Calling Ricky Jay
Michael
"Yello."
Jeff
"Hello, Rick? It's Mitch."
Michael
"Mitch... Mitch... oh, from the Houdini séance! How are you, man! What occasions this call from the sunny West Coast?"
Jeff
"Yeah, that's right. I got... how are you doing, man? I got a two-part question for you."
Michael
"Doing well, man! Lay it on me, I'm all ears."
(Clearly Ricky expects to be expert-consulted like this as a matter of course.)
Jeff
"Cool. One, are psychic powers real enough to get tested in lab conditions, and two, how much of a dick is Uri Geller? Oh, and three, if I was going to do a thing to screw Uri Geller on Carson... he's going on Carson a week from today... if I was going to do a thing to screw Uri Geller over on Carson, how should I do that? How would you do it if you were going to do it?
"I know, that's three questions, I should have made some notes or something before I called. I been trying to catch you for like a week, so the Uri Geller thing is more pressing now than it was then."
Michael
Ricky clears his throat. "Man, you really did lay it on me. All right. Let's set Mr. Geller aside for a moment. Psychic powers. Are they real, can they be tested for." Ricky sighs. "Mitch, I am a dedicated student of stage magic and have been since I was old enough to have memory. I have seen and read all manner of explanation of magicians' ability to summon objects, to banish, to make invisible, to save themselves from death or distress or danger. Demonic familiars, pacts with higher powers, incantations rescued from ancient tomes. And none of these explanations are as simple and straightforward as the human inclination, the audience's inclination to ignore what is actually in front of one's eyes in favor of one's own subconscious explication, one that connects together the hidden part of the shot between the setup and the reveal. The secret of magic, whether it is handcuff-escaping or mind-reading, is that the human mind is a complex machine that constantly seeks to fill in the blanks in reality. What we can't see, our brains explain away; they're eager to do it. The gaps in the inexplicable aren't the result of magic or psychic powers, but they are powered by the human brain. The observer's human brain. The hand and the eye make magic possible; belief is what makes magic real.
Jeff
"Sure, sure. Great. I mean, yeah. I asked that question mostly to take your temperature about the other part."
Michael
"Yeah, Uri. Well, listen, showman to showman, I admire the grift. He's tied together old-style stage legerdemain with Age of Aquarius patter and, if I understand the reports from media in Israel in any capacity, a self-proclaimed reputation as the Holy Land's latest prophet, full of gifts and genius he lends to protect the Kingdom. An exotic accent and good looks also never hurt anyone doing magic on stage. But his bits... you can see the strings if you look hard. It wouldn't take much. Change the spoons he uses, make sure he doesn't have any hidden elements, magnets, to help him. The setup with him is always carefully managed. You'll notice he doesn't do a lot of live magic not on TV where he doesn't control the performance stage, surface, or surroundings. He's good. But he's not un-debunkable."
"You know Carson's a magician, right?"
Jeff
"Yeah. Thing is, if you want to wreck his rep... I know this guy, Ingo Swann. You happen to know him?"
Michael
"Vaguely, from New York. Last year, drama at the American Society for Psychical Research, they wanted to throw him out for being a Scientologist."
"If I wanted to wreck his rep... well, a magician would never do that to another magician. Unless, of course, he was doing something that brought the college of magicians into disrepute." An expectant pause.
Jeff
Mitch doesn't have a good plausible justification for wanting to ruin Uri Geller's life, just "bad vibes" which he doubts Ricky would have much respect for. "Ingo claims to be a no-fooling esper, right, but he's always careful to say, hmm, well, it's very sensitive, if I'm spooked or tired or irritable it might not work... And Uri Geller does that cranked up to ten, right? So if Johnny comes out and he's like, here, bend this un-prepared random spoon in real time with the cameras all pointed at you, and Uri can't do.
"People fucking love underdogs."
"That's his whole thing, playing with expectations... I dunno how you can respect that grift, it cheapens the whole thing."
Michael
Hmm. I like it. Fast-Talk-15.
>>>> SUCCESS
"If someone tried to set me up so I couldn't work a shot... well, first of all, that'd be difficult, because my talents are in my hands and my patter. That's the inherent weakness of the ESP framework to explain away one's abilities, you can always say 'malign influences' are in the air. Same thing the mediums used to do to explain away their cold-reading not working, 'Oh, someone at the table doesn't really believe in life after death,' and so on."
"You ask me if I think Uri cheapens what I do? Yeah, upon second thought and consideration, yeah he does." Ricky pauses, considering Mitch's "underdog" argument. "Uri, the wounded underdog... yeah, he could absolutely milk that. But it would also show a national TV audience that pretenses of psychic power are just that, pretense."
"But again. I'm curious. Why all the interest in Geller and Swann? I haven't asked you at all what your shot is in all this."
Jeff
"Oh, didn't you know? I'm a magic man. I see the future, I start fires with my mind. There's these guys at Stanford paying me to let them run tests. That's how I met Ingo. They're Scientologists, too. Apparently Uri is their big dog, I haven't met him."
Michael
Ricky chuckles. Then realizes Mitch is being completely serious. Another pregnant pause. "Don't bullshit a bullshitter, come on, man."
Jeff
"It's a real thing. The testing is, I mean. They got nerds and Pentagon money, in case it turns out we can use psychic powers to spy on the Kremlin and win the cold war. Between you and me, I don't think we can. But yeah, they know Ingo, they talk about Uri, how he's coming in to get on Carson..."
Michael
"Whoa." Ricky chuckles, more to himself. "I mean, that's wild. I guess I'd heard rumors about this kind of thing... so the question you asked me at the outset, the 'tested in a lab' question... I guess that was basically just to gauge how skeptical I am, huh?"
"And Uri's well-known, uh, publicity seeking behavior... do the boys in the lab dig that?"
Jeff
"It's like you said, people want to believe. 'It's got to be psychic, why, how else could he possibly have guessed the three of clubs?' and shit. From what I've picked up the nerds have at least halfway convinced themselves that Uri's the real deal. Which kind of irks me, you know?"
"You don't happen to be heading to San Fransisco in the next few days, do you? You could stop by the lab, blow their minds."
Michael
"No plans to hit the West Coast this summer, buddy, sorry to report. And if these lab folks are seriously looking for firestarters and soothsayers, I'm honestly not gonna be their speed. A few card tricks aren't going to bring down the Politburo. Ingo and Uri, huh? I suppose that Uri has enough, uh, intelligence experience to be convincing to them in psychic spying on the Soviet Union. Ingo, though... he's a bit spacey."
"I'm just.... gonna leave the questions I have about seeing the future and starting fires for another time. Maybe when we're face-to-face again." Ricky seems maybe a little confused at how someone would call him looking for debunking advice and then drop he's the real deal in the middle of the phone call.
Jeff
Mitch chuckles. "Don't worry about it."
"Let me put it this way: if you showed up at the lab tomorrow, I'd be as surprised as anybody."
Michael
"And all the talk about Carson? You got something up your sleeve with your industry connections?" I'm assuming Ricky saw Mitch talking with Nez and/or considers Marshall "industry" given his movie star clients.
Jeff
Mitch makes a very noncommittal kind of tongue-cluck. "That's a big maybe. Maybe, as in, maybe Uri Geller will get immolated on live TV next week. Well, not live. They record in the afternoon."
"Maybe it'll go great for him, big tour de force, everybody throwing flowers. I mean, I got some guesses as to how it might go, but nothing I'd bet money on, man."
Michael
"Well, I find him insipid and a bit of a creep but that's no reason to light him on fire, man." Ricky sort of uncomfortably laughs.
Jeff
Mitch chuckles. "You bet."
Michael
"Anything else going on with you? Heard from any of the Houdini gang recently?"
Jeff
Mitch hums. "Anna, you remember Anna Turner? She's local, works in radio here. I seen her a few times. Her and her husband. Went to a sci-fi con last month. That was a trip. Atlantis Risen, you ever read any of that stuff?"
Michael
"I remember Anna, sure. I've been to plenty of magic cons, but never a sci-fi one."
Jeff
"It wasn't what I'd expected, let me tell you. Much more intense. Anyway, next time you're out Cali way, you're gonna hit me up, right?"
Michael
"We will most definitely hang, yes. We'll see who decides to call from the networks over the next few months, maybe I can get an LA trip together and we can revisit your old stomping grounds."