[jazz music]
♪ ♪
[cheers and applause]
- From the Penn & Teller Theater
at the Rio Hotel in Las Vegas,
here's our host, Alyson Hannigan!
♪ ♪
- Welcome to "Fool Us,"
where the competition keeps getting tougher.
Penn and Teller handle the stress in different ways.
Penn keeps his cool meditating and juggling.
Meanwhile, Teller blows off steam
making TikTok dance videos.
He's fluid and fierce. Speaking of fluid and fierce,
that was the original name for our main men to magic,
Penn and Teller!
[applause]
♪ ♪
Penn and Teller award a slot
in their world-famous magic show
to any magician who fools them,
and they throw in a "Fool Us" trophy
for good measure.
And our first winner might be this magician.
Take a look.
- People say it takes about 10,000 hours
to master something,
and I've spent over 25,000 hours
practicing the cube.
I got my first cube in my Christmas stocking
when I was 14.
It took me hours to solve the cube for the first time.
About 3 months later, I got down to about 20 seconds.
I wanted nothing but to be faster.
I can solve a three-by-three cube
in under 9 seconds on average.
I was the first female in the entire world
to solve a six-by-six cube blindfolded.
I can solve a cube with my feet,
with my elbows, or underwater with just one breath.
I personally own about 400 different twisty puzzles
of all different shapes and sizes and difficulty.
For the past several years,
my full-time job has been teaching the cube.
I have lectured at places like Stanford and Berkeley.
I've been working on writing a book on twisty puzzles,
so I just wanted to take my actual skill
and turn it into magic.
The trick I'm doing tonight is unlike any other cube magic.
It's taken years to be able to perfect.
Penn and Teller, tonight,
I'm going to try to twist your mind like never before.
- Put your hands together
for South Carolina's Sydney Weaver.
- Any sufficiently complex mechanism
has a kind of artificial intelligence,
and this definitely is
a sufficiently complex mechanism.
If you can imagine the number 19 with 159 zeroes after it,
that is how many possible arrangements
there are of this cube.
But what kind of intelligence does it have?
Well, this particular cube is clairvoyant.
It knows the unknowable.
Let me demonstrate this with a random bit
of information from a deck of cards.
Just a mixed up deck, right?
Alyson, I would like you to help me select a card.
- Okay. - Now I'm going to turn away,
and I'd like you to cut the deck in half
and complete the cut.
- Oh, my gosh. You'd think I'd be better
with a deck of cards by now.
Okay, it's done. - All right.
Please once more cut the deck in half
and complete the cut.
- Okay.
- Then take the top card
and sit on it without looking at it,
and once you've done that, let me know.
- Okay. - Awesome.
So there is no way that you or I or anyone could know
what card you've picked-- Anyone, but not anything.
Because this cube has the magic of clairvoyance,
it knows your card even though you and I do not.
- Wow. - But in order to find out
what the cube knows,
we have to let it do what it's made for.
[energetic piano music]
♪ ♪
- I mean, just this alone is impressive.
♪ ♪
- Now just to be clear, I am not in charge here.
The cube is actually using me in the same way a Ouija board
might use tween girls at a slumber party.
It leads, and I follow.
♪ ♪
Not that I'm saying the devil is in this puzzle cube...
And not that I'm saying he's not.
- This is very impressive, just this part.
- Wow.
♪ ♪
- The cube has spoken.
Alyson, the cube says that your card is a club,
but not only does it say your card is a club,
it also says your card is a two of clubs.
Alyson, for the first time, please reveal your card.
- Okay, hold on.
[gasps]
Two of clubs. [applause]
- Ladies and gentlemen, the two of clubs.
- Wow!
Sydney Weaver.
Ah!
That is so impressive. - Thank you.
- Have you always been good with the cube?
- I've been doing the cube for about 10 years,
but before then, I always loved things
with patterns and puzzles in general.
- Do you just, like, go to sleep, like,
dreaming up puzzles?
- Yeah, sometimes I dream of algorithms,
and the second I wake up, I try them.
Sometimes they work. Sometimes they don't.
- Have you always been good at math?
- I have been, yes.
I teach at math festivals,
and I lecture at universities.
- So what is the world of cubing like?
- It's a lot of wonderful people,
people who do different things from blind solving puzzles
to building crazy unique puzzles.
Everyone in the community is amazing.
- And so is it super competitive?
- I personally have been to 23 competitions
and have nine gold medals, so I'm going to say yes.
But a lot of other people are just welcoming
and want you to have fun.
- Okay, Sydney, let's see if Penn and Teller
solved your magic cube trick.
- Sydney, I am going to now damn you with faint praise.
You are the smartest person we've ever had on this show.
You are the smartest magician we've ever seen.
Now I know that's a very, very low bar,
but it's the one I have to offer.
And not just raw processing power,
but also a real sense, that's a really good card selection.
It's really, really nice and simple
and just mind-blowing,
just right on the mark in every way
and the number of algorithms that you need to memorize.
I mean, you gave that number.
How many possibilities are there?
- Nineteen with 159 zeroes. - Which is about your IQ?
Around that ballpark? - Give or take.
- That's somewhere around where it is.
I don't want to, you know-- I don't want to just hit
how smart the routine is
because that is a little bit insulting
because it's also so entertaining.
It's not something you appreciate.
It's something you just love from beginning to end,
and the algorithms you memorized,
that's not the only thing you've memorized in this trick.
It's--the whole thing is just astonishing,
and I'm now going to say something
that, if it does make you a little sad,
I will guarantee you it makes us sadder,
because we so, so want you to come on our show,
but we don't think you fooled us.
But we love this routine so much, Sydney.
You were so fabulous.
- Sydney. - Yeah, I think you got me.
- Did he give you a clue they know how you did it?
- Yep.
- Oh, well, it was fantastic to watch.
Thank you so much,
and I definitely need advice from you.
- All right. - Okay, Sydney Weaver.
[cheers and applause]
More magicians will attempt to confound
and astound Penn and Teller,
and at the end of the show, Penn and Teller
will try to do the same to us. Stick around.
[applause]
[jazz music]
♪ ♪
- Welcome back.
The only thing standing in the way of you meeting
our next magician is me saying this sentence.
- Hello. I'm Steven Palmore,
but I perform as Jazz Man S.
My two passions in life are music and magic.
My bass means everything to me.
When I die, I want to be buried with my bass
and a pack of cards,
because whether it's Satan or Jesus,
there's going to be a show.
In 2008, I injured my spine,
and I was temporarily paralyzed.
It was a 9-hour surgery,
and I knew my life would be over
if I couldn't perform music and magic.
Thankfully, I'm here today, alive and kicking,
and I don't take one moment for granted.
I do over 200 sit-ups and push-ups every day,
and I will till the day I die. It's the same with my magic.
I don't practice. I train.
So look out, Penn and Teller,
because here comes me and my bass.
- From Queens, New York,
give it up for illusionist Jazz Man S.
- My name is Jazz Man S,
and I am the world's only comic jazz "mugician."
That's one half magician and one half musician.
I owe a great deal of my success to my assistant,
and I'd like for you to meet her, my magical bass,
Little Betsy.
Now, Betsy and I have traveled the world
making beautiful music together.
We've shared the stage with Wynton Marsalis,
the Duke Ellington Orchestra.
We've toured with Stevie Wonder.
We've played for five Broadway shows,
and we even have two CDs out.
I love Betsy more than anything else in the world.
I even had a girlfriend who left me because of Betsy.
She couldn't stand playing second fiddle.
[laughter]
Now let me tell you all of the wonderful things I love
about Betsy:
her long, slender neck, her E string,
her A string, her D string,
and, of course, her G string.
Now don't go getting weirded out.
I know she's just a musical instrument,
but to a mugician, she's much more than that.
How you feeling, Betsy, dear?
Is that right?
Betsy said that she's tired.
Well, she should be.
You see, we had a gig until 3:30 in the morning yesterday,
so if you'll excuse me for just one moment,
I've got to put her to rest. Here you go Betsy, dear.
Yeah, how's that, honey? Yeah.
Oh, one more thing: she hates the air-conditioning.
She says that the cold air disturbs her beauty rest
and takes her out of tune,
so if you'll bear with me for one more moment,
I've got to get her wrapped up. Here you go, honey.
Remember I told you that my girlfriend
actually left me because of Betsy?
Well, here's how that went down.
One time she walked in on me while I was getting Betsy
all wrapped up and nice and cozy,
and she looked at me, and she said,
"You love that bass fiddle more than you love me."
I said, "Well, honey, I love you too,
but can you do this?"
[upbeat music]
♪ ♪
- And that is the story of my magical,
beautiful bass fiddle, Betsy.
[cheers and applause]
- Jazz Man S!
Hi.
- Hello.
- It's so nice to see you. - Pleasure is mine.
- How long have you been playing the bass?
- Let's see, about 40 years. - Oh.
So what was your very first magic trick?
- My very first magic trick? - Mm-hmm.
- Well, I was born on the West Side of Chicago,
which is kind of a rough neighborhood, and it still is.
I was in the second grade,
and I was approached by two gangs of kids.
Yeah, at recess, and they approached me,
and they said "We want you to join our street gang.
Whose gang are you going to be in?"
So I said, "I don't want to be in a gang of punks,
"so you guys fight it out, and whoever wins,
I'll join your gang."
So they started fighting, and about 5 minutes later,
after the dust had settled, they looked around
and said "Where is he?" I had disappeared.
- That's the smartest trick you probably ever did.
- That was the first magic trick, yes.
- Wow. Is there an art form
to putting together a great show?
- Definitely.
When I approach putting together a show,
I don't think about the tricks. I think about the effect
that it's going to have on the audience.
How do they feel about it? Do they laugh?
Do they relate to it in some way,
shape, form or fashion? That's why I designed Betsy,
so that husbands and wives and girlfriends and boyfriends
can kick each other underneath the table.
- Okay, well, we were jazzed to have you on the stage,
so let's see if you fooled them.
- Okay. - Oh, Jazz Man, how long
is it going to take to get this stupid grin off my face?
I've got to tell you, there could not be an act
more in the pocket for me.
I just--you know, I play upright.
- I know.
- And I love it so much, and I love jazz so much,
and I saw that bass there.
I think you might've heard me as you were coming down.
I was just hooting. I just love that so much.
It's just so great, and Teller and I have been talking about
doing a levitation with my version of Betsy.
I have a nice Italian bass that goes back a while
that I play that we thought about floating around.
And this is just a beautiful, beautiful setup,
and you really do play and play well.
- Yes. - And I've got to tell you,
if you were writing an act just for me, personally,
you couldn't do better than this.
I was grinning every moment, loving every single bit of it.
And the one thing I'll tell you,
now that it's time to say whether you fooled us or not,
is I can tell you this very clearly,
and I think you'll know what I'm talking about
when I tell you it's all about the bass.
That's how you did that trick. It's all about the bass.
- Okay.
- You know what I'm talking about.
- Yes. Yes.
You know what you're talking about.
- You can read between the lines there.
I think you could pick up on that.
- Is that right, Jazz Man? - Yes, it is true.
- Is it all about the bass? - It is. Yes, it is.
- So you didn't fool them? - No, I didn't.
- What a great act. [applause]
- Oh, well, you really entertained all of us.
Thank you so much.
- It's certainly been a pleasure.
- Jazz Man S.
- Nice moves.
- Penn and Teller aren't off the hook yet.
They've got more acts to take on
when "Fool Us" returns.
[jazz music]
- Welcome back to "Fool Us." The next magician
trying to baffle our boys is this performer.
- Growing up I had two dads.
My biological father was absent, off in jail,
and my stepfather, who's really my dad,
see, my dad being present in my life taught me
to be present in the life of my family and my friends,
and really on stage,
I want to be present
in the moment with my audience.
Even though I've done the show 1,000 times,
they're seeing it for the first time,
and I want to experience it with them.
There's a craziness to my show where cards are flying around,
and Skittles are flying, and pieces are everywhere,
but in the end, I like to show how there's meaning
and there's purpose in the mess,
that that's not the end of our story,
but that's part of our story.
This trick is something I designed myself.
I was trying to find a way into Penn and Teller's heart.
I mean, how difficult can it be to get in there
with, you know, the right equipment?
Penn and Teller, keep your eye on this one.
♪ ♪
- Buckle up and ride along with the magic of Danny Ray.
- Hi, Alyson. - Hi.
- You're going to be perfect for this.
You know why? - Uh-uh.
- Because as any "Fool Us" fan knows,
you love dangerous magic.
- Oh. - So, Alyson...
- [mock-crying] Yes.
- I could assure you that this device is very dangerous.
- I--you got me all wrong. Oh!
- Let's make sure it's working, Alyson.
- Let's not. Okay.
- Yeah, it's working.
Now, can you verify that that would have a devastating impact
on anything that it hit?
- Yeah. - Yeah, okay.
And, Alyson, what do you think would happen
if this hook hit somebody directly in the eyeball?
- I think that would be horrendous.
- Alyson? - What?
I don't like you anymore.
What are you...
Teller, you're perfect for this.
- Thank you.
Thank you so much for helping me.
- Uh-uh.
- Okay, let me just show what would happen.
I want you to imagine that this egg
with a green eye on it is your eye.
- No. - And imagine that that's
behind this device, and that pin was pulled.
- Wait, wait, wait, wait. Wait, wait.
Is that hard boiled?
- It is not hard boiled. - Oh, my God.
I'm going to go back over there, please.
Oh, jeez.
- If that trigger was pushed,
that would be a bad day right there.
- Oh. - Yeah. Yeah.
- Great. - All right.
Here, let's do this. Let's get that out of here.
Yeah, that is beautiful right there.
There's a little eye juice right there, Alyson.
That's fun. It's all right.
- You just seemed so nice.
Like, you had a nice smile... - I apologize.
- And then this.
- Apparently I've already fooled you.
- Yes. Great trick, everybody.
- So, Alyson, for the remainder of this,
I need you to hold your eyeball right here.
- No! That's not okay.
- Okay.
I wouldn't ask you to do that.
If anybody is going to get hurt,
that's going to be my job.
Your job is to make sure
I don't end up a sight for sore eyes.
- Oh.
Aw. - So, Alyson...
- Yeah? - Let me show you what we have.
We have four metal plates.
Now, three of these have holes going right through them.
Now, imagine for a moment that one of these,
with a hole in it, was placed into this envelope,
that envelope placed into the device,
and that device had
my eyeball behind... - Okay.
- Yeah, that would be bad.
- Yeah, I mean, just imagining it is bad.
- Yeah. - Is that the trick?
- That is not the trick.
- I think it should be the trick.
- Because this is what we have. - Oh, that's...
- It's a solid steel shield. - Okay.
- This will stop the hook
from going directly through my eyeball,
which is kind of the point, right?
- Yeah, yeah.
- So you keep your eye on this one.
- Can I touch it? - Sure, if you want to.
- No, I just want to make sure
it's the one that goes in there.
- So here we go. I'm going to move these over.
In a moment, I'm going to have you move these around, okay?
- Okay. - You can move them around
however you want, okay?
So you can just mix them up.
- All right. - But at the end of it,
you have to know where the one with the shield is.
Does that make sense? - Mm-hmm.
- Okay, so I'm going to turn around.
You start to mix them up. When I turn back around,
I'm going to try to read your verbal
and your nonverbal language,
your face, your reactions, to figure out
which one has the shield. Can I turn around?
- Sure. - Okay. Alyson, here we go.
You're--no hints or clues. No hints or clues.
So I don't know whether you're lying to me,
or you're messing with me. Here's what I want you to do,
because I only have one shot to get this right.
- Mm-hmm. - One shot to find the shield.
- I really want you to get this right.
- Now, no hints or clues, just follow my hand.
Here--ooh, interesting.
I do think... Maybe.
It's one of...
Okay, I'm going to go with this one.
Alyson, I do think
you were telling the truth. Is this it?
- Yeah, I hope so. - That's a big hint.
That's a big hint. - Oh, okay.
- So here we go.
- Oh, God. - I told you no hints.
- Do I--I can't... - Here we go.
- Okay, I... - On the count of three.
One...
- I don't want to see this.
- Maybe just watch with one eye open--
[both yell]
Alyson, that definitely does not have the shield.
Are you messing with me right now?
- No. That was the right one.
- That was not the right one. - It was the right one.
See, I told you this was a bad idea.
- Did you really think this had the shield?
- Yeah. - Do you know where...
If you had to guess right now, which one would you guess?
Just point to one.
- I don't know.
I mean, that was the one.
I swear that was the one.
- Okay, so if you had to guess you would go with this one?
Here's the problem, Alyson, is we can't guess.
We can't guess. You know why?
The eye that you think is pretty is on the line.
That one is on the line.
Okay, so no more guessing, okay?
No more guessing.
- I was the wrong person for this job, clearly.
- Alyson. - Yeah.
- I'm going to lock this up.
So, Alyson, here's what I think,
is I think maybe on a subconscious level
you still know where it is.
- I don't. I never did.
- You don't? We just have to unlock it.
Let's look at the situation. We have two metal plates.
- Right. - One is solid, one has a hole.
- Yeah. - One will save my eye.
One will make it pop like a grape.
Yeah. So, Alyson...
- Yeah.
- I'm going to put my eye into your hands.
- Please don't. - I might have to in a moment
because you're going to make the final choice.
- Clearly this is wrong.
- Yeah, so whichever one you choose,
just using your instincts, will go into the device,
and my eyeball will go on the line.
No second-guessing, no do-overs.
Alyson, right now,
I want you to point to the one you believe is the shield. Go.
- Which one do you want me to point to?
- Here we go.
[mischievous music]
♪ ♪
- This is dumb.
- Alyson... - No.
♪ ♪
On the count of three. - W-w-w-whoa...
Oh, God. - One.
- No.
- Two... - Mm-mm.
- Three.
Ah, my eye!
My eye is all right. It's all right.
But, Alyson, had you gone with this one over here,
I would have a whole different outlook on life right now.
Alyson, thank you for choosing life for this eyeball.
You're awesome. I really appreciate your help.
Let's give it up for Alyson. Thank you, Alyson.
- [flatly] Yeah, me! Hooray!
- This is mean. - I'm sorry to do that to you.
- Are you just pretend nice? - No, this is only, like,
you know, a little piece of, like, my life, you know?
But these are the things that come out of my head.
- Ugh, so you, like, wake up
in the middle of the night with a nightmare,
and then, like, "Oh, that's a perfect trick"?
- Yeah, that is a problem.
- You know, if you had a magic master class,
what would you teach?
- Ooh. More the philosophy
behind how you fool somebody,
how you design stuff.
To me, that's more interesting than some of the,
you know, mechanics of how it's done.
How about you?
What would your master's class be?
- How to avoid getting picked
for tricks like this.
Shall we see if Penn and Teller know
how you magically saved your eye?
- Yes, let's find out. - Hey, Danny.
- Hi there. - What a...
And I mean this as the highest compliment,
what a goofball trick, just the goofiest thing,
putting your eye against some weird machine
and then having Alyson choose. It's just beautiful.
I really liked it, and the egg looked great,
the drawing on the egg, and we got an idea
that the holes in the metal were not really in the center.
- No. - Okay, that wasn't my guess.
- What? - That sounded like a guess.
- I was just musing aloud.
- All right. All right.
- That's the way someone else might do it,
is what I was saying, not the way you did it.
We think that that gizmo you got there--
That gizmo that looks like nothing on planet Earth
but is rusty and old, but what would you ever use that for?
Who would ever make a device to do that other than you?
It's not old. You developed it,
and we think that that machine
can decide whether it goes through or not,
and you have some sort of switch.
Well, we don't know exactly what it is,
but we think that you didn't fool us
because your machine there has got some sort of gimmick.
Is the machine gimmicked?
- The machine is not gimmicked in any way.
- See, what I understood you to say was that the machine
was not gimmicked in any way. Can we get a little?
- Yeah.
- It's even much more beautiful.
- I'm going to lock it into place here.
- So that's locked. - You have to pull the pin
if you're really going to do that.
- Having flashbacks.
- Oh!
Okay, and there's no gimmick in here at all?
- There's no gimmick in it. - I just asked you outright.
You're giving us your word as a lying magician.
Okay. Then I'll give you our word.
You fooled us.
[applause]
- Thank you so much. - We have a Fooler.
Yay!
- Yes! - There it is.
Take it away, please.
- All right. - That's a beautiful thing.
Up close, it's even more beautiful.
- It is. Thank you so much.
- Danny Ray!
- Thank you so much. You guys are awesome.
Thank you.
- We have our first Fooler of the night
and maybe not the last.
Come back and see Penn and Teller
take on more magicians after this.
[jazz music]
- Welcome back.
One magician just won a slot in Penn and Teller's show.
Will our next act join them? Let's find out.
- I didn't really think
I could become a magician on stage
because of my speech... [stuttering] impediment.
I would stutter.
But I saw on the "Ed Sullivan Show"
a lot of magicians on there didn't speak.
They did their acts in pantomime.
I was like,
"Oh, that's something that I could do."
So I developed an act in pantomime and ended up
winning a lot of awards for my magic.
I wanted to develop a one-man show
about my experiences,
and to that, you needed to speak.
It was terrifying, but I kept at it
until I was able to speak on stage for a whole hour.
Hello, everyone.
My name is Bobby Torkova, and welcome to my show.
This is a dream come true tonight.
Who would've thought that this scared little kid
would be on this big stage,
performing for Penn and Teller?
[applause]
- Let's give a big warm welcome to Bobby Torkova.
[applause]
[big band music]
♪ ♪
- Bobby Torkova!
That was so enjoyable.
- Thank you. I'm glad you liked it.
- I could watch that every 4th of July.
- Absolutely.
- I always find that so fascinating,
that people who stutter,
often times performing is what winds up helping them.
- Yeah, at times. It's difficult.
I mean, people who stutter and sing,
they don't have any trouble with that,
but speaking is still an issue.
But a part of my therapy as an adult was to go on stage
and actually stutter even when I wasn't going to,
and I developed a one-man show
which is based on my experiences growing up
and learning how to do tricks from the comic books,
and now I can do the whole show,
and I speak on stage.
- That's so cool. - Yeah.
- Do you perform a lot of silent tricks?
- I do. I do.
I think for the first 20 years of my career,
I performed silently on stage
because I was too afraid to speak,
but then I wanted to do a longer act,
and you have to speak.
You can't do, you know, two hours of silent stuff.
I tried.
- Well, that was wonderful.
Let's see if you fooled Penn and Teller.
- Okay.
- Hey, Bobby. Good to see you.
Boy, that's classic magic,
which we do not get enough of on the show,
a good, classic silk dye routine,
a lot of Al Baker in there
and a story going all the way through, not just silk dyeing,
but actually going through the whole thing.
And I'll tell you, the drop of the blue handkerchief
looks like a real accident. - Oh, good.
- And that's a really nice moment
when you start thinking you're a step ahead of the magician,
the magician is really a step ahead of you.
And the good news is,
we love having classic magic done beautifully.
The stuff you're doing there is really hard.
There's hard manipulation stuff in there,
and it's really, really wonderful.
But the fact that it's classic means we're thrilled
to have you on the show, and the fact that it's classic
also means we probably know how you did it.
- Right. I figured that.
- Just wonderful.
- So they know the magic?
- Yeah, I think they have a very good idea.
- Yeah. Well, thank you so much.
It was wonderful watching you perform.
- It was a pleasure. - Bobby Torkova.
[applause]
Stay right where you are, because after the break,
Penn and Teller take center stage.
[applause]
[jazz music]
♪ ♪
- Welcome back.
Penn and Teller have been dazzling audiences
for more than 4 decades.
Here with a little trip down Memory Lane
is our legendary duo, Penn and Teller.
[applause]
- My children are teenagers now,
but especially when they were younger,
Teller was a great uncle.
He'd always do little magic tricks for the children.
One of his favorite things to do
was to tell them about his partner before me--
It was named Pen, but with one N--
And the tricks that Pen, one N, and Teller would do,
and the trick he loved to tell them about
was how he would take Pen with one N
and tear him apart, rip him apart,
and then magically put him back together.
He couldn't just put him back together like this.
He had to do this and then take a little bit of whiffle dust
and put Pen with one N back together.
[applause] - They loved this trick.
Teller would do it over and over again,
and finally the children started to kind of catch on,
for the way you would do a destroyed
and restored something is, you have a duplicate.
So Teller always had a duplicate prop,
another Pen with one N,
and he would have that hidden in his hand.
And then he would take the Pen with one N
that the children saw, rip it apart,
and the children knew he had the duplicate in his hand,
and he would just switch them.
So the children would watch for the switch.
And then he went to his pocket for the whiffle dust,
he would ditch the pieces, come out with the whiffle dust
and then just show the duplicate.
So by the time my children were, like, 8 or 9,
they were pretty sophisticated in watching magic.
And then one day, we were all at the park,
just relaxing, having a good time,
and the children would always check
Uncle Teller's hands if he wasn't doing tricks,
to make sure there was nothing hidden in his hands.
They were very, very careful, and Teller had a balloon,
and Teller was just going to play with the children
with a balloon. He's blowing it up,
and the whole time he's blowing the balloon,
they're watching the balloon of course,
but they're also making sure his hands are completely empty.
Now I don't remember exactly what happened that day--
Maybe there's some really mean guy in the park--
But all of a sudden, the balloon just popped.
Now the children said
"Uncle Teller, put the balloon back together."
But Teller tried to amuse them in other ways.
He said "Well, wait a minute, I can use the pieces.
It can be a mustache." The children didn't care.
He said "Hey, children, it could be earrings,"
and the children didn't care.
And he said "Hey, children, it could be snot."
Now they liked the blue snot a little better,
but then he said
"How about, children, if I have a boutonniere?"
And the children didn't know what a boutonniere was
and didn't care at all. But Teller still did it.
Then he said, "How about we do some music?"
And he turned the balloon pieces into a kazoo.
They didn't care.
Then he turned it into a guitar.
I just said, "Pluck it."
There we go.
And then they said, "No, Uncle Teller,
"we saw your hands empty. We saw no switch.
"Why don't you just restore it, you know,
like you did Pen with one N, but without a duplicate?"
And sure enough, Teller just blew up the balloon,
and no matter how sophisticated they were,
they were impressed with that.
[applause]
- Aw. [laughs]
For tiny Penn and tiny Teller
and all of us here at "Fool Us,"
good night from Las Vegas. We'll see you soon.
[applause]