The Pen Teller

Teller is best known as the smaller, silent half of those outrageous bad boys of magic, Penn & Teller. He’s also the loving, only son of Joe and Irene Teller, two quirky artists who live in Philadelphia and who have devoted their lives to their only son, whom they call “Kid.”

The recently published “When I’m Dead All This Will Be Yours” (Blast Books, $24.95) is Teller’s sweet and funny portrait of his father (a.k.a. Pad) and mother (a.k.a. Mam). Joe, 87, talks about his experiences riding the rails during the Great Depression, spending World War II in the Philippines and how he and Irene, 92, eloped and lived in garrets with wild canaries in Philadelphia.

The book also is filled with more than 60 cartoons Joe drew in 1939--in hopes of selling them to the Philadelphia Inquirer--and eight pages of his watercolors.

Teller, 52, is the co-author with Penn of “Cruel Tricks for Dear Friends,” “How to Play With Your Food” and “How to Play in Traffic.” A former high school teacher, Teller has seen his articles appear in the New York Times Magazine, the New Yorker and GQ.

During a brief stopover in Los Angeles from Seattle to his home in Las Vegas, the very talkative Teller discussed his parents over a hot dog at Patsy’s restaurant in Toluca Lake. Teller then had his photograph taken at Forest Lawn in Burbank at a cenotaph he and Penn have there that’s part of an elaborate card trick. On the cenotaph is an etching of the three of clubs and the phrase “Is This Your Card?”

Question: Before we talk about your book, I’d like to ask your opinion of magician David Blaine, who recently received oodles of publicity for his stunt in which he spent three days standing in a block of ice.

Answer: I am quoting Penn on this: “He can do something no other working magician can do--take off his shirt in public.” I know him personally. He’s a very nice fellow. I think that his television specials have been among the best magic TV specials I have ever seen. They create a level of reality, whether that reality is real or not is irrelevant. They create a feeling of reality which is a very fresh way of looking at magic. I have enjoyed the TV specials quite a bit. I am a bit perplexed by the idea behind the stunts. But he did accomplish what he wanted to do. He was trying to get his picture in the newspaper and, man, he got his picture in the newspaper.

Q: What was the genesis of “When I’m Dead All This Will Be Yours”?

A: It really did start the way I describe in the book. I was sitting there in the living room reading the Philadelphia Inquirer, the very paper [Pad] tried to get published in 61 years ago, and he said, “Did you ever see my cartoons?” And I said no and we trundled all the way up to their studio on the top floor, and there in the midst of stacks and stacks of paintings was this grimy, decaying portfolio. We took it downstairs and wiped it off with a dishrag and put it on the kitchen table. We started to go through them and for some reason it opened the gate to memories, and that started to lead to other stories.

And then about six years ago I began to realize [my parents] talk differently from other people. I noticed their strange way of making pancakes on Sunday where my father drizzles batter on a griddle to make an abstract painting and gives it to my mother to interpret. These are old artists whose idea of art is very bred in the bone. I started to notice these wonderfully funny ways of looking at the world. I started to keep notes and send them to my friends over the Internet.

Q: Growing up, you didn’t think your parents were different from your friends’ mothers and fathers?

A: No, I never noticed it. I took it for granted that everyone’s house was like this. I took it for granted that if Joe Blow down the street said, “I am kind of interested in puppets,” that Joe Blow’s father would go to the cellar and build him a puppet theater. I thought that’s what parents do.

I knew that people on the street I grew up on ate less well. I knew that my mother was quite an extraordinary cook with an artistic sense. When she puts out a table, it’s not just the bowls that are pretty, there was deliberate artistic contrast between the foodstuff themselves and quite a range of those.

[Teller writes: “Mam dished up with an eye to color. The yellow corn was set off by a grass-green bowl. The green broccoli was complemented by a deep maroon platter. I was permitted the honorary role of carrying the ten or twelve steaming dishes to the table and setting them on two dozen hot pads and trivets strategically placed to protect the flannel-backed plastic tablecloth.”]

Q: I loved a lot of your father’s cartoons, especially the surreal one in which two dogs dressed to the hilt are walking people.

A: The illustrations are very cunningly placed [in the book]. A cartoon of a kid with a wooden leg just happens to be above the text where my father is relaying his stories of his misbehavior--being sort of a Little Rascals type of kid.

His paintings are pretty stunning. Because my parents spent their own working lives making sure that their only child got a good secure income, they didn’t have the chance to take the gamble to go out and sell the paintings.

Q: But they don’t seem bitter they didn’t get that opportunity.

A: No, they never even once said, “We gave this up for you.” It just doesn’t occur to them. In fact, when I told them about the book, their first remark was that would be a good thing for me. It is another one of the Kid’s projects, let’s get behind the Kid’s project and support his book.

Q: Your dad worked as a commercial artist.

A: I think you can still see some of his lettering on the Zesta Saltines boxes. The words “Zesta” were originally painted by him, and in those days there was no press type or computer type. My mother worked at selling arts supply at Wanamaker’s department store in Philadelphia, and that allowed her to work just the hours I was at school so she would be sure to be there for the Kid.

Q: Do they still paint?

A: Yes, indeed. My father has a tolerance of about an hour at a time. If you concentrate on a painting for more than an hour, you’ll lose perspective. My mother is deeply into it. She has pretty bad arthritis. She’ll get up and work on a still life, and the pain will have vanished because she is concentrating on the painting.

Q: What do your parents think of the book?

A: They’re following it avidly. My father asks me, “How is it selling?”

Q: Do you still call your parents every day?

A: I call them several times a day. And if you don’t mind, I’ll take your picture and send it to them.

Q: I take the worst pictures.

A: Oh, you’ll be fine. I gave them an electronic picture frame that logs on to a particular Internet site at 4 in the morning every day. I’ll send this picture into that Internet site and the [frame] will log on and pick it up, so tomorrow at 7 in the morning when my mother goes downstairs she’ll look at this. I will probably have talked to them after I talk to you, so she’ll say [when she sees your picture], “There she is.”