Erection control problems along the eightfold path.

MY FRIEND SCOOP Nisker manages to maintain his balance between current events and the infinite void. As a commentator on radio station KFOG in San Francisco, his slogan is, "If you don't like the news, go out and make some of your own." He is also a practicing Buddhist, and his other slogan is, "Stay high, but keep your priorities straight."

Together, we-Scoop the sit-down meditator and I, the stand-up comic-have led humor workshops at Esalen and other New Age resorts. The first one was a five-day workshop at Hollyhock, on Cortes Island off British Columbia. On the final day, Scoop suggested that the group remove all their clothing and wade into the ocean, returning to the shore covered with seaweed. As we watched their naked bodies following that instruction, I observed, "We mustn't let this power get into the wrong hands."

Once, Scoop persuaded me to attend a 10-day meditation retreat where I would have to survive without any of my usual media distractions. I was afraid at first and decided to go only in order to confront my fear. But then my daughter Holly called. She was now 17. She wanted to go to college in San Francisco and live with me again. So, keeping my priorities straight, I immediately canceled out of the Buddhist retreat. That whole experience would only have been polluted by my irresponsibility in not being home to help Holly with her re-entry.

One afternoon, we were waiting at a bus stop, on our way to a movie, and there was a luscious teenage girl waiting for the bus.

"Ooh, yummy," I whispered.

"Daddy, she's my age."

Her words echoed around in my cranial cavity. Lust for teenagers permeates our culture. I had slept with four 17-year-olds, but now I felt myself caught between the lines of dialogue in Stripes, where Bill Murray mentions getting "wildly fucked by some teenage girls," and Tempest, where John Cassavetes says, "If you touch my daughter, I'll kill you."

When Holly got involved with a new boyfriend, they cooked spaghetti in my kitchen and threw a few strands up at the ceiling, where they stuck, thereby passing the gourmet chef test. She spent a lot of time at his place, but soon my moment of truth arrived, not in a bullfight ring, but in the form of a question from Holly. She wanted to know if her boyfriend could spend the night at our house. I pretended to be nonchalant. I prided myself on being a permissive parent. Holly and I had agreed that I wouldn't tell her what to do unless it involved health, safety or the rights of others. And now she was calling my bluff.

"Okay, sure," I said, "but tell him that he can't smoke cigarettes in the house."

At least I felt justified in exerting some parental authority. When I was Holly's age, I would lay in bed wondering if my parents did it. Now I lay in bed knowing that my daughter was doing it. She was no longer my little girl saying, "Daddy, would you scratch my back?" She was no longer that innocent youngster standing on a porch and calling out for her friend's cat "Hitler! C'mere, Hitler!" She had since read The Diary of Anne Frank and seen Holocaust on tv.

And now she was going to audition for a punk band called the Vktms. One of their lyrics went, "Hey, you know I ain't no martyr, but I ain't no Nazi." She also wanted to change her name to Holly Hard-On, but she had the flu that week, so her audition and name change became moot. Ah, yes, but she would've been following in my footsteps. Rumpleforeskin was the name I used on my own radio talk-show. Introducing Rumpleforeskin and his daughter Holly Hard-On. How proud could a father be?

And whenever I found myself looking lustfully at a teenager, I would automatically hear Holly's voice saying, "Daddy, she's my age!"

Holly didn't accompany us when Scoop and I went to cover an anti-nuclear-power demonstration at the Diablo Canyon site in California. We reserved a motel room for that night. During the day, we became friendly with a couple of female protestors and invited them to use their sleeping bags on our floor. At one point, Scoop was about to take a shower, and asked, "Anybody want to join me?" And indeed, one of the women decided to join him. Later, Scoop and I found ourselves in the double bed, while the two women were in their sleeping bags on the floor.

I finally broke the long, awkward silence by announcing, "I feel like I'm on a Polish double date."

Scoop is now the editor of the Buddhist journal, Inquiring Mind. In the May 2004 issue, he writes: "It's time for a mythological revolution. Not only do we need some regime change in world governments, we also need a new spiritual pantheon. We have lived long enough with the old stories: the mishugas of warring desert tribes; the personified sky gods who judge and punish; the idea that we aren't tied to materiality, to atoms or to the elements; and the notion that our true identity has some life beyond the one we are now living. Isn't it time to be more in the present? Isn't it time to come back home?

"Our current mythology is not only out-of-date, it has become dysfunctional. It has stripped us of the Earth and placed the divine somewhere else. Our major religions have come to regard Earth as little more than a training camp, a place where we come to learn some special lessons, get rid of some karma or get saved by some messiah or another. The general hope is that once we're done here, we can go off to a better place, where we truly belong, and be in a better life, forever and ever!"

Scoop will be participating in the 16th International Transpersonal Conference-"Mythic Imagination and Modern Society: The Re-Enchantment of the World"-June 13 through 18 at the Riviera Resort in Palm Springs, CA. Speakers range from Francisco Moreno ("Effects of Psilocybin in Patients with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder") to Monty Python's John Cleese ("The Mythic Aspects of Lemon Meringue Pie and the Drunken Ferret Archetype"). For further information, call 415-575-6115 or go to itaconferences.org.