---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <turquoiseb@...> wrote :
From: salyavin808 <no_re...@yahoogroups.com> ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <turquoiseb@...> wrote : I don't want to get in the middle of any "the TMO killed Doug Henning" discussion, but in a very real sense, they did. I knew Doug briefly because one of my roommates at the time created airbrush-painted silk costumes for him. During that year, I saw him go from TM newbie to Absolute, No-Question-About-It TM Cultist. It was not a pretty transition. He always stayed a nice person, even when he learned that my roommate and I had backed away from the TMO, but we could tell he was being pressured to distance himself from us. I was deeply saddened when years later I heard that he'd taken the "Andy Kaufman cure" and become yet another TM cancer fatality. He was really *such* a nice guy, but easily swayed by Woo Woo. I thought he was a really nice guy, the only time I ever really saw him was in a presentation video the TMO PR department had cobbled together to raise funds for his Veda Land project. Trouble is he was on his death bed at the time but that little factoid didn't make it into the presentation for some reason. That was my turning point in turning away, that they would shamelessly exploit such an innocent seeming guy made me realise the sort of organisation I was dealing with. Doug, in the time I knew him, was in the finest of health and skills. I consider myself infinitely fortunate to have been exposed to such a master of the magical arts, and in such close proximity. Doug would come over to our apartment in Marina del Rey to do costume fittings with my roommate. While he was waiting around, he'd sit on the floor of our apartment and entertain the rest of us with close-up magic. He had studied with the best (Dai Vernon) to learn it, and then practiced 6-8 hours a day for 20 years to perfect it. I was in AWE of Doug's close-up magic. I've probably described it here before, but he'd sit on our floor, crosslegged, and invite us to sit around him. Except for me. Even then, he must have suspected that I was the critic in the group, because he allowed me to move around and watch his act from any perspective I wanted. So then he'd sit there, wearing a T-shirt so that there could literally be "nothing up his sleeves," and hold his two hands out, resting on his knees, palms downward. First, he'd turn each hand over and show us that there was nothing in either hand. Then he took a gold Kruggerand from his pocket and placed it in one hand, and then turned that hand over. Bear in mind that when I say "turned his hand over," that was all there was to it. His two wrists from this point on never moved from resting on his knees. So first he's sitting there with his two hands closed and facing downwards, and then he turns over the one into which he'd inserted the Kruggerand, and there's nothing. Nada. Zip. He turns his hand over so both of them are palms-downward again. Then he smiles and says, "Listen," and I hear a "Clink!" in his other hand. He turns it over. There is a gold coin in it. He turns it back over, I hear another "Clink!" and then he turns over that hand again and there is nothing in it. He turns over the *other* hand, and there is the Kruggerand. This goes on for some time, in various permutations. The whole time I was free to wander wherever I wanted in the room, to try to figure out what he was doing. At several points I literally placed my head on the floor beside and behind him, so I could get a better view of what he was doing, and thus figure it out. I never figured it out. Was it "real" magic? No, of course not. But it's as close as I've ever seen, and it was wonderful. Excellent story. I love that sort of thing, making elephants disappear has its place but there's nothing like good sleight of hand right in front of you. Card tricks are my faves, don't see many people doing them now. Paul Daniels was the best, I shall look up some vids on youtube, must be something good of his on there. I know a guy who has a career entertaining kids with a science show, loads of explosions and cheeky banter but it's also informative. He did the David Blaine levitation trick in my kitchen once, right in front of me he rose into the air, my jaw dropped off. But looked at from another angle what he had done was slip his shoe off and was lifting himself up with his barefoot while holding his shoe between his ankles. I think it works by taking you by surprise so much you just don't see how obvious it is from the front. You simply stop looking for a solution as your brain does somersaults. I'm sure most magic is diverting attention from what you are doing and making it look harder than it is. Or they've got super powers. I'm actually positive that Derren Brown has. In the last show of his I saw on TV, he guessed someone's mobile phone number by asking questions about their gran's dog (WTF!) And I did see Doug Henning make an elephant disappear on this video the TMO prepared. It was pretty cool.
