The first weekend in October here at UR was a special opportunity for families to come visit the students and enjoy with them series of programs developed especifically for the occasion. Unfortunately, my family lives way too far to come visit me (whether it is during Family Weekend or at all…considering they live in a different continent!) and I was getting a bit homesick after campus was flooded by the hundreds of people that came down to visit.
Fortunately, my girlfriend’s parents were also coming down, and I’ve developed a pretty good relationship with them, to the point where they always ask me to join them for dinner or other events. They arrived on campus at around 5pm, and announced they had tickets for Craig Karges, a really cool mentalist they had seen the previous year.
They told me how amazing he was, but I’ve always been the type of person who has to see in order to believe, so we went to get dinner off campus and made sure we would be back on time for the show.
And with on time I actually meant half an hour early. We got AMAZING seats, almost right in front of the stage. And I was debating whether I should take out my camera or not. First of all, I wasn’t really sure if I would be allowed to take pictures or record a part of the presentation, I figured that wouldn’t be too good for him. Second, I was way too close to the stage, so he would probably see me taking the pictures (assuming I would’ve done it without being allowed to). But, most importantly, even if he hadn’t seen me taking the pictures, he would’ve still known just from picking up random brain waves, right?
Right…
So, I didn’t take any pictures of the show itself. But I did manage to take pictures of what they gave us at the show (after the show was over, of course!)
I don’t know if you can tell, cus I had to zoom the hell out of that thing, but the table isn’t touching the floor! It is therefore what I would like to call: a flying chair. Before his trick, he showed us how he had no possible way of holding the table. And, being right in front of him, I could see only his finger tips were touching it. Plus, a random person from the audience was helping him, so there was no way he could’ve “cheated.”
Of course, he’s an illusionist, and what he does is a “show” for a reason. But damn, I wish I could put on a show like that!
The funniest part was when one of my friends was selected to help him with one of his acts. He gave her a marker and a whiteboard and put her hand, together with the board, inside a bag so that no one else could see what she was writing (not even herself). At the same time, he asked a random guy to identify a bunch of celebrities just from pictures. The guy was doing really well, until Craig showed him only a glimpse of one of the pictures. The guy thought it was Marilyn Monroe, but when looking over the pictures, she wasn’t in any of them. All throughout, my friend had been scribbling around on the board, just letting go and not knowing what it would be. When Craig pulled out the board, she had written MARILYN on it. Not content with that, he took a sealed envelope he had given to a little kid (which was empty before being sealed) and pulled out the picture of Marilyn Monroe. Talk about being creepy…
Or totally AWESOME! It was by far one of the best illusionist acts I’ve seen life, and I was definitely happy my girlfriend’s parents got me tickets for it, haha. Maybe next year I’ll go again, and I’ll try to take pictures this time!
