throats cut. I had read the papers. But then I heard her say, grilled cheese sandwiches for everyone. Why was my mother giving protein to a serial killer? And then there was a blast as my father came into my room and he said, you, cousin Chuck is here. Come down. And I timidly followed my father down the stairs to see in the living room what appeared to be Mama Cass Elliot, Jim Morrison, and assorted long hairs devouring Christmas cookies. My cousin stood shyly holding a Three Dog Night album at the stereo. And he told us he was going to play a song for us that no one had ever heard before. Side one song. A Jeremiah was a bullfrog was a good friend of mine. I never understood a single word he said But I help him a drink of his wine. And on that cold, windy night, everyone stood up and started to dance. My father grabbed my mother and they started to dance. I looked over and Jim Morrison v. Jim Morrison was dancing the jitterbug with my grandmother on the coffee table. It was so extraordinary. It was so magnificent. The hippies and the long hairs were all singing long to choruses of Joy to the World. All the boys and girls now. And then the song was over and someone picked up the needle and put it back at the beginning. And the song continued and the dancing continued. And there's Something emblematic about certain California Christmas memories. And here is one that is transcendent rock and roll. And this is what made my monkey legendary. He came down cuddling down the stairs and went right up to the stereo and started dancing. Had we forgotten Carol was a circus monkey? And this was her cue. You know I love the ladies. Her arms. His arms are stretched like rubber bands. And he, he started picking off the ornaments from the Christmas tree. Love to have my fun the monkey started to juggle. I'm a high night rider and a rainbow flyer A straight shooting son of a gun I said a straight shooting I wish you were all there to have seen the expression on those stoned on it we found out later lsd, hippies and my grandmother. As Carol, my monkey rightfully claimed the spotlight. Glee is a very good word to use because that's what it was. Pure happiness and glee. Because I was 12 years old and I was alive and I had escaped Manson's knife. And I had a monkey with talent. And as everybody danced and as everybody laughed and as everybody ate cookies, I looked at my family. I looked at these people. And all of their crimes, past, present and future seemed to just spill out and dissolve into the contours of the blue shag rug. And as Carol balanced an ashtray on his nose, it was as though I was looking into my future. Because I realized all the glorious things that could happen with music and with joy. And that Christmas, the last one that I was ever a child. I learned a very important lesson that I'd like to pass on to you all tonight. And that's that no matter how horrible your day is and no matter how scary your night is, everything can turn on a dime. And with a knock the door. Thank you. Jeremiah was a full frog was a.
- [52:18]
Mark Redmond
Good friend of mine.
- [52:20]
Kathryn Burns
That was Taylor Negron. Taylor is a stand up comedian, actor and writer who has starred in his own HBO special and appeared on the Tonight show as well as in films such as Stuart Little, the Last Boy Scout and Fast Times at Ridgemont High. So that's it. Happy holidays from all of us here at the Moth Radio Hour.
- [52:56]
Moth Radio Hour Announcer
Your host this hour was the Moth artistic director, Kathryn Burns. Kathryn also directed the stories in the show along with Maggie Sino and Jennifer Hickson. The rest of the Moth directorial staff includes Sarah Haberman, Sarah Austin, Janess and Meg Bowles. Production support from Whitney Jones, Kirsty Bennett and Janelle Pfeiffer. Moth stories are true as remembered and affirmed by the storytellers. Moth events are recorded by Argos Studios in New York City, supervised by Paul Ruest. Our theme music is by the Drift. Other music in this hour from mannheim Steamroller, Mark O'Connor, Taj Mahal, the Trans Siberian Orchestra, the Karl Orff Ensemble, and Three Dog Night. The Moth is produced for radio by me, Jay Allison at Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, with help from Vicki Merrick. This hour was produced with funds from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the John D. And Catherine T. MacArthur foundation, committed to building a more just, verdant and peaceful world. The Moth Radio Hour is presented by the public radio exchange prx.org for more about our podcast, for information on pitching your own story and everything else, go to our website themoth.org.
- [54:16]
Dan Kennedy
What a great episode of the Moth Radio Hour. When I heard that Taylor Negron story, all I could think was my God, there was a night when Jim Morrison was in a friend's living room and a monkey came out and danced. A three dog night. And every single time he told friends about that, they just looked at him like, wow, Jim is really, really starting to lose it now. Hey, what's your best holiday story? Any holiday? New Year's Eve? Hanukkah? Kwanzaa? We'd love to hear them all. So pitch us your story by calling 1 877-799-MOTH. Or you can go to themoth.org and record a short pitch by clicking the button that says Tell a Story. Some of our best stories have come to us from the pitch line and they've been developed for the Moth main stage. So maybe next year at this time we'll be sitting around listening to your story.
- [55:07]
SimpliSafe Advertiser
A quick reminder to our podcast listeners, the Moth is a not for profit organization. Our podcast, the hundreds of live shows we produce each year, as well as our education and community programs are all made possible by the generosity and support of people like you. Please consider the Moth and your end of year giving by visiting themoth.org thank you.
- [55:29]
Ophira Eisenberg
Our Podcast host, Dan Kennedy is a writer and performer living in New York and author of the new novel American Spirit.
- [55:37]
Kathryn Burns
Available now.
- [55:38]
Dan Kennedy
Thanks to all of you for listening and we hope you have a story worthy week. Podcast Audio production by Paul Ruest at the Argo Studios in New York. The Moth Podcast and the Radio Hour are presented by prx, the Public Radio Exchange, helping make public radio more public@prx.org.