Coffee, Cards, and a Goatee.

There's a saying by one of the great Golden Age magicians, Harry Keller, which goes something like (and im paraphrasing): "You can fool the eyes and minds of the audience, but you can never fool their hearts."

Of course, there's another great Golden Age magician, Jean Hugard, who wrote (and I'm not paraphrasing), "Of course, humor is closely associated with eggs."

This is why Harry Houdini (who got the Harry from Kellar and the Houdini from Robert Houdin), didn't call himself Jean Houdini. He didn't own any eggs.

ANYWAY, going back to that first quote, I've always believed that to be true. You might have the best tricks in the world (and if you do, call me), but if you don't have sincere respect and adoration for your audience, and if you don't truly believe in what you're doing, they will see right through to the panty line of truth lying underneath the much-too-tight pants of bullshit. Which is why I have to gloat about this new routine G and I are doing. Its fantastic. It's not ours, not even close, but MAN is it good. And for once in this art of deception, its REAL.

Here's what happens:
Spectator comes up on stage and is shown two envelopes and asked to examine their contents. In one envelope is a check for a large sum of money (large being relative). In the other, is a lovely but worthless picture of a bear (it makes sense in the show, trust me). The spectator turns her back, and the envelopes are shuffled. When they turn back around, one envelope is placed on one side of the stage, and vice versa. They are given a choice of envelope. They choose one. They sit down.
Later in the show, they are given a chance to change their mind, amongst much by-play. They do not.
Later still, they are brought up on stage and are given a hint, and read a letter that explicitly (and thats no joke) states how wrong they are, and lists about 83,000 reasons why they should change thier mind, even though it also says that they wont. They don't change their mind. They open the envelope they chose. The bear pic is inside.

Now, what makes this routine so appealing is that it can fail. When you boil it down, I guess its only a 50/50 chance. But the fact that there is real money on the line makes it feel like there's a lot more riding on that 50%. And they can genuinely win it. But I'll be damned if I'm going to let them off that easy. So really it relies on my being able to influence them through words and actions. I only wish I could post the entire script of the routine so you could appreciate the subtleties involved. But A) you wouldn't since you're probably not as geeky as me or G and B) you'd just scroll past it all. So be content when I say that its genius.

What else is there to talk about? I know its been a while since I posted...I guess not much. Oh! How about this: Leave comments about what you would like to see a mentalist do - something you've always wanted to see done, and you might just see it in the show! We're looking for new routines. Okay, we're admittedly desperate. But there's gotta be someone out there who knows a little something about this stuff that can come up with something! Anyone?!?

...please?

Just looked back at my first post which contained, amongst other things, a kind of mission statement for this blog.

...I really fucked that one up, huh?

A few things quickly...

-Crash won best picture. Weird, huh?
-Umm...did anybody see that hip-hop thing happen? And then they won?!? I'm not saying thats a bad thing...just...different.
-John Stewart...best Oscar host ever?

The Academy Awards are certainly going in a few different directions. If only they were actually worth anything in the real world.

First of all, Amanda (whom I don't know) commented to the last post. Commended my effort, though very, very politely and nicely put down my execution of said effort. Three things:

1. That was really strange, because I honestly didn't know anyone actually read this thing (including those that say they do).
2. If I had known #1, I would try harder to make this thing readable.
3. Amanda obviously knows what I mean, since her blog is far wittier and better than mine. Damn you. You're probably stealing readers from me. Including myself.

Second, in the past few hours I have:

1. Started cooking rice only to find that the little dark pieces of rice were, in fact, insects. Insects of the very alive variety (though at the moment they were being fried, so they weren't going to be alive for long)
2. Put an oven mitt on one hand and picked up a scalding hot pan with the other.
3. Shocked myself every single time I've touched anything metal.
4. Stained my sweatshirt with something unidentifiable
5. Developed a pounding headache
6. Nearly choked to death on...air I guess? Just started choking. No one seemed to rush to my rescue.

So....luck is certainly not a lady tonight. More like a Nazi.