13/05/08
Brown Damaged -
Categories: Not such a clever titled blog this week. I'd love to pretend that this is a clever political blog about our crap Prime Minister's failing at keeping the country from heading speedily towards a massive recession, but its not. Even though that is something that I have felt particularly string about since seeing my accountant this week and finding out exactly how poor I'm going to be for a while. No this blog is about the mental damage inflicted on me by seeing clever magic man Derren Brown's live show last week.
Since last week I have done some nice things, including spending much time in the sunshine lapping up the rays, opening the door for all the sunburn and inevitable skin cancer that I'll be rewarded with. Despite how nice all of this is, as I lie back into the sun, or in fact do anything that allows my brain to churn the same single thought has been popping into my head. This thought is simply 'How the f*ck did Derren do what he did do in his show last week?' Now its rare that I will rant on about a show like this, but I could well be brain washed to this week.
Now obviously I can't tell you what he did 'cos that would ruin it in case you go, but it was stuff that was truly truly brilliant and also completely baffling. The only time I've ever felt like this before is when I saw his last show, where, upon leaving, neither my girlfriend or I could talk for about 45 minutes because we had felt, for want of a better term, well and truly 'mind-raped'. God knows how the people involved in the tricks feel. During neither of these shows was I picked to go on stage, which is something I've been very grateful for. Derren's technique for choosing 'volunteers' was to fling Frisbees into the crowd at random so I was very careful to duck my head at appropriate moments. I truly enjoyed being able to sit back and watch Derren's show knowing fully well that I would just be a non-critical punter looking forward to some crazy trickery. Sit back I did, for about 5 minutes, until he first screwed with our brains and then I was on the edge of my seat hoping that at some point he didn't turn us into his zombie army through subliminal messaging. Well that's not strictly true. He is a brilliant showman making the whole room feel very comfortable about being there, even though in reality he probably had 500 little zombie army helmets backstage.
I've got no clue about magic at all. I once learnt a very crap card trick, spent most of my eighth year of age trying it out on family and getting it wrong over and over again helping to increase their boredom with my antics considerably. So having remained mainly ignorant to it all, I still marvel at great tricks. As far as I'm concerned it makes me feel like a kid again, and I am fully willing to be sucked in to thinking that the magician I am watching could be the child of Gandalf and that everything they do is all real. Its the same for music, because I am musically inept, and therefore a great live band is astounding to me. Whereas comedy, with some exceptions, has slightly less wonder about it because even though there are many amazing stand-ups out there that I don't compare to, I know how they do what they do. I did a bit painting and artwork when I was younger and as arrogant as it sounds I get the same knowledge awareness when I walk through even the most impressive of art galleries. "Mona Lisa? He just did that with oil paints on canvas then copied her face didn't 'e? Easy bloody peasy I tell ya.'
So after Wednesday's show I have decided that Derren Brown is a wizard and should probably be burnt alive or something. Either that or he should stop pissing about and just rule things by making people do what he wants. He seems like a nice bloke, or so I think, when infact he's projected that thought into my mind against my will. Even so I reckon he'd be a great PM, well, better than the other Brown anyway because even if he stole all my money in tax payments I'd be mind-wiped to enjoy it. I highly recommend going to see 'Mind Reader'. There's not really anything else out there at the moment that manages to capture that old fashioned vaudevillian show style while at the same time being genuinely impressive magic. Just maybe wear a tin foil hat so that he can't enter your brain and steal your memories. Or something.
By the way, despite the respect i have for the man, I still love the Daily Star's inspired genius when he came out as gay a few weeks ago. Headline of the article was 'Derren is a mind-bender'. So wrong but so funny.
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