For the First Time, Real Information on the Back Page
Penn Jillette

Every year, I go with a bunch of friends to my childhood hometown county fair in Massachusetts. Friends of mine come from all over to spend a day at the little Hooterville fair and then we all watch the Franklin County Demolition Derby. ("Number 7, turn off your engine, your car is on fire," - that's not just entertainment - that's art.) The night before the fair, about 30 of us met at my Mom and Dad's house for chips, dips and fruit punch. (Yeah, I got your family values, hanging.) We were all sitting in my parent's living room and my Dad was talking to my friend, Brad Carvey. Brad Carvey should be famous for being one of the developers of the Video Toaster ("Oh, friends of Penn's invented the Video Toaster - that's why he wrote a column about an Amiga product in a PC magazine. I get it, now.") But I guess Toaster isn't a household word, (what?) so Brad needs a different claim to fame, and he has it. Brad's famous brother, Dana Carvey, modeled Garth, Wayne's sidekick in "Wayne's World" after Brad. Brad = Garth. Garth = Famous. Brad = Famous (kinda). So, Brad is talking to Dad and Dad's saying Dad stuff like "So, you're into computers, huh Brad? You must read Penn's computer articles?" So Brad (who is Garth of "Wayne's World") doesn't think "Hey, I'm in the Jillette house. I'll just let Penn's father believe that his son knows some little thing about computers. I'll just say `yeah.'" Not Brad. Brad says, in kind of an innocent but still very insulting way, "His column isn't really about computers." Dad gets a little bummed. Dad tells me and I get a little bummed. Brad's right, of course. I brag to everyone that I write about computers but I guess I really don't. Everything I say that has to do with computers, everyone already knows. I decided to change that, at least for one column. I wanted to write one goddamn page that wasn't about praising Uma Thurman (too easy), or trashing John Dvorak (even easier), a column that wasn't about movies, or jokes, or chickens, or murder, or Dead Sea Scrolls, or Jim Morrison. But one column that had some real computer information. Just once, I wanted to be a computer journalist. I was determined that this column would have some hard news, some scoop, some enlightenment - something that wasn't just filler. (Take the stuff in parentheses, for example. It always seems to me like the stuff in parenthesis is just filler. I read the column over and say to myself, "Hey, when I read these parenthetical comments, they never tell me anything. It's just rambling. Most of the time, it's not even funny. It looks like Penn, writing the column, realized he was 80 words short, and wrote anything at all in parenthesis, as an aside, just to fill up the page.") There was only one thing stopping me from writing this informative column - I don't know anything. I use Wordperfect, Crosstalk, Tapcis, and Sidekick 2. I do such simple stuff that the only way I know about bugs is when I read about them in a column in PC Computing that really does have information. So, I asked around. What was going on in computers that no one else would know? Then it came to me, by phone, out of the blue. My prayers were answered. (That's a lie, I don't pray and on top of that I got the idea for the "I-want-real-information-in-one-of-my-columns" hook after I already knew this information.) I've got the skinny. You won't read this in any other column or in any other magazine. I have scooped everyone. Ready? Here goes - Lou Reed is no longer a PC user. He used to use an Everex laptop but he just bought a Powerbook. The Rock and Roll Animal has gone over to Mac. Remember, you heard it here first.