A Private Note for Oz Pearlman

Guys, this is a private note for Oz Pearlman. If you’re not him, do the polite thing and bail now.

Hey Oz. I don’t have your email—and I’m not on Facebook—so this is the only way to get this to you. I was listening to your Joe Rogan appearance and, around the 45-minute mark, you launch into the story about going to jail and saving your ass (maybe literally) by doing card tricks for the brothers for eight straight hours.

Here’s the thing: the story has a real “first draft energy”: wobbly timeline, fuzzy logistics, movie-logic jail dynamics. I’m going to help you tighten it for the next time you need a spicy anecdote to punch up your otherwise beige backstory. We’ll go through it beat by beat…

Oz: This is a good story for my book that I’m writing right now. So—I end up in jail for a weekend. It’s a long story. I was in jail one weekend—stupid weekend—but I walk in there by myself. I should have been out that day, but I got stuck all weekend.

And I’m watching these guys playing cards, and it’s like I had trained my whole life for this moment. I walk up—record scratch—to like forty dudes and go, “Can I see those cards?” Everyone’s looking at me like, “What’s this guy about to do?”

And I just did card tricks for the next eight hours. When I went to take a shower, I’m thinking of the show Oz, like, Oh my god, right now I need protection. I went to shower—Mecosta County Jail in Michigan—and literally had people being like, “Go take a shower, we got you, bro.”

Joe: What did you go to jail for?

Oz: So stupid. This almost derailed my whole career. Drunken idiots. I go up to visit a buddy in college, and we steal from a Papa John’s. God, don’t ask me why. A broken phone at a college Papa John’s—just being idiots.

I paid for the pizza, but there was a broken phone on the counter, and, you know, this is me, sleight-of-hand style. I’m like, I’m just stealing this thing. Gone. It’s in my jacket.

To be clear: in your book, you explain that it was a landline phone you stole. You write:

“At Papa John’s, they had a bank of about twenty phones on the counter; this was before it was common to have one phone with dozens of lines. So there were these red phones that the employees were constantly answering, thanks to their brisk delivery business.”

“Before it was common to have one phone with dozens of lines.” Huh? Multi-line business phones have been around since the Nixon era. In the early 2000s, they were practically antiques. The story’s already collapsing and we’re only two sentences in.

Papa John’s didn’t have a “bank of twenty phones” on the counter. They don’t have one now, and they didn’t then. The Jerry Lewis Telethon didn’t have twenty phones on the counter.

Also, I’m not sure picking up a phone and jamming it in your jacket qualifies as “sleight of hand.” I get that you want to make yourself sound like the world’s smoothest magic thief, but what exactly are you implying here? Did you French drop the Papa John’s phone? Spider vanish it? Sleight of hand is about manual deception when people are paying attention to you. Quietly pocketing a broken phone off a Papa John’s countertop when no one is looking means you’ve mastered the ancient art of petty larceny, not prestidigitation.

Oz: Then I tell my buddies, “You guys gotta get something too.” So they go in the bathroom—which doubles as the employee locker room—and they take three dirty shirts. Dirty shirts from a laundry bin.

Lol, Oz, you adorable goofball.

Look, I get it: your story has to get you to jail, but you don’t want to invent something where you’re like, “My friends and I raped a drifter and set him on fire.” So you’re trying to pick a story that makes you look not too bad. But… um… I’m guessing you never worked in fast food?

The bathroom doesn’t double as the employee locker room—that would be a health-code violation (several, actually).

And Papa John’s doesn’t launder employee’s shirts for them, you bozo. You go home and wash the shirt yourself. Or do what I’m guessing most Papa John’s employees do: wash it once a week once it’s fully saturated with garlic butter.

Oz: We bring them back to my buddy’s house like idiots. We wear them at the party. I barely remember this—I was blackout drunk—like, “Papa John’s! Who wants a pizza? Who wants a pizza?”

I end up going to sleep on his futon around 2 a.m. At 4 a.m., someone comes in and says, “Yo, the cops are here.” I’m like, “Dude, it’s not my house. What do you want from me?”

I find it a little unbelievable you were invited to a party, but let’s pretend, for the sake of narrative flow, that you were.

As you know—because you possess super-human mentalism powers!—people tend to slip on the tiny details when they’re making things up. Saying you were “blackout drunk” and still remember crawling onto a futon at precisely 2 a.m.? That’s one of those continuity errors that gives the whole game away. You’ll want to pick a lane here between omniscient narrator or sloppy drunk.

Joe: Did you guys post the videos?

Oz: No, this is pre-social-media, man. No, no. Somebody ratted us out. Somebody’s roommate—I found this out way later—called and said, “Yo, bro, there’s a bunch of dudes here with a broken phone from Papa John’s.”

I didn’t know any of this, but someone comes in like, “Yo, the cops are here.” I say, “They’re here for you.” They go, “They’re here for you.” I’m like, “Here for me? What do you mean, they’re here for me? I don’t live here.”

The cops come in the room, and I’m wearing aggressively small underwear—like tighty-whities. This couldn’t have been more of a bad perp walk. They go, “You’re under arrest.” I’m like, “For what?” They go, “For stealing from Papa John’s.”

Mmm-hmm… let’s think about this for a moment. First, you’re wearing the fucking dirty shirt to bed, you disgusting slob? 🤮

And let me get this straight—you’re saying a third party, not even a complaining witness, called the cops on you? “There’s some guys here with a broken phone from Papa John’s”? To what end? Did people find you that dislikable that they’d really call the cops in the middle of the night on you for this?

And then what did the cops do? Wake up the manager of Papa John’s in the middle of the night to see if he wanted to press charges?

This is a believable story to you?

Joe: What night was this?

Oz: Friday night.

So, let’s review: it’s Friday night—the busiest shift of the week—and the local cops, instead of dealing with drunk drivers and bar fights, leap into action over a missing broken phone from Papa John’s. At four in the morning.

Sure. Forget the assaults, the DUIs, the domestic calls—we have rape kits piling up for years—but yes, let’s mobilize the entire department because we have a hot lead on a busted landline.

Honestly, removing a broken phone from a Papa John’s isn’t even a crime, it’s a service. They should’ve thanked you. “Hey, appreciate you getting that eyesore out of here, kind citizen.”

Joe: How old were you?

Oz: I was twenty years old and just about to get an internship at Merrill Lynch. While this story’s hilarious now—it’s a funny chapter in my book—it was like, God help me, did I avoid everything.

When I went to jail—yo, scariest, one of the scariest days of my life.

Joe: How’d you get out of everything?

Oz: I had a clean record. I was a pretty upstanding citizen. And, not to get in the weeds, but there’s something called the Holmes Youthful Trainee Act—I wonder if they still have it—where it was expunged from my record. Didn’t have to report it to the Wall Street firm.

How convenient—your imaginary arrest just happened to be wiped clean by the state!

Here’s the issue: the Holmes Youthful Trainee Act isn’t an instant delete button. When granted, you’re placed on a kind of probationary status. There’s no conviction, but the record isn’t immediately erased. Only after successful completion (which can take years) does it get fully expunged.

So the arrest still would have been on your record for that upcoming internship.

Also, I’ve read that part of the book. If anyone told you it was a “funny” chapter, they were fucking with you.

Oz: Then they separated us when we went to general population. And it’s not like the movies—you know, it was wild. When I went in there, I just knew, This is my cheat code. Like everything in life had prepared me for this moment.

The jail was very segregated—the white dudes are here, the Black dudes are here—and I didn’t know what to do. I’m five-foot-nothing, a buck-forty dripping wet. How do I make friends right now?

You’re not going to be put into gen pop while you’re on a weekend hold for stealing a broken phone. I mean, none of this story is true, but even if it were true up to this point, that’s not how it works.

You don’t get the Shawshank experience for petty theft. You’d be in a holding cell, waiting for Monday morning paperwork, not navigating a racially divided prison yard like it’s American History X.

It’s funny that you say, “It’s not like the movies,” and then describe it exactly like the movies, because that’s the only frame of reference you’ve got.

Oz: The jail was very segregated—the white dudes are here, the Black dudes are here—and I didn’t know what to do. I’m five-foot-nothing, a buck-forty dripping wet. How do I make friends right now?

Then I see the Black guys playing spades, and I just walk up. You gotta make your move. I’m like, “Let me see those cards.” And that was it—I didn’t stop for hours, didn’t repeat a trick. I know tricks encyclopedically. I just went all day.

“The jail was ‘very segregated,’ so I went up to the black guys to make friends.” I’m not quite sure I understand the logic there. You know you’re not black, yes?

But honestly, now that I look back on it, I’ve been a bit too critical. This is such a great story. Getting arrested on some trumped-up charges and being stuck in jail over the weekend until you could get things taken care of. So you see all the black guys playing Spades, you go up to them, entertain them all, and win everyone over with card tricks.

Do you know what this reminds me of? That story in Blaine’s Mysterious Stranger. The one where he gets arrested on some trumped-up charges, stuck in jail over the weekend until he can get things sorted out. So he sees all the black guys playing Spades, goes up to them, entertains them all, and wins everyone over with card tricks.

Now, I did notice in the book re-telling of this story you’ve changed some details to avoid some of the obvious inconsistencies and made-up stuff from your appearance on Joe Rogan. But now I think it’s even worse because now you have both versions floating around—different timelines, different “facts”—so it seems even more fake.

Of course—who cares, right? Magicians have been fabricating colorful backstories for centuries. It’s part of the tradition. But remember, you’re trying to convince people you’re a master of the mind, a human lie detector who can pick up on the tiniest details—read micro-expressions, catch every twitch, every hidden tell…and then you spin this half-baked, instantly debunkable story?

You built your brand on noticing the details, and you missed all of them here. It doesn’t just weaken the story, it guts your persona.

And it looks extra corny because it’s a clearly fake story that you thought made you look cool. “I crossed the color barrier and charmed the homies with my sleight of hand!” When you tell the story in your book, you even have the judge saying something like, “Are you the magician everyone’s talking about?!” lol. It’s essentially autoerotic fan fiction for how much you’re blowing yourself here.

As a professional writer (something you might consider employing), here’s the new story I suggest for you going forward:

Okay, actually the story I told on JRE and in my book was fake. I lifted parts of a Blaine story and sprinkled in some other bullshit to sound cool because, truthfully, I didn’t have any good anecdotes for my book.

Well… there is one story, but I was embarrassed to share it. My friends and I had just left Papa John’s when we saw a drifter we decided to rape and set on fire. I went to jail for it, but the black guys said I was their hero for doing card tricks. They also protected me in the shower. And then I used my incredible knowledge of body language to get the judge to dismiss the case and erase all evidence that anything ever happened.