Customer Reviews

Penn and Teller's How to Play with your Food

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

Penn & Teller take their stage personas to the print medium, and it works superbly. Penn is just as loud as ever, and Teller (seen in many of the photos) wears his trademark blank smile.

Most books on magic and ``tricks'' tend to be frustratingly dull, but the lively prose, scrumptious humour and fine photos and illustration make this one a pleasure to read.

This magic book also has the virtue of presenting several tricks that are easy to perform--if you want to learn two or three very funny and fun tricks table gags that require almost zero practice, this is the book to get.

Everything from de-bunking spoon bending to "The parsley game" ( you need to read to know..). Highly recommended for those interested in magic or just want to poke their eye out with a fork. I couldn't put this book down and laughed my wife awake.

everybody loves humor, everybody loves food, and, well, there are creeps who don't like penn & teller, but this if one of the funniest things i've ever read, i learned every trick in the book and life is neeeeeever boring. the two best parts, in my opinion: teller's bit on the great egg drop and penn's story of a milkshake as self-defense. worth every penny.

Got this book a couple of years ago, and spent a weekend trying NOT to die laughing reading it! Some of the tricks in here were absolutely wonderful. I'll never look at jello molds the same way again!

I learned of this book when Penn & Teller appeared on the Larry King show to shamelessly plug it, and my life hasn't been the same since. (I learned every trick in the book, and as it warns, people think I'm *really* a kook.)

This book contains lots of fun, disturbing, money-making, and just plain gross tricks involving food. Learn how to poke a fork in your eye and make it spurt white glop! Do a card trick that will make you feel like James Bond! Learn what it's like to shoot melons with high-powered rifles! Make a pickle glow by literally plugging it into a power socket!

But, a word of warning: a few of the tricks in the book are a little on the dangerous side, meaning that you might get hurt if something goes wrong, or if your conned "friend" gets wise as to how you psychically guessed what he was going to order for dinner.

Overall, this book is a great read, lots of messy fun, well worth giving up your hard earned money to line Penn & Teller's pockets.

Penn & Teller's How to Play With Your Food includes not only dozens of entertaining and minimally-harmful tricks to be performed at home or in restaurants, it also includes some of the great secrets of Houdini and a strong debunking (always fun) of Uri Geller. These guys should change their job title to "magic historians." Also shows you how to remove Dave Letterman's watch from the belly of a fish--some great behind-the-scenes looks at some of the stuff they've actually done on TV and on tour. Witty and engaging, the narrative is easily as much fun as a live performance.

This is certainly one of the funniest books I've read in a long time. The book is filled with pranks, tricks, and funny anecdotes of Penn and Teller's life experiences. A few of the reviews I've read lamented at the used version of the book they bought not having a bag of tricks that comes with the book. In my opinion though this is hardly reason to complain. It only affects about 3 of the tricks in the book and of those only 2 of them can't be overcome with a little ingenuity from the reader. The only one that may be problematic is the one trick involving a Kevlar sugar packet. Either way all three of these tricks are extremely enjoyable anyway and certainly worth the money for the book. All of the tricks in the book are quite enjoyable its difficult to pick out a favorite.

Penn & Teller's "How To Play With Your Food" is a must have for any practicle jokster. From even the simplest tricks, like how to poke your eye out with a fork, to the elaborate "Transporting Davidletterman's Watch into A Fish." This book is a riot to even read when you can imagine you friends squirming at the "Bleeding Gelitan Heart Dessert" to the comical rammerings you might get when you open "The Lie in Your Lunchbox." The one thing that is recommened if you decide to preform any of these tricks is to keep the book hidden and alos look at the NPD rule as you will read in this fine book. "How To Play With Your Food" has the same style as their other hit "Cruel Tricks For Dear Friends." When I talked to Teller in Vegas after a preformance that they did he mentioned that they are working on a new book called "How To Play On The Freeway." Over all this book is great even if you don't preform the tricks

Penn and Teller are comic magicians who go back to the 1970s, but did not make it big until their appearances on David Letterman and Saturday Night Live in the 1980s. Since then they have made guest appearances on many television shows including Home Improvement. And recently a cable show has given them their own time slot. Penn and Teller have also written three best-selling books: Cruel Tricks for Dear Friends, How to Play in Traffic, and this book How To Play with Your Food.

Most magicians do not share their secrets. But Penn and Teller love sharing the secrets of magic in a comic way. Some of the topics covered in this book are "Genteel versus vulgar food play"; "Why all miracles are fake"; Stabbing a fork in your eye"; popcorn and pizza tricks; the JFK trick; and many others. My favorite is the "Oliver Stone Melon-Head Trick", which is not for the squeamish. The only caveat is that they did not include the ImpeachBlair vanishing trick, but perhaps they can make the White House lap dog disappear?

If you like Penn and Teller, you should like this book. It's like a cookbook for bad adolescent behavior. Full of fun and mostly harmless pranks, tricks, or gags (literally) that can offend, upset, or nauseate the whole family.

I had a copy years ago and i was surprised to be able to still find it for Christmas gifts for my kids even though i had to order single copies from individual vendors since no one had more than one in stock. One of them even had a partial bag of goodies that comes with it, which after this long after publication, i absolultely did not expect.

If you like mild pranks and harmless practical jokes at the dinner table, this is the book for you.