Last night my wife, son, and I had the chance to see Penn & Teller bring their Las Vegas show to Atlantic City.
It was, as I expected, fabulous.
The show started off with a clever trick involving an audience member’s cell phone, and later included several memorable tricks, one of which was a cool audience participation trick involving four playing cards and a cup.
I have been a long-time fan of Penn & Teller’s, having seen them first perform as part of Asparagus Valley Cultural Society when I was in college. (I actually got to juggle with Penn after that show – read here about how I completely choked). I saw them again a short time later at Walnut Street Theater in Philadelphia, but that was almost 40 years ago.
I’ve watched with great joy their career skyrocket over the years, and had their Las Vegas show on my bucket list. Since I had no idea if I would ever get to Vegas, you can imagine how excited I was when I saw they were coming to Atlantic City.
My excitement really peaked a few weeks ago when I actually got in a Twitter exchange with Penn. I had posted the following tweet about a story in the Wall Street Journal about performers who play afternoon shows:
Sober Crowds and 2-for-1 Specials: The Thriving Daytime Acts of Vegas https://t.co/mY8HxDA81k @Big_Elvis @pennjillette @vegasmentalist
— Jim Borden (@jimborden) October 6, 2016
//platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsWell as it turned out Penn retweeted my tweet, and so I thanked him for doing so:
@pennjillette thanks for the retweet; looking forward to your show in AC; haven’t seen you live since Asparagus Valley Cultural Society!
— Jim Borden (@jimborden) October 6, 2016
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And then what really made my night, well actually my year decade was when Penn replied to this tweet with the following:
@jimborden Wow. We’ll try to be good.
— Penn Jillette (@pennjillette) October 6, 2016
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It’s not often, well never, that the top performer in Las Vegas enters into a brief chat with me on Twitter. I even woke up my wife to tell her; she didn’t quite share my enthusiasm.
And I can now say that they were more than good, they were great.
The highlight of their shows, for me, is when Penn does some juggling. Penn is a world-class juggler, and he did some juggling with liquor bottles that looked fairly risky, but he pulled it off flawlessly.
So thank you Penn & Teller for an outstanding performance; hopefully it’s not another 40 years until I see you again.
I think I need to plan a quick trip to Vegas see the two of you again, and while I’m there, I’ll also check out Jeff Civilico…
By the way, if you’ve never seen Penn & Teller in action, here’s a short clip:
Borden's Blather 