Penn & Teller are not merely post-modern
magicians who regularly litter television
talk shows like Leno, Letterman, or Conan
with vermin and blood, or romp nightly on
stages across North America attempting to
shoot each other with bullets marked and
identified by the audience and then fired
from .357 magnum revolvers. Nor are they
apparently satisfied with frequent
appearances in Las Vegas or two Broadway
shows, two off-Broadway shows, and another
Broadway production in the works, or for that
matter, previous network television specials
produced both in the United States and
England.
No, no. Because Penn & Teller , true
Renaissance renegades who have also published
columns, essays, and articles in the "
New York Times", "Harper's ",
" Esquire", 'Playboy",
"Spy", "The New Yorker",
et al, have now just written their third
book. Not bad for a couple of skeptics who do
card tricks.
Like "Cruel Tricks For Dear
Friends" (1989) and " How To Play
With Your Food" (1992), the newest
addition to the Penn & Teller oeuvre,
"How To Play In Traffic" will be
found in the humor section of your local
bookstore, but in fact includes an array of
material including essays, short stories,
stunts, gags, magic tricks, a plethora of
laughter-inducing photographs, and yes,
plenty of that aforementioned humor. As such
the volume is an eclectic tour of the minds
of these unique creators-cum-commentators,
embracing subjects as far-ranging and near and
dear to their dark and duplicitous hearts as
skepticism, atheism, libertarianism, free
speech, free markets, a panoply of other
varied ism's and freedoms, and sex. This is
an engrossing and entertaining book of ideas
for the deeply hip in fin de
siecle America.
If you're familiar with the work of Penn
& Teller, then you can expect more of the
same - like it or not- within these covers.
If you're not familiar, this will sever as a
fine introduction. The title refers to the
loosest of excuses for banding this material
together under one cover, namely that the
material has something very generally to do
with the subject of travel. The table of
contents is organized by category, so forget
any linear itemization of the contents in
order; the only order here is conceptual. The
book is divided by "stories- really true
and kinda true"; "stupidly easy
tricks - just read 'em and do 'em";
"just as stupidly easy tricks-but maybe
you have to stick something in your
pocket"; "real tricks - it's not
going to hurt you to learn something";
and "hard, impossible, immoral, and/or
illegal tricks - maybe you'll go to
jail." But at least you'll probably go
laughing.
Some of the entries in the
"stories" section includes a paean
to the Mutter Museum and its creepily
wonderful collection of medical oddities at
the College of Physicians in Philadelphia,
and another to the classic sideshow illusion
known as Girl To Gorilla. There is an
appreciative account of attending a NASA
shuttle launch that is told in the context of
a discussion of comic timing. Another
narrative touches on issues of free speech
and sexuality, while providing an awfully
nifty and inexpensive tip for how to become
the hit of the dancers at a strip bar. And in
"The Devil Went To Bell Labs", a
short story turns a classic barroom joke into
a thought-provoking tale of computer
programming set among the computer whizzes at
Bell Labs.
We'll begin with "stupidly easy
tricks", which include a nice stunt with
which to spread a bit of joy and confusion at
your next toll booth; a strongly worded
anti-drug piece (hey, as role models, these
nutty guys, Penn & Teller, seem to be
perfectly...well,let's just say, your kids
could do a lot worse) that includes a prank
to play on a drunk that will provide some
slightly mean amusement but also prevent said
drunk from starting his or her own car. There
is a trick which according to the authors, a
famous magician once used to fool Albert
Einstein , in which you accurately and
uncannily guess how much change is in a a
full jar of coins (or a casino slot-machine
winnnings bucket). Then there is an easy
-to-do but strange magic trick in which you
declare yourself "the god of
carbonation" and transfer the agitation
of a shaken can of carbonated soda into an
unshaken can. Add to this a funny but easy
stunt, especially good for freaking out your
fellow passengers on a bus or airplane, in
which you appear to crack your own neck in an
excruciatingly loud manner. And another
airplane/bus/train bit which requires only
some acting skill but is hilariously
conceived and, like most everything in the
book is just plain fun to read. The premise
of this one: Tell the person seated next to
you that, as a kindness, you feel they should
be warned that you seem to have an odd,
unintentional habit of sleeping with your
eyes open. You ask them not to be troubled,
but also not to disturb you. You now pretend
to fall asleep with your eyes agog; the
admittedly over-the -top photos are as funny
as the effect that a convincing but perhaps
slightly more restrained performance would be
in actual practice.
Stupidly easy tricks which might require a
little advance preparation include one entry
that describes an amazing trick requiring
very little other than the ability to lie
with wit and style. You hand a restaurant
waitperson a watch and tell them to take it
away with them and set it to any time. Before
they return with it, you predict the exact
time that they have set it to . Some of those
items are far more difficult to describe here
than they are to do. In one of these, for
example, in an effort to torture your
afraid-of-flying companion (even the authors
confess that " this is a mean
trick"), you ask them to choose from the
route map in the airline magazine a country
in which the plane might crash, whereupon you
reveal that their point of impact has in fact
been predicted on the safety card in the seat
pocket in front of them! In another more
cheerful item, you bring a laugh to anyone
who asks for your photo ID and,according to
the authors, you might just get a free
airline upgrade, or escape a possible
speeding ticket. This is a joyful little bit
that's too cute to reveal here, but is a
delight to read and think about.
