I used my very first words to demand a magic set for Christmas. I got maybe a third of the tricks to work, but even then they only fooled dogs and my sister. I couldn't believe that most of the tricks, like the Chinese linking rings, required hours if not weeks of practice. That would have really been a feat, considering my attention span didn't last through The Cosby Show.
Still, I kept going, gradually accumulating a box of simple tricks. The more I learned, though, the more daunting the hobby seemed. My friend Marty was just two years older, but somehow those years had imparted the world's wisdom to him, including how to grow chest hair at the age of ten. He told me about the superhuman efforts Harry Houdini put into his tricks. He could hold his breath for fifteen minutes. He could pick locks with his teeth. He could pull every one of his bones out of their sockets. My goal in life was to escape from a straitjacket inside a locked trunk, but Marty's first step was a stunner:
First hide a crochet hook in your ass.
This baffled me, coming completely out of the blue. I mean, I idolized Houdini, and would have given anything to be like him. Admired by men, loved by women, muscular and rich and amazing. But was this really what the job entailed? As far as I knew, this didn't happen to kids who had other hobbies. If you wanted to take up golf, the first step wasn't stuffing tees in your butt. If you wanted to try out for football, you didn't have a jam a goalpost up your ass. To a kid who was still four years away from initiating contact with anything downstairs, this was equivalent to saying, "Why don't you take up stamp collecting instead?"
Mere minutes later, though, David Copperfield hit it big. He was Houdini reincarnated. The whole world was riveted to their couches when he made the Statue of Liberty disappear, and the next morning I raced to Marty for details.
The solution seemed obvious as he related it, in between taking shots from his flask. Everybody was facing the Statue of Liberty, and then they weren't. Clearly that was the only way to do it, since thousand-foot-tall structures don't disappear. I remember standing there in shock: I mean, if that was the solution, it wasn't a real magic trick. Picture Houdini trying it:
HOUDINI: I am now going to make myself disappear!
AUDIENCE: [GASPS]
HOUDINI: Okay, everybody turn left!
AUDIENCE: [TURNS LEFT]
HOUDINI: Can you see me? No? Ta-dah!
Copperfield's next TV special took place on an airport runway. A bunch of people made a big circle around a 747, holding hands. A curtain closed in front of the whole thing, and when it opened, the people were still in a circle but the plane was gone.
I was baffled. Clearly something inexplicable had happened, but once again Marty knew:
"You really are a kid, aren't you?" he said, taking a puff on his Pall Mall. "You know all the people surrounding the plane? He paid them off. The second the curtain closed they backed away so the plane could get dragged off."
My mouth dropped open in disbelief and it didn't close for weeks. That was the solution: "Everybody was paid"? I went through all the stages of loss over the next few months. I was horrified, disenchanted, disgusted. After finally reaching accepetance, though, I realized something:
If magic just required paying off people, then it really was something I could do.
I quickly devised some simple tricks and spent more time posting signs around my neighborhood. "MAGIC SHOW," they read. "AMAZING SKILLS OF PRESTIDIGITATION BY MUSTARDO THE MAGICIAN! Admission $1." Probably the most amazing thing was that nine people actually showed up that day in my backyard, including adults who should have known better. I gave two dollars to my stooge in the audience, and the show was on.
I gazed out at the audience and pretended to randomly pick someone out, though most of these folks lived within a five-minute walk so they recognized my sister.
ME [HOLDING UP A DECK OF CARDS]: Miss, I'd like you to randomly name any card of any suit. Any card of any suit.
MY SISTER SUE: Okay. I pick the eight of hearts.
ME: Would you be so kind as to look in your purse?
SUE opens her Hello Kitty bag and pulls out a playing card.
SUE: Ohmigod! It's the eight of hearts!
THE AUDIENCE murmurs a bit of approval but foreheads furrow too.
ME: Now I will transport an ordinary piece of string across the room. [I PUT IT IN MY POCKET.] Miss, please look in your pocket.
SUE: What? Oh, this is a surprise.
As SUE fishes the string out there's still a paucity of oohs or aahs and more grumbles and harumphs. "Can you do a trick with somebody other than your sister?" somebody yells. It suddenly occurs to me that David Copperfield probably doesn't perform around people who live on his block.
ME: Is anybody thirsty? Now I will take a drink from the magic cup and transport the magic liquid to a random audience member.
SUE acts shocked and clutches at her throat, then she hocks a huge loogey on the ground.
SUE: YOU ARE FUCKIN' KIDDING ME!
AUDIENCE MEMBER: WHO DO WE TALK TO ABOUT GETTING A REFUND?
ME: Next let's try a stab at mentalism. [I PRETEND TO CONCENTRATE.] Is somebody thinking about a ... cat? Wearing a pink sweater?
SUE: HOLY JESUS! HOLY FUCKIN' GOD!!!
At this point a couple younger members of the audience leapt up and started chasing me. While I didn't exactly need a crochet hook up my ass, a little more practice probably would have helped. But the Amazing Mustardo wasn't particularly scared. He was a pretty quick runner back then, and the cape certainly didn't hurt.
Sure to be this year's hottest action thriller is Run All Night, starring Liam Neeson and Ed Harris. Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra and penned by veteran screenwriter Brad Ingelsby, you're sure to be on the edge of your seat with hair-raising scenes like this:
LIAM NEESON [VOICEOVER]: A night finally came for me to pay for the things I'd done.
ED HARRIS: You killed my son.
LIAM NEESON: I pulled the trigger to protect my son.
ED HARRIS: I'm coming after your boy with everything I got.
LIAM NEESON: As long as you're coming after my boy, I'm coming after you.
ED HARRIS: My son was very important to me.
LIAM NEESON: Not as important as my son.
ED HARRIS: Everybody loved my son. He led U of Miss football to victory in three straight seasons.
LIAM NEESON: My son sold his internet startup for half a million and nearly banged a supermodel.
ED HARRIS: My son was a real handful. He racked up fifteen hundred dollars in speeding tickets after I bought him that Mustang.
LIAM NEESON: My son wouldn't spit on a Mustang after Farrah Fawcett drove one in Charlie's Angels.
WAITRESS: You guys ready to order?
LIAM NEESON: Yeah. I'll have the usual.
ED HARRIS: Me too.
WAITRESS: Okay. I'll be right back with those.
ED HARRIS: What were we talking about?
LIAM NEESON [CHUCKLING]: I forgot too. [PAUSE] Wait. I think we were talking about our sons.
ED HARRIS: That's right. You never should have gotten near my son.
LIAM NEESON: I'd resurrect your son and chop him into little pieces if he so much as touched a hair on my son.
ED HARRIS: My daughter -- eh.
LIAM NEESON: I know. Chicks are like that.
ED HARRIS: If you came after my daughter, I'd be angry. I might be furious. But I probably wouldn't come after you.
LIAM NEESON: I wouldn't come after your daughter. I'd send my wife after your daughter.
ED HARRIS: If your wife came after my daughter, I'd send my wife after your wife. But nobody's gonna make a movie out of that.
LIAM NEESON: I know, right?
WAITRESS: Here's your breakfast. Enjoy!
ED HARRIS AND LIAM NEESON: Thanks!
Hi guys! Do you like amputees? Do you want mommy to put you over her knee and spank you? Did you soil your diapers like a naughty boy?
Oddly, this is how an increasing number of websites work these days. (1) They give you very little information; (2) you click to find out more; (3) as the photos fill in and details appear you're smacked with the horrifying realization that you were duped into looking at crap that isn't remotely close to what you want; and then (4) you get emails for the rest of your life with subject lines like, "HEY, ROMAN! MISTRESS HILDY IS STILL WAITING TO GIVE YOU THE ENEMA YOU DESERVE!"
My bath towels were looking a little threadbare so I used Google to see what my options were. Their top recommendation was Kmart, so I went there to investigate. They had a myriad of choices: polyester with embroidered butterflies, rayon with embroidered mushrooms, and dacron with gingham Holly Hobby silhouettes. I closed the window as quickly as possible but a few hours later I got an email from Kmart saying, "We saw you browsing our online aisles and thought you might be interested in these!"
And below are photographs of cardboard shoes, books about Jesus, and selections from Nicki Minaj's new clothing line for dogs.
It doesn't quite link up in my head. I mean, I didn't buy what I needed at Kmart, so they should probably have realized that I wasn't going to buy random shit. In fact, I was pretty much sitting there thinking, "Christ, what kind of desperate, douche-ass operation tries to flog all this bargain-basement crap?" It confirmed that if indeed there was a Kmart customer, it sure as hell wasn't me.
I got tickets for a talk on Eventbrite so naturally that signed me up for a news blast announcing every future event on the Eastern seaboard. The events weren't artistic. The locations weren't convenient. In fact, even EventBrite realized their suggestions had little in common with the event I chose. "YOU LIKE TO GO OUTSIDE," read the email's subject line. "HERE ARE OTHER EVENTS HAPPENING OUTSIDE YOUR HOUSE!"
I don't know what the fuck is up with LivingSocial. I'd heard they were a Groupon-style shopping portal that sent daily notifications about online deals, so I signed up. When their suggested deals weren't exactly my cup of tea, I followed their advice and customized my deal preferences. I spent literally hours filling out their six-hundred item "Personal Interests" checklist telling them things I barely admit to myself. Dogs don't like me, my gums are receding, I have a rather extensive collection of animated GIFs of Jon Hamm from the waist down.
And then every eight minutes for the next year I got email from them headlined, "CHOSEN ESPECIALLY FOR YOU!" that offered discounts at colon therapy and electrolysis salons. I'm not sure if the fault is accidental or intentional: though they ask yea or nay on Portuguese-Alaskan vegan-fusion restaurants, they neglect to inquire if you're unable to poop or are entirely covered in hair. I'm an atheist without a car, yet for some reason they think I'm itching to make a three-hour bus ride to New Brunswick, New Jersey, to see a play called, "Oy! Plotzing with a Yiddish Mama." Click on anything for additional info and they'll never let you forget it: a few hours later you'll see the email, "JUST BECAUSE YOU DIDN'T BUY IT DOESN'T MEAN YOU DON'T NEED A BRAZILIAN WAX!"
Even Change.Org -- the allegedly-altruistic petition site -- is full of shit. You sign one petition to protest bullying at a New Jersey preschool and literally seconds later the deluge begins. Now you get daily emails with headlines like, "Hey, Mr. Bleeding Heart, don't you give a fuck about the Boko Haram?"
I'm not sure what can be done about this irritating new trend. Businesses might pretend that those follow-up emails are a customer service, but when you get a hundred a day it seems more like punishment for visiting their website in the first place.
If you really want to sell me something, then, make a mouse that'll take back my last few clicks. "Excuse me," it'll broadcast to Change.Org, "I apologize for giving a shit." "Oops," it'll say to Kmart, "I'm not looking for fabrics made by DuPont." "Sorry," it'll tell Mistress Hildy, "I thought that was a mustache on your upper lip."
I like this radio station. Ohmigod, was that a raccoon? I sure hope he didn't have a family. No, wait -- he's got a pouch, so they'd have been in his pouch. So I hope he did have family? No -- I hope he had family but they were on vacation. Though I'm not exactly sure where furry brown pouch-dwellers would be welcome. Maybe ... Greece? No, wait -- it wouldn't be good if they were on vacation. Think of it: you're sitting on a beach and you get a telegram saying your father is dead. Good luck finishing that Peach Mojito. Or would that have been their mother? Shoot, now I'm crying. And it wasn't even a raccoon, either. It was a homeless guy.
I really shouldn't be driving. What was it I took? I didn't think cocaine made people hallucinate. I really feel like some of these buildings could be Transformers and they could turn into robots at any time. Would that be a bad thing? It would if they had laser beams for eyes, but not if they were the "Danger, Will Robinson!" type. Why are robots always either good or evil? Those Transformers movies would be like six minutes long if all the other robots were normal. Like if they said, "Optimus, you know, I've got a lot on my plate today. Can't you enslave mankind by yourself?"
If there were people in a building and it transformed into a giant car, would they all end up in the seats or would they be crushed to death in the folded parts, just like that raccoon? There could be hundreds of people in a building, but only six or seven could fit in this Infiniti, so -- JESUS CHRIST! I guess I should at least look out for cheaper cars because who'd give a damn if they banged up a piece of shit?
These seats are so soft. I can't take my eyes off them. I know I should look at the road, but cement isn't exactly imported from Spain. Look, there's a small imperfection, almost like a zit. OHMIGOD WERE THESE LEATHER SEATS MADE OUT OF MY SKIN? No wait -- it's still there. I'm not sure about my back or my ass, though. Are my back and my ass still there? I think they must be, though I haven't seen them recently. OH HOLY FUCK!!! IT IS OPTIMUS PRIME! You bastard, you'll steal our civilization from my cold, dead hands! TAKE THAT! AND THAT! AMERICA'S NOT GOING DOWN WITHOUT A FIGHT!!!
Oops. Wow. Since when did we get mass transit in L.A.?
The Infiniti Q50. The car that pays attention so you don't have to.
It's been a million years since someone made a discovery as groundbreaking, when a caveman's odd, arbitrary actions changed history. Maybe he rubbed his nose with a rock and nothing happened. He scratched the ground with a stick and nothing happened. But then he smashed two rocks together, producing sparks that just happened to shoot into a bed of sticks. And suddenly there was fire.
He must have thought he was hallucinating. I mean, one minor, arbitrary action discovers a life-changing chemical process. A hither-to unknown substance -- with seemingly no weight or substance -- runs and leaps and sprints across the earth, leaving everything in its path black and burnt. It's like the opposite of air, all orange flames and destruction. It must have seemed like some horrific demon that consumed everything in its path, and when it finally ran out of food it died. Why is it orange? Why does it give off heat? It's all so bizarre and capricious it must have seemed like a dream.
My discovery was also arbitrary. My Maltese, Chutney, waddled up to me and started barking while I was making dinner. She was so cute I just had to pick her up. While I was giving her a hug, though, she bumped into a butternut squash, and then all hell broke loose. Seriously. It was unbelievable: yet another nondescript action somehow initiated an unstoppable, indescribable force.
The closest comparison I can come up with is fire, but instead of orange flames it burbled up in iridescent fuchsia bubbles. It spread really quickly, because like regular bubbles these arbitrarily took flight and landed on nearby surfaces, setting off further chain reactions. Instead of leaving things burnt and filling my apartment with smoke, though, it left a shiny trail, and its smell was reminiscent of popcorn.
I put Chutney down and grabbed a towel and chased it through the room, finally managing to smother every bit. I don't want to scare you too much: it wasn't hot and it didn't burn stuff so I wasn't in any danger. In fact, putting it out was something like shampooing a two-year-old: if it hadn't left me damp and out of breath I'd have said it was kind of fun.
When I regained my bearing I ran to Google. I typed in everything I'd observed -- fuchsia bubbles, popcorn, Maltese, butternut squash -- but for the first time ever it came up blank. And then it hit me.
I'd discovered an incredible new phenomena.
Like I say, I was trembling at this point. I immediately knew it wasn't quite as great as the discovery of fire: I mean, fire has all sorts of applied uses, from heating food to powering cars. I'm not sure what good fuchsia bubbles are, or who wants to smell like popcorn. But singlehandedly I'd opened up a whole new field to investigate, and unwittingly found myself on the forefront.
I grabbed my notebook and wrote down two definitions:
GRONK: [noun, guh-RONK] the fuchsia bubbles that appear when a dog touches squash
SPELCHING: [verb, SPELL-chung] the arbitrary encroachment of gronk throughout an area, turning everything shiny and smelling of popcorn
Now that I'd named my new world, I'd have to define it. What prompts it? What fuels it? What purposes could it serve? And naturally, as someone with nearly a degree from a major university, I'd need to re-enact the experiment in controlled conditions.
UPDATE 1: When neighborhood dogs touch a butternut squash, nothing happens. No gronk and definitely no spelching. Bad news, not to mention the rather insulting posters blaring BEWARE OF THIS MAN!!! that were recently taped up on my street.
UPDATE 2: When Chutney comes into contact with a pumpkin, nothing happens. Similarly acorn and spaghetti squash. I'm a bit embarrassed that what I tell friends will be the Entertainment Event of the Century actually turns into three rather boring side dishes touched by a dog.
UPDATE 3: I decide to start from scratch. I make Chutney touch a butternut squash again. To my horror there are no fuchsia bubbles, and it doesn't smell like popcorn.
UPDATE 4: I take another hit of LSD. Twelve hours later I realize this must have been the catalyst, since my notebook is mostly unintelligible except for the words RUNAWAY SCRELB and PLATCHING.
Anyway, I guess that's it. It appears the whole thing was an illusion. I hope you don't see this as a massive waste of time, because I certainly don't. I believe we made headway in describing how we encounter our world, though I should probably give a shout-out to my neighbor for pointing out that my beloved Maltese Chutney is actually a striped sweatsock.
