Lots of Great Shows

I am officially resisting the urge to talk about gas prices today. I had written a whole bunch of stuff about a rumor I heard that Obama said we should drill in Alaska and went on a whole rant. I’ll save it for another day.

You are welcome.

I’ve been real busy with three shows in three states in four days. All went incredibly well. The one of particular note was a high school in Northampton, PA where I was told by a few people that I put on the best show they ever had there. One of those people was the principal of the school.
That show was in front of 500 people and the truth is that it’s easier in front of a large group like that. I know that statistically I’ll have great candidates and I can move much faster through my induction process than with a smaller group.
But that’s not always the case, of course. I had a return visit to a high school in Butler, NJ this week with about 60 people in the audience and it was probably a better show that the one in PA. There is something in the water up there I guess that just makes them much more animated than most audiences.

Who knows? Maybe I’m just getting better at what I do that helps these things become better shows.

The other show was an after prom in Weedsport, NY. This was also a return visit. I know that this show went very well for me and that for the most part this was a homerun as well. But there was one girl was over-the-top animated and was a bit on the annoying side to a lot of the people watching and even participating.
How do I know that she was perhaps a little too distracting? Well, there was one incident where I was doing a skit where I was talking to one of the volunteers. For some reason she started pulling the leg hairs of the kid I was trying to get to talk to me. I have no idea why she was doing this, but I needed her to stop so I put her to sleep. Half the audience gave me a standing ovation for doing so.
Then I was doing my skit where everyone talks gibberish. She was now sitting front and center of the stage on the floor in front of three girls who were sitting in chairs. I talked to a few kids who were making no sense, as was supposed to happen, and then went to the girl in the middle of three who had been one of the other stars of the show. I asked her how she was doing and then in English replies, “I don’t know, but this girl right here is really annoying,” to yet another standing ovation.

I don’t really market myself very well with my entertainment career particularly considering the social networking methods available. But I do have a Facebook page for me as a stage hypnotist. Before the PA show I had about 190 people who “liked” the page with perhaps half of them not people who I know who just liked it because they are my friends. After the PA show, it jumped to 238, a 50% increase in “other-people” fans in one show.
That’s very flattering. It perhaps rivals the show I did at a Lancaster, PA show where someone created a whole Facebook page in tribute to the time they had that particular day. “I attended Marshal Manlove's party on Magic Island!”

Again, anything that I read, see, or hear like that is very, very flattering and gives me great satisfaction.


Speaking of great shows, we are down to just three contestants in American Idol now; Scotty, Lauren and Haley the hot one. Lauren pulled herself together this past week and was clearly much more confident on stage. Haley slayed the crowd with a second song performance that pulled herself out of a hole she dug with her first one and Scotty is simply a future country recording star.
We said good-bye to James Durbin, who will also forge forward to recording music in the rock genre. He’ll be missed by the rockers out there who follow the show.

As mentioned, it’s been anyone’s to win now for a few weeks. It’s tough to now judge who is best because we simply all have different tastes. There are two teenaged country singers left of the three though, so that might suggest something about the show’s demographics this year.


Speaking of more great shows, I had wanted to get into talking about Survivor, which had its finale last night. To me it’s still the best reality show out there and it was really the first of its kind to introduce the whole concept of voting off a contestant like that, to my knowledge.
I won’t give away the ending in case some people have it taped and want to try to be surprised by the outcome.
The show still holds up great to me and keep in mind that I can be as critical as anyone of these things. It is well produced, well shot, well planned and it is intriguing every week.
What I like to watch is how this gets filmed. In 22 seasons you cannot find a hint of a cameraman there. Of course you know that the camera is there because people do interviews on it but what I mean, for example, is that you cannot see a cameraman’s shadow in this show. They have cameras all over the place…in the air, underwater, in the mud and you name it, not one shadow that shows a cameraman there.

Cast of Survivor Redemption Island

The engineering staff and creative staff that they have to create, develop and build the sets for the challenges continues to come up with new twists on these challenges and the sets at which they are contested.
Thousands of people still send in entries to be on this show where, if selected, they will basically starve for the majority of the time they are there.
I know plenty of people who talk about how it’s faked and that it’s not completely pure. One cannot fake starvation though, remember that. There would have to be SOME help along the way either with a ration of food or some tools or something at the start. If someone were shipwrecked like that some provisions and tools would wash up on such a deserted place along with the people who were stranded.

Wow, I have a lot to do. So, I’m

Done.