More Luv 4 Criss Angel

I went to sleep this morning rockin' out to the MINDFREAK soundtrack (my kind of music, baby!) and I woke up to my bro watching the second disc of Season 1. We watched a few episodes, ordered some Rockin' Tomato -- a large Pepperoni, Sausage & Mushroom Pizza and a dozen Pepperoni Rolls with extra, extra Ranch Dressing to dip them in -- and watched the first disc of Season 2.

Oh, and this was preceded by a text from my baby before I went to sleep, and an IM from her when I woke up!!! (She saw PIRATES 3 again!)

So good, GOOD day for Ray Jay!!! :D

Criss Angel is ASTOUNDING!!! I have always loved magic! I love when stuff doesn't behave the way you expect it to! I mean, not like a car refusing to start when you're on your way to work or something, but like when someone realizes that they can shove their thumb through the back of a styrafoam cup and make you believe they're levitating the cup.

You know?

Or like when a writer convinces you that this character you love IS GOING TO DIE, and then they figure out a believable way to keep the character alive!

Think of Indiana Jones...

Every five minutes of RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK Indy is finding himself in situations that you know he shouldn't be able to survive! And yet he always finds a way out of it!

Same thing with John McClane in DIE HARD. (Still need to see the 4th movie!)

There's a similar dynamic working in writing and magic, which is understanding the Human Condition, understanding what people think (in a general, universal way), creating a situation that intrigues them and engages them and presents a fundamental impossibility, and then defying that situation in a satisfying way and creating an outcome that people fundamentally want to see.

Like Criss says "I'm gonna try to make you believe I have made a 4-ton elephant disappear" and he actually makes you believe he made the elephant disappear!

Genius!

Incidentally, the sequence where he performs magic for the chimpanzees... BRILLIANT!!! OMG, I laughed until I HURT!!! I'm glad I bought both seasons of the show IF ONLY for that sequence!!!

I mean, what does a chimp think when you make something disappear in front of it?!!

I haven't laughed that hard in a while!!!

It HURT! :P

Oh, and there's a bone of contention in the Edwards household: Brian loves the show, but he's convinced (along with some people on the Internet Community) that the gag behind Criss's magic is that he IS using movie magic to pull off some of his bigger illusions. Criss has shown how he does enough of his tricks that I believe his mind works in a different way from most people's and that when he's levitating a girl in a Las Vegas street, people surrounding him aren't paid conspirators, and REALLY DON'T KNOW how he does it.

Coincidentally...

Season 1 has 4 interractive dvd tricks as a bonus feature. The viewer is asked to think of a card or pick a word or something like that, and Criss Angel guesses your card, word, whatever. Brian did the first 3 tricks, and CRISS ANGEL WAS RIGHT ALL 3 TIMES!!! I took the last trick -- guessing a word from the dictionary -- and the word he guessed was a different word from what I guessed. :( But it started with the same letter! Out of an alphabet of 26 letters, that's fairly impressive, hehe!

I needled Brian, because he had just said -- maybe 2 minutes before we did this -- that if he were in the audience, he'd play along and not spoil the trick. But he insisted that he wasn't "playing along" and that he hadn't watched that part of the dvd before I woke up!

Still, I think Brian believe Criss Angel does enough small-scale tricks that are mind-blowing so that when he does the hugantic ones we won't even consider that he might be using movie tricks.

He has a point, to be sure.

I need to get enough money now so we can go to Vegas as see Criss in person, so that maybe we can see which one of us is correct.

OOH! AND GNOMEY SHOULD BE WITH US!!! THAT WOULD BE SOOOOO COOOOL!!!

Now... If only I can use my literary prestidigitation to conjure us some money...

;)