Thursday, November 13, 2008

CBS -- Tool of the "Magic" Industry

Anyway, that's my opinion after watching last week's episode of Numbers on CBS -- the episode with the disappearing magicianette reappearing as a corpse after the always-dangerous, sometimes fatal "girl-in-the-water-tank" trick.

Now, maybe this is just me. But as soon as I saw the "trick" with the girl in the tank, surrounded by water, and the aforementioned water filled with swirly orange-gold confetti leaves, I said to myself, "Umm, nope. Tchh -- uh-uh!" (Apologies to the Vancombe Lady.)

Have you seen one of those "aquarium spinning lights" you can buy at flea markets and other places? Where the fish spin one way and the background turns in the other direction? Tell me honestly, did you really believe that there was water flowing around the light bulb in the center?

No, you just have a couple of transparencies of plastic spinning in opposite directions.

In the Numbers episode, all that folderol about how strong the glass would have to be to hold "x" amount of water, and the power of the pumps to feed it into the tank -- what a bunch of specious nonsense.

I figure that the gal stands inside a dry central tube, with a fan below the grid she stands on, the fan gently wafting her hair in waterlike fashion.

Between the outer wall of the gal's tube, and the inner wall of the ouside, there is a few inches (the least space, the better for water pressure) of hollow space where water and golden papery leaves are pumped. There's plenty of visual distortion to blur the image of the (dry) woman within.

I think the Nefarious Magician's Union for Keeping People in the Dark must have paid off CBS big-time to get the network to play along with the whole stupid idea of filling the tub with water.

Yeah, don't start about Houdini -- this trick on Numbers was NOT about the gal holding her breath, it was just about vanishing and comong back again. A soaking-wet, reappearing magicianette is probably NOT on the bill.
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