Yes, I usually write about Penn and Teller. But Penn has another partner, his wife, Emily.
There is something good about having your ego kicked out from under you. Of course, this can happen in ways of extraordinary embarrassment or simple silliness. The silliness is to be preferred over the embarrassment, and I got lucky that way.
This story begins last week at the Penn & Teller show with me by chance running into Emily Jillette in the audience. She invited my friends and me backstage after the show at Rio. I met Emily recently when I did a cover story on Teller for Las Vegas Weekly. And I like her boisterous personality. I had a surprise with me too. I am huge fan of jazz piano player Mike Jones, who opens the Penn & Teller show. And I thought my guest, Jessica, would be of special interest to Jones. As a little girl her grandfather, bandleader and Los Angeles jazz legend, Gerald Wilson had named his 1982 disc "Jessica" after her. Now she was all grown up in a family steeped in jazz history.
Jones was excited to meet her, he told me later on the phone. But the two did not have a chance to connect because we got distracted by a conversation about Rickrolling. I had never heard of this net prank of redirecting people who click on a link to a video of Rick Astley singing "Never Gonna Give You Up." I know this is old news to most of you as this joke has already made its way to the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. But it was new to me.
This is where the ego came into things. I was totally surprised so many people were fooled by such a silly trick. And, I argued idiotically, that maybe I did not know about it because I simply was too sharp to fall for such ruses. Here are the sort of things my ego was going through. I've never downloaded a virus. I have never tried to collect money on behalf of the many people in Africa with millions in banks they can't get at who e-mail me needing a "Dear Soul" to just help out. And I am always cautious about which link I click on. In fact, I declared, I was quite sure it would be impossible to Rickroll me. And it sort of matters to me, because I grew up in the '80s and there is nothing retro cool in that song; I still find Rick Astley super annoying.
At this point people were beginning to filter into the backstage room, also called the monkey room, because it is decorated in monkeys and not because I was behaving like one. Mike Jones was there. Teller arrived and began having his meal. The last person to come inside, I think, was Penn, by which point the Rickrolling conversation had sort of run its course. Still, Emily told me she would Rickroll me within a week. I actually was aware that I was sounding like a person drunk on ego, but I also truly believed she could not do that and told her so. After all, I had all sorts of advantages that average folk do not, and I do not mean super Rick Astley virus protectors (though in retrospect, I should have searched for some).
1. I knew she was going to try to send me a link and all I had to do was avoid clicking for one week. What could be so important I could not wait a week to win a bet?
2. I also knew she could use Mike Jones or perhaps Teller to assist her and so I knew to click on nothing they sent.
So,how could I be tricked? And it took less than 24 hours.
The culprit, of course, was Penn, who I obviously was also suspicious about, though perhaps less than the others and clearly less than I should have been. Penn just wasn't focused on the Rickrolling conversation. But he apparently did catch the part where I declared I could not be tricked to his wife. You do not put down such a challenge in front of someone who has tricked people for decades and expect to win. I did not win.
Most people do not know of Penn's deep interest in jazz. Further one of the few times I have seen Penn in public outside his show was at a meet-and-greet for Elvis Costello. In addition to her legendary grandfather, another of Jessica's relatives, Anthony Wilson, worked as the guitar player for Costello's wife, Diana Krall. But Penn was not in the room when I told Mike Jones about Jessica's family. And so I was not entirely surprised the next morning when Penn wrote me a note asking if there was any chance he had met Jessica before, as she looked familiar. At this point I should have been extraordinarily suspicious, because as Penn tells audiences every night, he has horrible vision and a terrible visual IQ. He simply does not recognize people well. Instead, I was imagining elite jazz gatherings where perhaps once Penn and Jessica rubbed shoulders. Penn then sent a brief note asking if the link below was in fact a photo of Jessica, and I clicked expecting tuxedos and jazz: Rickrolled.
Now that I have put it all out there you can think maybe you would have been smarter than I was under the circumstances. I think I should have been smarter under the circumstances. But now I know if that link had not worked on me, another would have worked. If the person conning you is good enough, anyone can be tricked especially when the first step to being fooled is the ego that forgets that fact.
Now let me end this post in a very Penn & Teller way by noting what happens when the stakes go from silly (Rickrolling) to embarrassing (scientists being tricked into discovering "real" psychics). Much like reporters, scientists act professionally suspicious and do not expect anyone can trick them. Anyway, if you are at all curious how professionally humiliated you can be by a well executed con, read about the Project Alpha Hoax and see where the we-can't-be-tricked ego took those researchers. I am guessing they would have been thrilled to learn this lesson for the cost to the ears of a Rick Astley song followed by Penn and Emily Jillette gloating.
