Entry 2: Penn & Teller

A photo of my sister and I with Teller, a famous magician.

Have you ever seen a magician perform? I have!

Penn Jillette and Teller are a duo of magicians who perform under the name Penn & Teller. Over the summer, my sister and I went to New York City to see them perform. My sister is a magic enthusiast and has seen them on television in the past. However, this was the first time I had seen them. They usually perform in Las Vegas but to celebrate their 40th anniversary of working together they performed in New York for several weeks.

The both of us were astonished by their performance. They had many different acts but one of their most incredible and frightening ones involved a nail gun. Penn would switch between firing a nail gun into his body and a plank of wood. Every time he fired into the wood a nail would shoot out. But when he fired it at himself only air would escape! He revealed to the audience that instead of memorizing the pattern in the nail gun he had instead synchronized the order of nails and air pockets in the nail gun to his speech. Depending on how far into his speech he was, he could tell whether or not a nail would shoot out. After the show we got to take pictures with both Penn and Teller. I was surprised by how tall Teller was since he always looks minuscule next to Penn who is of towering height.

Vocabulary
duo (noun): pair
enthusiast (noun): fan
usually (adjective): almost always
several (adjective): more than two, but not many
astonished (verb, past tense): amazed
frightening (adjective): scary
revealed (verb, past tense): to show what was hidden
synchronized (verb, past tense): to go together
minuscule (adjective): very small
towering (adjective): very tall

Vocabulary Exercise
1. On Halloween I saw a ___________ ghost!
2. I ___________ swim on hot summer days.
3. There were ________ cupcakes on the baking rack.
4. The baseball ___________ collected cards of every player.
5. When the magician pulled a rabbit out of his hat, I was ___________.
6. The _________ giant stood before the _________ townspeople.
7. Batman and Robin are one of the most famous dynamic _______s.
8. The stage curtain opened and the actors were _________.
9. I ________ my grandfather clock with my smartphone's clock so that they both showed the same time.

Grammar Point & Activity
When ending a sentence, you need to use either a period (.), an exclamation point (!), or a question mark (?). Periods are used to end statements. Exclamation points are used to end exclamations. Question marks are used to end questions. Find a statement, exclamation, and question in the above passage. Then, create your own.