Dustings #42
/As June winds down, I want to sincerely wish a happy Pride Month to all the LGBTQ+ magicians in our midst. I hope we’re at a point in time where you feel welcomed and accepted in every aspect of the world of magic. If nothing else, you’re always welcome at this site.
So Happy Pride Month to all of you who fall under that rainbow umbrella, including great performers such as Michael Carbonaro, Neil Patrick Harris, Derek DelGaudio, Chris Ramsay, any anyone else who shows up in the Google image search results for: super gay magician.
A few months ago, I had this to say about the upcoming (at the time) television show, Big Trick Energy…
I think what people love about prank shows, or things like the Carbonaro Effect, or even just a David Blaine special is that they have this fake thing—the prank or the magic trick—but we get to see people’s genuine reactions to that fake thing. If the reactions to Blaine’s tricks didn’t feel legitimate, he never would have had a special in the first place.
But from the clips I’ve seen, when it comes to this show, everything seems fake. The tricks, the reactions, even their reactions to the reactions.
So it’s this weird situation where you have a phony reaction to a phony scenario. My gut tells me that’s going to make it difficult for people to connect to the show in any real way. But what the hell do I know?
Well, even a dumb bitch like me can be right occasionally, and in this case it looks like I pegged what the issue with the show would be. To call this show an abortion would not be accurate, because abortion actually has some proponents.
I haven’t watched the show (nothing against it, I just don’t watch much magic generally), but I searched reddit to find what the non-magician consensus was. It’s… not good.
Ouch. Those weren’t bad comments that I cherry-picked from good comments. Those comments were representative of the consensus. (On reddit, at least. But similarly on IMDB it has one of the lowest scores for a tv show I’ve ever seen.)
I usually feel bad for people when something flops. Like if there is a new restaurant that opens in the neighborhood and it’s always mostly empty, I feel miserable for them. Which is strange because I’m pretty indifferent to my own failures. I just have a lot of sympathy for others.
But here I don’t really feel too bad for the guys behind the show. It doesn’t seem like this was a passion project where we were getting a glimpse of their true personalities. In that case I would feel for them if it turned out to be hot garbage. But this just seems like they were trying to be something they’re not, the filming was rushed, and it was shot during a pandemic. That’s a bad mix.
I don’t know if a second season is on the horizon, but if so, here is what they should do. They should take the Dominos Pizza tactic from 10 years ago where they came out and said, “Yeah, our pizza sucks. Now we’re going to make it good.” Don’t hide from the fact that the show didn’t work. Address the issues head on. And make it a show that is, in part, about rebuilding the show into something better. Sure, that might be a flop as well, but at least it would be interesting.
Congratulations to Joshua Jay who recently graced the cover of Ohio State’s alumni magazine.
Those of you outside the the United States might be wondering why any university would feature Josh on the cover of their alumni magazine. “Ohio State must be a very small school,” you’re thinking. “Very few alumni? Maybe a plane crash took out a whole class at some point leaving slim pickings?” No, actually Ohio State is one of the largest schools in the country and has a huge alumni pool to pick from. So making the cover is a great achievement.
The phrases “Joshua Jay” and “cover boy” remind me of a funny misunderstanding I had once with Andi Gladwin. This was years ago. We were supposed to have a meeting about them buying out the Jerx and turning it into a showcase for Josh and Andi’s humor writing. But when I got to their offices, Josh wasn’t there. Andi mentioned he would be about 20 minutes late because he was at a cover shoot for a magazine. At the time, Josh had just been in the New York Times and on the cover of a couple magic periodicals, so his face was really getting out there. And I was like, “Damn, this guy is all over the place. What magazine is he going to be on now?” And Andi said that it was a photo shoot for Bon Appétit magazine.
“Is there anything this guy can’t do?” I asked.
“What do you mean?” Andi replied.
“Well, he does the writing and the lecturing and the books and the shows. It’s just a lot of different stuff. I didn’t realize he could cook too.”
“Huh?” Andi said.
“Well, you don’t get on the cover of Bon Appétit if you can’t cook.”
Andi waved away what I was saying. “I’m sorry, my bad,” he said. “I should have enunciated better. He is on the cover of Boner Petite, The Quarterly Journal for Men Who Suffer With Micro-Penis.”
Just one of those funny misunderstandings!
For those of you who are following along with my transformation from magic blogger to bible scholar, I would like to share with you my new favorite passage from the good book. Before I started reading the bible this year, I didn’t consider myself a “religious” person. But that book contains passages that are full of such truth and beauty that it’s very hard not to feel yourself drawn into its belief system.
Recently, I’ve found myself in moments of quiet contemplation, reflecting on the awesome power and universal truth of Psalm 137:9
