By Scott Buckner
I’m not sure what anyone might say about a local TV station that promotes a music awards show that already happened a month ago. But those folks might say WPWR-TV/Channel 50’s Wednesday night presentation of the World Magic Awards came as close to bitchin’ entertainment as bitchin’ entertainment gets since Lawrence Welk isn’t around to kick it out anymore.
The two-hour extravaganza was led by congenial actor and world-of-magic ambassador Neil Patrick Harris in front of an audience packed with absolutely nobody famous. Harris scored points early among those accustomed to awful Academy Awards opening numbers with a monologue that lasted about as long as it takes two flies to mate. But the program may have made award-show history by being the first where the even janitor knew the winners of the 14 categories ahead of time. The award itself was a black obelisk topped by a big crystal ball, which made me think they were part of a shipment hijacked from the World Fortune Teller Awards.
But that’s not to say the World Magic Awards was an affair as unremarkable as a Chamber of Commerce Man of the Year banquet at the town VFW, as everyone in the audience was decked out like it was prom night, at least. I missed any announcement of where the show was being held, but I suspect it might have originated from an upper-tier Indian casino, since the last ordinary person in Los Angeles or Las Vegas to wear a tux for a night on the town left town in 1967.
If you figured an awards program showcasing the amazing talents of 14 magicians had to include some show-stopping music, you’d have figured right. Nothing wows a show like an orchestra sounding like terrorists kidnapped the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, fed it nothing but meth for a week-and-a-half, and then dropped the whole band off at the front door five minutes before the show. Still, it was good to know where frenetic guitar god Steve Vai is making the rent these days.
All in all, stuff disappeared, hot-babe assistants were levitated and chained up like they were on a cover of True Crime magazine, snakes and black panthers crawled out of boxes, and things were set on fire in remarkable fashion. Here’s a roundup of some extra-notable moments:
* Dan Sperry was the overwhelming winner of the “Christ, Get A Load Of THIS Fucking Freakshow!” category by showing what happens when a guy decides to deliberately cross Alice Cooper with Edward Scissorhands and do his whole magic act mouthing words to the audience without actually speaking. Mamas, sometimes it is better to let your babies grow up to be cowboys.
* As you might expect, no magic show would be complete without an homage to master illusionist Harry Houdini. But you’d think that, in the 100 or so years since the guy died from a burst appendix, the magic industry could have come up with at least one new hero to worship. Jeez, Jimi Hendrix was a rock guitar god who did all sorts of truly astounding things few mortals have been able to equal, but we’ve managed to move on already.
* Several once-really-famous actors were enlisted as presenters to prove once and for all that, no, they’re not dead. The producers thought some of us might need extra help with Ernie Hudson, so begins his speech with, “In my role as a ghostbuster . . . ”
Later, Corbin Bernsen makes his presentation speech really pissed off at whoever made his looks and hair disappear.
* The most unexpected magical moment of the show was a lengthy appeal for Feed the Children, featuring a taped voiceover by Sir Roger Moore. As a kid during the 1960s, I remember having to cart around a little bright-orange cardboard coin box to trick or treating for UNICEF, so hunger in distant lands seems to be a highly stubborn problem.
This season’s trouble spot is Kenya, where we’re told a child dies every five minutes. It pretty hard on a kid when he spends his day dying every five minutes, so you’d think someone would find the fastest jet available and fly Hans Klok – a highly-skilled Magician Of The Year winner with the ability to make an oncoming airplane vanish into thin air – to Kenya to make food appear out of thin air.
* Magic can be a funny business too, so the show booked weisenheimer Amazing Johnathan – a guy who seems to be held in the same dim regard the comedian industry has for Gallagher – as Best Comedy Magic winner. Maybe there’s little patience for a guy who serves as a warning that Jack Black might actually wake up one day, decide to give up acting, and start working on a card routine involving sharp knives and live ammunition. I don’t know. But for me – and maybe my sense of humor isn’t as refined as it ought to be at my age – Johnathan is funny in the same sense that John Daly might be funny if he got really good at drinking and magic instead of drinking and professional golf.
Honorable mention to Johnathan for abandoning the typical Vegas showgirl/hooker-looking assistant in favor of someone who might be mistaken for Marilyn Monroe had she lived long enough to see her career tank, pork out, and end up in a roach-ridden dive bar all hopped up on helium and Singapore Slings.
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See what else we’ve been watching! Submissions welcome.
Posted on December 1, 2008