we're watching the World Magic Awards on cable. All the performers on the bill appear to be winners of The Consistency Award, since every single one of them is doing the same material, WITH THE SAME JOKES, wearing the same costumes, that they have been doing on TV specials for as long as we have been watching magic on TV specials.

It's gruesome.

Not to mention the vaguely sheepish "celebrities" - people from reality shows, mostly - who are tasked with introducing the acts. Dougie's doing a good job as emcee - he's actually a magician, did you know that? He's pretty good, I hear. He's been doing mostly gags on this show, but I read that he does quite a respectable close-up set.

The best thing about this show in Hans Klok's sparkly pants.

3 thoughts while watching television

1. On America's Got Talent Which It's Keeping in a Top Secret Location And Then Showing Us This Crap Instead, a magician did a pretty inventive turn and advanced to the next round! Last year's auditions included some rather awful magic; Nathan Burton hung in until late rounds, and his act (IMO) is strikingly unoriginal.

Tonight's guy (I missed his name) ate fire, and then combined two classic effects (one of which is occasionally flashy but never deceptive) into one well-choreographed, fooling, totally surprising trick!

Magic - really, a lot of allied arts - has such exceptional potential for originality, surprise, the ability to bring beautiful metaphor and poetry to literal life. To embody really meaningful ideas. (Not that the guy on tv tonight had any beautiful ideas; he had 2 minutes to make people curious to see more, which worked.)
And so much is 100% soulless. So I was pleased to at least see something I hadn't seen before, and well-done.

2. Dude, I would totally RULE The Singing Bee.

3. Prince Harry's pretty darn hot.