Watch Lovebirds Amanda Palmer and Neil Gaiman Sing “Makin’ Whoopee!” Live

Aman­da Palmer and Neil Gaiman strike me as a very hap­pi­ly mar­ried cou­ple, an impres­sion their live cov­er of Makin’ Whoopee sup­ports.

What’s their secret? As any­one with an inter­est in romance or Earth Sci­ence will tell you, oppo­sites attract. On the sur­face of things, the exhi­bi­tion­is­tic, high­ly the­atri­cal, always con­tro­ver­sial Palmer is quite dif­fer­ent from her unfail­ing­ly dis­creet hus­band of the last two-and-a-half years. (Watch him mine his ret­i­cence to great com­ic effect at the 2.52 mark.)

That’s not to say they don’t have things in com­mon.

Both are insane­ly pro­lif­ic, the fruits of their labors dis­played across a vari­ety of plat­forms—music, comics, film, lit­er­a­ture, com­mence­ment speech­es, TED talks, Twit­ter…

Both have rabid fan bases and blogs (Hers accepts com­ments; his does not.)

He was raised in a Sci­en­tol­o­gist house­hold. She scrawled Nope. Not plan­ning to fund Sci­en­tol­ogy with my Kick­starter mon­ey. That would be dumb on her nude tor­so, then post­ed a self­ie on her web­site, thus pour­ing gaso­line on the fires that pow­er that por­tion of the inter­net devot­ed to spread­ing mis­in­for­ma­tion about their reli­gious affil­i­a­tion.

And while he has three chil­dren from a pre­vi­ous mar­riage, the Gaiman-Palmer union has yet to pro­duce any lit­tle Neil or Aman­das. Which brings us back to Makin’ Whoopee. Whether or not the lyrics jibe with one’s per­son­al out­look, the song’s endur­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty (85 years and count­ing) might sug­gest its cen­tral dilem­ma is ever­green. Its bio­log­i­cal obser­va­tions are cer­tain­ly above reproach: sex often leads to babies, who lead to the sort of respon­si­bil­i­ties that sig­nal the end of the hon­ey­moon, if not the mar­riage.

Per­haps an open rela­tion­ship in the whoopee depart­ment will con­tin­ue to keep things play­ful between the Gaiman-Palmers, regard­less of what their future holds. It’s real­ly none of our busi­ness, is it?

(Those drawn to spec­u­la­tion, could do so live, when the alt.power-couple (Naman­da? Ameil?) bring their “inti­mate night” of spo­ken word, songs, sto­ries, audi­ence chats and sur­pris­es to New York City’s Town Hall.)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Aman­da Palmer’s Tips for Being an Artist in the Rough-and-Tum­ble Dig­i­tal Age

Down­load Neil Gaiman’s Free Short Sto­ries

Neil Gaiman Gives Grad­u­ates 10 Essen­tial Tips for Work­ing in the Arts

BBC Radio Adap­ta­tion of Neil Gaiman’s Nev­er­where Begins Sat­ur­day: A Pre­view

Ayun Hal­l­i­day must ten­der her regrets as she is direct­ing a cast of 15 home schooled teens in her hus­band’s musi­cal, Yeast Nation, that night. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday