Show Updates
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Season Premiere of MindfreakThursday, July 24 2008 |
In this one hour season premiere of Mindfreak, Criss Angel will get hit by a SUV, make a woman feel weightlessness, pry a playing card of of a man's head and walk on top of Lake Mead. Prepare to be thoroughly amazed...
Somewhere in the world today, there are a group of people who have started their own support group: Folks Who Had Been Mindfreaked (FWHBM). If that group doesn’t exist, then maybe last night’s episode of Mindfreak will inspire people to establish chapters in their own cities.
Criss Angel, though terribly busy, almost made a game out of jumping people out of their skins with his illusions. He started his season premiere with a bang… or more appropriate- a tire screech.
At the North Valet Entrance of the Luxor Hotel in Las Vegas, Criss met up with his ubiquitous crowd of fans and skeptics. After he discussed a trick to do for the gaggle of people, Criss agrees and begun to prepare for the upcoming illusion. He doesn’t mention exactly what it was, but it involved Criss, a long black cloth and a big SUV.
“This is my brand new Cadillac Escalade”, Criss announced to the crowd. “I am hoping not to completely destroy it.”
The crowd already caught wind that something extremely dangerous was about to take place as Criss ordered one of the crew members to get into the truck and go at about 35 miles per hour. He stood underneath what looked like to be an entrance to a parking structure with shadows cast on the walls. The tension mounted as he gave a warning to the viewers: “Do not attempt to do this. You will kill yourself.” With a little label on the bottom left hand corner of the screen that read “continuous shot”, Criss, who was a safe distance from the cheering crowd, held the black sheet to cover himself with. He ordered the truck to speed towards him and right when it looked as if it had hit him, the truck came to a screeching stop. Without any editing or Hollywood camera magic as an aid, Criss jumped out of the driver’s seat of the truck. The crowd couldn’t believe it. He even invited the mystified audience to survey the truck. “You can look it all day long”, he said walking away from the scene. “I’m gonna grab some lunch.” The crowd was still surveying the truck, curious as to how this mortal man could do such a thing!
At the Silverton Hotel Aquarium, which was a scene of a failed water illusion a year before, Criss Angel practiced a little with the element of water. “Water has never been my friend”, said Criss.
The scene is innocent and benign enough. Groups of people, maybe tourists, are just looking at the aquariums and the marine life that live in them. A young woman looked at some fish swimming around a pair of boots that looked to be floating on the surface of the water. “Oh my god,” she said. “It looks like feet!”. Why it is the Mindfreak himself, of course. In grand fashion, Criss walked on the surface of the aquarium, as the people below him were amazed. The fish were probably equally puzzled.
“One of the reasons why I walk on pools or aquariums is that I can control the elements”, said Criss.
Yet Criss made it known from the start that he was interested in pushing his own envelope by walking on water, but this time the body of water would be Lake Mead, which is the largest man-made reservoir in America located in Nevada.
What would make a rational man do something like that, even if he is Criss Angel? His answer was simple. “Twenty-four million people have watched my walk on water demonstration (on Youtube.com)”, said Criss. “More people than any other magician or performance artist, escape artist or any of that in the history of the Internet. People obviously really connected to this thing.” But Lake Mead is not a pool filled with bikini-clad women and young hip men giving props, it is the real deal and Criss approached is self-appointed task with a heavy sense of responsibility. “I have a lot at stake”, he said. “And I have no control over this environment.”
Criss wreaked havoc on the boxed mind states of his fellow men by performing tricks that totally turned one’s sense of reality on its side. Inside the Luxor Hotel, he took a person from a crowd and used her to be is assistant (every good magician needs one, right?). “Has there ever been a time in your life when you felt weightlessness?” he asked her. As she meditated on her answer, Criss pulled a cover over her with his back to the audience. The material stopped at her feet and soon he was pulling the sheet gently over her body. He stopped at her midriff, which was gone! He even stuck his head through the empty space. Wow. As he pulled up the cover more, the audience gasped because it looked as if her midriff had disappeared and her upper torso was suspended in air. Weightlessness. The illusion was done when he pulled the cover down to her feet again and then took off the cloth completely. The girl was whole and every one in the room (except Criss) was totally mindfreaked.
a macabre twist
It was nighttime and it looked to be as if someone was having a backyard party. Criss walked in with most of his fingers adorned with rings encrusted with diamonds. The raven haired Angel (with blond streaks) wants to do a regular card trick. He got two volunteers from the crowd. He had one of them, a man with a bald head seated in front of the crowd. He had the other one pick a card from the ones he had in his glamorous hand. Once the card was chosen, Criss had his standing volunteer put the card back with out Criss looking at it. Criss then went to his seated bald volunteer and had him look at the card.
“What I am gonna do is take this card and put it on top of your head”, said Criss the bald gentleman. He then told his standing volunteer to remember the card he picked. What happened next was unreal, if not totally gross.
Criss placed the card and his hand firmly on the man head while putting him to sleep on the count of three. As his lifted his hand from the man’s head, the card disappeared. The audience was stunned. The Angel then walked to the man’s side, pulled out a box cutter and proceeded to slice an incision on the side of the man’s head. Blood was dripping down the man’s neck as Criss continued to cut. The audience gasped as they stood close to the action. He then began to pull out some medical forceps and dug into the cut he made.
“What was the card on your mind?” he asked his volunteer who was so amazed he could hardly speak. “You weren’t the only one with that card on your mind”. With that, Criss yanked out a card that the man had chosen: a blood drenched three of clubs.
“There was NO way this could be fake!” an enthused spectator said. “I saw the meat under this guy’s head. The white meat!”
At the front entrance of the Luxor Hotel, on a warm night, Criss performed some parlor tricks for the people outside. He would give a person a sharpie and turn his or her back to him and write down a word on their hand. He and the other person would turn around to face each other again. Ordering the volunteer to keep their hand with the word on it in a fist, and then would touch their hand. “Tell me if you feel the energy”, asked. After the volunteer felt the energy to their amusement, Criss would ask them the word and they would tell him. The Mindfreak would ask to see it on their hand yet it wouldn’t be there. Criss then opened up his hand and the word in the person’s own handwriting would be there. “The energy had transferred into my hand”, he told them as they gasped in amazement. The Mindfreak had stuck again!
Criss Angel's stunning feat
Even the next trick he did with taking a lady’s watch and somehow attaching it to a stranger’s watch or appearing at Trop Aquarium in Los Vegas and making a woman appear in a fish tank and giving her a kiss was all just filler for his tour de force, walking on Lake Mead. Every trick he did in this episode seemed to prepare the viewer for his seemingly miraculous feat of walking on water.
He stood at the water’s edge, with a full beard and hat and gathered some spectators to watch up close at him performing the awesome feat. “I have a lot at stake… my reputation and I didn’t want to disappoint any loyal fans”.
It happened with in two seconds: Criss put his feet on the waves of the water and began to walk on top of the surface of the water. A couple of women came out to him from where he stood. One of them put her hand underneath his feet. The water level reached a little above their hips. “Oh my god!” she shrieked. “There is nothing underneath! Nothing!”
Criss kept on walking further out into the lake. When he was about 100 yards away, he stood for everyone to see. His mission was accomplished and he had set a new precedent in the field of magic and freaking the minds of millions of souls in the process.
“I am doing this to push my own envelope”, Criss said. “I am interested in things that will provoke conversation, connection…emotion. I don’t give a @$%* about what I look like. What I do give a @#$* about if my art connects to you”. The audience at the shore cheered in a deafening crescendo as the illusive Mindfreak sank slowly beneath the waves.
Welcome to a new season of Mindfreak. Are you ready?
