penn jillette

With only a few days until the premiere of Dancing With The Stars, it's time to start picking favorites. Brett already gave you his analysis of the ladies, and now it's the men's turn to be evaluated. This season we have an athlete, a comedian, a recording artist, a magician, a Latin heartthrob, and an 80's film star--a little something for everybody. So, who's a front runner and who has an uphill climb ahead of them? Read on to find out!

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Reality rules at ABC -- or so it seems. Today the network announced that five "alternative" (their word, not mine) shows have been picked up for next season: Dancing with the Stars (no surprise), Extreme Makeover: Home Edition (still no surprise), Supernanny (understandable), Wife Swap (not too unexpected) and America's Funniest Home Videos (are you kidding me???).

Yes, yes, it's true. Even in this era of YouTube, there's an audience out there that still enjoys America's Funniest Home Videos. ABC has booked it for an 18th season, making it the longest-running primetime show in the network's history. Host Tom Bergeron will be back -- natch -- and more money will be awarded to the funniest videos, which are now DVDs.

That's not me saying that, it's The Los Angeles Times. But I have to agree.

As several of us here have pointed out in the past, just look at the shows that pass for game shows nowadays. Deal Or No Deal has the gimmick of hot chicks and shiny suitcases. So far, so good (every show needs something). But then we get the most annoying guests in the history of television. Seriously, these people are so OUTGOING and have big PERSONALITIES, all of them, that the producers must give them a test before the show and won't pick anyone normal. Even their family members are this way. This was never the case on game shows before, and if you got an episode where it was like that, it stood out.

Now all of these contestants are the same, and so are the shows. After all, what is Identity but Deal Or No Deal, only with humans instead of suitcases? More annoying guests, more luck, and more stupid decisions (honestly, quit while you're ahead). And the l.......o......n.....g, drawn out pauses and "suspense" each show tries to build. Ugh.

I really wanted to like this show, but I couldn't even make it through the first episode. Although, to be honest, the only thing that made me want to check it out was knowing that Penn Jillette was hosting it. I've been a fan of Jillette's for years, both solo and as one-half of Penn and Teller, but watching Identity was like listening to paint dry -- not watching paint dry, listening to it dry, which is much more boring.

Since networks don't make decisions based on my personal preferences, Identity will be returning to NBC Fridays in March. The first new episode will air at 9:00 p.m. on March 16, and will then slide into its regular timeslot beginning March 23 at 8:00 p.m.

Okay readers, should I have given the show more of a chance? Is it actually better than I thought it was? I'll admit I might not have been in the right mood when I watched it. Perhaps I had just been shot down by a girl at the bar, or maybe I ate some bad ham. If you think it deserves a second look, here's your chance to convince me.

(S01E01) The latest in the ever increasing line of game shows is upon us. With Penn Jillette hosting, NBC unveiled Identity last night. After one episode, the show has a lot going for it. To start, Jillette was a great choice for the host. He's good with the guests, manages to keep the show moving along, and a pretty funny guy. The line of the night came when he said of the shark attack victim, "If she didn't have that top on our ratings would be a lot better."

The game itself is rather simple. The contestant is presented with 12 strangers and a list of twelve identities. For each correct guess they move up the money ladder. Correctly identifying all twelve strangers is a $500,000 payoff. They have one mistaken identity in their pocket, so the first miss is a freebie. But a second miss sends them home with no cash.

To aid them in their quest there are two helper options. With "tridentity" they can pick one of the identities and the field will be narrowed down to three potential correct answers. There is also a panel of experts that includes a body language expert, a psychologist, and an fbi agent.

This isn't really a surprise: ABC has canceled the William Shatner game show Show Me The Money.

Even though game shows are all the rage now, especially ones hosted by celebs known for other things (Shatner, Howie Mandel, Bob Saget, Penn Jillette), no one really seemed to care about Show Me The Money, and the ratings for this past week's show were the lowest yet. The network actually ordered more episodes, but they won't be shown either (though I guess we'll have to wait to see how long it takes for the shows to show up on ABC's site, though I bet even that's a long shot).

Did anyone even watch this? I like Shatner, but this held no appeal to me. I fear the same thing about Identity, Jillette's new show. I like Jillette, but this show just seems lame and random. Guessing what other people do for work or what has happened to them by looking at them? Yawn. Looks like Deal Or No Deal, only without the beautiful models and human beings instead of shiny suitcases.

Ben Silverman, the executive producer of Ugly Betty and The Office, has more than sitcoms up his sleeve. Silverman and friends are introducing a game show called Identity to television before the end of the year. Taking the Deal or No Deal approach to scheduling, NBC has decided to fast-track the show and air it every night over an eight night stretch between December 18th and December 22nd. Penn Jillette, one half of magic duo Penn & Teller and co-host of Showtime's Bullshit, will host.

One of my favorite forgotten television specials was Steven Banks: Home Entertainment Center, which aired on Showtime in the late 80s. The special took place in Banks' apartment as he continuously distracts himself with toys, cookies and musical instruments rather than writing a report for his boss. Banks is now a writer for SpongeBob SquarePants and sometimes performs as Billy the Mime. What I didn't know until recently is that Banks also had a short-lived series on PBS titled The Steven Banks Show. How that managed to slip by me, I'll never know, but I did find a great clip from the show featuring Penn and Teller performing a song with Banks called "Clothes of the Dead," a rockin' tribute to thrift stores. Check it out after the jump and thrill at the unconventional keyboard stylings of Teller. Enjoy:

That's The Aristocrats as in the movie from Paul Provenza and Penn Jillette, not The Aristocats, the Disney movie. One of those films is incredibly decadent and depraved, while the other is merely about the world's dirtiest joke. The joke has actually been around since vaudeville times, and it is not, in and of itself, a particularly funny joke, but it's definitely a fun joke to tell because it allows for the teller to embellish and stretch the joke out as long as they want. It's been a dirty little secret among comedians for ages. They sit around trying to come up with the grossest, raunchiest version of the gag they can think of, and the movie skips from one comedian to the next as they each put their own unique twist on it. The movie will make its TV debut on HBO this Wednesday, July 26, at 11 p.m.

South Park co-creator Trey Parker paid a visit to comedian/magician Penn Jillette's radio show the other day, and you can listen to the entire show by clicking over to the PennRadio site. Don't wait too long, though, because they only list shows for the last few days, and there's no archive of past shows. Parker and Jillette talked about all the craziness that has centered around the show in the past year, but Penn also touched on something that often gets ignored in stories about the show, which is that beneath all the subversiveness and political incorrectness, the show can actually be very patriotic, and very human. Parker talks about Isaac Hayes leaving the show, and maintains that Hayes' constituents in the Scientology community had more to do with shaping the aftermath of Hayes' departure than anyone realizes. He also talks about people who have confronted him about the show, and reveals that often it's liberals, and not conservatives, who take issue with the show's subject matter.

Okay, I'm usually not interested in listening to other people talk about politics, and especially not on talk radio, which has a tendency to make all viewpoints, even the ones I agree with, sound annoying. However, magician Penn Jillette had Lawrence O'Donnell on his radio show yesterday to spout off on things political, and it was quite interesting. Of course, you might have the reaction I usually do to these sort of things and find it a complete yawnfest. O'Donnell is a former Chief of Staff of the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance, a political analyst on MSNBC, a panelist on The McLaughlin Group, and was a writer and executive producer for The West Wing. He has some interesting things to say about politics in general, and not always partisan issues, either. Anyway, if that's not your cup of tea, I encourage you to at least skip ahead to about twenty-eight minutes into the show when a cranky old woman calls and all but yells at O'Donnell for all the minor mistakes that popped up on The West Wing.

Yesterday, magician Penn Jillette's wife gave birth to their second child, Zolten. "Zolten" is his wife's maiden name. In a scenario that was quite suitable to the magniloquent magician, his wife actually started giving birth at the hospital while Penn was doing his radio show. Halfway through the show Penn was forced to leave it in the hands of his co-host as he bolted from his home studio and drove through Las Vegas traffic, staying connected to the radio show via his cellphone while his wife and her doctor made calls to the radio show to let Penn and everyone listening know how things were going. You can listen to the chaos in all its glory by clicking here and then clicking on the "May 22" show.

I've been listening to magician Penn Jillete's radio show for awhile now, and it's become perfectly clear that no matter how much he likes you, he'll still insult you. During yesterday's program, which you can listen to here, he and guest Criss Angel spent the hour slamming David Blaine and his stunt in front of Lincoln Center. This isn't the first time Penn has lobbed insults at Blaine, although he always prefaces those insults by saying he does admire Blaine as a performer. Penn's assertion is that most of the card tricks Blaine does could easily be learned by anyone in under six minutes. Of course, one should take Penn's penchant for exaggeration into consideration, as well. Angel, also a fan of Blaine's, claimed he has already done Blaine's underwater stunt, having been submerged in a tank for twenty-four hours. Since math wasn't my best subject I haven't been able to figure out how twenty-four hours is the same as seven days, but there you go. Penn also reiterated something he's been saying all week, which is that his partner Teller has been underwater for more than eleven minutes on more than one occasion as part of their stage show, considerably more than the current record of eight minutes and fifty-eight seconds. Of course, Penn then adds this caveat: "Of course, he was cheating."

So yeah, it's a bit after the fact, but if you want to hear magicians talking smack, it's worth a listen.

I recently started listening to the podcast of Penn Jillette's radio show. Jillette is the loud, boisterous half of comedy/magic team "Penn and Teller," whose show Penn and Teller: Bullshit! is currently in its fourth season on Showtime. At one point, Jillette suddenly went on a hilarious rant about one director's alleged desire to have Paris Hilton play the role of Mother Theresa in an upcoming movie. Ever the contrarian, Penn's rant was not against Hilton, it was against Mother Theresa, whom he claimed did not actually help people get well, but merely set up places where people came to die due to what Penn claimed was some kind of sick perversion on her part.

I almost blogged about this when I heard it, but I think I was distracted by a shiny object or something, because I forgot about it. However, the AP reports that another radio host didn't cotton to Penn's rant, and sarcastically offered to pay a listener $5,000 to kill Jillette. The host, John London, was fired for his comments, along with the show's producer, Denis Cruz, and Chris Townsend, a sports reporter.

Click here for an MP3 of the Penn Radio episode.