Thought Struggle: 09/01/2005

Thursday, September 29, 2005

Blast from the Past

For Jmac.

Sincerely yours,
Ookla the mock

PS: I know Ookla wasn't on that show.

Tuesday, September 27, 2005

Family day at the Lake

Mommy and Napoleon with friend Max (not pictured is Annabelle, the WonderPug's sexy girlfriend)...

Friday, September 23, 2005

I wanna get freaky wit you

Master B.Rheal asked for my opinion on Criss Angel, star of MINDFREAK on A&E. So here it is:

Criss Angel is a big star and he's getting bigger. He started out as a musician/magician, doing shows in NY. He also had a band called Angeldust. I remember seeing a special back in '01 or '02 which was basically him doing stage magic (trunk escapes, cutting people up, making things/people disappear) while industrial music played. The stage was littered with a mixture of industrial/goth props and characters. The finale was Angel making some random crap mutate into robots which then captured him. That's what I remember anyway.

He is a good magician (he's won the Merlin award twice) doing interesting versions of classic tricks along with some newer tricks. I have no idea if he comes up with these tricks or not, although some tricks are obvious tweaks of older tricks (like his levitations) -- usually magicians employ experts to help them realize their ideas or visions. They don't usually figure out how to actually make the effects they use. If you watch any television program you'll see people listed in the credits who do these jobs. They might go to these people, engineers, physicists, carpenters, etc and say, "I want my arm to disappear and a tentacle to replace it while I'm suspended from a noose." Then, the building and brainstorming starts. Angel has used this type of planning to do some of his tricks -- I know he's gotten help from Penn & Teller and some of P&T's experts. People see someone like Angel, Burton, or Copperfield doing huge tricks and sometimes think they did it all themselves -- like making the Statue of Liberty disappear or walking through the Great Wall of China -- but it's all about nerdy engineers pulling off the angles and mechanisms needed to do these things.

Criss Angel has a persona that works well for magic. He is somewhat mysterious, although I think David Blaine freaked people out more. Angel is good looking with his long hair and physique, and he's figured out a way to milk the counter-culture scene for all it's worth with the industrial/goth/tattoo/piercing thing. Magic is only about the tricks in small part; the majority of pulling off that stuff is one's attitude and persona. Criss Angel is one of the magicians who acts like what he's doing is real, much like Blaine did before going into nothing but physical stunts of endurance (as opposed to Penn & Teller who tell you to your face how they do a trick and still amaze you). A good way to tell if someone is a good magician is to see if people believe their bulls**t. There are message boards full of people who actually think Angel can bend the laws of physics and claim that he is "Real" magic and has real powers. Not illusions, not tricks, but real. Angel perpetuates this somewhat by the way he talks about reality, the border of illusion and reality, and his tricks, but I doubt he actually believes in this codswallop. Maybe he does, though. Part of me sees the need for him to carry out this persona all the time, but part of me wishes he'd let those people who actually unquestioningly believe know that he doesn't really have supernatural powers. It only feeds their delusions. He calls his message board members "The Loyal" which could be viewed as evidence of his narcissism, but I bet many magicians, actors, etc. are narcissists. He sets himself up as god-like in a way, but many magicians do that, so you can't really fault him for it.

This brings us to his levitation. There are a lot of people who see the TV as evidence that he's really levitating and not using any trickery. These people are quite silly. To quote Penn, "It's TV, it's fake. You're supposed to know that. Some people believe soap operas, that's not my problem." He said that in answer to being asked to debunk Angel's levitation. Some people get upset because Angel claims that he levitates through "extreme muscle control" and doesn't acknowledge that it's a trick. Would it be as cool if he said, "Hey, I'm going to levitate, but it's a highly technical trick and we use some ******* and ******* and a little ******* to get the effect we show you on TV?" No.

Which brings me to the "How does he do it?" There are many many ways to accomplish what he does. I won't write about those here. I'm almost sure that I know how he levitates himself, but I'm not sure how he levitates the other people like the lady bent over backwards in the field. I have some pretty good guesses, though. And if I told you, you'd say, "OH! That's neat. Actually, I'm kind of disappointed now that I know." No matter how much you think you want to know, believe me, you're better off wondering about it.

I know a lot of magic tricks and now when I see them it's the skill and presentation I admire; I'm not awed like I used to be when I didn't know how they were done. It takes the mystery and magic out of magic to know the workings of the trick. Once you start learning about tricks you begin to "get" other tricks because there are only so many underlying principles at work throughout all of magic. It's a lot more fun to keep guessing and preserve a sense of wonder and awe when you watch a magician.

I like Criss Angel, but not enough to tune in weekly to see what he's up to. Mostly, he does what other magicians do, stuff I've seen before, but his presentation and persona is new and edgy so he's popular. He is a great magician, but I liked David Blaine better -- Criss Angel does the "street magic" stuff well enough, but I think he's better at the bigger, larger scale tricks. Blaine could take a trick anyone could buy for two bucks at a magic shop and make it seem like he's the Devil showing you his evil powers. Criss falls short of that kind of wow-factor, but he's tries his darndest to freak people out, or should I write, Mindfreak people out.

Ha.

Monday, September 19, 2005

The Trash-heap...NYAH!

Go Dawgs!

"It's more and more, every year, it just depends on how the team's doing, who they're playing and what time the game is at," he said. "About 55 tons is in the normal range for a night game with an SEC rival."

Over the years, as the stadium has expanded and UGA has built more parking areas, the clean-up job has gotten bigger, too, he added.

"Also, the team's got a better record than when we started doing this and all that impacts how big a job we have to do the next day," he said. "God forbid Richt leaves and the team isn't as good as they are now -- we wouldn't have as much trash to clean up. But if they find a coach who's better than Richt, I'm just going to quit because the job would just be too much."

Sunday, September 18, 2005

It's a Deep Burn...

This past Friday, Bly and I headed downtown to Pain & Wonder to get some black ink permanently poked into our skin. Earlier we had painted the WonderPug's foot and made him create some pug-prints on a piece of paper; soon these prints would be forever a part of us. Here are some pictures on which you can click to make them bigger as if by magic:

Mine is on my left forearm (no more short sleeves at work for me!), Bly's is on her right foot. Radar did mine and Mike did Bly's. Both guys were very professional and I highly recommend Pain & Wonder for all of your tattooing needs. You can't really tell from the pictures, but the shading is incredible -- it looks like a real footprint, not cartoony at all and very detailed. We went a few weeks ago with the idea of getting them placed on the side of a foot (sort of below and behind the ankle), but Mike sent us away after warning us that that location would be bad news as far as healing and fading over time is concerned. They could have easily went ahead anyway without any sort of warning, but they turned down business with honesty. We respected the fact that they actually cared. When I told Radar I wanted it on my forearm, he made sure that I had thought about the changes I might have to make in my daily life since it would be highly visible. Again, the honesty and genuine concern trumped the almighty dollar. We assured them that we had thought about it, and were ready to go. The shop is spotless, clean, and inviting. Out of the three tattoos I have and the three shops I've been to, Pain & Wonder is, hands down, the best shop I've patronized. Radar was the best artist I've been to, also. Again, I recommend both Mike and Radar at Pain & Wonder.

Thursday, September 15, 2005

Somebody get Merriam-Webster on the Phone

This kid needs a dictionary:

"I'm not racist or anything," he said. "It's just, some people I hate, some people I don't get along with. And black people just happen to be the ones because they think they're better than everyone else."

Read the whole story here.

Idiot.

Thought Struggle