Our Love Blinded Us to Spelling

We have few regrets in our life other than selling our
Microsoft stock in 1988 to buy what turned out to be a forged
autographed photo of Ann B. Davis and Maureen McCormick
from the 1970′s archetypical show, The Brady Bunch. We learned an
important lesson. Check the spelling of alleged autographs. There are
two E’s in Maureen and no I’s.

But as we look at the millions we could have had if we had kept the
Microsoft stock or even received an actual autographed photograph of
our two favorite female actresses in a long-running, TV sitcom in which
the youngest male child was not replaced by another actor after the
first season, we realize regret is nothing more than another tool by
which we can club our ego and self-esteem like the monkeys at the
beginning of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

To be healthy, we must think
healthy. To think healthy, we must take all negative thoughts about our
incredible screw-ups in our life, ball them up into one round ball of
self-hatred and swallow them with a brimming cup of surrender and pity
so they may mutate like a cancerous, ulcerating, blob of distress
within us.

That’s the healthy way of dealing with regret.

What does this have to do with Mindvention 2005?

Well, we have kicked and scratched ourselves for months now for
missing last year’s first-annual Mindvention held in Las Vegas. We do
mentalism and love mentalism.

In particular, we love Bob Cassidy but in
a healthy kind of way. You know, obsessively buying, watching,
memorizing, and while pretending to be him (with full costume including
tattoo on our hand) doing his entire show for startled patrons at the
mall. “Who are you?” they ask incredulously. “I’m Bob Cassidy, darn
ye!”

(Speaking of Ebay: we came across a great idea based on our superior
knowledge of the history of philosophy. If something was written prior
to 1923, the original writer no longer has a copyright in the writings.

Consequently, you can steal it and it is not even like stealing. It’s
almost noble. Almost. Well, last time we checked (this morning) Plato’s
writings were almost all done before 1923 (at least the important ones
– there is something on the internet about some “Retreat” he had in
New York during the 1970′s but we don’t care about that). So you can
just steal what he wrote and say it’s yours.

Well, you can’t do that
because we just did and claimed it was ours but you could with one of
the other “Classic” writers before 1923 like Jonathan Swift, Socrates,
Dickens, Zsa-Zsa Gabor, or Hawthorne).

According to Mindvention’s website, the following greats in our field scheduled to appear include: “Banacheck (sic), Richard Osterlind,
Bruce Bernstein, Barrie Richardson, Rick Maue, Lee Earle, and Larry
Becker.” We are…
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Mario Manzini

Hi, I’m a normal person. I’ve decided to take up a
profession where to get ahead, I will allow folks to tie me up, bury me
under six feet of dirt, or hang me from a burning rope. It seems like
it will be more exciting than my current boring job, defusing bombs and
stuff.

Who thinks that? What drives Mark Cannon, Dean Gunnarson, or anyone
to risk their life for an audience who thinks it?s fixed anyway?

Well, we don’t know. We do know that a kind young man is about to
attempt his escape from a Plexiglas coffin in October. Mario Manzini
knows the history of this particular variant of the buried-alive
effect. We’ve never spoken to a single escape artist who desired to do
the buried-alive escape a second time. Read about Banachek’s recollection of the event. Many don’t make it. Houdini himself thought it was too dangerous.

We recall seeing the horrible footage of another young man
attempting to escape from a buried Plexiglas coffin and failing. We ask
again, therefore, why anyone would choose this type of business?

It’s been a year since Mr. Manzini risked his life performing an
aerial strait-jacket escape suspended 100 feet in the warm air over
Columbia, Missouri. Because no one would think it sufficient to hang
upside down in a straight jacket whilst dangling from a burning rope
without more, Mr. Manzini asked the local police to lock his arms with
handcuffs. Sure. That makes sense. Yikes!

The mayor, police officials, local television, and the crowds
watched as he struggled against the odds and time permitted by the
rapid burn of the rope. Mr. Manzini tells Inside Magic, “Luckily, I
escaped from the cuffs and hinge cuffs and was able to escape from the
strait-jacket and on the way down to the ground as the rope was almost
burned in two I pulled out the American Flag to show it as a symbol of
Freedom (Escape) for America.”

Our first career choice was taste tester for Saddam Hussein but it got boring.

So Mr. Manzini does the logical thing. He has decided to return with
a new escape that has already taken the life of one young artist.

Winston Churchill wrote “[t]here is no greater exhilaration than to be
shot at . . . and missed.” He did not say, however, “[t]here is no
great exhilaration than to be shot at . . . and missed, and then going
back to the same place to be shot at again.”

Mr. Manzini is working to make the casket stronger to prevent a
similar cave-in. He also hopes to, “be placed inside a strait-jacket
and chains first instead of just handcuffs. I may be adding more
restraints to make it more dangerous.”

We admire those willing to risk their lives for us. Please take care Mr. Manzini and keep us informed.

Check out Mr. Manzini’s web site for more information.

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