| Monday, November 13, 2006 |
| Strange times |
One of the staples of late-night talk shows is the segment where the hosts show products or items that are real, but funny. David Letterman had "Supermarket Finds," "Dave's Video Collection" and "Small Town News"; Jay Leno reads "Headlines." Dave also featured segments with made-up products, like books and greeting cards, concocted by his writers. I always enjoyed the real-life items much more, because anyone can make up a wacky product; knowing that Jim Beam Pancake Syrup and Bloody Clams are out there on store shelves just makes them that much funnier. Truth really is stranger than fiction. That's probably one of the reasons "The Daily Show" is my favorite program. A gay-bashing minister whose megachurch is adorned with homoerotic art turns out to have patronized a male prostitute for "massages" and crystal meth? That's hilarious. And now, that legendary team player Terrell Owens has come out with a children's book called Little T Learns To Share. I mean, you can't make that stuff up!!!
Last night, Joe & I went to see Marc Salem's Mind Games show at the Post Street Theater in San Francisco. Salem is a mentalist, although he's quick to point out that he's not involved in the supernatural or the occult; it's all about psychology. In one amazing trick, he brought up a volunteer from the audience to choose a book at random from a bookshelf on the stage. Then she opened the book to a random page, hiding it from Salem, and he told her to focus her mind on the first word on that page. He started running rapidly through the alphabet -- "A, B, C, D, E -- E's the first letter. The second letter is closer to the end of the alphabet... Z, Y, X, W, V -- V is the second letter." In just a minute, Salem managed to tease out that the word was "everything." I guess he must have been reading micro-expressions on her face as he hit on the correct letters. He also managed to ascertain when audience members were lying in another exercise. Apparently this is one of his specialties; he's served as a consultant to lawyers, police officers and therapists. It would be really interesting to watch political speeches or press conferences with Salem -- or televised appearances by Ted Haggard, for that matter. |
posted by 125records @ 2:12 PM  |
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| 1 Comments: |
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I suppose it won't do me any good to announce to the world that that Jim Beam pancake syrup actually sounds pretty good.
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Name: Sue
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I suppose it won't do me any good to announce to the world that that Jim Beam pancake syrup actually sounds pretty good.