Snarkin' time
Nov. 1st, 2007 07:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sailorhathorIf you are a fan of Criss Angel, you do not want to read this post. It will only piss you off.
Uh I guess SPOILERS for last night's "Phenomenon." And in one part, I discuss a few small spoilers for an episode of "Degrassi High." And I reveal the truth about wrestling. And I tell you how the bulk of magic tricks are done. This is going to be long. I know many people will not read it because they're not interested in "Phenomenon," but I need to write all this out for the sake of my brain, which won't stop hopping around with opinions. If I write it all out, it'll get out of my head and make room for the sex fantasies to come back. That's always good. If you find it funny when Lo-chan snarks, you'll probably enjoy this.
Before I start, I'll explain a couple things. I don't like Criss Angel. Never have. There's just something about him that screams POSER to me. It isn't really one thing I can name, that I can put my finger on. I just get a fraudulent vibe from him.
Some aspects of goth wear can be kind of nice to look at, but when Criss wears the black nailpolish, my mind screams, "Take that off, you fraud!" I can't even tell you why. It's just what my intuition says to me. Like, something inside tells me that he's doing it all for money and would prefer not to have that image.
Before anyone on my flist tells me his life story, it's not going to convince me, because people in the public eye often lie. I know this. It is possible for them to make up an entire life story for themselves and present it in order to create an image. It doesn't change that my gut tells me he's a big fraud.
For one thing, he appears to be hiding an accent. It bugs me when people do that. I understand that actors have to do it because you're, say, playing a guy from Kansas when you're really from Texas. You have to cover your Texan twang. But Criss Angel is a, what, magician? Mentalist? Why should he have to hide his accent? His image doesn't seem to fit who he really is.
Another thing, I don't like his stage presence. Well of couse I don't, if I think he's a poser. He's not convincing to me. He comes off as one of these pretentious, puffy shirt-wearing, poetry-reading Goths who also does magic, and that makes me want to beat him with a baseball bat. XD I mean, seriously, I have a nickname for him - "Claude" - because he reminds me of a character from "Degrassi High" named Claude who was one of these puffy shirt-wearing fops who thinks he's better than everyone else. And instead of "Clawed," he's "Clode." *eye roll* The character wanted to do a poetry reading for the school talent show and his poem was all about how he wanted to kill himself. "Soothing, black, and warm..." So everytime I see Criss Angel, I start reciting that poem to myself. XD
"Ladies and gentlemen, Criss Angel!"
"Soothing, black, and warm..."
I have nothing against Goths in general. I just hate "I wish I cared enough to kill myself..." Goths. Buncha kids with no real problems, or if they have actual problems, they've created most of them themselves, who whine endlessly about them and cut themselves to fit in with their friends. Gack.
Criss Angel reminds me of this kind of Goth. Someone who will give up the look as soon as they grow up.
Notice: I have no problem with puffy shirt-wearing people who like poetry in general. You just combine it with pretention and a gothier-than-thou attitude and I become pretty goldurned irritated. I am also not saying that everyone who dresses Goth just needs to grow up. I'm saying that emo goths just need to grow up. And I know that not all people who cut themselves are just doing it for attention. There, I think I've covered all my disclaimers.
I don't know if the guy has any real talent. I can't watch his show. I tried, and his stage presence annoyed me so much I had to change the channel. He also did this trick that grossed me out so bad that I couldn't watch anymore, either. It was some sort of trick where he made it look like a coin was moving around under his skin. Things moving around underneath someone's skin makes me want to puke. I know how he did the trick because the guy who was on "Night Court," Harry Somethingorother, is also a magician, and he did a demonstration of classic "Geek" magic on this comedy show one time. Harry made it look like he was driving a rod through his arm and moving it around under his skin, complete with fake blood. Then he explained how the trick was done. It grossed me out. So everytime I see someone do a trick like that, I think, "Geek. Ugh," and get sick to my stomach.
Anyway, now on to "Phenomenon." Criss is trying to be the Simon of this show. He's a poor excuse for a Simon. Simon (from "American Idol") rocks. He's right 95% of the time. Criss, I hardly agree with. There were two acts last night that he loved that I was bored to tears with. He loved the matchbook thing. The guy lost me after half a minute. He loved the tattoo guy. I thought he was creepy, gave off a sleazy air, and performed absolutely no magic. Trying to influence someone to draw a yin-yang isn't magic. I would have drawn a flower. Not convinced! When a judge sets up a pattern of me always disagreeing with them (like Paula Abdul), they lose credibility with me, and then I just tune them out when they start to talk. That's just human nature. I just sit there and mock Criss when he gives a critique. I truly wish they had gotten someone else to do this show with Yuri Geller, but they probably couldn't find anyone else who wanted to hurt their credibility by doing a reality program. (Yuri is the Paula while Criss is the fake Simon, and there's no Randy. *pout*)
The number one reason I don't like Criss Angel, though, is because he's got an ego the size of Texas, and he hasn't been in the business long enough to have even half that ego. He very obviously thinks he's hot shit. I strongly dislike anyone with a big ego, especially if they have no reason to think so highly of themselves. Confidence, I like. Egotism makes you unattractive.
Anyway, if you watched the show last night, you saw Criss get into a fight with one of the contestants. Does anyone know what the fuck this was about? It was like he had some sort of personal problem with the guy. Did the dude sleep with his girlfriend Vampira or something? And charging at the guy like he was going to beat him up... oh, so funny. Extremely unprofessional. It would have been so much cooler to just sit there like, "I'm not afraid of you, peasant. I can't even be bothered to stand up." Give him a cold stare, Claude.
About this particular contestant... first off, it pisses me off that people can play Russian roulette with nail guns and knives and it's not "controversial," but someone performs automatic writing, which is NOT life-threatening, and it gets its own specially-written warning. People are still so freakin' superstitious when it comes to methods to speak to "the dead." Automatic writing, Ouija boards, you put them in front of people and they still freak out and start making the sign of the cross. You know, I have no idea if you can really contact the dead through these methods. I imagine I won't know until I'm dead. I do know that you can contact something. I do know that the Ouija planchette (pointer) can move on its own. If there's some sort of natural, scientific explanation that a planchette would move on its own that someone could explain to me, then I'd accept that explanation. But at this point, my fingers were not on the planchette and it kept moving. I saw it, my friend who was there saw it, and at this point, it's just weird. So I'm quite fascinated by these sorts of tools, and I don't get why people think they're evil. Tools are just tools. Intention is evil.
I understand that the Bible tells people not to contact the dead. I understand why people would think it is unnatural and unadvisable. What I'm saying is that I disagree on the fact that it's evil. If someone is a natural "medium," they were given an ability and they should use it. With caution, but they should use it. If you know how to use a Ouija board and you use it with caution, then that's not an evil act, IMO. Your intentions don't necessarily have anything to do with evil.
But still, a guy does an act using automatic writing, and it's soooo taboo. (If you're not familiar with automatic writing, it's a method used to contact the dead where a person invites the spirit to write down messages using a pen. Sometimes the pen is in the hand of a person who relaxes their hand and allows the spirit to "take it over," other times the pen is inserted into a pointer made to hold it and the pointer, on casters or tiny wheels, moves around like a Ouija planchette and writes out messages. The major warning concerning automatic writing is that inviting a spirit to take over your hand could result in possession, if you believe in that sort of thing.) Basically, the dude's act was a classic example of Spiritualism with modern twists thrown in. He claimed he was contacting the spirit of some author (the name escapes me right now) through automatic writing, and the author was going to tell him what was in the box. The guy flopped around and made uncomfortable noises, as if contacting the dead was physically strenuous, while his face popped up on video screens to tell the audience what was going on. He wrote something down on a pad of paper. Tones played to indicate the start and finish of the "contact." Raven Simone (celebrity guest) opened the box and took out a toy car. The dude showed us that the dead author's writing was backwards and held it up to a mirror to reveal that he had written, "Metal. Rectangular. Four wheels." Oh, and he performed this act inside a circle of salt.
Did I like the act? Somewhat. The video screens were very effective. The guy certainly seemed to have done some actual research and tried to make it convincing. The playing of tones was cool and realistic; people really do use certain sounds to sort of "hypnotize" themselves and put themselves into a meditative state. Backwards writing that you have to view in a mirror is always cool to me. Most automatic writing doesn't come out that way, from what I've read, but it was still cool. It can easily be associated with contact with the dead. Did I really believe he had contacted some dead author through automatic writing? Not at all. I've never in my life seen someone flop around and make embarrassingly silly noises while contacting a dead person, in a seance or whatever. I would have told the guy if I'd been critiquing him to ease off the silly noises. I know that he was doing it to make it seem more dramatic, but it wasn't a successful part of the act. The guy who "stopped his own heart" made less noise. Also, I wasn't at all convinced that the guy didn't already know there was a toy car in the box. All he said was, "I don't know what's in the box." Well maybe I don't believe you! Convince me, stupid. That's part of your job. Have the object that is put in the box be chosen at random from an object someone in the audience has in their pocket. Turn your back while this is done. THEN I'll believe you maybe don't know what's in the box. (Person in the audience could be a plant, but it's still more convincing than just telling us you don't know what's in the box.) Beyond all that, I still really liked the performance because the other elements were effective. He had good stage presence. I really want to see more of what this guy can do.
Criss Angel didn't like him, though. I don't really understand why he took it so personally, as to practically attack the guy instead of just critique him. I mean, we know none of these people are magic. We know it's all a trick. So why not challenge all of them to do something really magic and try to humiliate them all? Why do this to just one guy? I didn't get it. It was all a bunch of pathetic prickwaving. Yuri's not going to tell the guy, "Hey, you looked silly flopping around and groaning, tone down that part of your act." Yuri's the Paula! Criss could have been the one to tell him that, but instead he acted like he wanted to assault the guy and didn't help him at all.
It makes me wonder if the whole thing wasn't a setup. You know, like how wrestlers don't really hate each other, they just pretend to be enemies to make it an exciting soap opera? And they're all hanging out together and having a beer when the show is over? I wonder if Criss Angel and this dude pretended to have a fight to make the show more exciting. 'Cause, you know, it kind of needs it at times. I also wonder if people won't vote for the guy to stay on the show just so they can see him bicker with Criss every week! I know I kind of wanted to vote for him just to spite ol' Crissy.
My favorite contestant so far has been Angela. It's extremely refreshing to see a woman in this business dominated by men. She had great stage presence, made her act dramatic and exciting, and did it without wearing a skimpy, trashy outfit. I honestly wasn't convinced that she performed her act without knowing where the knife was. In case you didn't see it, Angela put a sharp knife on a stand and then covered it, along with four other empty stands, with collapsible cylinders. One by one, she mentally deciphered (haha) which stands were empty and which one had the knife and then slammed her hand down on the empty cylinders. She even faked us out by making us think she was going to smash one, and then smashed the one next to it, which of course turned out to be the last empty one. Even though I knew she wasn't going to get hurt, I still got tense. It was cool. I'd like to see what other sort of stuff Angela can do. We know she can do slight of hand because she made a small object disappear. (I think it was a safety pin, but it's hard to tell with my lousy cable-less reception.) Does that mean she does regular magic tricks too?
It's a shame that if Angela is a full-blown magician and not just a mentalist that she can't do the reverse of the traditional magician scenario and have herself a whole gaggle of hunky male assistants. It simply wouldn't work. The reason why the bulk of magician's assistants are women is because most magic tricks rely on the assistant being small, flexible, and short. They have to squeeze into teeny spaces to make the tricks work. (I was a junkie for those "Breaking the Magician's Code" specials.) Hunky men don't fit into tiny spaces. A female assistant who is small and thin has a very good chance of being attractive, so it works out well. A short, extremely thin man... well, it just doesn't work out as well. So, maybe Angela could be the girl-on-girl action magician and have all female assistants. Lots of men wouldn't object to that. ;)
My #1 piece of advice for the show as a whole would be DON'T DO THE SHOW LIVE ANYMORE. You can't edit out the glaring, embarrassing flubs when you do it live. This is a show about magic tricks - WE SHOULDN'T SEE HOW THE TRICK IS PERFORMED. Some guy was doing a card trick where he made it look like his shadow moved the cards. The cards were on top of a glasstop table, and the camera was aimed downward at the table. When he made the cards move, I saw something move under the table! It zipped by really fast, but you could still see it. I'm sure that if you taped it, you could freeze frame that part and see what it was. But I'm quite sure it had something to do with performing the trick. Very shameful mistake. Like being able to see the string.
The other flub happened during the act where the guy pretended to stop his own heart. Although the guy still made it sort of exciting, it was laughable how easy he could have faked that. How do we know the heart monitor was even real? Anyway, Raven Simone (again) was supposed to feel the man's pulse and ring a bell every time she felt it. Of course, she eventually stopped ringing it. After about ten to twenty seconds, the guy gasped and "came back to life," which seemed to scare Raven because she screamed and ran away. The announcer said (and I'm paraphrasing), "Give him a minute, ladies and gentlemen. This didn't happen in dress rehearsal." Later in the show, the same announcer claimed there was no dress rehearsal for ANY of the performances. Dumbass.
Ah, the trials of live television. *snrk*
The guy whose last name was Super was very funny. I liked the joke about how his real last name was Van Awesome. XD And when he said that he had written some things on a piece of paper and stuffed it into a plastic cylinder that he stole from the drive-up window of his bank. XD Too bad his act was dreadfully boring.
The show is just interesting enough to keep my attention, but I think I'm going to become really intimate with the Mute button every time the critiques roll around. ;)
Uh I guess SPOILERS for last night's "Phenomenon." And in one part, I discuss a few small spoilers for an episode of "Degrassi High." And I reveal the truth about wrestling. And I tell you how the bulk of magic tricks are done. This is going to be long. I know many people will not read it because they're not interested in "Phenomenon," but I need to write all this out for the sake of my brain, which won't stop hopping around with opinions. If I write it all out, it'll get out of my head and make room for the sex fantasies to come back. That's always good. If you find it funny when Lo-chan snarks, you'll probably enjoy this.
Before I start, I'll explain a couple things. I don't like Criss Angel. Never have. There's just something about him that screams POSER to me. It isn't really one thing I can name, that I can put my finger on. I just get a fraudulent vibe from him.
Some aspects of goth wear can be kind of nice to look at, but when Criss wears the black nailpolish, my mind screams, "Take that off, you fraud!" I can't even tell you why. It's just what my intuition says to me. Like, something inside tells me that he's doing it all for money and would prefer not to have that image.
Before anyone on my flist tells me his life story, it's not going to convince me, because people in the public eye often lie. I know this. It is possible for them to make up an entire life story for themselves and present it in order to create an image. It doesn't change that my gut tells me he's a big fraud.
For one thing, he appears to be hiding an accent. It bugs me when people do that. I understand that actors have to do it because you're, say, playing a guy from Kansas when you're really from Texas. You have to cover your Texan twang. But Criss Angel is a, what, magician? Mentalist? Why should he have to hide his accent? His image doesn't seem to fit who he really is.
Another thing, I don't like his stage presence. Well of couse I don't, if I think he's a poser. He's not convincing to me. He comes off as one of these pretentious, puffy shirt-wearing, poetry-reading Goths who also does magic, and that makes me want to beat him with a baseball bat. XD I mean, seriously, I have a nickname for him - "Claude" - because he reminds me of a character from "Degrassi High" named Claude who was one of these puffy shirt-wearing fops who thinks he's better than everyone else. And instead of "Clawed," he's "Clode." *eye roll* The character wanted to do a poetry reading for the school talent show and his poem was all about how he wanted to kill himself. "Soothing, black, and warm..." So everytime I see Criss Angel, I start reciting that poem to myself. XD
"Ladies and gentlemen, Criss Angel!"
"Soothing, black, and warm..."
I have nothing against Goths in general. I just hate "I wish I cared enough to kill myself..." Goths. Buncha kids with no real problems, or if they have actual problems, they've created most of them themselves, who whine endlessly about them and cut themselves to fit in with their friends. Gack.
Criss Angel reminds me of this kind of Goth. Someone who will give up the look as soon as they grow up.
Notice: I have no problem with puffy shirt-wearing people who like poetry in general. You just combine it with pretention and a gothier-than-thou attitude and I become pretty goldurned irritated. I am also not saying that everyone who dresses Goth just needs to grow up. I'm saying that emo goths just need to grow up. And I know that not all people who cut themselves are just doing it for attention. There, I think I've covered all my disclaimers.
I don't know if the guy has any real talent. I can't watch his show. I tried, and his stage presence annoyed me so much I had to change the channel. He also did this trick that grossed me out so bad that I couldn't watch anymore, either. It was some sort of trick where he made it look like a coin was moving around under his skin. Things moving around underneath someone's skin makes me want to puke. I know how he did the trick because the guy who was on "Night Court," Harry Somethingorother, is also a magician, and he did a demonstration of classic "Geek" magic on this comedy show one time. Harry made it look like he was driving a rod through his arm and moving it around under his skin, complete with fake blood. Then he explained how the trick was done. It grossed me out. So everytime I see someone do a trick like that, I think, "Geek. Ugh," and get sick to my stomach.
Anyway, now on to "Phenomenon." Criss is trying to be the Simon of this show. He's a poor excuse for a Simon. Simon (from "American Idol") rocks. He's right 95% of the time. Criss, I hardly agree with. There were two acts last night that he loved that I was bored to tears with. He loved the matchbook thing. The guy lost me after half a minute. He loved the tattoo guy. I thought he was creepy, gave off a sleazy air, and performed absolutely no magic. Trying to influence someone to draw a yin-yang isn't magic. I would have drawn a flower. Not convinced! When a judge sets up a pattern of me always disagreeing with them (like Paula Abdul), they lose credibility with me, and then I just tune them out when they start to talk. That's just human nature. I just sit there and mock Criss when he gives a critique. I truly wish they had gotten someone else to do this show with Yuri Geller, but they probably couldn't find anyone else who wanted to hurt their credibility by doing a reality program. (Yuri is the Paula while Criss is the fake Simon, and there's no Randy. *pout*)
The number one reason I don't like Criss Angel, though, is because he's got an ego the size of Texas, and he hasn't been in the business long enough to have even half that ego. He very obviously thinks he's hot shit. I strongly dislike anyone with a big ego, especially if they have no reason to think so highly of themselves. Confidence, I like. Egotism makes you unattractive.
Anyway, if you watched the show last night, you saw Criss get into a fight with one of the contestants. Does anyone know what the fuck this was about? It was like he had some sort of personal problem with the guy. Did the dude sleep with his girlfriend Vampira or something? And charging at the guy like he was going to beat him up... oh, so funny. Extremely unprofessional. It would have been so much cooler to just sit there like, "I'm not afraid of you, peasant. I can't even be bothered to stand up." Give him a cold stare, Claude.
About this particular contestant... first off, it pisses me off that people can play Russian roulette with nail guns and knives and it's not "controversial," but someone performs automatic writing, which is NOT life-threatening, and it gets its own specially-written warning. People are still so freakin' superstitious when it comes to methods to speak to "the dead." Automatic writing, Ouija boards, you put them in front of people and they still freak out and start making the sign of the cross. You know, I have no idea if you can really contact the dead through these methods. I imagine I won't know until I'm dead. I do know that you can contact something. I do know that the Ouija planchette (pointer) can move on its own. If there's some sort of natural, scientific explanation that a planchette would move on its own that someone could explain to me, then I'd accept that explanation. But at this point, my fingers were not on the planchette and it kept moving. I saw it, my friend who was there saw it, and at this point, it's just weird. So I'm quite fascinated by these sorts of tools, and I don't get why people think they're evil. Tools are just tools. Intention is evil.
I understand that the Bible tells people not to contact the dead. I understand why people would think it is unnatural and unadvisable. What I'm saying is that I disagree on the fact that it's evil. If someone is a natural "medium," they were given an ability and they should use it. With caution, but they should use it. If you know how to use a Ouija board and you use it with caution, then that's not an evil act, IMO. Your intentions don't necessarily have anything to do with evil.
But still, a guy does an act using automatic writing, and it's soooo taboo. (If you're not familiar with automatic writing, it's a method used to contact the dead where a person invites the spirit to write down messages using a pen. Sometimes the pen is in the hand of a person who relaxes their hand and allows the spirit to "take it over," other times the pen is inserted into a pointer made to hold it and the pointer, on casters or tiny wheels, moves around like a Ouija planchette and writes out messages. The major warning concerning automatic writing is that inviting a spirit to take over your hand could result in possession, if you believe in that sort of thing.) Basically, the dude's act was a classic example of Spiritualism with modern twists thrown in. He claimed he was contacting the spirit of some author (the name escapes me right now) through automatic writing, and the author was going to tell him what was in the box. The guy flopped around and made uncomfortable noises, as if contacting the dead was physically strenuous, while his face popped up on video screens to tell the audience what was going on. He wrote something down on a pad of paper. Tones played to indicate the start and finish of the "contact." Raven Simone (celebrity guest) opened the box and took out a toy car. The dude showed us that the dead author's writing was backwards and held it up to a mirror to reveal that he had written, "Metal. Rectangular. Four wheels." Oh, and he performed this act inside a circle of salt.
Did I like the act? Somewhat. The video screens were very effective. The guy certainly seemed to have done some actual research and tried to make it convincing. The playing of tones was cool and realistic; people really do use certain sounds to sort of "hypnotize" themselves and put themselves into a meditative state. Backwards writing that you have to view in a mirror is always cool to me. Most automatic writing doesn't come out that way, from what I've read, but it was still cool. It can easily be associated with contact with the dead. Did I really believe he had contacted some dead author through automatic writing? Not at all. I've never in my life seen someone flop around and make embarrassingly silly noises while contacting a dead person, in a seance or whatever. I would have told the guy if I'd been critiquing him to ease off the silly noises. I know that he was doing it to make it seem more dramatic, but it wasn't a successful part of the act. The guy who "stopped his own heart" made less noise. Also, I wasn't at all convinced that the guy didn't already know there was a toy car in the box. All he said was, "I don't know what's in the box." Well maybe I don't believe you! Convince me, stupid. That's part of your job. Have the object that is put in the box be chosen at random from an object someone in the audience has in their pocket. Turn your back while this is done. THEN I'll believe you maybe don't know what's in the box. (Person in the audience could be a plant, but it's still more convincing than just telling us you don't know what's in the box.) Beyond all that, I still really liked the performance because the other elements were effective. He had good stage presence. I really want to see more of what this guy can do.
Criss Angel didn't like him, though. I don't really understand why he took it so personally, as to practically attack the guy instead of just critique him. I mean, we know none of these people are magic. We know it's all a trick. So why not challenge all of them to do something really magic and try to humiliate them all? Why do this to just one guy? I didn't get it. It was all a bunch of pathetic prickwaving. Yuri's not going to tell the guy, "Hey, you looked silly flopping around and groaning, tone down that part of your act." Yuri's the Paula! Criss could have been the one to tell him that, but instead he acted like he wanted to assault the guy and didn't help him at all.
It makes me wonder if the whole thing wasn't a setup. You know, like how wrestlers don't really hate each other, they just pretend to be enemies to make it an exciting soap opera? And they're all hanging out together and having a beer when the show is over? I wonder if Criss Angel and this dude pretended to have a fight to make the show more exciting. 'Cause, you know, it kind of needs it at times. I also wonder if people won't vote for the guy to stay on the show just so they can see him bicker with Criss every week! I know I kind of wanted to vote for him just to spite ol' Crissy.
My favorite contestant so far has been Angela. It's extremely refreshing to see a woman in this business dominated by men. She had great stage presence, made her act dramatic and exciting, and did it without wearing a skimpy, trashy outfit. I honestly wasn't convinced that she performed her act without knowing where the knife was. In case you didn't see it, Angela put a sharp knife on a stand and then covered it, along with four other empty stands, with collapsible cylinders. One by one, she mentally deciphered (haha) which stands were empty and which one had the knife and then slammed her hand down on the empty cylinders. She even faked us out by making us think she was going to smash one, and then smashed the one next to it, which of course turned out to be the last empty one. Even though I knew she wasn't going to get hurt, I still got tense. It was cool. I'd like to see what other sort of stuff Angela can do. We know she can do slight of hand because she made a small object disappear. (I think it was a safety pin, but it's hard to tell with my lousy cable-less reception.) Does that mean she does regular magic tricks too?
It's a shame that if Angela is a full-blown magician and not just a mentalist that she can't do the reverse of the traditional magician scenario and have herself a whole gaggle of hunky male assistants. It simply wouldn't work. The reason why the bulk of magician's assistants are women is because most magic tricks rely on the assistant being small, flexible, and short. They have to squeeze into teeny spaces to make the tricks work. (I was a junkie for those "Breaking the Magician's Code" specials.) Hunky men don't fit into tiny spaces. A female assistant who is small and thin has a very good chance of being attractive, so it works out well. A short, extremely thin man... well, it just doesn't work out as well. So, maybe Angela could be the girl-on-girl action magician and have all female assistants. Lots of men wouldn't object to that. ;)
My #1 piece of advice for the show as a whole would be DON'T DO THE SHOW LIVE ANYMORE. You can't edit out the glaring, embarrassing flubs when you do it live. This is a show about magic tricks - WE SHOULDN'T SEE HOW THE TRICK IS PERFORMED. Some guy was doing a card trick where he made it look like his shadow moved the cards. The cards were on top of a glasstop table, and the camera was aimed downward at the table. When he made the cards move, I saw something move under the table! It zipped by really fast, but you could still see it. I'm sure that if you taped it, you could freeze frame that part and see what it was. But I'm quite sure it had something to do with performing the trick. Very shameful mistake. Like being able to see the string.
The other flub happened during the act where the guy pretended to stop his own heart. Although the guy still made it sort of exciting, it was laughable how easy he could have faked that. How do we know the heart monitor was even real? Anyway, Raven Simone (again) was supposed to feel the man's pulse and ring a bell every time she felt it. Of course, she eventually stopped ringing it. After about ten to twenty seconds, the guy gasped and "came back to life," which seemed to scare Raven because she screamed and ran away. The announcer said (and I'm paraphrasing), "Give him a minute, ladies and gentlemen. This didn't happen in dress rehearsal." Later in the show, the same announcer claimed there was no dress rehearsal for ANY of the performances. Dumbass.
Ah, the trials of live television. *snrk*
The guy whose last name was Super was very funny. I liked the joke about how his real last name was Van Awesome. XD And when he said that he had written some things on a piece of paper and stuffed it into a plastic cylinder that he stole from the drive-up window of his bank. XD Too bad his act was dreadfully boring.
The show is just interesting enough to keep my attention, but I think I'm going to become really intimate with the Mute button every time the critiques roll around. ;)
