Mind Matter

The folx, TLW and yours truly caught Marc Salem's Mind Games last night. Now, I've read about the show for quite some time, and learned a few things from James Randi's Website about mentalist acts, "cold reading," and non-verbal communication, but this thing was just another level entirely. Creating a 4x4 "magic square" for a randomly chosen audience number, reading a bill's serial number blindfolded, and telling people about their vacation locations, all while "just warming up," Salem had the place in awe. His best trick, however, was one which most of the audience missed. While going up the aisle to pick a "volunteer," he stopped to quickly greet my father by name, recognizing him from some 35 years ago, when his brother and cousin were roomates of my father's (and Salem was still known as Moshe B.) There hasn't been much contact since, but we managed to sneak in a quick conversation at the stage door.

Actually, we pulled a pretty nice name recognition trick of our own later in the evening. Back in our "we're not really dating, we're just hanging out" denial days (okay, so *I* was in denial, The Lovely Wife(tm) was just confused), we caught Fred Barton giving Karen Miller a break, playing a couple of songs for an Australian woman with a killer belt named Anita Plateris. Fast forward nearly five years to last night's Cast Party, where TLW and I pass by a table with a striking brunette seated. The name "Anita" immediately sprang into both our heads, and we managed to find the her before we left, and confirm that yes, indeed, our memories were correct. In town for a short while, Anita's going to be performing with Fred at a venue and time TBA. Hopefully, we didn't scare her too much by gushing over her last performance (I keep waiting for performers to take out restraining orders on us, but I guess we keep the adulation at an appropriate level.)

Oh, and as a reminder to myself as much as anything else: The upcoming New York Musical Theatre Festival (NYMF for the attention-span deprived) is featuring a show called The Big Voice written and performed by my favorite Southern-Baptist-gospel-singer-songwriter, Steve Schalchlin, and his partner, Jim Brochu. I've previously shlepped out to such godforsaken locations as Rochester, Baltimore, and the Wings theatre to see productions of their first show, The Last Session, and I can't wait to catch this one.