The Unpleasant World of Penn and Teller

August 12, 2007 6:42 PM

You want to waste as much time as possible before going back to work Monday morning, right? So, stay up late and watch 6 episodes of The Unpleasant World of Penn and Teller, their mid-90s show on British TV. Don't have time for all that right now? Then jump right to a card trick with John Cleese, or their unique version of the Card Stab trick. At the very least, you owe it to yourself to prepare for tomorrow's coffee break.
posted by The Deej (12 comments total)

[this is good]
posted by gd779 at 7:46 PM on August 12, 2007 [1 favorite]

Luuurve Penn & Teller. I'm bookmarking this so I can watch them tomorrow. Thanks, The Deej!
posted by amyms at 8:00 PM on August 12, 2007 [1 favorite]

You're welcome amyms.
I got to see them do some of those tricks live in Las Vegas last year. Awesome show in a beautiful theater at the Rio.
posted by The Deej at 8:49 PM on August 12, 2007

Thanks, Deej. I'm gonna waste a lot of time on these.
posted by puke & cry at 9:30 PM on August 12, 2007

This is way better than Bullshit!.
posted by Pope Guilty at 10:25 PM on August 12, 2007

Some of thsse tricks are brilliant (the houdini trick, producing flies, the john cleese card trick), some of them are incredibly lame -- most of the rest of the 'is this your card' stuff, for example.. I have a suspicion that some of the ones I think are lame, are inside jokes for other magicians, though.
posted by empath at 10:35 PM on August 12, 2007

I have to posit that even the brilliant tricks are incredibly lame for other magicians. If you watched closely to the John Cleese trick, the palming of the card and the hand-off to Teller was pretty obvious. But I think that's why Penn and Teller are really cool. If you just enjoy the performance, it still works. They do a lot of entertainment outside of the magic. You have to work at it to ruin it.
posted by team lowkey at 1:49 AM on August 13, 2007

Wow. So, Teller's a zombie now?
posted by tehloki at 5:09 AM on August 13, 2007

Oh, well, I wasn't referring to the magic itself as I was the set-up. Like the houdini trick completely goes against every expectation you have of a magic trick.
posted by empath at 6:16 AM on August 13, 2007

One of my earliest lessons in magic was from Roy Kissell, who ran the magic shop near my house in downtown Detroit. He explained to me how magic was just a means to entertain. A magic book I read at an early age told a story of a magician whose business card billed him as "magician, ventriloquist, and entertainer." After performing for a client, the client commented, "OK, I saw the magic and the ventriloquism. Now where is the entertainment?"

That's the lesson all magicians can learn from P&T. They are entertaining whether you are fooled or not. And even though I have studied magic since I was 9, I still get fooled by them, because I am too busy being entertained and sometimes even miss the obvious.

Being entertaining is the best misdirection.

(For a specific example, one of the linked episodes has a lima-bean catch in lieu of a bullet-catch. It totally fooled me when I first watched it, because it was just so fun to watch I didn't pay attention to the method. When I watched it the second time, the method is obvious to the point of being downright clumsy. But who cares? Certainly not P&T, not their audience.)
posted by The Deej at 8:38 AM on August 13, 2007

good find, Deej. I really enjoyed the post.
posted by Kwine at 11:27 AM on August 13, 2007

Watching one of these I realised that I'd had a broad grin on my face from beginning to end. Great stuff, thanks.
posted by Shinkicker at 3:51 PM on August 16, 2007