Okay, maybe it wasn't dropped, it was somewhat placed. But still, there it was, the car right over my head.
The story begins quite some time before though. (Just like Enterprise where they show you the end results of the episode then tell you how they got there!)
It goes like this. Sunday was my daughters eleventh birthday. Last year for her birthday we took her to see Cirque du Soleil down in New Orleans. We did the whole VIP passes and the works. Did it right. This year we needed to at least match last year so we did some research. It turned out that David Copperfield was performing in New Orleans on Saturday and Sunday. As the Sunday performance wouldn't be good for watching the show and then getting back the 240 miles to Vicksburg with decent time to get sleep etc before school on monday we decided to go for the Saturday night show. Several years ago we had seen him on my wifes birthday in Birmingham and my daughter had a ball. This time we upped the ante and bought a ticket for the friend of her choice.
So we get to the theater with plenty of time to get our seats etc, and then they don't open the doors until 15 minutes until scheduled curtain. Rushed in, found our seats etc and then the show didn't start until 10 minutes late. Amazingly there were many empty seats, including the two next to my wife.
The show starts and it's rocking and rolling along. Now if you've ever seen him in person or on TV you know that for certain tricks he enlists audience members to help him out. I confess, many times I'm skeptical of the objectivity of the selected person. Even when he does something random to pick the person there was always the little bit of doubt as to HOW random it really is. Not anymore.
He starts off telling this story about his grandfather who he got along with quite wonderfully until the day grandpa learned that he was going into show business. Grandpa didn't approve of showbusiness people at all. Grandpa also had for years really wanted to win the Irish Sweepstakes and buy himself a new Cadillac. Grandpa died before winning the lottery or buying the car. After grandpa died, they found in his apartment a ticket for a David Copperfield show that he had gone to in secret to see how his grandson had been doing. They also found the license plates with the numbers he'd played for years.
Before the show started we saw several crewmembers come on stage with a metal box sealed inside a lucite box. They attached it to some wires and suspended it high in the air above the stage, but in full view of the audience. Before the show started, he had placed three items in the box. The first was a piece of paper with a series of numbers on it, the second was a cassette, and the third was an object of his grandfathers. Tonite! With the aid of the audience, he was going to try and make his grandfathers wishes come true!
Several rubber frisbee's get thrown into the audience, the people who catch them end up on stage, holding the keys to the box which has now been lowered onto a lucite pedestal. Then he tosses a frisbee into the audience and wants an adult man. It bounced off of the seat behind us, and landed on the floor in front of the empty seats next to my wife. There was a man sitting on the other side of them, she went for the frisbee and he waved her on. He didn't want anything to do with it. So I was the lucky winner.
I stand up and we went through the obligatory questions. Have we ever met before. NO. Was this planned in any way before tonite. NO. Okay, give me two numbers. I popped off with 7 and 13. Then he wanted some personal information about me. Boxers or Briefs, and what color were they? Well, I could answer the first, but to be honest, I hadn't paid attention to what color they were and at that moment, my brain was somewhat addled anyway. So I pulled up a little bit of the back so my wife could tell me. I then tossed the frisbee off in another direction. In my haste, I threw it a little fast, and a little low. Almost decappitating several people, but it ended up in the hands of another man. He got to give two numbers, 25, 27 and his personal information was "when was the last time you got busy". He tossed it to a woman who gave two more numbers, 48, 2, and her month and day of birth. At each answer, he wrote them on a large board on the stage. I figured I was done, but no. He had the three of us come on stage. I got to shake his hand, I then went and got the keys from the witnesses, he had me test the lucite box to make certain that it was solid. It was. I unlocked a large padlock and held the padlock and bar for a few minutes while he had the other man unlock the metal box. It's now time for the reveal.
Inside the box was a piece of paper, a cassette, and a large cloth bag with something inside. I held the bag in full view, against my chest.
On the paper was the personal information about us, as well as the 6 numbers. On the cassette which he played was him reciting the numbers. Inside the cloth bag were two antique looking license plates. Embossed on the licence plates were the number as well. Thunderous applause. I've made my mark in showbiz. But that wasn't the end.
While he was doing the reveal, his stage crew had been setting up some pillars on the stage. The other gentleman who'd picked out numbers and I were then placed in the middle of the stage, on our knees, hugging these four foot high pillars. They told us not to raise our heads. The witnesses were placed around us, holding a rope. A drape was thrown over the two of us. I'm sitting there wondering what the heck is going to happen, when I feel the pillar I'm hugging get heavier. Like it was now supporting a great weight. I look up and see that there is a CAR over my head and the drape was pulled off. I know it didn't come in from the floor, according to my wife it didn't come in above the drape. It couldn't have come in from any of the sides. There was no sound at all. It was just there.
We climbed out from under the car, shook his hand again, then walked off the stage and into history.
Afterwards I had many people come up to me and demand to know how much money I was paid. How it was set up. All the details. I could only tell you as I told them that I didn't know. I was a completely random person. It could have been them.
When climbing out from under it didn't look like a real car should look from underneath. Not that I have a lot of experience lookigng at the underneath of cars, but it didn't seem like it was all there and in the right spots. I don't hold that against him though. I know it's an illusion, I know that it's fake. Whether it was a real car or not is somewhat irrelevant, a large object appeared under a drape, over me on stage. Maybe if I had been looking up at the right moment I could have seen how it got there. But sometimes it's better to let magic be magic.
So how was your Saturday night?
Topic: And then he dropped a car on my head! (Read 973 times)