A man named Messer once wrote:
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?
———–
…
…
boo.
First quiz is brought you buy Su Ann
Favorite main entree:
I don’t know.
Favorite salad:
Any Caesar Salad
Favorite soup:
That’s easy. The southwest chicken at Moe’s!
Favorite appetizer:
Depends where I’m eating. Sampler always works.
Favorite dessert:
TGIF’s brownie + ice cream thing! Oh, wait. Never mind. Choc. moose cake @ Hooters. Oh, wait. Never Mind. That giant Peanut Butter thing I had at Friendly’s. Hands down.
Favorite fruit:
mango. peaches.
Favorite vegetable:
Broccoli
Favorite sashimi:
Not a fan of sashimi …
Favorite sushi roll:
Not a fan of sushi
Favorite soda beverage:
Mr. Pibb
Favorite non-alcoholic beverage:
Coffee!
Favorite alcoholic shot:
I don’t drink.
Favorite alcoholic drink:
OKay, I said I don’t drink. With that said, strawberry daiquiris!
Favorite cake:
Choc. moose cake @ Hooters!
Favorite pie:
Apple
Favorite ice cream:
Ben & Jerry’s Phish Food. Haagen Dazs’ Strawberry Cheesecake. Baskin Robbin’s Cookies and Creme!
Favorite milkshake:
anything with Oreos in it.
Favorite cut of beef:
Not cut?
Favorite cuisine:
I’ll have to get back to you on this…
Favorite part of chicken:
Wings! From Hooters! Enough said.
Favorite fried food:
I don’t know…hm.
Favorite cookie:
ANYTHING from Mrs Fields.
Favorite indian curry:
As an Indian, and my mom will kill me if she reads this but, I HATE CURRY!
Favorite gum:
I’m not a big fan of gum. However, if I had to pick one, Winterfresh.
Favorite candy:
Reeses Pieces
Favorite crepe:
Who knows.
Favorite sandwich:
Turkey Melt
Favorite pizza:
Singa’s Famous Pizza!
Favorite mexican dish:
Joey Bags of Donuts. Double Meat! (Zach knows the drill…)
Favorite vietnamese dish:
Okay, I have viet food, I just can’t remember what it was. Damn.
Favorite Korean dish:
Never had korean stuff.
Favorite chinese dish:
Never really had chinese food, except for fast food chinese food.
Favorite filipino dish:
Never really had…you know the rest.
Favorite southern food:
I don’t know. Get back to you.
Favorite instant noodles brand:
Any. I’m a college student. Any will do!
Favorite juice:
Grape
Favorite snack food:
Too many to state.
Favorite fish:
None.
Favorite cereal:
Cap’n Crunch’s Peanut Butter Crunch
Favorite pho:
Never had pho.
Favorite breakfast food:
scrambled eggs, baby. pancakes too! (IHOP)
Favorite french food:
Dunno.
Favorite mcdonalds food:
Chicken McNuggets (Remember when it was 6 for a $1? I know David remembers…)
Favorite pasta dish:
I like any pasta. Take me to Olive Garden, and give me the Never Ending Pasta Bowl!
Favorite bread:
White
Favorite tea:
Any Tea.
Favorite 7-11 slurpee flavor:
Cherry.
Favorite hershey’s kiss:
There’s more than one?
Favorite flavor of m&m’s:
Peanut Milk Choc.
Favorite candy bar:
Twix.
The second quiz has been brought you buy Aline
The RULES: Remove the blog in the top spot from the following list and bump everyone up in one place. Then add your blog to the bottom spot.
The Final Five
1. Collection of Thoughts
2. YounGorgeous feat Kelly Clarkson
3. Shahruddin.com: Project Sha
4. | Make a Wish |
5. Shallow Thoughts of a deep mind…
You’re Next
Anyone!
So here goes.
What were you doing ten years ago?
It was 1996. I had just come back from India and was preparing to transfer to a new school. Yay for me!
Five Songs Which You Now All The Lyrics Right Off Your Head Now
1. Another Day from RENT
2. Out Tonight from RENT
3. One Song Glory from RENT
…
I think I know the whole RENT soundtrack by now.
Five Things You Would Do If You Were A Millionaire
1. Travel
2. Buy CES stuff
3. Invest
4. Pay for med-school and stuff.
5. Buy a nice House.
Five Bad Habits
1. Procrastination
2. Snacking
3. Skipping breakfast
4. Impulse buying
5. Easily glued to computer screen (spend too much time on my computer)
Five Things You Like Doing
1. Coding Websites.
2. Watching movies.
3. Creating content such as Podcasts or Video stuff.
4. Creating various techniques for Mentalism stuff.
5. Sleeping.
Five Things You Will Never Wear, Buy Or Get New Again?
1. Any Nokia Phone…
2. HP iPAQ
3. Magic Cards
4. A PSP ( I will NEVER get one)
5. A superman game.
Five Favourite Toys/Things
1. My computer
2. My digital camera
3. My Ipod mini
4. My ibook
5. My TV
April 2005
I was in a class called Introduction to Folklore and for my final group project, my group had decided to make a video. Now, for this project, all I did was shoot the thing. I was the cameraman. The editing and post-production was done by someone else, using Windows Movie Maker. It was a good project, I learned something…Tripods are your friends.
October 2005
Fast forward to the next semester. I decided to take a class called Alternative Fiction. In this class, my second project was a group video project. We decided that we wanted to film the ending to the story of “Robby’s Kill Box.” For this project, I shoot the entire thing as well. However, I took up the job of editing as well, to test the powers of my ibook. This experience bought much joy to my life. I was happy editing and coming up with ideas. I was happy with the outcome and our grade proved it was a good production!
November/December 2005
On the heels of creating “Robby’s Kill Box,” our final project was stated as anything. I went to Zach and I asked him about a Magic Documentary, to fuel my new found joy of film making and his joy of magic. Thus, Magic/Mirror, the first joint venture between Zach and myself and the first official production of DemonFish. It didn’t turn out the way we hoped, but it was a good experience for both of us. Magic/Mirror was a success in our eyes.
December 2005
For months, I’ve had been thinking about podcasting. I wanted to have some content to which I could that could be seen/heard to an audience besides my classmates and professors. I had been a member of Rice Bowl Journal for about a year and I had this idea. How about a podcast that used the ideas that form the foundation of Rice Bowl Journals. And thus, the pilot episode of BOWLcast, A RBJ Podcast, was created. After a brief hiatus, RBJP is now a bi-weekly production that created using VoIP. I am hopeful for a RBJ Meetup/Live ep, however it maybe a while before this occurs. RBJP we switched over to DemonFish in February 2006. For more information on RBJP, you can visit the main blog at http://rbjpodcast.demonfish.net
February/March 2006
At this point, DemonFish had done some private video projects and a open audio podcast. It was time for something new! Zach and I teamed up once again, and co-wrote an original mentalism themed magic performance for No Boose Weekend at Seneca Hall, a dorm hall in College in the Woods at Binghamton University. That performance was held on Feb. 25th, 2006. However, the performance was great, we realized it needed much work. After a bit of tuning, we are holding on another performance, hopefully taped, for an Folklore class, the same class that fueled the first “unofficial” production of DemonFish.
So, that’s the history of DemonFish. It’s not a great one, but that’s not what we were aiming for. Currently, every production/performance hurts us. And when I say us, I mean Zach or myself. We not complaining, it’s one of the scarifies that we have to make to create content that people can enjoy. Zach and I are currently lucky that Binghamton supplies us with Camera, Web Space, and Bandwidth. We’re also lucky that ourmedia charges nothing to host these productions and gives us a Creative Commons Copyright. We are just two people who create something out of nothing. Believe us when we say that these productions do not bring us any fame, and/or fortune. When you look at production cost, you would think the both of us were mentally insane! Don’t believe us? Here’s an example of what we spent on the No Boose Performance. (Note: We asked Dawn to just give us $60, we kept on adding shit because we wanted to make something enjoyable)
No Boose performance
4 Easels ($40)
5 Poster Boards ($12)
Marker ($3)
Color Pages ($5)
Envelopes ($3)
Pre-made Deck of Cards ($7)
Safety Pins ($4)
Regular Deck of Cards ($2)
Scissors ($3)
100 Business Cards ($30)
As you can see, we went over $100. And there was more stuff, like rubber bands, index cards, etc. And that was just one production. Like I said before tho, we aren’t complaining. No, we willing did everything we did. Many of the things we did was a one time purchase, like the Easels. The only production that didn’t cost us money was Robby’s Kill Box. The Magic production stuff cost us a shit load. And RBJP cost me around $30, mainly for software.
So, why did I write this, instead of reading One Lonely Night for my Crime Fiction class? I suppose I felt it was needed. However, I must say that there are other productions that Zach and I are current working on. Zach and I are current working on the show that will be taped at the Folklore class. In addition to that, I have spoken to Admission about a Video project for the University. DemonFish is growing and we are happy about that. How long will this last? We don’t know. Will we be able to afford it? We hope so. Will it be great to have the popularity of TWiT or digg? Well…that might cause us to shit in our pants for many reasons. But we hope that you are enjoying our content and that your continue to support us by listening/watching until the time comes when we packed everything up.
A few weeks ago, the first paper for my Crime Fiction class was to take any one of the stories we read and rewrite a part of it. The stories we read at that point were the following:
*The Killer by Ernest Hemingway*
*Fly Paper by Dashiell Hammett*
*Red Wind by Raymond Chandler*
(Note: If I know you, just E-mail, IM or PM me if you want to read these, I have pdfs of them.)
Additional novels we read since then:
*The Maltese Flacon by Hashiell Hammett*
*The Big Sleep* by Raymond Chandler*
Before I continue, I just have to say that if you are a fan of the pulp genre or just a fan of Crime Fiction in general, these stories/novels are must reads.
Anyways, we were suppose to take any one of the stories we read and rewrite them. Zach’s TA was nice. He just had to rewrite it and that’s it. My TA, Cody, made us explain what change we made. Wonderful.
Anyways, long story cut short, I got my paper back today and I got an A! This was completely unexpected, I would have been happy with a C! I’m so happy, I decided to share will you all my version of the ending of Fly Paper.
I do recommend that you read Fly Paper before reading my version just so you get the flow of the story, however, it’s not needed. I will warn you do, since my version is of the ending, it is a bit spoiler. If you plan on reading Fly Paper, read it before reading my version. Consider this as my warning! Do not bitch, whine and/or complain that I ruined the story for you! One last note, if you have read Fly Paper, just replaced chapter seven with what I wrote. The rest of the story is same, including chapter eight. (we were only suppose to change one scene.) Okay. Here it is.
——————————————————-
Fly Paper: The Alternate Ending created for Crime Fiction, English 380N, by me!
——————————————————-
~7~
I talked to McCloor in the hospital. He lay on his back in bed with a couple of pillows slanting his head up. The skin was pale and tight around his mouth and eyes, but there nothing else to show pain.
“You sure devastated me, bo,” he said when I came in.
“Sorry,” I said, “but—“
“I ain’t beefing. I asked for it.”
“Why’d you kill Holy Joe?” I asked, off hand, as I pulled a chair up beside the bed.
“Uh-uh—you’re tooting the wrong ringer.”
I laughed and told him I was the man in the room with Joe when it happened.
McCloor grinned and said:
“I thought I’d seen you somewhere before. So that’s where it was. I didn’t pay no attention to your mug, just so your hands didn’t move.”
“Why’d you kill him?”
“He stole something from me.”
“Holy Joe did?” I asked.
He studied my face a while before he replied:
“Yep. He ain’t no saint, I tell ya.”
“How do you figure that out?”
“Hell,” he said, ‘I don’t have to. Sue told me. Give me a butt”
I gave him a cigarette, held a lighter under it, and objected:
“That doesn’t exactly fit in with other things I know. Just what happened and what did she say? You might start back with the night you gave her the goog.”
He looked thoughtful, letting smoke sneak slowly out if his nose, then said”
“I hadn’t ought to hit her in the eye, that’s a fact. But, she had been out all afternoon and wouldn’t tell me where she’d been, and we had a row over it. What’s this—Thursday morning? That was Monday, then. After the row I went out and had a few drinks over at Bibbowoski joint on Army Street, you know, the Ace O’ Clubs. I got home about three in the morning. Sue was still a wake, she had been talking to ain’t so Holy Joe on the wire. The whore was bitching—“
“Sue was angry?” I asked.
“No,” he replied, “I was talking about Joe. He was real ticked off, something about ruining their plan. She hung up a few minutes later and sat down on the bed. That’s when I walked in on her. She was sick as hell, but she wouldn’t let me get a croaker for her. It was kinda funny, because she was scared stiff.
McCloor scratched his head meditatively and suddenly drew a great lungful of smoke, practically eating up the rest of the cigarette. He let the smoke leak out of his mouth and nose together, looking dully through the cloud at me. Then he said briskly:
“She told me she’d been poisoned by Joe”
“She say how he’d given it to her?”
McCloor nodded his head.
“I’d been asking her what was the matter, and, at first, not getting anything out of her. I took hold of her and looked her straight in the pearls. Then she starts whining that she’s been poisoned. ‘I’m poisoned, Babe,’ she whines. ‘Arsenic. That damned Holy Joe,’ she says. She was going to run-out on me with Joe and wanted me out of the picture.”
“You knew Sue was planning to take a run-out on you with Joe?”
“I don’t know it then,” he said. “I knew damned well she was cheating on me, but I didn’t know who with.”
“Yeah? Then what’d you do?”
“Sue was sitting there, on the bed and then she started jittering, like those folks at the yard. She took my hand, placed it on the pillow near her and told me to kill her. ‘Do it Babe, she said.’ ‘Be a man, be my hero and save me.’”
McCloor’s clenched his fists as his mouth and eyes tighten.
“I killed her. I did it with these bare hands” he said. “I couldn’t let anything hurt Sue. I’d promised her that I’d protect her.”
“Is that why you killed Joe? You were just protecting Sue? Did she even tell you where to find Joe?” I asked, as I leaned forward.
“I told ya, he stole her from me. I knew him, but didn’t know where he jungled up, and didn’t find out till yesterday, much thanks to you.”
“Me?”
“Yea. I saw you snooping around and questioning the dyke, so I tailed ya downtown and then up to Joe’s place. I had picked up a boiler and parked it over on Turk Street, for the getaway. When I got back to it, there was a copper standing close to it. I figured he might have spotted it as a hot one and was waiting to see who came for it, so I let it alone, and caught a streetcar instead, and cut for the yards. Down there I ran into a whole flock of hammers and saws and had to go overboard in China Basin, swimming up to a pier, being ranked again by a watchman there, swimming off to another, and finally getting thought the line only to run into another bad break. I wouldn’t of flagged that taxi if the For Hire flag hadn’t been up. You know the rest. I’m through spitting”
And he was. I couldn’t get another word out of him.
——————————————————-
Preview of what’s to come:
-Redesign!
Taken from Su Ann‘s blog.
7 Known Things About You
1. I don’t drink.
2. I don’t smoke.
3. I’m short (5’6)
4. J-Drama fan.
5. Biology Major (tho, not a very good one)
6. Pre-Med(@_@)
7. Advanced Model from the “Good Friend” series.
7 Lesser Known Things About You
1. Good at being a tour-guide.
2. I’m not that big of a gamer.
3. I’m not that big of a techie.
4. I really suck at Halo (both games)
5. I’m not an only child
6. I sleep
7. I sleep at night
7 Wishes
1. I wish I could program!
2. I wish I could drive!
3. I wish I had a car!
4. I wish I had more of a radio voice.
5. I want to do something useful.
6. I want to know who reads this blog (if you want to call it that).
7. Turn back time (for many reasons)
7 Things You Like About Yourself
1. Killer at making presentations
2. Can think out of the box.
3. I’m learning video editing and mentalism techniques. (Watch out Channel 4!)
4. Now days, I try to be happy.
5. Now days, I try not to hurt others.
6. Good with technology.
7. Adaptive.
7 Things You Dont Like About Yourself
1. My Voice
2. My GPA -_-”
3. Grammar anyone?
4. I spend way too much money
5. I have no money (see why #4 is a problem?)
6. I’m short(5’6)
7. I can’t drive T_T
7 Things On Your Mind Right Now
1. Papers!
2. Two novels in a day? Interesting
3. Laundry soon?
4. I wonder which RSS feed is supporting iTunes now
5. Multiple video podcast?
6. Sleep is good!
7. Moe’s for lunch?
7 Things You Hope To Accomplish Soon
1. Finish grading papers
2. Writing that stupid Crime Fiction assignment
3. Study for class?
4. Start studying for the MCATs.
5. Get my driving license
6. And a car
7. Go to Melbourne, London and the West Coast.
Damn, this thing is hard!!
As far as tagging…whoever reads this.