Penn Jillette keeps magic files and fiction files on his computer, but they are kept together and the distinction between them is not always clear. For example, he once wrote a short story. For example, his longtime partner Teller thought it would be a good sleight of hand, so they turned it into a tidbit. King of Animal Trap.
“The first thing I wanted to be was a writer,” he said in a recent telephone interview. You would say that being there is writing.”
Gillette’s latest novel, Random, is about a young man who inherits his father’s bankrupt debt to a loan shark and uses dice and other dangerous means to dig himself up. That the dice bring him good luck gives him a new philosophy of leaving decisions big and small to chance.
Whether you’re writing a novel or a little bit, you’re always trying to tell a story, Gillette said.
“The happiest moment is when Teller and I get together and figure out what you want to say or feel with tricks and bits and find ways to do it,” he said. I was. “I don’t want to lie and say I don’t like being on stage — I like it, I like the applause, I like the laughter — it’s my favorite thing in the world. Writing fiction feels like the exact same thing.”
Here, authors, magicians, and co-stars of The CW’sPenn & Teller: Fool Us,” talks about how he eats watermelons, why he prefers skepticism to irony, and how he convinced Teller to pay half of the new base.
1. Too hot bath Every night I take a bath so hot that I almost pass out. Use scented oils to make it as girly as possible. And I read it on my Kindle. I’m trying to learn Spanish, so I read Spanish for at least 30 minutes and then read English for another 30 minutes.
2. Too cold watermelon I’ve lost a lot of weight over the last few years. One of the ways I lose weight is by eating watermelon. Watermelon seems to be eaten more than any other food and still feels good and tastes good. The secret is to cut it so finely that it hurts your teeth and super cool it.
3. Lava lamp I go back and forth all the time: Am I a beatnik? Am I a hippie? I know she’s one of those two. I also know that alcohol doesn’t get in the way of being a beatnik and drugs don’t get in the way of being a hippie. I think I own 20 lava lamps. They are in every room in my house. I like to look at them and pretend I got high even though I never got high.
4. Tony Fitzpatrick Music is unnatural to me, so I study music quite extensively. And that’s what fascinates me. I’m also very bad with visual stuff, so I’m trying to get my head around why there’s artwork all over the house and why it’s beautiful. One of my favorite artists is Tony Fitzpatrick from Chicago. There are etchings of him all over the house.
5. Ray Brown There are a lot of great bass players out there, but Ray Brown had that sound, that consistency, that power. He’s been a source of inspiration and he’s one on my road to jazz. He loves “Papa Was a Rolling Stone,” recorded with fellow bassists John Clayton and Christian McBride.
6. Skepticism, not cynicism I’ve fought my whole life to be skeptical, not cynical. I could argue for minutes between me and Bill Maher about why cynicism is bad and skepticism is good. Cynicism is attributing the worst motives to people. Skeptics are looking for truth.
7. Little Tim On the walls of my house are the costumes Tiny Tim wore for most of his career, the ukulele he played for most of his career, and the shoes. I love the fact that there came a man who was so honest and sarcasm could not live in him. Some of the most cynical people who ever lived, including Bing Crosby, Johnny Carson, John Lennon, Howard Stern, and Frank Sinatra, completely collapsed in the presence of Tiny Tim. .
8. Word processor I wanted to be a writer so badly. I was a very good typist because my mother taught me how to type, but I still make mistakes and my spelling is really bad. After doing a show off-Broadway with Teller, he finally bought a computer, and within 24 hours of getting the computer he had two articles written and published. I’m sitting in front of the most powerful computer his Mac has to offer — I could edit my “avatar” on it — but 95% of what I do is his word processing .
9. Paul Toniguez double bass I play bass an hour before the Penn & Teller show. A very good bassist named Alex Frank told me it was better than the bass I was playing. He found me a bass made by a guy named Paul Tenigez. He said it was very expensive, but it was also the best bass he had ever played – it belonged to the late bassist Dave Stone. I sent an email to see if he thought I should buy it. was written as follows: buy it. “He didn’t even tell me the price.
10. Bob Dylan I think it’s possible that you’ve been listening to Bob Dylan every day for the last 52 years. Bob Dylan is someone we rarely meet, but it’s an amazing skill paired with a wild spirit. Just watch a Paul McCartney concert and a Bob Dylan concert. Paul McCartney, you know exactly what you’re getting yourself into. Bob Dylan? you don’t know anything