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I heard about the Orlando controversy between the Fox Network and its place on Bright House cable. Fox wanted more money for their content and threatened to pull the plug on their signal to cable. Attorney John Morgan represented some guy who appeared ready to have nervous breakdown from losing his TV football game. For now the issue seems resolved. I predict more wars between cable and content providers. Most of you know that Comcast Cable system just bought NBC from GE. The new owners inherit the Jay Leno fiasco. His programming move from 11:30 to 10:00PM has proved a disaster. He and his format weren’t ready for prime time. I don’t think that even Johnny Carson would have worked in prime time. I gave up on Leno years ago when his show degenerated into making fun of people. Recall that most of his comedy bits are making fun of ignorant people. I do not doubt his comedy premises but do viewers enjoy him rubbing our national noses in the fact that many Americans, especially the young ones, don’t know anything, can not spell and have no organized mental thought process? By the way, who was buried in Grant’s Tomb?
What does my dear wife use to chase away the Virginia darkness and the winter isolation? Television. The idiot box. We have a wide screen Hi-Def set. I spend my time in the basement watching magic videos on my DVD player in front of an old CRT tube or reading or watching You Tube.
The daylight hours are shorter here, since we are further north here in Virginia. Dawn, during the dead of winter, is at 7:20AM and dusk is at 4:45PM. The leaden overcast skies make the days seem even shorter. TV is the antidote. In Russia it is Vodka. I do not know which is worse. It is a case of either rotting your brain or rotting your liver.
Upstairs the idiot box squawks on. Look, I used to work in commercial television. It was not like the almost complete mindless nonsense on today! Sure, we had Gilligan’s Island, but a better proportion of the even prime time shows had artists and literary quality and variety shows still had a place in prime time.
Today, occasionally a magician is on. Jeff Dunham, filthy humor and all, is on with his ventriloquism shtick on the Comedy Channel but otherwise magic is seldom seen on TV. I long for the days when variety shows were a staple of broadcast television.
I am so sick of reality shows; I am tempted to throw my wife’s TV out the window. Most of them are fake, and the people whose lives revolve around watching that garbage need to get a life. A psychological study was done in 2004 to find out why reality TV is so popular (http://nisonger.osu.edu/
- The results showed that status is the main motivational force that drives interest in reality television. The more status-oriented people are, the more likely they are to view reality television and report pleasure and enjoyment. People who are motivated by status have an above-average need to feel self-important.
- Reality television viewers are more motivated by vengeance than are non viewers. The desire for vengeance is closely associated with enjoyment of competition.
TV is mostly junk in my opinion... It's easy to criticize reality TV. It totally stinks, but that is not the point. America sacrificed quality content to the almighty dollar decades ago. I am old enough to remember Playhouse 90 and CBS Reports. Networks are in a highly competitive and fragmented situation today so they have to turn a profit and the equation is: advertising revenue – the cost of production = gross profit. Reality TV is cheap to produce and it generates enough of an audience to make it attractive to advertisers. TV is going to get a lot worse before it starts getting better and the odds are we will never see another era where the networks compete based on quality. As harsh as all of this sounds, we are getting exactly what we are asking for as a society.
Remember the good old black-and-white Goodson/Toddman shows like "What's my line" and "Password" - which were entertaining and made you actually use your brain? Yes, some of us remember when MTV actually played rock videos, when A&E really meant "Arts" and Entertainment. Now it's no Arts and very little Entertainment. Remember when you could actually learn something on The Learning Channel? Those were the days. Remember the Ed Sullivan Show and The Magic Land of Allakazam? I am disgusted the way “America’s Got Talent” selects and harshly treats magicians.
Even the Weather Channel has begun to include more non-weather related content. They were running some “home improvement” thing the other day while it was snowing like heck outside my window and I did not know how safe the route was to pick up my kids in Hagerstown or when the snow would end and how much would stick. A local TV station was rerunning the weather from 2 days before because the weatherman could not get into the station. I called up the TV manager and told him the least they could do is get the guy Skype or an I-Phone so he could do the report from his house.
So when did TLC, The Learning Channel, become The Dysfunctional Family and Surgical Monstrosities-All-the-Time-
Our society is becoming a sicker society, tainted with entertainment interests in watching other people fail and getting a thrill from it – Reality TV. “Jon and Kate plus 8 now minus one- to be continued” Who cares? Kate got a new hairdo. Who cares?
Yes, I guess there is a good definition of Reality TV: It's showing us for who we really are, a country full of creeps? On top of all this, money fuels it and helps drive the networks to gear shows to generate more money, regardless of whether or not it's any value, or that we are any better by watching it. It is a self-perpetuating downward spiral.
I know people who go home and watch DVR'ed shows all night while they are DVR’ing more shows at the same time. That makes no sense! Get a life. I would rather go for a jog and lose a few pounds than watch a dozen weepers crash diet their way through The Biggest Loser. Need a resolution? Go take a dance lesson when Dancing with the Stars is on. Go to a local concert or a karaoke night. Organize a drawer, reupholster a chair, or plant a flower instead of watching HGTV for ten hours. Turn off Joyce Meter , Joel Osteen and Benny Hinn and just read your Bible for yourself! Magicians! Get out and do a magic show for a needy cause!
One evening my wife was sitting at the dining room table doing a craft project. The TV was off. I asked, “Why are you doing a craft project?” She said, “We have 725 TV channels and the DVR has 26 hours of shows that I have saved. We spend $94 a month but really there is nothing worth watching”… Yes!!! My wife is coming to her senses!
Enough of this stuff lets talk magic!
I have a mentalism bit that I perform every once in a while. It is a Headline Prediction! This one does not seem to use a stooge and no one would believe that it could.
I ship a package to the show sponsor a week before the show. It is a cardboard box that contains inside an aluminum foil wrapped clear plastic box with a small wooden chest (3 by 3 by 5 inches) inside “to keep it sealed”. (Chests are available at Michael’s Crafts and other stores).
The daily newspaper is brought forward. The cardboard box has been in the sponsor’s possession ever since it was received the week before.
I have the sponsor open the cardboard box. Inside they find the aluminum foil wrapped clear plastic box. The excuse is to prevent x-rays. “If someone knew the future they could make millions by betting on events. To prevent this and to preserve my sanity I never try to predict a headline but a more trivial event. There is an ancient Greek proverb that says, “Whom the Gods wish to destroy, they reveal the future!”
We both peel back the foil on the outside of the clear plastic case. The wooden chest is removed from the inside of the plastic case with foil on it.
I call for my assistant to come forward and hold her (or his) hands out with their finger tips vertical to the floor so they can gently hold the internal locked wooden chest by the ends.
The newspaper is opened and I have the sponsor take the chest and put it in front of him on the table. Here is where you have options as to the “Prediction”. I never tell anyone up to this point that this is a Headline Prediction act. The reason is that if there is a major tragedy you are locked into a real “downer” when it comes to revealing the headline. If there is a happy headline, by all means use it. If not then say that you had a mental block on the front page due to the nature of the headline.
Your out will be this: Stress that you “visualized” a single page. Have the sponsor turn to page 3 as you seemingly vaguely recall a specific number in one of the stories in the 3rd or fourth column. It was the number of people getting rebates on something (use any trivial story with a few facts). I stand away and the guy opens the chest and inside is a white card that fills the chest and on it is written “Page 4 Column 3 396 people”.
Sure enough in the paper on page 4, Column 3 is that number.
I have actually done this predicting 3 stock closing prices! AXP 36.52 etc. You may have Financial Planners following you out the door!
The secret? A stooge! Not the Sponsor but my assistant who holds the chest for the brief time! They have a “thumb writer” on their thumb. The craft box is doctored by sanding the slit on the back where the lid hinges. The card is partly inserted through the slit with most of it hanging out the back where it can be easily written on with a thumb writer. I pre-write the known parts and my assistant fills in the specifics.
I think that this may have originally been “The Jack London Prediction Chest”. I never saw the manuscript or confirmed the creator of this. I was shown the method in the late 60s by Chuck Windley when I was working for him. It is a goodie! Try it!
I can say that after reading Sheldon’s excellent Ring Reports and from my E-mail contacts with those of you that have not forgotten me, “Good things are always happening in Ring 170!”
Dennis Phillips
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