Every Day is an Atheist Holiday!

and so on.

Our class also had a vote on whether to have class personalities and we also voted it down. We were hip and modern too. The yearbook committee and administrators decided to ignore our vote and have the personalities anyway. The same people who had voted against “class personalities” also had to vote for the “class personalities.” I thought maybe I could exploit that.

I knew the majority of my fellow students didn’t want “class personalities” and I knew when they were planning the vote for the student personalities. This was worth going to school for. We had a fairly small class, a few hundred students. If I was systematic, I would be able to reach every one of them personally before the vote, but I also did some group speeches. If we were in a class before a teacher came in, or there was any gathering of students, I stood up in front of them and gave a little speech like this: “In a few days, we’re going to be asked to vote for school personalities, you know, ‘Class Clown’ and ‘Most Likely to Succeed’ and all that shit. If you sincerely want to vote for these things, please write in the name you want, use your votes how you want. But if you’re thinking of writing in ‘Abbie Hoffman’ or ‘Mickey Mouse’ or ‘Mike Hunt’ or just writing ‘Fuck you’ and throwing the paper away, please just take the time to write in me, Penn Jillette, for everything. I promise you, if you do that, it’ll be more fun. Write me in for every category for both sexes. Class Flirts should be ‘Boy—Penn Jillette,’ ‘Girl—Penn Jillette,’ ‘Class Clown—Penn Jillette,’ ‘Best Athlete—Penn Jillette.’ Please remember, they will try to bust us on technicalities so write it perfectly, ‘P-E-N-N J-I-L-L-E-T-T-E’ and make it legible. Please block print it, two N’s, two L’s, two T’s—if you’re disgusted with the school or just making a joke, write in my name. If we work together, we can make this funny. Please, nothing is funny but Penn Jillette.”

The day of the vote, I used the school copy machine to print out and cut up many little slips of paper that said, “Vote Penn Jillette for everything—Nothing is funny but Penn Jillette.” I tried to give the slips out to everyone, so they would have the spelling in front of them. I put full-page versions of my message on every public bulletin board—“Nothing is funny but Penn Jillette!”

I went to class to vote. There were a lot of categories and they were doubled with a choice for each gender. I took the page and I wrote my name in every space.

I hung around until the end of the day and then headed to the administration office where I figured the yearbook committee would be tallying the votes. I walked in to see the head of the yearbook committee crying. Good sign. The principal was standing over her, very angry. Even better sign. I walked in with a big smile, like the class clown, and I said, “Which do you think is funnier, taking a different picture of every category, some of them in drag, or is it funnier to take one picture and just repeat it dozens of times. I’m kind of leaning toward the one picture over and over. That’s also a lot less work.”

The principal said, “Get out of here, Penn. We won’t be having class personalities.”

“But you wanted a vote and you had a vote. You can’t ignore it. You went against the wishes of the people, and the people won. You must do this. It’s only fair.” I said that like somebody “Most Likely to Succeed.”

“Don’t push it. Get out of here now.”

“How much did I win by?”

“Get out of here.”

“What percentage did I get? Did I win by a lot?” He started walking toward me, and like the “Class Coward” I was, I ran away.

If they keep giving us two evils from two identical parties from which to “choose” our president of the United States, couldn’t we just do “Nothing is funny but Penn Jillette”?

Listening to: “High School”—MC5

“VISSI D’ARTE” EVEN ON THE CELEBRITY APPRENTICE

I FIRST SAW THE WHO ON TV. I was watching with my parents, and when Pete, Roger, and Keith started smashing their instruments, we were appalled. We were just barely middle class. My dad was a jail guard and we lived in a nice neat little house that my parents had built with their own hands. I loved music and I had a newspaper route, and I mowed lawns. I took drum lessons using a practice pad and was saving all my money to buy a used drum set so I could join a rock-and-roll band. At my rate of earning, it would have taken me decades to afford Keith Moon’s drum set and I didn’t understand how he could destroy it on TV. How could Keith do that? How could he have such little respect for music, for the TV show he was fortunate enough to be on, and for me and my family? My parents didn’t like the music or the act, but they still tried to console me. These rich rock stars just didn’t understand what money meant to us common folk. Then in a flash everything changed. I started to cry. Right then something happened and I understood The Who. I understood that passion and art could be more important than money. I went from sad and disgusted to exuberant. It was the first time I had ever understood real beauty. I loved The Who. I loved rock and roll. I loved life. It was at that moment I became an artist.

I use Teller’s broad definition of art: “Whatever we do after the chores are done.” There’s one show business and Bach, Dylan, Ron Jeremy, and the guy at the mall in the Santa suit are all in it. By that definition The Celebrity Apprentice is art, and for my sins, I was on it.

I’ve done a lot of TV, but one of my proudest moments in my career was shown on The Celebrity Apprentice. I didn’t watch it, I don’t know how it was edited, but I was there and it was beautiful. The Celebrity Apprentice is all about watching people argue and lie while they covet money and success. Those are the artistic ideas. Donald Trump scowls and passes judgment and we all suck up and rat out to win more time on TV and get money for our charities. The theme song is the O’Jays’ “For the Love of Money,” used as awkwardly as “Born in the U.S.A.” at a political rally.

Some of the “tasks” on the show are measured by money, so if you convince a rich famous person to buy a sandwich for ten grand, you have a better chance of winning. I’ve been a fan of and friends with Blue Man Group since we were all working in NYC. They make my heart soar. They make me proud to work in the arts. They are the best of us. They’ve also got some money, so I called them, told them I was doing this TV show and did they want to donate some money to charity? They said yes before finding out what charity or how much I wanted because Blue Man Group is like that. They do charity all the time. They really deeply care about people and they do a lot for many charities. TCA is not the most likely show to have something beautiful happen, but the Blue Man Group can make beautiful anywhere. They are the best of us.

BMG asked if I wanted them to show up and do something. Oh yes, please. After weeks of sitting on boardroom sets pretending to do business, I really wanted something beautiful.

“Can you deliver the money in a fun way?” I asked them.

That was the problem. In the Blue Man Group world, money doesn’t exist. To the Blue Man Group, money means nothing. The ideals that they’ve established in their art don’t include avarice. The Blue Men Group donate tons of money out of the blue makeup, but in it, well, they’re not above money, but they’re beside it. It doesn’t exist. They asked me to give them some time to think of something beautiful. A couple days later they sent me a video of them filling a balloon with thousands of ten-dollar bills and blowing it up with a leaf blower. It was beautiful and it delivered money, without the Blue Men Group having to respect it. It was so beautiful.

I really wanted to save their appearance and money for “my task” and my charity (Opportunity Village for people with intellectual disabilities, a charity that BMG helps a lot), but I was on Dee Snider’s team and he asked me to help raise more money on his watch. I ran the idea by all our team members, the production company, and NBC. Everyone signed off. Blue Man Group would march up, with a loud parade and giant puppets and they would blow up a balloon full of money with leaf blowers and fill the air with ten-dollar bills that the Blue Men wouldn’t care about. Whatever our team could gather out of the wind, we would have to score for our team. Teller would join BMG and add thirty grand of his own money, not blown around, but handed politely to our cashier, American Idol Clay Aiken. Clay took The Celebrity Apprentice very seriously and played the game for all it was worth.

We were outside selling our bullshit little jive guidebooks (the sandwich of the week). I gave the signal, and from blocks away we could hear the parade. BMG with their giant drums and confetti cannons were changing traffic patterns in NYC. They arrived at the park where we were set up to sell our guidebooks. My business partner for my entire adult life, Teller, was in the parade, firing streamers into the air and dancing. Teller had the eyes of Keith