of my song The Great Unknown. the second verse is gibberish. on the basis of this sketch Beau, Bobby and i recorded a new foundation on Thursday night. i’ll post the final version of that when it’s finished. for now, the sketch:

 

 The Great Unknown: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Reminds me of your Human Endeavor local-community idea.

Here in the United States, we have enjoyed brilliant magicians like Houdini, but also embarrassing flim-flammers like David Blaine and Criss Angel, both of whom have been caught doing “magic” using video post-production while hired actors pretend (not very convincingly) to watch the trick in awe. Angel even convinced the Luxor hotel in Las Vegas to sink $100 million dollars into a stage show called “Believe” – audiences came expecting to see live performances of the magic feats Angel “performs” on his show, such as levitation. Surprise! Without video post-production, Angel is every bit as magical as a damp sponge. Audiences report overwhelming disappointment, and the Luxor must be losing money hand-over-fist, but they’re trapped in a 10-year contract.

Derren Brown is unknown in the U.S.A., so ‘The Heist’ was my first exposure, and it blew my mind; I was at the edge of my seat. I was astounded. I could talk of nothing else for days. Later, reading up on how Brown really achieves his effects, I felt that my trust had been taken advantage of, and very surprised and disappointed with the BBC for collusion in claims they apparently knew to be a big fib.

Brown was caught red-handed committing fraud in his 2003 show “Russian Roulette” — the tension of the show was based entirely on Brown’s claim to be using only live ammunition, but the policeman overseeing the event, Jersey Island’s Deputy Chief of Police Lenny Harper, told Reuters that Brown lied and actually used blanks (”Magician defends gun stunt fake,” CNN). When confronted, Brown responded: “…as a magic-related performer to have that event being asked: Was it real? Was it not real? That lifts it to a level that — I’m very comfortable with. What’s left is that fact that it was a terrific piece of television.”

Okay, so Brown himself has admitted to defrauding his viewers, which he justifies as “a terrific piece of television.” He credits David Blaine as his source for the “really simple and really great idea” of making a mundane trick seem more convincing by focusing on [fake] spectator reactions, on people “freaking out.” Was the Blaine-inspired Roulette fraud a rare one-off, or Brown’s standard method? The evidence points at option B.

* Consider the “Magic Doll” segment of Mind Games, in which Derren Brown claims to be controlling a woman’s actions through the power of suggestion. Keep in mind that Brown repeatedly claims to use no “actors or stooges.” The woman “controlled” by the vudu doll has been outed as professional television actress Magda Rodriguez, who lists the gig on her IMDB resume as “Vudu Mind Player.”

* SPOILER: Brown opens his show ‘The System’ by seemingly flipping a coin and getting the same side ten times in a row. Later he reveals the “trick” was achieved by spending an entire day videotaping himself flipping coins until he got that result. Keep this technique in mind while watching many of Brown’s “miraculous” stunts, like his schtick of dressing up like a clown and pretending to mind-read strangers. His ‘hit’ rate of correct guesses seems too high even when it’s clear he’s using standard cold-reading techniques. Comparing this video to ‘The System,’ it becomes obvious that Brown is attaining the “wow” factor with the same cherry-picking technique: he’ll film himself making guesses for hours but only show us the lucky guesses. In my eyes, anyone can do “magic” using selective video editing, but to do so is a violation of the unspoken contract between audience and performer.

* The common underlying method for almost all Brown’s tricks is: (1) claim upfront that he is NOT doing traditional stage-magic or using actors, (2) pepper his banter with claims of psychological manipulation and mind-control, then (3) do stage-magic or use actors. Brown’s signature technique and innovation is to misdirect our attention away from his real method with a constant froth of psychobabble. The celebrity is too busy pondering how he was “subconsciously mind-controlled against my will to pick the cards Derren had already chosen” to realize he’s actually been had by a simple card trick. There is some genuine verbal suggestion happening in most of these tricks, but it’s usually only about 5-10% of the claimed effect. This is why Brown frequently makes vague but tantalizing allusions to the mostly-pseudoscience of NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming), as part of an overall campaign of misdirection.

Simon Singh, writing for The Daily Telegraph, explains very succinctly: “Derren selected his ten cards very carefully – three aces, three kings, three sevens and a queen. This combination ensures that whoever has the queen will always lose the game… At the start of the game Derren merely has to deal the queen to his opponent, and then he will win no matter what cards his opponent chooses. In short, this is nothing to do with psychology. It is a magic trick. In fact, exactly the type of trick that Derren denied using at the very start of the show.” Singh gives a second example, in which Brown stares into a boxer’s eyes and claims to “use [his] mind” to “take [the boxer's strength] away,” thus making it impossible for the boxer to lift Brown’s assistant in the air a second time. In real life the assistant has furtively stepped a few inches away, moving the fulcrum-point and thus multiplying the strength the boxer would need to lift her. So a clear pattern is established of Brown using false claims of mental influence to misdirect attention from the traditional stage-magic he’s really using after claiming not to.

Brown is famously an atheist, denouncing Christianity as “nonsense” and a “circular belief system” in his 2007 book ‘Tricks of the Mind.’ But if ‘The Heist’ is a fraud, as the evidence would suggest (notice that the most prominent credit at the end of the program is “Written By,” notice that Brown’s usual “no actors or stooges were used in this production” disclaimer is suspiciously absent), isn’t Brown repeating that same abuse-via-fraud dynamic against millions of viewers? Am I over-estimating the civic responsibility of the BBC in expecting at least a brief disclaimer, clarifying that the results were faked, the key participants were actors, and no one was really manipulated into believing they have electrocuted a stranger to death on national television?

Brown has a brilliant mind and is undeniably scintillating as a performer. His book ‘Tricks of the Mind’ is well worth reading. Brown is certainly a step up from the sad posturings of David Blaine or Criss Angel. But ultimately, Derren Brown seems guilty of exactly the same flim-flammery he condemns in others — humbug on the BBC for betraying the essential contract of trust with their audience by pretending otherwise.

Cross-posted to Amazon.uk.

here’s an op-ed i sent to the local paper:

Greg Norman (Letters, 7/9) is correct to object to Arthur Mokin’s (Guest Viewpoint, 7/5) assertion that criticism of Israel is almost exclusively an expression of “Jew-hatred”, but he fails to properly rebut the substance of Mr. Mokin’s reasoning.

Mokin proposes underlying Jew-hatred to explain a disparity in the coverage of two somewhat similar recent events involving the murder of Turkish nationals: in one case, a number of civilians killed by Kurdish separatists within Turkey; in the other, a similar number killed by Israeli defense forces off the coast of Gaza. Accepting Mr. Mokin’s research into the volume of relevant coverage, the first incident “died on the day it was born”, while the second “had legs.” The question he proposes is, why? In deciding on secret, perhaps even unconscious, Jew-hatred as an answer, Mr. Mokin overlooks more obvious grounds.

It is clear that Mr. Mokin begins from a supposition of hidden racism, calling Jew-hatred “the oldest prejudice in the world.” A nonsensical assertion given the long history of humanity predating the origin of Judaism, but revealing as to the partisan mindset of the author. I propose an alternative explanation based upon a proper distinction arising from a specific difference between the two cases.

Though the victims were in both instances killed and in both instances Turks, the killers were in one instance soldiers and in the other insurgents. Because of this, while the tragedy of the deaths in both cases is equal, the meaning of their murders is not. Simply put, the legitimacy of statehood brings with it a higher standard of conduct. Not only is this a fact of how people do think, it is a statement of how they ought to think. Thus the disparity of outrage in response to the two cases can be understood as an expression not of Jew-hatred, but of an appropriate prejudice that holds lawful states to a different standard than terrorists.

This appropriate double standard might be observed in the extensive coverage accorded a recent gunsight video showing American soldiers killing unarmed Iraqi civilians – including two journalists – from an Apache gunship. Compare that flurry of coverage and outrage to the daily accounts of car bombings that kill similar, if not greater, numbers of Iraqis, yet similarly die on the day they are born. This difference has nothing to do with hatred of Americans and everything to do with the fact that America, as a lawful nation, is rightly held to a higher standard as regards the use of lethal force than shadowy militants who grant themselves a license to kill.

Consider also two fictional examples, one in which a man is murdered by a criminal and another in which a man is murdered by a police officer. While both victims are equally dead, the latter is certain to generate more press and outrage than the former, as the issue is ultimately not murder but the violation of trust inherent to the abuse of power.

In making the argument he does, Mr Mokin implicitly proposes Israel be regarded as a legitimate state yet held only to the low standard applied to insurgents.  He attempts to blur this distinction by claiming that both Israel – nuclear-armed and by far the most powerful military in the region – and Kurds in Turkey – a people so oppressed that even their name has been declared illegal – are “struggling for survival” in a hostile mid-east. We are by now well-familiar with this attempt to reframe standards of civilized behavior by invocation of constant, if fraudulent, existential threat, having lived through the first eight years of what we are told will be a generational war on terror.

Such thinking destroys the very principle of statehood, reducing legitimate authority to mere force. Herein lies a grave and hidden danger of the reflexive recourse to charges of anti-semitism, and likewise, anti-Americanism: by failing to hold recognized authority to a higher standard we undermine the justification, and hence the meaning and value, of such authority. By defending the actions of sovereign authorities by comparison to the worst actions of self-elected militias we invite and enable the degeneration of sovereignty into a tyranny.

this song began as a chord progression on piano, but i played it on guitar while writing the lyrics. last night i sang to the piano for the first time.

 

 Sinners Like You: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

i’m starting work recording some songs in my friend Beau’s studio. this is a more fleshed out sketch of Sinners Like You i put together to communicate the syncopation to him (he drums).

 

 Sinners Like You: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

working on some harmonies for the chorus…

 

 Standard Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

sketch for a new song, titled “sinners like you” and written from the perspective of Irritable Jesus (as distinct from Sweet Jesus who dies for your sins and Rambo Jesus who comes back and tells the world to suck it).

 

 Sinners Like You: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

wrote this song over the last couple days while at Breitenbush.

 

 Good Queen Jane: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download