Authors: Penn Jillette
The secret to one of the greatest magic tricks you’ve ever seen is public information; it’s patented. You could search for it right now. I’m not going to say which trick it is, because I don’t want to piss off the magician even more than I already have, but if you think about one of
the best tricks, really any of the best tricks, the secrets are out there and you can find them. If you go to the U.S. Patent Office website (while you’re there, search for “Penn Jillette”; I have a patent on a female masturbation device called the “JillJet”—really; I care about women cumming) and search for the best trick you ever saw, it’s there. It’s a cool, cool trick, but the method is ugly. You won’t get through two pages before you lose interest. You’ll skim over the diagrams. That’s what keeps professional magic secrets secret: they’re ugly and boring. Genius magic designer Jim Steinmeyer said the real secret of magic is that we magicians are all guarding an empty safe. There are no real secrets in magic. We do things just the way they have to be done. We sneak things around, we use gaffer’s tape, and we lie. Whenever they do a TV detective show with a magic trick as part of the plot, the secret has to be a forty-five-degree-angle mirror. In a detective show, there has to be an “a-ha.” You don’t get “a-ha” in real life. Real-life detectives don’t get it, and real-life magicians don’t use it. When Penn & Teller give away magic tricks, it’s really hard work. We have to design magic that’s made to be exposed. We make the way we do it as beautiful as the trick. That’s a sneaky thing for us to do. It makes the audience think that the tricks we don’t give away are also beautiful, and that fucks up their shit. When you’re looking for something beautiful and satisfying, it’s much harder to find the ugly truth.
The big secret of magic is we are willing to work harder to accomplish something stupid than you can imagine. We’ll practice things for years that you wouldn’t consider investing an hour in. You can imagine spending half your life under a bridge learning to play sax like Sonny Rollins, but you can’t imagine spending five minutes learning to drop a palmed cell phone into a little pocket behind a cardboard cutout of Criss Angel while hanging a cross around its neck and talking a mile a minute without the slightest pause. I had to practice that a lot. A lot more than you can imagine. I had to practice it a lot more than you think it’s worth. Our big secret is that it’s worth more to us to do our tricks than you can even imagine. Our deep secret is simply misplaced priorities.
Shitty Valentino and Fox TV had to pretend magicians were mad at
them for exposing secrets. It was pretty embarrassing and desperate. I remember a TV crew following Lance Burton and me to dinner, trying to get us to say we were pissed at the Masked Magician. We didn’t care. We gave them nothing. They got a few amateur magicians, starving to be on TV, to act pissed off, but professionals didn’t care. Valentino was a two-bit dove magician in Laughlin, Nevada, and he became the Masked Magician and thought he was a big star.
At the strip club that night, Valentino was surrounded by women whose job it was to be sitting around whoever sat down with money. He’s one of these really creepy guys who goes to a strip club and acts like he’s on a date. He was talking to the women instead of having them rub their asses against his cock. That’s really creepy. Sex isn’t creepy, loneliness is creepy. Valentino thought some of the women recognized me, and he beckoned me over to his hired table full of hired women. “Hey, Penn, I was just telling these beautiful ladies that I was the Masked Magician and they don’t believe me.” Has any non-dipshit man ever used the word “ladies” not followed by the word “room”? But he wasn’t done. “Would you tell these fine ladies that that’s me, that I’m the star, I am the Masked Magician?”
I stood in front of Valentino and his “ladies” (even typing that makes my skin crawl) and started listing names: “David Letterman, Deborah Harry, Picasso, Mick Jagger, Madonna, Ke$ha, Bill Clinton, Mark Twain, Tom Jones, Fergie, Salvador Dalí, Muhammad Ali, Elvis Presley, Ayn Rand, Che Guevara, Ringo Starr, Janet Jackson, Frank Sinatra, Bette Midler, Cher . . .” I went on and on, yelling over the music. After about twenty names from politics, science, and the arts, I asked, “What do all these people have in common?”
Valentino and his “ladies” shrugged their shoulders, jiggling their bountiful jelutongs. I gave them time to think, and then I yelled, “We know who they are because they didn’t put fucking bags over their heads when they worked.” I paused for another moment and then looked all the women in the eyes, ignoring Valentino, as I said, “I have no idea who this asshole is.”
Aftermarket tits fill me with joy when they’re cartoony and obvious.
I love them when they look like someone stapled some skin over a Tupperware set. I only find them depressing when women get them to “fix” something. There are medical problems that have to really be fixed, of course, but I’m not talking about that kind of “fixed.” I’m talking when they’re not happy with their tits because they’re “too small” or “too saggy.” I’m not saying it’s wrong to do it, but it’s depressing to me when women use surgery to try to be “normal.” I like when surgery is used as a celebration of nutty desire. I like surgery when it’s a “fuck you” to god. When the tits are sticking out like Hummer headlights on a Big Wheel tricycle. I like them to be a celebration of choice over nature.
I don’t have any tattoos. I’m typing this in a Vegas Starbucks, and everyone has a tattoo. Tattoos used to mean you lived outside the law; now tattoos mean you’ve been to a mall. You now have Miss Americas with tramp stamps. How depressing is that? It’s not depressing because it makes Miss Americas more like sluts, it’s depressing because it makes sluts more like Miss Americas. I like sluts; I don’t like Miss Americas. I’m old enough that tattoos still seem a little carny and prison, but that image is fading even with me.
My friend, mentor, and hero Doc Swan is a carny. He’s a real carny. He’s my age, but he’s from another time. He taught me fire-eating, and he taught me about friendship. He broke my heart once by telling me that I
used to be
the funniest person he’d ever met. He said I used to be like Curly Howard in the real world, but the day I did Letterman for the first time, I stopped being funny just to be funny—I was now only funny for money. I don’t think I was ever as funny as Doc thought I was, but it’s certain that something was lost in my heart when I walked out on that Letterman soundstage. Some of my young desperation for attention was replaced with control. Doc loves me enough to tell me. He loves me enough to be sad as he watches me on TV in his motor home parked in a Wal-Mart parking lot, illegally using their storm drain for his gray water.
Doc told me a story about a fire-eater that he knew. Doc said that even for a carny, this fire-eater was really far out. There’s a carny story that I’ve had verified by two different liars. There was a carny named
Vinnie the Puke who had scammed a big rig driver. I don’t know what they say this Vinnie did, but let’s say he took the driver for some serious jingle. The trucker found out that Vinnie the Puke was with the show and followed the show to the next town to beat payback out of him. The trucker parked his eighteen-wheeler, walked onto the lot, grabbed the first person who looked “with it,” and demanded to be taken to Vinnie the Puke. The roustabout responded, “Which one?” He wasn’t fucking around. This is a profession that can support two Vinnie the Pukes on a single show. (Doc was telling another carny about my writing this section of the book, and when he told the story, the carny stopped him and asked, “Vinnie the Puke or Benny the Puke?”) And, even in that world, Doc says this fire-eater was out there.
Doc said this fire-eater creep didn’t want to spend money on food at the cookhouse, so he would eat out of the midway trash. He’d just reach in and finish half-eaten hot dogs and cores of candy apples. Of course there’s still good eating in carny trash, but it’s a little sickening. There are researchers trying to find out if part of the allergy problems in the USA are caused by too much cleanliness. Doc supplied the anecdotal evidence that this fire-eating pig was never sick.
Doc would tell me how this man had no respect whatsoever for his body. He didn’t care what he ate and didn’t care about his hygiene, and he was meaner than a snake. Doc once saw his ankle and there were some very odd tattoos. Just weird kinds of angles and marks. Doc asked him what the tattoos meant. “Fuck you,” the fire-eater explained. Doc caught him another time, after the fire-eater had found some liquor in the trash and was in a better mood, and asked him again. The fire-eater told Doc that the marks on his ankle didn’t mean anything. The fire-eater had been paid five bucks to fix someone’s tattoo gun. He’d fixed it and had to test it to make sure it worked. He tested it like you’d test a Bic pen on the back of a candy wrapper. He had his legs crossed, so he just scribbled on his ankle to make sure the gun was fixed. They were the only tattoos he had. Tattoos that didn’t mean anything.
Those tattoo scribbles mean the world to me. Those scribbles on his ankle are pure atheist symbols. They show that god, the higher power,
nature, the order of things, doesn’t mean anything. We are only here for a little while, and our bodies belong to ourselves and no one else. There’s no need for respect for a creator because there is no creator. I love those ankle scribbles, but I could never have them. Mine would mean something, and by meaning something would mean nothing.
Teller and I did a bit on Conan where Teller carved the name of Conan’s “freely selected” card into my arm. I’ve written a lot about “tattoos of blood.” Those are tattoos without ink. All the pain and none of the gain. Tattoo ink is a lubricant and a coagulant, so tattoos of blood hurt more and bleed more than a real tattoo and they last about three years. So, the same length of time as most of my relationships. It’s really just carving into your skin. Teller carved the selected card into my arm on Conan. There was no trick to that part, he just carved in my arm on TV. Teller and I had to practice—we had to put more time into learning it than you’d believe it’s worth. That’s always how we fool you. We had to practice the card force, but we also had to make sure that I could focus and do the magic moves while my skin was being carved. We had bought an unlicensed tattoo gun and it arrived at our shop. I was wearing cutoffs (it’s the desert, and with my body, you gotta wear the Daisy Dukes and feature the talent). While I was waiting for Teller and the crew to get the cards and start working the script, I fired up the gun and just scribbled on my leg, making cuts and letting the blood flow. Trying to see my intelligence, vitality, and passion as outside of nature and my body. It wasn’t secret cutting. I can’t pretend to understand why young people, mostly women, cut themselves up. I won’t write about that, except to write that what I was doing was different from that. And it was different from the carny pig, because it was self-conscious. I was writing “fuck you” to god in blood on my leg, and I knew it, so it wasn’t as good.
These tattoos that are walking by me in Starbucks as I write this are tribal and Asian, and some outright religious. I figure the Asian logogram that the trendy guy thinks means “truth” probably means “round-eyed sodomite,” but what do I know?
But to me, even the overtly religious ink says “fuck you” to god. (Take
this with a grain of salt—to me,
Green Acres
reruns on Nick at Nite are a “fuck you” to god.) Tattoos and big fake tits are a way to say to yourself and the world that the way you ended up, even the way you think you were created, is not as important as your free will. God wanted the back of your neck to have a cute little freckle at your hairline, but you think “Property of Wolf” is more to your liking. God wanted a mole right on your miniskirt line, and you’d rather have “Heaven’s Above” and a little pinstripe.
If there really were a god, wouldn’t he have the power and wisdom to put that Playboy bunny on your ass at birth? I don’t like tattoos much, but I sure love what they say about people taking control of their own bodies.
That’s why I like big stupid fake tits. Don’t try to tell the world that you were naturally endowed like a fucking Barbie doll; let the world know that you decided you wanted a balcony someone could do Shakespeare from regardless of what god wanted. Big fake tits are a celebration of technology and humanity, and a rebellion against god and nature. I’m all for that.
Which brings us to Auto-Tune. Anyone who has heard me try to slide up to that high F on my upright bass during our show knows that I don’t have a great ear. I have pretty good time, but my intonation really sucks. I’ve worked hard and gone from being oblivious to knowing when I’m off. The next step is to be able to figure out whether I’m sharp or flat without experimentation.
I can’t sing in tune either. And now there’s a gizmo that can put me right in the dead center of the note. Right in that fat middle where Sinatra and Ella always seem to be. And you can use it live too. Anthony of the Chili Peppers can now choose to be right in tune on “Under the Bridge.” It’s amazing technology, but I miss people being out of tune. The Monkees were produced within an inch of their lives, but if you go back and hear the records (you can still use the word “records” even for new music; it may be digital, but it’s still
recorded,
don’t you think? “Record” doesn’t have to mean vinyl), their slightly (or more) out-of-tune
harmonies give them a feeling of youth and disrespect. Lou Reed being a little flat on “Walk on the Wild Side” isn’t a mistake; it evokes the pure ennui that he was living. Stevie Wonder being a little sharp cuts through that fat Sir Duke sound. Not being in tune can be a choice or a very happy accident. Now, engineers often tune stuff up reflexively, without even making a choice. You’re not going to hear one of those
American Idol
fucks singing like the Go-Go’s live in their own arena show, now, are you?
I miss the out-of-tune music, both the intentional and the accidental, because . . . with recorded music, the chosen and the accident become the same. They’ve played “Layla” so much on the radio that the out-of-tune high slide sounds perfect, and I love that. There are a lot of lo-fi musicians who are keeping things out of tune, so the battle is only lost on the cheesy Top Ten stuff, and the Top Ten is almost gone anyway. We’re getting all sorts of diversity. With the cosmetic Auto-Tunes, comes the technology to do the crazy Auto-Tune. The proud 44DD of Auto-Tunes, used just for effect. I’m not sure what software the Black Eyed Peas use to sound like cartoons, but it’s only one whole step from what Ross Bagdasarian used for the Chipmunks. They’re not trying to fool anyone that they really sing that way. It’s making a joyful noise that god never wanted us to make. I love Cher’s “Believe,” and I love her tattoos, but I hope she isn’t trying to pass off the tits to anyone as real.