Granted we’re only twenty minutes into it, so this is a mid-stream observation. The only thing that comes to mind is this quote:<\/p>\n
“Here’s a quarter, it’s gone, you’re an idiot, it’s back, you’re a jerk, show’s over.”
\n— Jerry Seinfeld<\/p><\/blockquote>\nThis has got to be the irony of ironies.<\/p>\n
Let’s see how the next hour and a half goes.<\/p>\n
UPDATE:<\/strong> Okay, it’s over. I’ll stand by what I wrote above. <\/p>\n
It really is ironic to me that P&T appear to have become a living example of what Penn has for years consistently excoriated: the epitome of the type of magic as described above in Seinfeld’s quote.<\/p>\n
Between Showtime’s Bullshit<\/em>, the interview on stage at MAGIC Live!<\/em> last summer, and the television special this evening, it seems to me Penn is becoming the George Carlin of magic.<\/p>\n
Back to the special this evening.<\/p>\n
To my mind, this was the network version of “The Aristocrats”<\/em> — a well produced inside joke told at the expense of the paying audience.<\/p>\n
Except in this case, I’ll go a little further and suggest this was the 21st century version of Hans Christian Anderson’s “The Emperor’s New Suit<\/a>“<\/em> — with we magicians and the audience members playing the part of the emperor<\/em>, to Penn and Teller’s swindling weavers<\/em>. <\/p>\n
On the other hand, maybe I’m just not inside enough<\/em> to “get” P&T these days.<\/p>\n
In 1980, Blue Oyster Cult<\/a> released a great album — probably the last one of theirs I loved start to finish. Titled, “Cultosaurus Erectus,”<\/em> it contained a song named “Divine Wind.”<\/em> It was actually a political song aimed at the Ayatollah Khomeini, who considered the USA to be the “Great Satan.” The lyrics included the line:<\/p>\n
If he really thinks we’re the devil,
\nthen let’s send him to hell.<\/p><\/blockquote>\nIt could be that, after all these years of being called exposers of magic<\/em> they’ve adopted the same point of view.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Granted we’re only twenty minutes into it, so this is a mid-stream observation. The only thing that comes to mind is this quote: “Here’s a quarter, it’s gone, you’re an idiot, it’s back, you’re a jerk, show’s over.” — Jerry Seinfeld This has got to be the irony of ironies. Let’s see how the next […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.escamoteurettes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.escamoteurettes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.escamoteurettes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.escamoteurettes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.escamoteurettes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=250"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.escamoteurettes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.escamoteurettes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.escamoteurettes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.escamoteurettes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}