"It's the house of a 12-year-old with a lot of money," says Penn Jillette of his decorating taste.
		By Bob Riha Jr., USA TODAY

That's the message to trick-or-treaters as they come upon the desert lair of magician and writer Penn Jillette. Inside are sights so outrageous as to leave libertines breathless with glee and the moralistic begging for CPR.

Sitting on 12 hardscrabble acres, the sprawling 6,000-square-foot playpen — nicknamed The Slammer by Jillette, the larger half of the Penn & Teller duo — is stocked with erotic art, freak-show collectibles and a ubiquitous logo that spells out "No God."

And did we mention the bondage room off the master suite?

"It's the house of a 12-year-old with a lot of money," deadpans Jillette.

But that's far too facile, like calling Einstein a foreign nerd with a few wacky ideas. In fact, 6-foot-6 Jillette, 49, who along with the mono-named Teller has made a lucrative career of combining magic with the macabre, is a lumbering contradiction:

• Hard-core atheist, but also a talented bass player who worships the power of bebop.

• Loves having his place stuffed with raucous friends but has never once lost himself in drugs or alcohol.

• Partial to art that borders on the pornographic, and yet his prized possession is a shelf-buckling 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary that comes in handy for writing New York Times op-ed pieces and novels such as Sock.

In short: He's a demented genius, the love child of the Marquis de Sade and a Jeopardy! champ.

"This is where I spend 80% of my time," says Jillette, inside a computer-centric office crammed with personal effects.

On the wall is a Three Stooges photo ("I love this because they're actually all so relaxed in it," says Jillette) next to a shot of a smiling elderly woman, his late mother. ("I'm a real momma's boy," he adds.)

There's a stand-up bass next to some jazz sheet music, a functioning urinal and poster featuring The Amazing Randi, the famed debunker and Jillette's hero.

He gazes into the hazy distance.

"I used to be able to see the (Las Vegas) Strip from here, before the city got totally built up," he says.

The magician and his silent partner — the one-named Teller lives a mile away in an expansive modernist retreat built into a mountainside — moved to Las Vegas a decade ago, after a hit run on Broadway led to a steady gig at this city's Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino. Jillette quickly found a small house on the edge of town and immediately bought up a dozen surrounding acres.

"I told a friend, 'Ijust want some space so some neighborhood wacko doesn't get mad and get up in my face,' " says Jillette. "And my friend says, 'Ah, you are the neighborhood wacko.' "

Cue a proud grin.

Jillette commissioned another buddy, Colin Summers, then fresh out of architecture school, to design a house around the original 1978 A-frame. "He got a dream job right out of school, and I got someone who really knew me," says Jillette, adding that Summers lived on-site for nine months for inspiration.

The house remains a work in progress. A new garage is going up to house his three "stripper pink"-colored Minis, and there are plans to demolish the old A-frame section entirely.

As it stands today, The Slammer is a surreal Cubist vision in concrete, stucco and steel. Jillette's aforementioned office sits in a silo-like structure, from which radiate two wings that look like a jumble of multicolored boxes.

Inside, there are enough fascinating and odd touches to fill this entire newspaper. Scanning some of the headlines:

•Guests Line Up for Mug Shots. All visitors must stand against a height chart worthy of a police station and have their digital picture taken. (It's right next to the foyer's prison-issue, stainless-steel bathroom.) The photo shoots over to a lobby computer, which constantly cycles through the 3,000-plus visitors so far, some of them topless.

•Penn Jillette: The New Howard Hughes. The artist gleefully says he never has to leave his sprawling compound, which includes a gym, a beanbag-chair-filled home theater and a state-of-the-art recording studio. "Friends come out for weeks at a time, to write, relax, whatever," he says. "I still love New York, and they bring a bit of the city here to me."

OK, OK, we're getting there.

To the bondage room, Robin. Just off Jillette's leopard-themed bedroom (which he shares with his privacy-preferring girlfriend) is a mirrored walk-in closet whose centerpiece is a harness suspended from the ceiling. There are some whips, and few restraints and a one-way mirror to check for intruders.

"Actually," he adds, "there are a few rooms here I really can't show you at all."

Is he serious? Who knows. But this is a man who shows off jars of "pickled fetuses" bought froman old freak show, though Jillette staffers later insist they aren't real.

Moving right along and into the blessed sunshine. In the multicolored Astroturf backyard, Jillette points to a koi pond shaped like a goldfish cracker. ("We scanned a cracker, so it's one specific goldfish treat," he says with pride.)

That's next to an 80-foot lap pool, which is near a hot tub. This spa has one strange feature and ... here we go again. Look carefully and you see one water jet is located very close to where someone would sit down.

At the moment, anyone leaving Jillette's pad on sensory overload is free to scurry off into the desert to nurse their emotional wounds. But that won't last long. Jillette escorts a visitor out to his property's driveway, where a chain-link fence will soon be joined by two large gates, forming a box.

What gives? "Every car that pulls up will get let through the first gate, but then it'll be held there between the two shut gates. And that's when we'll have gigantic floodlights blast the car, like something out of CSI." A basso giggle. "Should be pretty funny."