A modern ouija board plus planchette

The Ouija board ( /ˈwiːdʒə/ WEE-jə) also known as a spirit board or talking board, is a flat board marked with the letters of the alphabet, the numbers 0-9, the words "yes", "no", "hello" and "goodbye" and various symbols and graphics. It is a registered trademark of Hasbro Inc.,^[1] which markets and distributes the Ouija Board as part of its line of board games.^[2] It uses a planchette (small heart-shaped piece of wood) or movable indicator to indicate the spirit's message by spelling it out on the board during a séance. Participants place their fingers on the planchette and it is moved about the board to spell out words. It has become a trademark that is often used generically to refer to any talking board.

Following its commercial introduction by businessman Elijah Bond on July 1, 1890,^[3] the Ouija board was regarded as a harmless parlor game unrelated to the occult until American Spiritualist Pearl Curran popularized its use as a divining tool during World War I.^[4]

Mainstream religions and some occultists have associated use of the Ouija board with the threat of demonic possession and some have cautioned their followers not to use Ouija boards.^[5]

While Ouija believers feel the paranormal or supernatural is responsible for Ouija's action, it may be parsimoniously explained by unconscious movements of those controlling the pointer, a psychophysiological phenomenon known as the ideomotor effect.^[6][7][8] Despite being repeatedly debunked by the efforts of the scientific community and denounced as a tool of Satan by conservative Christians, Ouija remains popular among many people.^[4]

History[link]

Wang Chongyang, founder of the Quanzhen School, depicted in Changchun Temple, Wuhan

China[link]

One of the first mentions of the automatic writing method used in the Ouija board is found in China around 1100 AD, in historical documents of the Song Dynasty. The method was known as fuji 扶乩 "planchette writing". The use of planchette writing as a means of ostensibly contacting the dead and the spirit-world continued, and, albeit under special rituals and supervisions, was a central practice of the Quanzhen School, until it was forbidden by the Qing Dynasty.^[9] Several entire scriptures of the Daozang are supposedly works of automatic planchette writing. Similar methods of mediumistic spirit writing have been widely practiced in ancient India, Greece, Rome, and medieval Europe.^[10]

Toy[link]

During the late 19th century, planchettes were widely sold as a novelty. The businessmen Elijah Bond and Charles Kennard had the idea to patent a planchette sold with a board on which the alphabet was printed. The patentees filed on May 28, 1890 for patent protection and thus had invented the first Ouija board. Issue date on the patent was February 10, 1891. They received U.S. Patent 446,054. Bond was an attorney and was an inventor of other objects in addition to this device. An employee of Kennard, William Fuld took over the talking board production and in 1901, he started production of his own boards under the name "Ouija".^[11] Kennard claimed he learned the name "Ouija" from using the board and that it was an ancient Egyptian word meaning "good luck." When Fuld took over production of the boards, he popularized the more widely accepted etymology, that the name came from a combination of the French and German words for "yes".^[12] The Fuld name would become synonymous with the Ouija board, as Fuld reinvented its history, claiming that he himself had invented it. The strange talk about the boards from Fuld's competitors flooded the market and all these boards enjoyed a heyday from the 1920s through the 1960s. Fuld sued many companies over the "Ouija" name and concept right up until his death in 1927. In 1966, Fuld's estate sold the entire business to Parker Brothers, which was sold to Hasbro in 1991, and which continues to hold all trademarks and patents. About ten brands of talking boards are sold today under various names.^[11]

Criticism[link]

Religious[link]

Most religious criticism of the Ouija board has come from Christians, primarily evangelicals in the USA. In 2001 Ouija boards were burned in Alamogordo, New Mexico by fundamentalist groups alongside Harry Potter books as "symbols of witchcraft."^[13][14][15] Religious criticism has also expressed beliefs that the Ouija board reveals information which should only be on God's hands, and thus it is a tool of Satan.^[16] A spokesperson for Human Life International described the boards as a portal to talk to spirits and called for Hasbro to be prohibited from marketing them.^[17]

In the murder trial of Joshua Tucker, his mother insisted that he had carried out the murders while possessed by the Devil who found him when he was using a Ouija board.^[18][19]

Bishops in Micronesia called for the boards to be banned and warned congregations that they were talking to demons and devils when using the boards.^[20]

Popular[link]

Ouija boards have been criticized in the press since their inception; having been variously described as "'vestigial remains' of primitive belief-systems" and a con to part fools with their money.^[21][22]

Some journalists have described reports of Ouija board findings as 'half truths' and have suggested that their inclusion in national newspapers lowers the national discourse overall.^[23]

Ouija boards have also been satirized in song. Singer Dick Valentine's lyrics suggest playing with them is comparable to 'playing with tiddlywinks' and nothing more.^[24]

Academic[link]

The Ouija phenomenon has been criticized by many scientists as a hoax related to the ideomotor response.^[25] Various studies have been produced, recreating the effects of the Ouija board in the lab and showing that, at least under laboratory conditions, the subjects were moving the planchette involuntarily.^[25][26] Detractors have described Ouija board users as 'operators'.^[27] Some critics noted that the messages ostensibly spelled out by spirits were similar to whatever was going through the minds of the subjects.^[28]

In the 1970s Ouija board users were also described as "cult members" by sociologists, though this was severely scrutinised in the field.^[29]

Ideomotor Effect[link]

The ideomotor effect refers to muscle movements that occur outside of conscious awareness. Such unconscious movements are self generated, and can create the illusion that an outside force is moving a Ouija board planchette.^[30]

Use in creation of literature[link]

Ouija boards have been the source of inspiration for literary works, used as guidance in writing, or as a form of channeling literary works. As a result of Ouija boards becoming popular in the early 20th century, by the 1920s many "psychic" books were written of varying quality often initiated by Ouija board use.^[31]

Emily Grant Hutchings claimed that her 1917 novel Jap Herron: A Novel Written from the Ouija Board was dictated by Mark Twain's spirit through the use of a ouija board after his death.^[32]

Poems and novels written by Patience Worth, an alleged spirit, contacted by Pearl Lenore Curran, for more than 20 years, were initially transcribed from sessions with a ouija board.

In 1982, poet James Merrill released an apocalyptic 560-page epic poem entitled The Changing Light at Sandover, which documented two decades of messages dictated from the ouija board during séances hosted by Merrill and his partner David Noyes Jackson. Sandover, which received the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1983,^[33] was published in three volumes beginning in 1976. The first contained a poem for each of the letters A through Z, and was called The Book of Ephraim. It appeared in the collection Divine Comedies, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1977.^[34] According to Merrill, the spirits ordered him to write and publish the next two installments, Mirabell: Books of Number in 1978 (which won the National Book Award for Poetry^[35]) and Scripts for the Pageant in 1980.

Use in film[link]

A number of films have used an Ouija board as a plot vehicle:

• The Uninvited, 1944
• Thirteen Ghosts, 1960
• Tales From The Crypt, 1972
• The Exorcist, 1973
• From Anson to Jervis, 1977
• Alison's Birthday, 1979
• Amityville 3-D, 1983
• The Devil's Gift, 1984
• Spookies, 1985
• Witchboard, 1985
• Girls' School Screamers, 1986
• Awakenings, 1990
• Repossessed, 1990
• And You Thought Your Parents Were Weird, 1991
• Radio Flyer, 1991
• Sorority House Massacre 2, 1992
• Witchboard 2: The Devil's Doorway, 1993
• Only You, 1994
• Witchboard 3: The Possession, 1995
• Grim, 1995
• What Lies Beneath, 2000
• Long Time Dead, 2002
• Paranormal Activity, 2007
• Downton Abbey, 2011
• The Myth of the American Sleepover,2010

Notable users[link]

G. K. Chesterton used a Ouija board. Around 1893 he had gone through a crisis of skepticism and depression, and during this period Chesterton experimented with the Ouija board and grew fascinated with the occult.^[36]

Poet James Merrill used a Ouija board for years, as described above, and even encouraged entrance of spirits into his body. Before he died, he recommended that people not use Ouija boards.^[37]

Former Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi claimed under oath that, in a séance held in 1978 with other professors at the University of Bologna, the "ghost" of Giorgio La Pira spelled the name of the street where Aldo Moro was being held by the Red Brigades in a Ouija. According to Peter Popham of The Independent: "Everybody here has long believed that Prodi's ouija board tale was no more than an ill-advised and bizarre way to conceal the identity of his true source, probably a person from Bologna's seething far-left underground whom he was pledged to protect."^[38]

In London in 1994, convicted murderer Stephen Young was granted a retrial after it was learned that four of the jurors had conducted a Ouija board seance and had "contacted" the murdered man, who had named Young as his killer. Young was convicted for a second time at his retrial and jailed for life.^[39][40][41]

Bill Wilson, the co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, used a Ouija board and conducted seances in attempts to contact the dead.^[42]

On the July 25, 2007 edition of the paranormal radio show Coast to Coast AM, host George Noory attempted to carry out a live Ouija board experiment on national radio despite the strong objections of one of his guests, Jordan Maxwell, and with the encouragement of his other guests, Dr. Bruce Goldberg, Rosemary Ellen Guiley, and Jerry Edward Cornelius.^{[citation needed]} In the days and hours leading up to the show, unfortunate events kept occurring to Noory's friends and family as well as some of his guests, but these events would likely be considered coincidences. After recounting a near-death experience in 2000 and noting bizarre events taking place, Noory canceled the experiment.^[43]

Dick Brooks of the Houdini Museum in Scranton, Pennsylvania, uses a Ouija board as part of a paranormal and seance presentation.^[44]

The Mars Volta wrote their album Bedlam in Goliath based on their alleged experiences with a Ouija board. According to their story (written for them by a fiction author, Jeremy Robert Johnson), Omar Rodriguez Lopez purchased a Ouija board while traveling in Jerusalem. At first the board provided a story which became the theme for the album. Strange events allegedly related to this activity occurred during the recording of the album: the studio flooded, one of the album's main engineers had a nervous breakdown, equipment began to malfunction, and Cedric Bixler-Zavala's foot was injured. Following these bad experiences the band buried the Ouija board.^[45]

Other musically related uses: Early press releases stated that Vincent Furnier's stage and band name "Alice Cooper" was agreed upon after a session with a Ouija board, during which it was revealed that Furnier was the reincarnation of a 17th century witch with that name. Alice Cooper later revealed that he just thought of the first name that came to his head while discussing a new band name with his band.^[46] Brandon Flowers, the lead singer of The Killers, believes his death will be associated with the number 621 (which is also his birthday, June 21) from having used a Ouija board.^[47]

Arthur Fellig, the famous New York press photographer, was nicknamed Weegee because of his seemingly prescient arrival at crime scenes shortly after the crimes occurred.

Michael Urie, known for his role on Ugly Betty, told a story about a ouija board on Celebrity Ghost Stories Season 2, Episode 4.

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Cain, D. Lynn, "OUIJA – For the Record" 2009 ISBN 978-0-557-15871-3
• Carpenter, W.B.,"On the Influence of Suggestion in Modifying and directing Muscular Movement, independently of Volition", Royal Institution of Great Britain, (Proceedings), 1852, (12 March 1852), pp. 147–153.
• Cornelius, J. Edward, Aleister Crowley and the Ouija Board. Feral House, 2005. ISBN 1-932595-10-4
• Gruss, Edmond C., The Ouija Board: A Doorway to the Occult 1994 ISBN 0-87552-247-5
• Hunt, Stoker, Ouija: The Most Dangerous Game. 1992 ISBN 0-06-092350-4
• Hill, Joe, Heart-Shaped Box
• Murch, R., "A Brief History of the Ouija Board", Fortean Times, No.249, (June 2009), pp. 32–33.
• Schneck, R.D., "Ouija Madness", Fortean Times, No.249, (June 2009), pp. 30–37.

External links[link]

Information on talking boards

• Museum Of Talking Boards
• Paranormality A-Z Paranormal Phenomena
• User anecdotes
• The Official Website of William Fuld and home of the Ouija board
• Guide to using the Ouija board

Skeptics

• The Skeptics' Dictionary: Ouija
• An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural
• How does a Ouija board work? from The Straight Dope

Trade marks and patents

• (1): Trade-Mark Registration: "Ouija" (Trademark no. 18,919; 3 February 1891: Kennard Novelty Company)
• (2): "Ouija or Egyptian Luck Board" (patent no.446,054; 10 February 1891: Elijah J. Bond – assigned to Charles W. Kennard and William H. A. Maupin)
• (3): "Talking-Board" (patent no.462,819; 10 November 1891: Charles W. Kennard)
• (4) "Game Apparatus" (patent no. 479,266: 19 July 1892: William Fuld)
• (5) "Game Apparatus" (patent no. 619,236: 7 February 1899: Justin F. Simonds)
• (6) "Ouija or Talking Board" (patent no.1,125,833; 19 January 1915: William Fuld)
• (7) "Design for the Movable Member of a Talking-Board" (patent no.D56,001; 10 August 1920: William Fuld)
• (8: "Design of Finger-Rest and Pointer for a Game" (patent no. D56,085; 10 August 1920: John Vanderkamp – assigned to Goldsmith Publishing Company)
• (9) "Message Interpreting Device" or "Psychic Messenger" (patent no.1,352,046; 7 September 1920: Frederick H. Black)
• (10) "Design for the Movable Member of a Talking-Board" (patent no.D56,001; 10 August 1920: William Fuld)
• (11) "Ouija Board" (patent no.D56,449; 26 October 1920: Clifford H. McGlasson)
• (12) "Psychic Game" (patent no.1,370,249; 1 March 1921: Theodore H. White)
• (13) "Ouija Board" (patent no.1,400,791; 20 December 1921: Harry M. Bigelow)
• (14) "Game Board" (patent no.1,422,042; 4 July 1922: John R. Donnelly)
• (15) "(Magnetic) Toy" (patent no.1,422,775; 11 July 1922: Leon Martocci-Pisculli)
• (16) "Psychic Instrument" (patent no.1,476,158; 4 December 1923: Grover C. Haffner)
• (17) "Game" (patent no.1,514,260; 4 November 1924: Alfred A. Rees)
• (18) "Amusement Device" (patent no.1,870,677; 9 August 1932: William A. Fuld)
• (19) "Amusement Device" (patent no.2,220,455; 5 November 1940: John P. McCarthy)
• (20) "Finger Pressure Actuated Message Interpreting Amusement Device" (patent no.2,511,377; 13 June 1950: Raymond S. Richmond)
• (21) "Message Device With Freely Swingable Pointer" (patent no.3,306,617; 28 February 1967: Thomas W. Gillespie)

Other

• "'Ouija board' appeal (against second guilty verdict) dismissed" – R. v. Young (1995)
• BBC video on Ouija Board
• Clare Randall haunted castle
• Ouija at the Open Directory Project

Penn & Teller (Penn Jillette and Teller) are American illusionists and entertainers who have performed together since the late 1970s, and are known for their numerous stage and television shows. Their current Las Vegas show is an amalgam of illusion and comedy. Penn Jillette is a raconteur; Teller generally does not speak while performing, although his voice can occasionally be heard during their performance. They specialize in gory tricks, exposing frauds, and performing clever pranks. More recently they have become associated with atheism, scientific skepticism, and libertarianism, particularly through their television show Penn & Teller: Bullshit!.

Career[link]

Penn Jillette and Teller were introduced to one another by Weir Chrisimer, and they performed their first show together at the Minnesota Renaissance Festival on 19 August 1975.^[1] From the late 1970s through 1981, Penn, Teller, and Chrisimer performed as a trio called "The Asparagus Valley Cultural Society" which played in San Francisco at the Phoenix Theater. This act was sillier and less "edgy" than today's Penn & Teller act.^{[citation needed]} Chrisimer helped to develop some bits that continued, most notably Teller's "Shadows" trick, which involves a single red rose.

By 1985, Penn & Teller were receiving rave reviews for their Off Broadway show and Emmy award-winning PBS special, Penn & Teller Go Public.^[2] In 1987, they began the first of two successful Broadway runs. Through the late 1980s and early 1990s, the duo made numerous television appearances on Late Night with David Letterman and Saturday Night Live, as well as The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Late Night with Conan O'Brien, Today, and many others.

Penn & Teller had national tours throughout the 1990s, gaining critical praise. They have also made television guest appearances on Babylon 5^[3] (as the comedy team Rebo and Zooty), The Drew Carey Show, a few episodes of Hollywood Squares from 1998 until 2004, ABC's Muppets Tonight, FOX's The Bernie Mac Show, an episode of the game show Fear Factor on NBC, NBC's The West Wing, in a two-part episode of the final season of ABC's Home Improvement in 1998, four episodes during season 1 of Sabrina, the Teenage Witch in 1996, NBC's Las Vegas, and Fox's The Simpsons episodes "Hello Gutter, Hello Fadder" and "The Great Simpsina" and the Futurama film Futurama: Into the Wild Green Yonder in 2009. They also appeared as three-card Monte scam artists in the music video for "It's Tricky" by Run-DMC in 1987, and were thrown out of a Las Vegas hotel room in the music video for "Waking Up in Vegas" by Katy Perry in 2009.

Their Showtime network television show Bullshit! took a skeptical look at psychics, religion, the pseudoscientific, conspiracy theories, and the paranormal. It has featured critical segments on gun control, astrology, Feng Shui, environmental issues, PETA, weight loss, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the war on drugs.

On Bullshit!, the duo described their social and political views as libertarian.

They have also described themselves as teetotalers. Their book, Penn & Teller's How to Play in Traffic, explains that they avoid absolutely all alcohol and other drugs, including caffeine, though they do appear to smoke cigarettes in some videos. Penn has said that he has never even tasted alcohol, and that his tolerance for certain drugs is so low that his doctor only had to administer a minute amount of anesthetic relative to what one would expect necessary for a man of his size to undergo surgery.

The pair have written several books about magic, including Penn & Teller's Cruel Tricks For Dear Friends, Penn & Teller's How to Play with Your Food, and Penn & Teller's How to Play in Traffic. Since 2001, Penn & Teller have performed six nights a week (or as Penn put it on Bullshit!: "Every night of the week ... except Fridays!") in Las Vegas at the Rio All Suite Hotel and Casino.

Penn Jillette hosted a weekday one-hour talk show on Infinity Broadcasting's Free FM radio network from January 3, 2006 to March 2, 2007 with cohost Michael Goudeau.^[4][5] He also hosted the game show Identity, which debuted on December 18, 2006 on NBC.

Their new television series Penn & Teller Tell a Lie premiered on the Discovery Channel on October 5, 2011.

Penn & Teller have also shown support for the Brights movement^[6] and are now listed on the movement's homepage under the Enthusiastic Brights section.^[7] According to an article in Wired magazine, their license plates are customized so they read, "Atheist" and "Godless", and when Penn signs autographs, he often writes "there is no God" with his signature.^[8]

Off-stage relationship[link]

Penn Jillette has told interviewer Larry King that a big part of the duo's success and longevity is due to them never having been close friends. They enjoy working together immensely, but have little in common besides magic. As a result of their drastically different lifestyles and interests, they rarely socialize or interact when not working. Jillette believes that their partnership succeeds precisely because they give each other a great deal of space off-stage.

Tricks[link]

Their tricks include Teller hanging upside-down over a cushion of spikes in a straitjacket, Teller submerged in a huge container of water, Teller being run over by an 18-wheel tractor-trailer, Teller swinging going through Penn's hands. Many of their effects rely heavily on shock appeal and violence, although presented in a humorous manner.

Sometimes, the pair will claim to reveal a secret of how a magic trick is done, but those tricks are usually invented by the duo for the sole purpose of exposing them, and therefore designed with more spectacular and weird methods than would have been necessary had it just been a "proper" magic trick. For example, in the "reveal" of one trick, while Teller waits for his cue, he reads magazines and eats a snack.^{[clarification needed]} Another example is their rendition of the cups and balls, using transparent cups.

Penn and Teller perform their own adaptation of the famous bullet catch illusion. Each simultaneously fires a gun at the other through small panes of glass and then "catches" the other's bullet in his mouth. They also have an assortment of card tricks in their repertoire, virtually all of them involving the force of the Three of Clubs on an unsuspecting audience member as this card is easy for viewers to identify on television cameras.^[9]

The duo will sometimes perform tricks that discuss the intellectual underpinnings of magic. One of their acts, titled "Magician vs. Juggler", features Teller performing card tricks while Penn juggles and delivers a monologue on the difference between the two: jugglers start as socially aware children who go outside and learn juggling with other children; magicians are misfits who stay in the house and teach themselves magic tricks out of spite.

In one of their most politically charged tricks, they make a U.S. flag seem to disappear by wrapping it in a copy of the United States Bill of Rights, and apparently setting the flag on fire, so that "the flag is gone but the Bill of Rights remains." The act may also feature the "Chinese bill of rights", presented as a transparent piece of acetate. They normally end the routine by restoring the unscathed flag to its starting place on the flagpole; however, on a TV guest appearance on The West Wing this final part was omitted.^[10]

One of their more recent tricks^[when?] involves a powered nail gun with a quantity of missing nails from the series of nails in its magazine. Penn begins by firing several apparently real nails into a board in front of him. He then proceeds to fire the nailgun into the palm of his hand several times, while suffering no injuries. His pattern builds as he oscillates between firing blanks into his hand and firing nails into the board. While performing he states that the trick is merely memorization, and explains that the fact that he does not flinch when he could be firing a nail into his hand should be a sign that the trick is not actually dangerous. A later revision to the trick replaced the false claims of memorization with a more open explanation, allowing the audience to enjoy the rhythm of the nail gun without fear of a serious mishap.^[11]

A trick introduced in 2010 is a modern version of the bag escape, replacing the traditional sack with a black trash bag apparently filled with helium. Teller is placed in the bag which is then pumped full of helium and sealed by an audience member. For the escape, the audience are blinded by a bright light for a second and when they are able to see again, Teller has escaped from the bag and Penn is holding it, still full of helium, above his head, before releasing it to float to the ceiling. The duo had hoped to put the trick in their mini-tour in London; however, it was first shown to the public in their Las Vegas show on 18 August 2010. In June 2011, Penn and Teller performed this trick for the first time in the United Kingdom on their ITV show Fool Us.^[12]

Filmography[link]

Television[link]

Books[link]

• Penn & Teller's How to Play in Traffic (1997, ISBN 1-57297-293-9)
• Penn & Teller's How to Play with Your Food (1992, ISBN 0-679-74311-1)
• Penn & Teller's Cruel Tricks for Dear Friends (1989, ISBN 0-394-75351-8)
• Sock 2004, ISBN 0-312-32805-2 (Penn Jillette sole author)
• How to Cheat Your Friends at Poker: The Wisdom of Dickie Richard 2006, ISBN 0-312-34905-X (Penn Jillette and Mickey D. Lynn)
• When I'm Dead All This Will Be Yours: Joe Teller—A Portrait By His Kid 2000, ISBN 0-922233-22-5 (Teller sole author)

Other Media[link]

Music[link]

• "The Horse You Rode In On" by Pigface (Penn Jillette only)
• "Spookshow" by Adil Omar (Penn Jillette only)
• "Penn & Teller Present: Music to Look at Boxes By" (With Mike "Jonesy" Jones)
• "Never Mind the Sex Pistols" by Bongos, Bass, & Bob (Penn Jillette with Dean J Seal and Bob "Running" Elk)
• "Tattoo of Blood" by the Captain Howdy (Penn Jillette with Mark Kramer)
• "Money Feeds My Music Machine" by the Captain Howdy (Penn Jillette with Mark Kramer)
• "It's Tricky" by Run–D.M.C. (Penn & Teller shown throughout the video and at the end appear to take over the persona of Run–D.M.C.)
• "Waking up in Vegas" by Katy Perry (Penn & Teller are kicked out of their hotel room by Perry and her boyfriend. They later kick Perry out again.)

Jillette also toured with the Residents during the Mole Show, and hosted Ralph Records' 10th Anniversary Radio Special (1982). There is some mild controversy and confusion surrounding this. While the premise of 10th Anniversary Radio Special revolved around Jillette having never heard of the label or any of the bands on it (the Residents included), he was credited as a collaborator on the 1981 album Mark of the Mole,^[16] and he can be heard giving news bulletins in the first track. This has led some to speculate that Jillette may have been a Resident at one point.

Theater[link]

In 2008 Teller co-directed a production of Macbeth in Red Bank, New Jersey and Washington, DC.^[17]

Video games[link]

• Penn & Teller's Smoke and Mirrors 1995 – Absolute Entertainment for Sega CD & 3DO, Unreleased.
• Sabrina, the Teenage Witch: Spellbound 1998 – Simon & Schuster for PC – Voices for Drell & Skippy
• Desert Bus 2011 – Amateur Pixels.

The 1995 video game Penn & Teller's Smoke and Mirrors featured an unusual mini-game called Desert Bus in which the player drove a realistic bus route between Tucson and Las Vegas. This mini-game became popular due to the fact that it imitated a real 8 hour bus ride. Once reaching the destination, the player gets 1 point and, if desired, can then drive the return route. The game was long and boring, but found a cult audience due to the dark humor and weirdness behind the idea.

The game has since been used in an annual charity called "Desert Bus for Hope" run by website desertbus.org. The site invites celebrities play the game streamed live online, with all proceeds being donated to Child's Play (charity). on November 14, 2011 an iOS port of Desert Bus was created and released in the Apple Inc iTunes store. The game was developed in conjunction with the Desert Bus for hope event and all profits from the game are donated to charity.

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Penn & Teller

• Official website
• Penn's "Hydro-therapeutic stimulator" (aka Jill-jet) patent
• A man, a ball, a hoop, a bench (and an alleged thread)… TELLER!