Sunday, April 27, 2008

friends in medium-high places

I am watching, right at this moment, 3 people I know on TV!

They aren't TV stars (not even INDIAN TV stars like my friend David) particularly

- they're magicians, serving as coaches and one of the judges in a (GOD FORBID) cable reality competition called (PERHAPS THE WORST TITLE EVER) (JUST TRY AND IMAGINE A WAY THIS COULD BE WORSE) Celebra-cadabra!

Okay, so here's the question - if you do a reality show that takes some not-exceptionally-clever comedians and actors and gives them 24 hours to learn to perform a magical effect...does this trivialize the hard work and creativity involved in professional magical entertainment? My husband thinks so.

I think:
the rather large amount of UTTER FAIL by the celebrity magicians proves that it isn't at all easy to do entertaining, fooling magic. (Which is not to say some of them aren't entertaining.)
The show is better than I expected. (Which is not to say it is actually "good".)

(I'm pretty sure that commercials that focus totally on LEARN MAGIC FAST, on the other hand, do demean the art quite significantly.)

I had a grand day, by the way.

2 comments:

Kaitlin said...

that's so cool you know magicians!

betsy said...

Quite a few of the people I know in the variety arts are NOT particularly cool (either in terms of cool vs nerdy, or in terms of cool vs kind of a pain in the ass.) But I'm quite fond of the guys I know on the show.

Hey! I love most of your fav movies, and I LOVED LOVED LOVED JS Foer's first book. I haven't read the more recent one yet.