Observations of a Misfit

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May 28, 2007

Cameron Brown Trial Update

Well, well, well. For those of you still following at home:

Geragos dropped the Brown trial: LINK TO ARTICLE.

Thanks to Pat for the tip. This is very interesting. Geragos seems to bail on his lost-cause clients; unless, of course, there is media exposure to exploit. If more press had been covering the Brown case, I suspect our pal would have been more eager to continue to represent him personally. Unfortunately, so much time has passed since the arrest, and the trial got little exposure outside the local news and a radio talk show, poor Mark Geragos lost interest.

This, despite his promise not to abandon his client. Why am I not surprised?

May 06, 2007

Panning Copperfield

I never thought I would ever pan a magic show, especially one by the notable David Copperfield in a venue as (normally) impressive as The Palace Theater. I am a sucker for magic, even amateur acts in school talent shows or wandering sleight-of-hand magicians at wedding receptions. So, when the opportunity to see David Copperfield's show, billed as "An Intimiate Evening of Grand Illusion", I invested over $100 for tickets in the Mezzanine and looked forward to a dazzling display of illusion and escapism. Unfortunately, the evening was neither intimate nor grand.

Instead, we were held hostage to videos of Copperfield’s shameless self-promotion, cheap props, juvenile sex jokes and pop culture references, corny card tricks, annoying spotlight effects, and an obnoxious host whose current iteration is a sort of tasteless urban parody. If possible, Copperfield seemed more bored than the audience.

Nevertheless, I laughed at some of the silly routines (since I am easily amused) and offered a smattering of applause occasionally (since I am not easily impressed), and I remained optimistic that the show would progressively improve from its sparse, warehouse set to something with more pyrotechnics. I don’t mind the “smoke and mirrors” part of magic; I expect it. It didn’t happen. Up until the end, I was willing to believe that Copperfield really chose random people from the audience to assist in demonstrating his impossible clairvoyance. Now, I’m certain that most (if not all) of his “volunteers” are preselected, and that even though one cannot deny his slick and maverick prosecution, Copperfield’s magic is just another con game.

The prelude to this lackluster show was an overly-long video montage of snippets of movies, television shows and cartoons where someone mentions David Copperfield. Three minutes into it, we were more than convinced that he was a household word. So what? Halfway through the show we were treated with yet another video snoozefest displaying Copperfield’s projects, museums, awards, philanthropic endeavors and clips of some of his greatest illusions, which we wished had been duplicated for our live viewing pleasure. That was not to be. Unfortunately, in his current tour, Copperfield treats the audience like red-headed step-children. Gone are the tuxedo, mystery and elegance, replaced by “Casual Friday” denim, t-shirts and banal sexual innuendo. Apparently, Copperfield has changed his marketing strategy to attract more than the hoi polloi, but the riff-raff as well.

In what was to be one of the most bizarre experiences of any entertainment event in which I was a spectator, and that essentially ruined the entire evening for me, was the “Reunion” illusion, where a man is reunited with his estranged daughter in (of all places) Perth, Australia. The trick involves the alleged daughter (sitting conveniently in the audience), who joins Copperfield on a crane, they both disappear, then reappear in a video where the daughter meets her “dad” on the beach. Now, this might be warm and fuzzy (albeit rather dull) for the Oprah audience, and some of us may have tried to figure out how he juxtaposed the images to create the illusion of real-time, except for one glaring and deeply disturbing problem: the “actor” they used to perform the role of the long-suffering dad was none other than one of my "exes", the infamous Taz of lush-life, terror in Jamaica, murder-attempting fame. It’s hard to describe my surprise at seeing photo-chopped images of Taz flashing on the big screen: Taz holding a little baby, Taz as a kid, Taz in a garage with a little girl who resembled him (maybe they used his real daughter, who knows?); good old Taz looking all forlorn and heroic.

Seriously, I didn’t know whether to burst out laughing or scream in horror. At that point, whatever semblance of illusion and suspense I granted Mr. Copperfield was ripped to shreds like one of his mylar tarps.

Why David Copperfield selected that dog-faced moron to be his model for the “reunite” shtick is beyond me. I’m pretty sure that they didn’t really film the beach scene in Perth, Australia. Suffice it to say, the greatest illusion Copperfield created in this show was to turn a washed-up, violent, despised drunk like Taz into a sympathetic, heart-warming character. That, my friends, was definitely magic.