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November was the longest month of the year. Now that all my major events are over and done with, I have more time to…erm, prepare for next year’s events. Sheesh, work is a never-ending carousel.

Sometime last month, I was so mentally exhausted from work that I left the office early for the cinema and saw The Prestige by myself.

If you haven’t seen it, go get the DVD. It’s about two rival magicians engaged in a game of one-upmanship and hell-bent on ruining each other’s career. It’s not a great film but it’s a great mindf*ck. Chris Nolan likes to mess with your head.

Well, anyway, I don’t know whether this is a weird coincidence or what but the next day, I meet a magician at my client’s office.

Turns out my client’s event management company recommended this guy to create some sort of fantastic illusion for the launch gambit. That would cost a cool RM300,000.

So for that amount, you expect this guy to do more than just pull bunnies out of a hat.

He starts off by explaining that a large part of the cost involved goes into the construction of props, etc. He says he can’t reveal too much, understandably, as they’re "tricks of the trade".

But of course, we all want to know what it is about this illusion that will awe the audience.

And then he goes: "Well, first the audience doesn’t see the product and then…they do! It just magically appears onstage."

The client doesn’t look too impressed but she nevertheless asks, "How is it done?"

Magician says rather enthusiastically, "A projection screen drops down and we play a video. While that is going on, someone comes onstage to place the product on the podium. So when the video is over, the screen goes back up and the audience suddenly sees the product onstage!!"

The client blinks at him for a while before asking the obvious. "Uh, what exactly is the illusion here?"

"The illusion is…now you see it, now you don’t!!" Magic Man explains excitedly. He tries to elaborate further, but it’s clear no one’s buying it.

In the end, we found out Magic Man was a fraud. Well, not completely. Turned out that he was only a stagehand for the real deal and that’s why he didn’t sell the trick very well. It’s actually a lot more complicated than how he made it out to be. And the actual illusionist himself can do all sorts of cool stuff, like make the product appear in different sizes and colours.

But I’m still not sure why anyone would pay a few hundred grand for that kind of thing. Unless, you know, they made one of the Twin Towers disappear and replaced it with your client’s product scale size. Then that might just be worth the money.

This particular illusionist has quite an impressive clientele though…maybe it’s a magician’s natural powers of deception and distraction. Or maybe even big corporations can be suckers too.

Don’t know whether that’s magic or tragic.

But anyway, what’s more unbelievable is the fact that I have managed to survive November, with an average of 3 events per week.

It’s a miracle I’ve kept my mind and sanity intact throughout the month. You know what’s the biggest illusion of all? That my job is all effortless glamour.

Well, it’s not. It’s a lot of hard work and perspiration that goes unappreciated. We PR practitioners are the deodorant in the (client’s) armpit of success. And that’s the truth behind the illusion.

Hocus fucking pocus.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 5th, 2006 at 10:52 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.