Every Day is an Atheist Holiday!

thought if they kept him on payroll, they could keep him under control. Tell him he was no longer allowed even to say “pen” or “Gillette” again, let alone my name. I thought if they fired him, they would have nothing to hold over his head. My strategy was to keep him working and shut him the fuck up. The DJ found out about my phone call, but not the content and claimed that I had called to have him fired and sued me for that. He also thought that I’d have more money than CBS Radio. I sure wish I had the money that people who want to attack me think I have.

I ended up having sixteen hours of depositions where an elderly Christian lawyer asked me questions about Mother Teresa and how much money I had. I was supposed to follow rules and never help him at all, but after he asked me if I was familiar with Dave Carlin’s “ten words you shouldn’t say on TV” or something that far off, I finally said, “You mean GEORGE CARLIN’S SEVEN WORDS YOU CAN’T SAY ON TV?” My lawyer said that was wrong—I should have made him work for it. Jesus Christ. He also didn’t believe that I’d never heard his client’s comments about me and that I didn’t want his client to be fired. Everyone in the office heard the MP3 of the DJ threatening me, but I didn’t want to. And I didn’t want my wife to hear it. Would you want to hear someone offering money to have you killed?

I had nothing at risk. I was completely innocent. CBS was paying all the legal fees and they were signed to pay any damages. I was facing nothing at all. But I was in the system with people attacking me and I felt sick and depressed. There’s a line by Sly Stone in “Family Affair”: “You can’t cry ’cause you’ll look broke down, but you’re crying anyway, ’cause you’re all broke down.” That’s how I feel at these times.

In both of these cases, I had no reason to be worried. But the system is set up to make a person feel danger. It’s impossible to feel safe and innocent, at least for me. I’ve heard that really bad people thrive in this situation, but I don’t. I way don’t. I’m happier when I’m completely separate from the United States Justice System. I don’t want to sue anyone. I don’t want to be a victim or a perp. I just want to stay away.

I was talking to my senior adviser, Lawrence O’Donnell Jr. LOD and I were talking on the phone about how safe and innocent I was and how shitty I felt. This is what came to me. This is the self-help portion of the book.

I think you just have to take sick days. I always tell people when they’re going through a romantic breakup that “It’s just the flu—give it a week to ten days and you’ll be better. There will be some diarrhea and vomiting, but you’ll be fine. Just accept that you’re going to be sick and get through it. Don’t fight it. Don’t try to be happy and well. Go with the sickness—just get through it.”

I guess that’s what to do with blackmail and death threats too. Just take some sick days. Throw up, bundle up, drink plenty of liquids, take an analgesic for relief of pain and fever, and wait for time to pass. You’ll be fine. That’s my advice.

Now, wanna see some pictures of me getting my cock sucked? I’ll make you a deal.

Listening to: “Family Affair”—Sly and the Family Stone

^{What would this picture be worth to you?}

APRIL FOOLS’ DAY

OUR MOVIE, Penn & Teller Get Killed, is about two guys, named Penn and Teller, played by Penn Jillette and Teller, who play practical jokes all the time and—this isn’t more of a spoiler than the fucking title—those practical jokes end up killing Penn & Teller, and depending on how you read the ambiguous ending, maybe those jokes end up killing everyone in the world. Our movie was not the first movie starring people using their own names as characters who die in the movie. The Monkees’ movie, Head, stars Peter Tork, Micky Dolenz, Davy Jones and Mike Nesmith playing characters of the same names and they all die at the end (also not a spoiler, the end is shown at the beginning).

Penn & Teller Get Killed was directed by one of the greatest directors of all time, Arthur Penn, and he made exactly the movie we wanted. The movie we wanted was not the exact movie the audience wanted, and now it’s called a “cult film.” I’m pretty proud of it. I’m happy we did something that nutty for our movie. Nutty made me proud and ended our movie career.

The movie would have been better art if it had been popular. I’m fascinated by the difference between characters and real people in entertainment. I’ve spent most of my life playing a character that has my real name and many of my real-life personality traits. I try to make that character as close to my real self as possible, but that’s still quite a distance. The Penn who lives with his family doesn’t always feel like doing those tricks onstage every night in Vegas at nine p.m. But the Penn who works at the Rio wants to put his suit on and walk onstage every night at the same time, in the same mood, and perform those same miracles. The real me, the I, always feels like being onstage when the other Penn is supposed to be, but if I were totally myself, I might not leave my children to drive into the theater and put a suit on. Once we’re onstage, doing those tricks, we’re pretty much the same guy.

I try not to say anything in character that I wouldn’t say myself. People ask me if I believe everything I said on Penn & Teller: Bullshit! and I did and I still do believe almost all of it. There has been some information that’s changed my mind on a few things, and I’m also a different person now, so some of my opinions have changed a little, but when I said it, I meant it.

I’ve done a few TV dramas where I played myself and then it gets tricky. I did a detective show called Numb3rs and I was playing myself. Someone else wrote the script, but I was pretty much myself. The Penn in Numb3rs was proud of having known Richard Feynman, and the real Penn is even prouder.

I know the audience makes very sophisticated separations between fantasy and reality, but some reactions still confuse me. Lawrence Konner, one of my friends, was a writer on The Sopranos. He gave me a call once and asked my permission to write a scene in which one of the women on the show, Adriana La Cerva, confesses to having sucked my cock in a men’s room in Atlantic City. He was inspired to write that after an evening he and I spent hanging out in Vegas—you know what I mean. I was flattered. Even more flattered when a morning DJ told me that Mick Jagger had called Steve McQueen to ask if it was okay for Mick to sing about someone sucking Steve’s cock in the song “Starfucker” (it’s copyrighted as “Star Star”). Steve said yes to Mick and I said yes to Larry. Steve and I are that same kind of guy. After it was shot, Lawrence called me to apologize. I guess in his script she blew me in the men’s room, but they changed it on set to her blowing me in the women’s room. I don’t know why that made a difference on the set, and I don’t know why Larry felt he had to apologize. I have no idea what that means. I guess the Penn of The Sopranos cares where he’s blown. The real Penn would be happy to go into the bus station transsexual bathroom for any blow job.

When that episode of The Sopranos came out, I had people call me and say, “I loved your appearance on The Sopranos.” I got more reaction to that than the many TV shows I’ve gotten into makeup for. I’m at my best when I don’t show up. A character on 30 Rock talked about what outfit she’d wear to watch porno in Vegas with me. For the real Penn, you can watch porno with me without any outfit at all. People called up and congratulated me for being on 30 Rock. After The Sopranos blow job line, I was most shocked by the people who said, “You know, that actress, Drea de Matteo, must really dig you, or she wouldn’t have said that.” What? It was my buddy Lawrence who thought about sucking my cock; Ms. de Matteo had no more desire to suck my cock than James Spader desired to fuck Maggie Gyllenhaal in Secretary. Okay, that’s a bad example, but I was surprised how many people thought that I was somehow on The Sopranos.

Weirder than getting my imaginary cock sucked on that show were the two Penn & Teller appearances on The Simpsons. It seems everyone wanted to know what that was like. What? It was like being in a recording studio in Vegas wearing headphones and reading a piece of paper on a music stand. We didn’t go to Springfield. Homer didn’t want to suck my cartoon dick in the cartoon women’s room of the cartoon nuclear plant.

The X-Files called us in to do a script with them in the nineties. We went to L.A. for a meeting with the big cheeses on the show. They were considering having us play Penn & Teller, who discover that some bullshit wasn’t bullshit. We were to play the skeptics who were proven wrong. Morally, the show is fiction and so anything is okay. My favorite movie is Dawn of the Dead and my twelfth