I love gospel magic. Gospel music is a valid, inspirational form of music that comes out of Christianity. Gospel magic isn’t a real form of magic. It’s standard hack magic shop tricks presented as Christian parables. Christian music is among the best music of all time, from Bach to Ray Charles. In contrast, Christian comedy and magic aren’t the best comedy and magic in the world. The tricks aren’t deep foolers and the comedy is always with a k. The word “zany” is used a lot in the gospel magic press materials. I’m tempted to try to make the point that Christian magicians’ tricks aren’t that good because they feel that if Christians believe that Bible shit, how hard can it be to convince them that cupped right hand with the thumb sticking out and “flashes” between the fingers is empty and not palming a card that reads “John 3:16” in barely legible “Magic” marker? That’s an unfair shot; I don’t think gospel magicians do any cynical analysis at all. I think they’re sincere—most of them just aren’t that good. But most of all art isn’t that good, so they’re not special in that way either.
I love gospel magic because I don’t care much about the tricks being real mysteries. I ignore comedy with a k. Who cares? I love the passion of gospel magic and the naïveté, but mostly I love the strained, overextended metaphors. A strained, overextended metaphor is a constantly changing labyrinth full of warm hot chocolate, where every belabored, sliding non-45-degree turn is uncertain and desperate like a waterslide crafted by a dull child on acid with a love of shapes and no knowledge of physics or architecture but a passion to not give up until everyone gets to the giant pool of marshmallow fluff at the bottom.
Let me lay on you the kind of performance you might see in gospel magic. The gospel magician takes the sports water bottle he’s been sipping throughout his metaphor-packed show and starts a parable trick about how it’s god’s pure water that he’s been drinking. He takes a big gulp and explains that the water is free of sin, the same way god created Adam and Eve, pure, fresh, and clear—even though it always seems like Eve’s pussy is pure evil, but the Holy Houdini doesn’t say that. He pours some of the water out of the bottle into a clear glass so the audience can appreciate the crystal virginity of sinless water that’s way away from Eve’s dirty woman hole, and takes another sip from the glass. Then the magic Christian (and not the cool movie The Magic Christian, starring Ringo Starr and Raquel Welch, who herself sported a perfect pair of totally solid chocolate bunnies) explains that sin comes along. (Writing “sin” and thinking about Raquel Welch’s breasts as hefty solid chocolate bunnies is bringing a nice little solidity to the mighty fortress that is my jeans.) Mr. Christ-a-gician doesn’t explain why an all-powerful god doesn’t just stop sin. He doesn’t want to open that can of bees. I use the metaphor “a can of bees” instead of the “can of worms” cliché because, as Goudeau has pointed out, opening a can of worms is no big deal. Can of worms—so what? But opening a can of bees—that’s an unpleasant emergency. Explaining why god gave us sin only to hate us for it is a fucking can of angry wasps in an enclosed space. After not explaining why there’s sin at all, magic boy brings out some brown liquid and pours that into the clear, pure water, and the whole glass of water turns yucky brown. The faithful conjurer says that when sin is added to the water, the water becomes “gross.” He might use the word “gross” to show that he’s down with the youngsters. “Gross” is like gangsta slang in Branson, Missouri.
Now it’s time for some clever patter about how any amount of being good can’t get you into heaven. This is a can of mutant immortal white-faced hornets that gospel magicians seem thrilled to open with impunity in the claustrophobic dirty-old airtight phone booth that is their gospel magic act. It’s another part of Christianity that is so fucked and twisted. You need some line like “Living a good life and doing good deeds won’t get you into heaven.” That’s a little more of the disappointing hollow chocolate rabbit full of red harvester ants that is Christianity. The Bible Blackstone explains that, nope, no amount of being good to people will get rid of the gross brown sin. The saved conjurer pours more clear sinless water into the dirty sinful Raquel Welch/Ringo Starr-in-the-trailer-between-takes water and it stays sinful. God doesn’t give a fuck how good you are, you are fucked without fucking Jesus. (That’s not the actual patter, but that’s the idea. The real patter is probably more like “God doesn’t care how good you are, he still thinks your sins are gross.”)
Then the pious prestidigitator pulls out a model cross about the size of Ron Jeremy’s dick and stirs up the gross sinful water in the glass that represents that glass of life that holds our dirty water, and it clears up miraculously to pure, clean, clear, no-vagina water again. That’s the message of salvation. The all-powerful god makes us sinful and we can’t get un-sinful no matter what, unless we pray to that all-powerful god to do what he could have done for us in the Garden of Eden without all this genocide, slavery, torture, and hate. For a guy like me, who loves overextended nonsense metaphors, this is almost as good as Raquel Welch in The Magic Christian. In 2012 I should be talking about jacking off to someone sexy and modern like Justin Bieber, but I was fourteen when The Magic Christian came out and I went to see it because it had a Beatle in it, and I stayed after the show because I couldn’t stand up in public for an hour after watching Raquel Welch. She had a whip. Fuck.
To be a good magic trick and make the theological point, the Wizard of the Word needs to drink the newly pure water, but he doesn’t—the trick has to end with the cross-stirring. The evangelical enchanter won’t drink the clear pure water because it’s not clear pure water, it’s a chemical cocktail that god can’t make pure any more than god can magically take our trespasses away. The presentation explains divine truth with what is admittedly a magic trick, but it’s an overextended strained metaphor that isn’t even true. If god’s love were real, would you have to buy a magic trick to show it? They’re justifying a fairy tale with a lie, and that’s why I love gospel magic. At a very deep level it really is true. They are explaining the way the universe works with an example of their god that doesn’t work, just like the real world. There isn’t even skill involved. There’s no sleight of hand. No magic skills whatsoever are required. You just buy the chemicals, mix them up, and the trick works, except for no punch line—you can’t drink the supposedly pure water. If I set it up for you right now and put your patter on a teleprompter, you could do the whole trick cold. You don’t need to practice or rehearse, just don’t drink the “water” at the end.
There is no good antonym for “gospel,” but let’s imagine this trick being done by a magician who embraces the real world and science and has the same low level of skill as a cheesy gospel magician: Me. How would I do this trick?
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Here’s my presentation for the Atheist Magic version of the “Gross Water as Sin Trick.”
“You see this pure water I’ve been drinking? This is tap water that I put in a sports bottle to save some plastic, some carbon, and some coin. If we left this water to god, it would be full of parasites and disease. Without filtering, and a touch of man-made chemicals, I’d be drinking dysentery or worse. God seems to want water to either be non-existent or deadly. This water is pure not because of god, but in spite of god.
“This chemical I’m adding to the water is iodine. Iodine is processed by humans for many nutritional and medical applications. Trace amounts of iodine are needed for human health, so humans have added it to table salt in most of the world, but where humans haven’t added it, god has chosen to leave about two billion people without it. This gives rise to hypothyroidism, the symptoms of which include but are not limited to: extreme fatigue, goiters, and mental retardation. If there was a god, couldn’t he give some iodine to those two billion?
“I’m also sneaking in a little starch to make the water look really gross.” (Atheists like komedy and use the word “gross” too.) “Iodine is an indicator for starch, so a little spray starch snuck in the water binds the iodine and really gives a strong rich co
lor. Hmmm, if I snuck this starch into the clear water with a bit less iodine, I could make what looked just like water turn into something that looked just like wine. Never mind, no one would ever fall for a shitty trick like that. I’ve got enough starch and iodine in the water so that it’s not a pleasing purple like wine. I’ve put in enough of this cocktail that it’s kind of gross, and putting in more water doesn’t dilute it enough to change the color much.
“Now, I have this model of a torture and execution device that was used in ancient times. Yes, we still have capital punishment in this country and that’s unforgivable. The USA is very religious, so of course we still have capital punishment. Fortunately, there is a movement to get rid of capital punishment, but god is doing nothing to help eliminate this torture and murder—like the clean water and iodine, the good for the people is done by the people.
“This cross has ascorbic acid on it, or stuck to the back, or inside it, or something, I don’t know, I just bought this stupid trick at a magic shop. Ascorbic acid is vitamin C, necessary to human health and again withheld by god. God is fine with people having scurvy. If this citrus cross is used to represent Christianity, when it gets put into the sinful water, it makes the water look clear. Water has a neutral pH, and iodine is either neutral or slightly basic. The starch is also basic, so when it reacts with the iodine to produce the purple color, the resulting solution is also weakly basic. The ascorbic acid, as the name would lead you to believe, is acidic, so adding it to the solution moves the pH into the acidic range, which breaks down the starch, releasing the iodine back into the solution and ‘shutting off’ the purple color. It looks like clear pure water but it isn’t. Christianity allows Christians to feel forgiven for the horrible things they’ve done, but if I were to drink this cross-purified water, it’s actually still full of iodine and starch. Although the cross has made it look pure, it’s still poison. You can’t pray away the damage your malevolence, mistakes, and thoughtlessness have brought. The forgiving change brought about by Christianity is merely cosmetic—the sin, the hate, the poison are still there.
“Iodine is necessary for humans but this would be overdoing it. This trick requires a lot of iodine to get my water gross enough. One gulp of the not-gross-looking-but-still-toxic water probably wouldn’t kill you. It would taste like rancid sin (think Eve’s privates), but it probably wouldn’t kill you. If you get booked in a lot of church basements doing your gospel act, you’d probably eventually hit over a gram of iodine and that could lead to burning in the mouth, throat and stomach, and/or abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, weak pulse, and coma.
“Seems like a small price to pay to demonstrate god’s love, so I guess I’ll drink it down.”
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That’s the version I would perform, and I would drink all the water at the end. Why not? I’m not the best sleight-of-hand artist, but I’m a passable stage magician. On a big body turn, I could certainly switch the phony, sickening Jesus-cleaned water glass for a glass of real, clean American tap water that was hanging under my suit jacket with a rubber ball in the top to keep it from spilling. A glass switch isn’t that hard.
Happy Easter.
May all your chocolate rabbits be solid.
Listening to: “Gloria: In Excelsis Deo”—Patti Smith
HITCH AND TOMMY
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS AND TOMMY ARDOLINO were my friends. I loved them both, but I should have been closer to both of them. Time doesn’t just steal the future, it steals the past.
When Martin Amis and Salman Rushdie have written about something or someone, it’s best for Penn Jillette to just stay away. Let geniuses write about love and truth and honor, and I’ll stick to stories about dropping my cock in a blow-dryer. If you want to know what a brave and wonderful man Hitch was, go with Marty and Sally, they’re playing on Hitch’s level.
I’ve read God Is Not Great twice and I will go back to it again and again. I find tremendous comfort in that book. Shortly after I read it, I went into the hospital. I was sick enough to be in the hospital, but only because I’m a pussy. I felt well enough to pull the IV out of my arm every night, go to the Penn & Teller Theater at the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, do our show, then go back to the hospital and be put on morphine. Hospital staff told me I couldn’t leave the hospital, but Nevada law says they couldn’t keep me there, so I left to do the show. Nevada law also says they have to let me back in, so I commuted to and from the hospital. Someday I will be too sick to do the show, and then the show won’t go on, but as long as I can pull the IVs out, I might as well do the show. What else have I got to do? If you can do a Vegas show, you’re not really knock knock knockin’ on heaven’s door, but for someone who has suffered as little as I have, I felt pretty sick. Some would turn to the Bible for solace when watching the IV drip, but I reread God Is Not Great and it gave me the rage to live. Hitch’s insistence on the real world makes the real world better.
I loved the too few and too brief times I spent with Hitch in person. I treasure my many e-mails from him, often signed “Insha’Allah.” I started my book God, No! by writing about Hitch being so much smarter than me, even when he was drinking. I used the term “shit-faced” to joke about his drinking and my amazement at his intellectual ability despite the cocktails. Even though Hitch was dying, he used some of his too precious time to read my book and sent me a kind e-mail saying he would have liked my book more if I hadn’t insulted him on the first page. I was wrong to write about his drinking. What I thought was friendly ribbing was insult. So I called my editor at home in the middle of the night and begged her to let me rewrite the first two pages. She let me and I made it a little better. I sent the less insulting version to Hitch. He forgave me, but that was kind of my last real exchange with him. He was dying, he took time to read my book, and I insulted him. Fuck.
Hitch liked to drink and I’ve never had a drink in my life. Hitch was never “shit-faced.” He was more lucid and clearheaded than anyone I have ever met. I know nothing about drinking. When Hitch thought of drinking, he thought about Winston Churchill; when I thought about drinking, I thought about my fourteen-year-old school friends throwing up on my shoes. I thought about those same children wrapping their parents’ cars around telephone poles and dying young and not even leaving beautiful corpses. To Hitch, drinking meant being a grown-up. To me drinking meant never getting to be an adult and never getting out of Greenfield, Massachusetts. I never saw a grown-up who I respected drink until I was a grown-up. Maybe until I met Hitch.
Hitch was in town when we had a pretty fine rough cut of The Aristocrats and I invited him over to my house to see it with a few other friends. It was the only time Hitch ever visited my home. He arrived, I think in a cab, with a bottle of liquor in his hand. I could go to the Web and search what he drank, and write in “Johnnie Walker” and some color, but I don’t really remember, and it really doesn’t matter. I just know it was a bottle of alcohol.
I greeted him on the porch and I saw the bottle in his hand. I looked at the bottle, smiled apologetically and said, “I really don’t like having alcohol in my house.” Hitch looked at the bottle and looked at me, and said, with a sneer, “Well, I guess I should respect your religious beliefs.” I was arguing, on my front porch, with the greatest debater in the world.
“It’s not religious, Hitch, you know that.”
“It most certainly is, and you expect me to respect that.”
I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t mind his lit cigarette—people smoked in the Slammer all the time—but I liked that there had never been alcohol in my home. I had invited Hitch to be a guest in my home, and he had a bottle in his hand. We stood facing each other, one of the most brilliant minds of our time and me.
“I really don’t want you to come into my house with that bottle.”
“Are you going to stop me? Will you physically stop me from coming into your home?”
When I wrote what he said in quotation marks and read it on my co
mputer screen, it had a swagger. It’s like something from an action movie, but please try to reread it as a simple question. A question asked without any attitude at all. Just a request for information. If it were Hitch puffing out his chest and pretending to be an action hero, he’d be an asshole, but he wasn’t. It was a simple request for information. I’m the asshole. There was never going to be an exchange between Hitch and Penn where Hitch doesn’t win. It was asked as a simple question.
It’s hard, in emotional or comedic situations, to simply ask a question the way Hitch asked if I was going to physically stop him from entering my house with a bottle in his hand. Hitch just wanted to know what I was going to do.
I looked at him, looked at the bottle, looked at my home and I thought about it. I answered as honestly as I could. There’s no other way I could be around Hitch. Lying was a waste of time. He was too smart. I answered him honestly, “I don’t know.”
We looked at each other there on my porch. I couldn’t elaborate much, “I really don’t know what I’m going to do. I don’t want liquor in my house and I love you. I don’t know what I’m going to do. I don’t know.”
I sure wasn’t going to hit him or wrestle him, but would I stand in front of the door to bar him, or would I just open the door for him and welcome my friend into my home with bottle in hand? Hitch looked me in the eye for a long time. Nothing macho was going on. We weren’t two primates working for dominance. Just two men standing silently on my porch in the desert night. I’m always yapping and Hitch was always saying something important, but on that porch we just looked at each other. Finally, without any attitude, he set the bottle down on my porch. Not on a table, or a sill, just outside in the middle of the deck, right in the walkway. He didn’t smile or hug me. He said, “Let’s watch your movie” and walked toward the door. We never found out what I would have done.
Every Day is an Atheist Holiday! Page 19