Bound And Gagged!

.:31/365: The Russian Roulette:.

Hi, Angela. It’s been a while.

One of the most dangerous routines of all time is the Russian Roulette. It’s a mentalism act that forces one to rely on his ability to determine if a person is lying or not. I strongly suggest that any mentalist who is just starting out steer clear of this routine until they are both very good at doing the lie detector test, and insured. Even the best professionals get this routine wrong, with often disastrous results.

Like any other mentalism act, the script is rather simple: there are several discs on a table. One of them will have a sharp knife attached to its end. Then, all discs are covered with cups or a cylinder to conceal the location of the knife, and the performer will crush each cylinder by hand one at a time, all with the hopes that none of them actually contains the knife. At each point, the mentalist will be asking the person who mixed up the discs if the spike is there, and the person is indeed required to lie.

I don’t always use this routine simply because it’s a very dangerous one, and will often require me to sign a waiver if I have intentions of performing it. Any organizer who books me would naturally be terrified of the prospect of having their main event impale himself on (in my case) a sharp spike, and knowing my work ethic, finish the show while bleeding like a stuck pig. It conjures very visceral images in the minds of the audience, and you can sense the sheer terror in the air.

I think that out of all the routines I perform, this one gets the strongest reactions because of the tension it creates for everyone. Most magic and mentalism routines produce a certain amount of drama, but the danger often found in acts can seem quite distant to the audience, since many have seen people escape from straightjackets and the like before, or disappear and reappear from one place to another. However, the stakes are insanely high in this act, and anyone can clearly see how terrifying it would be if one got it wrong. Some people think that it might be a case of accomplices, but I can assure you that it’s not. I even offer to pay the guy who manages to fool me into impaling myself. That way, they are motivated to lie better, what with the promise of not only getting me possibly lethally injured, but even compensated for it.

This is one of the best routines in a mentalist’s arsenal, ever. However, I would almost never want to end the show with such a performance because let’s face it, it does create a lot of tension and ends the show on a very agitating note.

Anyone else uses this routine? Let me know how you like it!

Project 365 magic, magikel, mentalism, project 365 2010

Bringing Down The House (Of Runes):.

Friday night was the start of a new era, hot off the heels after our swan song in Ditzy Diner the previous week. After having risked life and limb in doing Russian Roulette last Friday (and finding myself the receiving end of Dramagician jokes because of it), we took our act to unchartered territories courtesy of fellow mentalist Nomer Lasala: The House Of Runes in West Avenue.

It was quite a challenge, to say the least. We were in a crowd that didn’t seem like our target market, and we didn’t know if we were going to get through them with our comedy style. Despite that, we went ahead and gave them our best shot, and we quickly found out that we could really get them to laugh if we just gave them enough time to warm up to us.

For once, I headlined the night, and I did two of my favourite magic and comedy acts to much success from the audience. At the same time, I tried out some new material and my classic jokes about my misadventures as a magician on TV. All in all, we really caught the attention of everyone there that night, and it’s something to look forward to for next week, to be sure.

We’re gonna be there again next Friday, guys! Catch some magic and standup comedy only at The House Of Runes, Westlife, West Avenue, QC. It’s very near EDSA, so you can’t miss it.

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.:30/365: Bank Night:.

So this is how we’re gonna rob the bank…

The Bank Night routine is one of the nicest ways to open a show, and establishes rapport with your audience as a mentalist from the get-go.

Imagine the mechanics: you have five or more envelopes. One of them contains a thousand-peso bill. The others, not so much. You give a few members of the audience the chance to pick any of the envelopes, and after everything’s said and done, they all end up with the not-so-great envelopes, and they leave you with the envelope containing a lot of money. You get your applause. You have just proven your abilities as a psychological manipulator.

It’s a very simple script, but one that’s both engaging and upbeat at the same time. You get the crowd excited with what you are about to do, and as if that’s not enough, you even tell them the serial number of the bill from memory, just to further prove your abilities as a mentalist.

Richard Osterlind is very well-known for this routine, and it’s one of his favourite show openers, with good reason. As a mentalist, you need to show to your audience that you can excite them, and it’s not going to be just a boring showcase of “I can read your mind, now watch.” You want to engage them in your performance, you want them to feel invested in it. This is why I’m especially fond of this routine, as it really establishes some rapport with your audience right from the start. It also helps the performer ease the butterflies from his stomach before going onstage because he has to commit the serial number of the bill to memory.

It packs small, what with you only using a few pay envelopes, but it plays big, because you can engage a lot of audience members at the same time. It’s a really good way to start off the night, and I highly recommend this routine for any mentalist who still hasn’t found a perfect opener for their show.

Project 365 magic, magikel, mentalism, project 365 2010

.:29/365: In League With The Devil?!?:.

I decided to do one of these every now and then, just because Demotivational Posters rule. I’d probably come up with two to four a month in between regular posts… heh.

.:House Of Druids!:.

In the wake of the end of Ditzy Diner, I’m headed to the House Of Druids to do standup there tonight. Let’s hope that works out.

.:Microsoft And Bonding:.

Haven’t seen Doc and Jester in a long time, so it was a good chance to hang out with them after getting excited about MS Office 2010. For once, I’m really stoked about a Microsoft product!

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.:28/365: Mentalism And Ethics:.

Meet John Edwards. He’s a douchebag.

I was saving touching on “talking to the dead” for another day, but I think today’s a good time to discuss the great divide in ethics and mentalism. In all honesty, it’s a very touchy subject, because a lot of great mentalist believe that you either never address the question, or you milk it for what it’s worth, simply because the classic adage is: “Nobody likes a fake mentalist.”

To the knowledgeable performer who sees a mentalist, there is nothing amazing about the feats a mentalist can do. A magician can duplicate most of the results a mentalist can pull off with sleight of hand, misdirection, and a host of other methods, and worse, a mentalist, if he relies on educated guesswork, always has a small chance of getting things wrong.

In the end, it’s not really a big issue how a mentalist can achieve what he achieves. To me, a mentalist is simply an entertainer, and if the crowd is entertained, what does it matter how he did his stuff? To me, the problem arises the minute they use their abilities as a mentalist the way John Edwards does above.

As a performer, you make an implicit contract with your audience. You are putting on an act. You are performing. You may be lying to them, but that’s implied to be a part of the deal. This is an implicit contract, and everyone is aware of that.

The minute you decide to claim that you can talk to the dead though, you’re just asking for trouble. It’s just in poor taste to go out there and try to give other people some “messages” despite the fact that you really would have no idea how to talk to the dead if a necrophone were to ever exist. John Edwards is using cold reading, which is a very popular method for most mentalists who rely on psychology. He doesn’t have any powers to speak to the dead. I’ve seen perhaps inexplicable instances where someone could apparently see or sense the dead, but to speak to them? Why are these dead people speaking so vaguely, then?

In the realm of hypnosis and mind control, I’ve been very careful about just teaching my methods, even declining a chance to teach a course on it in Ateneo because of the worry of how people might end up utilizing these techniques. It doesn’t matter if the techniques are not 100% proven. All it takes is one unscrupulous person to use these techniques for the wrong reasons, and that’s quite a terrifying prospect to me. I can’t claim a reliable success rate doing hypnosis, but the fact that I sometimes get a hit only means at some point, I could teach someone who could do it reliably.

There are even a few people who claim that they use mentalism techniques to pick up girls. I don’t know how true these claims are, or how effective these methods are in that regard, but with a vocal minority of magicians in the Philippines deriding mentalists for it, you do have to worry sometimes.

There are a million and one ethical issues about mentalism. It treads on very sensitive grounds, and could very well be used for the wrong things. As a guy who has been specializing in ethics for my Masters degree in Philosophy, I can’t help but want to look at the ethics of deception and be warier of unscrupulous individuals who do more harm than good for the reputation of the art form. Personally, my belief is if you’re ever in doubt, just stick to the main purpose of mentalism: entertainment, entertainment, entertainment.

On a personal note, even if I were a genuine psychic and could literally read minds or talk to the dead, I’d still probably want to limit myself to entertaining people. I don’t want the responsibility of having to dictate to people how to think or live their lives. If I could genuinely predict the lottery, I’d still not want to use that to win on the spot. I’m all for earning my keep, which I’ve been doing all my life. And I don’t need to have a ton of relatives materialize from thin air, either.

And all I could really say right now is: go to hell, John Edwards.

Project 365 magic, magikel, mentalism, project 365 2010

.:27/365: Drawing Duplication:.

Hello, boys. Meet Angela Funovits. Yes, she counts as a mentalist.

One of the most common demonstrations of mind-reading for the mentalist has got to be the drawing duplication routine. An act often performed by the irrepressible Uri Geller, this crowd favourite has two people, a volunteer and the mentalist, standing back to back, and while the volunteer is drawing something on the canvas, the mentalist is apparently drawing a very similar thing.

It’s considered remote viewing, to a large extent, but it’s still one of the coolest applications of this particular skill. Given the mechanics, the simplicity of the script when it comes to performing this routine cannot be denied, and is precisely what makes it appealing to the working performer. I mean, how much simpler can it be, right? You draw something, the mentalist duplicates it. Sometimes, knowing that the mentalist is using intuition to get things right makes near misses even more amazing than having the mentalist get it 100% dead on.

That being said, the Drawing Duplication routine is certainly one of the most powerful routines out there, and there are a million and one ways to do it. I sometimes include it in my show when I have a string of mind-reading feats I wish to demonstrate, and overall, it’s a definite crowd-pleaser, especially if your volunteer decides to be a bit naughty with his or her drawing.

Just about every mentalist of note has their own take on it. From Guy Bavli to Osterlind to Banachek to Maven to Derren Brown, these mentalists have made it clear that this act is a keeper and it’s a classic for a reason. You’d be insane to not include it in your act if you’re a full-time mentalist. It’s short, sweet, direct to the point, and makes for a nice memento after your performance.

Project 365 magic, magikel, mentalism, project 365 2010

.:26/365: Phenomenon:.

Scripted or real? Too bad I don’t care about Criss or Jim. At all.

You could simply believe that mentalism has hit either an all-time high or an all-time low the minute television comes up with an American Idol-style reality show for them, all the while skirting the uncomfortable question: how is any of this stuff done, and do these people genuinely have powers? Despite that very awkward question that the show never makes an attempt to answer, it was still worth a lot of entertainment value, albeit for me, the whole program made no sense.

Essentially, you had eight mentalists come together to show everyone who’s the best, you put together Uri Geller and Criss Angel to judge the program, then after you crown your “Phenomenon”, what’s supposed to happen to him or her? This is akin to a really bad season of American Idol, where you don’t even know or care who ended up winning. I do know who won because I had a vested interest in the competition as a mentalist, but what about the general public? Did this program’s production team even bother to make it a point to market the winner of the competition. After five episodes, Mike Super came out as the winner of the whole thing, and nobody knows or cares about him, no matter how good he actually was.

Personally, I liked Mike Super’s performances. I think he carried himself in a way that made mentalism very fun and exciting and strayed from the traditional approach of contemporary performers. He was part mentalist, part game show host, and it really worked. I personally feel he deserved to win based on the strength of his performance style, although I’m a bit tired of seeing a million and one variations on the PK touch, and let’s face it: he was one of those guilty of that.

Overall, I believe that this show didn’t really achieve its objective of getting mentalism out there and having it more recognized in the mainstream. That’s too bad, although thankfully, the TV show “The Mentalist” managed to help ease that failure somewhat.

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.:25/365: The Mentalist:.

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.:24/365: Keith Barry:.

This is Keith Barry’s take on the blindfold act.

Okay, I’ll be honest with you: I like him, but I personally feel he’s lacking a little something as a performer. His biggest advantage is mainly the rub he gets by performing for celebrities in his shows, but outside of that, he hasn’t really done anything yet to strike me as a cut above the rest. His scripting for his routines aren’t refreshingly different, his effects aren’t terribly original, and he’s not particularly funny, either.

What you cannot fault him for, though, is his ability to capture an audience. He may not be the best performer I have ever witnessed doing mentalism, but he knows how to get his name out there, and perhaps finds his popularity almost comparable to most of his other contemporary TV magicians. As a marketing man, Keith Barry certainly knows how to attract the right kinds of people.

Keith is of Irish descent and you can tell as much by hearing him speak with that unmistakable accent of his. He has a lot of things going for him as a performer, as he has crossover appeal, which even some of our best mentalists still find difficult to achieve. Nonetheless, he is often one of the first mentalists a good number of casual fans tend to know, so he does deserve a place of recognition in this month’s focus on mentalism.

Look for his TV special “Extraordinary” or bits and pieces of it on YouTube (The above video came from that TV special.). Even if you’re an advanced mentalist, you would appreciate the way he dresses up his routines to appeal to the average viewer.

Project 365 magic, magikel, mentalism, project 365 2010

.:23/365: The Blindfold Act Or Remote Viewing:.

This is my demonstration of the blindfolded rubik’s solve.

Remote viewing seems to be the one branch of mentalism that has had the most practical use over the years, assuming that it works perfectly. There was a time when the FBI actually used remote viewing to aid them in solving crimes, such that they’d have supposed psychics focus on finding kidnap victims or analyzing crime scenes.

Unfortunately, as my demonstration has shown, I don’t quite have that kind of range just yet, and am restricted to remote viewing in my proximity and in real time. The blindfolded Rubik’s solve is something I learned from Richard Osterlind, and is one of the key highlights of my act. Now, in my case, it could be called a blindfold act, but if I were to attempt to dictate to a person how to solve a cube while I stood in another room, that would not be a blindfold act, but it would still be remote viewing.

I love this routine, because it’s such a hard worker. It never fails to please the audience, and any skeptics you might run into are quickly flabbergasted when you start solving the cube behind your back, deliberately holding the cube in front of you both for orientation and drama purposes.

Remote viewing is something that has been utilized by pretty much every single mentalist of note out there, although there are a million and one variations. We’ve mentioned in the past that Uri Geller has also performed his own version of remote viewing, specifically doing the blindfolded drive. Osterlind has done it, I’m almost certain Banachek could’ve done it, as it’s right up his alley, and of course, the great Glenn Faulkenstein has done a signature blindfold act with his wife for decades.

The possibilities are limitless when it comes to sightless vision. As an entertainer, I certainly love the things I can pull off with it. But imagine this… if everyone could only do remote viewing even just by proximity, barring worries of peeping Tom’s, wouldn’t that be a good thing?

.:The Final Showdown:.

Ditzy Diner’s last ever open mic was amazing. That is all I can say about it for now, although I must warn that I was completely out of character that night, like anything. Needless to say, we’re gonna miss that place after everything’s been said and done.

I really went and left it all on the stage that night. I was extremely harried, what with the double whammy I got hit with earlier that afternoon. Still, my third set for the year went over very well.

.:Impromptu Homecoming:.

After a very successful show in Woodrose where I was asked to do an encore by the audience, I found out through Eky that tonight was Don Bosco Technical College’s homecoming, so I promptly dropped by. There were only five of us there: Patrick Cruz, Nilo, Jeff Ching, and Luis Geronimo. Mrs. Benessa also showed up, so did Mr. Antiga and Mr. Mefragata. Wow.

I was a bit saddened that I found out only tonight that my mentor in English, Edna Rivero, passed away last September, at the height of Ondoy. I owe it to her to write more about my memories and experiences of her once I gather my thoughts…

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