Sometimes he rants, sometimes he smiles. Sometimes he jokes, sometimes he sighs. Sometimes he's happy, sometimes he's sad. Sometimes he's good, sometimes he's bad. Sometimes he's there, sometimes he's gone. Sometimes he stalls, sometimes he's done. But whatever Marcelle says, whatever he'd do, you can be sure, it's true! It's true!
Yeah, I don't think I need to say much else beyond that, really. Hate this month, hate having to put up pretenses that everything's fine and dandy, hate having to deal with someone reminding me I'm still not okay while she is because she totally jumped the first person who gave her the time of day.
I don't really have much of a point on this day. I know, these kinds of rambling, nothing-in-particular posts have shown up more often lately, but I can't help it. I feel like there's something missing in my life, and nothing I've been doing has been able to fill it. At all.
Then again, maybe if I tried something like this, I'd have 2,000 things to fill that missing thing in my life. LOL.
This man wins at life. Sorta Not-Safe-For-Work and Not-Safe-For-Self-Esteem.
Before anything else, in case you missed our Christmas show last Friday, "My Idea Of A Perfect Christmas Show (Sayang hindi namin nakuha si Jose Mari Chan...)," you can catch snippets of it tonight on TV5, after Willing Willie, on the TV Show Wow Meganon!
Hope you guys like it, as we definitely pulled out all the stops for that show. :)
.:340/365: On The Ellusionist Culture:.
I’ve touched upon this in the past, but it’s something that bears repeating: Ellusionist has been both one the biggest boons and banes for the magic industry in the last decade, arguably next only to David Blaine (Criss Angel is a bane to the industry, period.). Through Ellusionist, we ushered in a whole new breed of magicians, with a throng of young performers who have been reared on the style crafted by the E to reach out to the next millennium’s budding magicians.
It was a stroke of genius on their part, really: they made magic seem cool all over again, and anchored it on the misleading premise that anyone can be a magician, and magicians will always impress people, without allowing their would-be clients a chance to glance at the fine print: yes, anyone can be a magician, but only if they work at it. Yes, magicians will impress people, but only if they’re actually any good at it. While retreading age-old material just given a new and edgy twist may seem like an excellent way to milk money, it isn’t a very viable one in the long term. Ellusionist is succeeding and will continue to succeed, but mostly because of an excellent marketing team rather than any actual substance behind the things that they do.
This isn’t to say that the E is completely bereft of substance, but it’s impossible to ignore how much more sizzle than steak can be found in almost all of their recent releases. After the initial onrush of great material, they began to rely more on their slick production values than in actually coming up with effects that really turned magic on its head.
All things considered, I like that there are more magicians than ever, but I also hate that there are more magicians than ever. To be honest, one can’t blame Ellusionist for this lack of regard for magic as an art form, but simply a matter of statistics: as more people want to learn magic, there will be more people who will want to learn it for the wrong reasons, be it for exposure, just scoring some one-night stands, or any other less than delightful motives. At the same time, couple this with the YouTube culture that we would have to discuss tomorrow, and you have a recipe for disaster.
It’s a huge burden, but the onus needs to be shared by Ellusionist to uphold magic and continue elevating it on their own turf. At the moment, they’re doing well coasting along on their success, but there’s no reason for them to not want to take it to the next level if it means that it will benefit everyone in the industry. How they could do it remains to be seen, though, because clearly, their current methods have reached an upper limit, and something drastic needs to happen to make that next transition.
.:341/365: On The YouTube Generation:.
Ever noticed how a good magic trick on YouTube would never go without having some smartass commenter divulging how the trick works? Heck, the video above? That’s proof in the pudding right there.
Welcome to the YouTube Generation of magic: a place where poor performances, exposure, and outright bootlegging of full videos are commonplace and unstoppable. If you thought torrent was dangerously hurtful to magic, YouTube is probably infinitely worse.
Ever wanted to learn how to do a magic trick? Just go to any YouTube video online, and either there’s a video out there that teaches the trick, or you could see a performer flub the trick so bad you’d know how he did it, or you could see an excellent performance filled with commenters who just have to tell you how it’s done and kill the faerie for everyone else.
While it has been an excellent platform to showcase magic, it has, in my estimate, done more harm than good to the magic industry. Really. Why would the average person want to pay money to see a good magic act when not only can they see the same performance on YouTube, they can even find out how it’s done afterwards?
And I guess that’s exactly why you would never find my full act online, for fear of eliminating any surprises I have up my sleeve as a performer. I like being able to keep people guessing what I would do next, and how free-flowing my performances can be. Having my full act on YouTube ruins that spontaneity because there are no more unexpected bits and pieces to my show, so the entire audience can potentially brace themselves against anything I can cough up, which is a crying shame, really.
The YouTube generation hasn’t really inspired a new generation of magicians. Instead, it has given an avenue for killing faeries wholesale, whether it be the likes of the Mythbusters (More on them next time.) or just your average sub-par magician botching the trick to the point of exposure. It doesn’t do a whole lot of instilling respect for the art form, and instead perpetuates the notion that anyone can do magic and that it’s nothing but trickery, and all trickery is bad. As it feeds into the cycle of denigrating the perception of magic, I feel that the gains it may have garnered for the magic industry in terms of dissemination and exposure are not enough to undo the damage it has caused upon the respect for the secrecy of the art form, as it has become so casual and widespread that it’s no longer a big deal to do exposure the way Valentino’s actions used to be such a huge issue for us.
Sometimes, I can’t believe how well I fool myself and other people that I’m just fine. Knowing you don’t feel the way I do about you, knowing it’s just me again.
Sometimes, I find very strong and compelling arguments that make me believe that indeed, loving someone just plain sucks. This is my day of bitterness. Let me at it.
.:Of Course, You Know, This Means War...:.
Something about seeing Jollibee prance around in front of a McDonald’s parade just really cracks me up...
.:Two Days After Single Awareness Day, And I'm Still Breathing. Barely.:.
The past couple of days has really taken a lot out of me, to say the least. I guess one can say that this is par for the course and all, but I just have to keep on keeping on.
This is my first attempt at bringing the songs I record to YouTube instead of just putting them on Supload or something. I hope you like it.
Sa wari ko'y, hindi pa lumilipas ang kadiliman ng araw. Ngunit tuloy pa rin ang awit ng buhay ko.
I will post about it in more depth, but for now, just to let you know what you guys missed...
1. The event was hosted by able guy PJ and yours truly.
2. There was rickrolling.
3. My magic act was a hit, much thanks to two people in particular... Shari and doubly so, Kring.
4. Shari Punk'd all of us... including the clients. Apparently, she was well and fine after the finale of my act, but she fooled everyone, myself included, into thinking something went horribly wrong with her... gah! =p
.:I Can Has Videos!:.
Courtesy of Azrael, this is the video of my performance of "Lady And The Rope" for Charmelle of the 26K girls from "Deal Or No Deal".
I've seen a lot of hideous things in my life, so watching the video itself didn't make me feel particularly bad.
What got to me though was the minute I read the comments, I was just driven nuts by the amount of ignorance spouted by some of the commenters there. Were we even watching the same bloody video?!?
If you look clearly at how the three-hour ordeal played out, the girl was clearly at least half the size of the manager's fiance. This meant that if the girl didn't do what she was being told, the guy was more than capable of beating her to a pulp, or worse. To say that the girl was a "slut" or that she "was enjoying herself" does not excuse the guy from doing what he did to her.
The girl was clearly on edge, and was afraid. She didn't know what to do, and for a moment there, I just thought that people had better sense than to take goddamned advantage of a girl who was out of her wits at the moment. I don't care if she was genuinely being "stupid", that's not an excuse to take advantage of her.
Scum like that man and his fiancee ought to be put in the slammer with the key thrown away. To have to read hundreds of comments at the end of the video pretty much blaming the girl for what happened to her is just depressing. Generally, I get annoyed at people who expose secrets in magic videos in YouTube, but I've never been this angry over a video before. The sheer bigotry and callousness of people who believed the girl deserved what she got was just crazy. You think she could just run out of that small room without the guy putting up chase and potentially killing her? You think she can just think of the best way to escape her ordeal when she's clearly scared out of a year's growth?
There's a double standard right there, and I'm sure people wouldn't be saying that if the guy were in a situation where he had to take off his clothes for a gay guy at gunpoint. Given the size differential, the other guy in the video didn't need a gun to implicitly threaten the girl with harm, and like those people who end up confessing to crimes they don't commit thanks to torture, we're looking at someone who did what she did under duress.
Even if we pretended that she wanted to do these things, why the hell did the guy do it? His fiancee was walking in and out of the room, dammit!!!
Sometimes, my faith in the human race really just falters. This is one of those moments where I don't understand how people could sleep well at night acting this way.
I'll post more extensively about it some other time, but the Mike Defensor party turned out exceedingly well.
I think I managed to turn some heads with the mentalism demonstration, and thanks to the poker chip effect, even the kids can appreciate a bit of mentalism now...
.:How To Cook Adobong Manakk:.
This guy had me in stitches, because you know he tried in earnest. I don't know if he memorized it phonetically or was genuinely fluent in Filipino sans the accent, but there's just something innately endearing about foreigners who try to speak the language.
My hats off to the guy. He sure made my day, and I learned a new word! Apparently, when you mix stuff with the serving spoon, it's called "sangkutsa". That's deep.
Do you remember the speech Jean-Claude Van Damme made when he was addressing the troops upon being informed that his superiors at the Allied Nations have called off the assault on General M. Bison? If you didn't, allow me to remind you of the transcript of that very speech from the diction-challenged Van Damme...
"True Peers!!! I just recede new orders! Org superiors say, the war is canceled! Weekend all go home. Bison is getting pay Duff for his crimes, and our friends will have DYED HAIR!!!1 ... will have dyed, for nothing. But, weekend all go home. Meanwhile, I deals like piss, freedom, and just dis... day get tacked up. But... weekend all go home.
Well... I'm nut going home. I'm gonna get on my boot and I'm going up writher, and I'm going to kick that sun of a bitch Bison's ass SO HORDE!!!1 ... that the next Bison wanibi, is gonna fill it!
No who wants to go home, and who wants to go with MIG?!?1"
What? You don’t believe me? Well, then go here and listen.
I don’t even need to say anything anymore. I just have to sit back and laugh.
Just so you know, I got to thinking about this film thanks to the "Street Fighter: The Movie: The Game" thread somewhere out there on Shoryuken.Com, by a Mr. Alan Noon.
.:Scissor Sisters:.
No words are enough to describe how brilliant their performance is. I don’t like their music, but this is one heck of a live performance! This is very similar to that Matrix ping-pong video, except they really pulled out all the stops to just floor people in a live audience as it happens.
And if you still haven’t caught on, you might want to check out thesevideos!
.:And The New Bet From Vote For The Worst…:.
Well, now that SanJaya is gone from American Idol, Vote For The Worst is endorsing Phil Stacey for the win.
I’m especially amused how people just flame the site for trying to shove the worst Idol hopefuls down the throats of America, because as we all know, controversy creates cash. These guys had so much traffic their site bogged down a couple of years back.
There is just something intrinsically awesome about having that kind of impact on American Idol, since the Vote For The Worst campaign has definitely kept a load of clunkers well into the Idol Finals before long after people have caught on how much these ones actually suck.
Weekend all go home.