I'm a big fan of Penn and Teller…not of everything they do, of course. I think, for example, they're responsible for what I see as an unfortunate belief among some newer magicians. That's the notion that a trick is hip if you can only work some self-mutilation and stage blood into it. But that's okay. One of the things I like about them is that they try different things and aren't afraid to alienate one segment of the audience to entertain another.
For a time, they had a bad name among magicians for allegedly exposing tricks. I thought that was an unfair rap. The few tricks they did expose were the kind that anyone with an I.Q. higher than their shoe size could figure out in ten seconds. The one exposed in today's video link is just such a trick. I figured out how it was done when I was six. I mean, how else could you put a box containing a live human head on the floor unless the rest of the human was under the floor? There would be little entertainment value in doing the trick and pretending it was fooling anyone. There's plenty in doing it in a way that shows you how hard it is to do.
The clip is from a pretty good TV special they did in 1990 called Don't Try This At Home and it runs a little more than three minutes. So let's blast off…
