If I had to be jealous of one person in Las Vegas it would be Penn Jillette. First off he knows more about Dylan than I do. Then there is the fact that he gets to work with Teller, who like Penn is one of the most brilliant people I have ever interviewed. I do not want to be on stage but being part of the best show in town would be a good consolation prize. And, for a long time I have called Penn & Teller the best show in Vegas. Strip entertainment has gotten bigger since Penn & Teller arrived here back in the pre-Celine Dion days when Cirque had so few shows you could count them with the fingers of one hand. But their stature remains the same.
The Penn & Teller show keeps getting better as they constantly refine old material and put in new sections to their Rio show. Penn & Teller at Rio remains the show I always recommend to people above all others. I think my primary attraction to Penn & Teller is their deep philosophical commitment to making a show of intelligence and merit which remains thoroughly entertaining. That to me is Vegas at our best. To them the goals of art and commerce are not in conflict or even carefully balanced out, but rather like Charles Dickens and Duke Ellington, Penn & Teller make art at the highest level that can be enjoyed on every level.
And, so it was no surprise that I find Penn offering a guest commentary on CNN.com about President Obama’s jabs at Vegas that is neither hysterically local nor totally dismissive. In fact, the juggling comic magician with the big mouth offers the most insightful explanation of why Vegas should not be an Obama punch line while the Strip will not collapse if we remain one. Penn notes in the editorial:
“Teller and I moved to Vegas to do our own show in our own theater. We took a big chance. Vegas also stands for stupid gambling like that. Vegas is gambling in the broad sense, the idea that taking a wild chance on an unknown might turn out to be a good thing.
What’s the main thing that drives stupid gambling? Hope. I’m not sure how I feel about hope. I don’t gamble in the casinos. That kind of regimented hope seems less fun to me. I’m a skeptic. I’m pro-science.
I like to say I don’t believe in hope, but I had the hope to move to Vegas to do a magic show. And I do hope that Vegas pulls through this bad economic time and people come and visit us and we do our stupid shows for all the stupid, hopeful people.
Obama, please remember, it was those stupid, very hopeful people who took the over on a stupid point spread on Obama with a stupid hope to help our country, which includes stupid Vegas.”
An excerpt, of course, does not do Jillette justice. Yet, I once again take this moment to recommend you see him at his finest, performing at the Rio show with Teller: the best show in Vegas. (Photo: Lanie Crossman)
Nice article.
Penn makes a whole helluva lot more sense about this issue than a certain local politician did with his patented knee jerk blast into the President.
What Penn is obviously missing here is “If putting your hopes on the line in Vegas has to dissapear for the benefit of this nations economy, then so be it”. Afterall, what was the lowest point of Obama’s election? Yes, it was the Nevada Caucus. That was probably when Obama needed us the most & we shunned him in favor of Senator Clinton. So no, Obama will probably never ease up on using Las Vegas as an example of irresponsible spending. That doesn’t mean “Lights Out in Vegas” either, it just means that the local economy in Vegas will be stuck in “Reality Mode” for a very long time. Amen.