Raymond Joseph Teller — now legally just Teller, Penn and Teller’s nontelling Teller — tells of directing “Tim’s Vermeer,” a doc on “Girl With a Pearl Earring” painting. A screening’s this week.
“For years Tim Jenison, my genius inventor scientist friend, a tech pioneer, investigated how 17th-century Dutchman Johannes Vermeer, 150 years before photography, painted realistically without Rembrandt-like brush strokes. He tested his theory. Reconstructed Vermeer’s studio in Texas. Matched the light. Used lenses similar to what Vermeer might’ve used.
“Understand, the Dutch invented the telescope. One involved in Vermeer’s own will invented the microscope in Vermeer’s own town. Da Vinci suggested such a possibility. David Hockney believes Vermeer didn’t magically paint but had secured some scientific way to re-create a picture on canvas.”
Listen, I’m into crayons so off with Johannes Vermeer and onto Penn Jillette.
“Together 40 years. It’s not a monogamous marriage. We give one another space. Working in Vegas, living a mile from one another, we meet at Starbucks. We disagree at times, but each takes the other to a different place. There’s never a fight about business.
“We’re always trying new ideas. Last night we put in a card trick about physics. Imagine doing a complicated thought process in Vegas where nobody has a brain?”
Not your average political NJ dinner
Another New Jersey kerfuffle:
Bayonne. Simple unfancy mom-and-pop, family-style Italian restaurant. A 70ish Port Authority commissioner (there are 12; six Jersey, six New York) was there. His brunette ladyfriend — for sure not his daughter, wife, mother-in-law or second cousin — was late 20s, early 30s. Things began nice. They had wine. Then they had words.
Then it elevated. Turned loud. One fellow diner monitored enough to tell it to me. Ladyfriend, clutching her goblet’s stem, knocked him in the head. Wine dribbled down his face. In sort of a bum’s rush they got walked out.
Gov. Chunky’s examining the players on his staff? Looking to play “Pin the Tail on the Donkey”? Forget it. They’re all asses.
Early exit for RiRi
Clive Davis’ pre-Grammy rumble:
During R. Kelly’s abfab Nelson Mandela tribute, Rihanna thought it’s time to go and walked out totally oblivious to the singing and clapping chorus.
Hey, when you’re tired you’re tired . . .
Not tired were Jamie Foxx, Gladys Knight, Smokey Robinson, Jane Fonda, who danced in the aisles to the Imagine Dragons.
Kerik opens up
Former NYC top cop Bernard Kerik, out of jail, is coming out altogether. Speaking in DC Wednesday on his plan for reforming justice and prison systems . . . Interesting item about razor sales going poop. Anyone recall I groused about whiskers, beards, muttonchops and nose hairs a year ago??? . . . Ed Hookstratten just left us. You don’t know the name. Bryant Gumbel does. Ed was his agent. Also the agent for Marcus Allen, the younger O.J. seem-alike with whom Simpson’s wife, Nicole, was supposedly having an affair.
Four people, deploring USA’s problems and blaming it on the homogeneity, met for cocktails. The conversation? “We’re all equal. All the same. All Americans. We’re not different.” Then one ordered a vodka gimlet. Another wanted a Cosmopolitan. A third did wine. The fourth requested a martini. OK?
Only in New York, kids, only in New York.