The other day I started thinking - which is always trouble - about Facebook and how connected I have gotten to it during these long, long days. I still have unhung costumes from three Heart-A-Ramas back, hundreds of CDs and DVDs that should be purged or organized, general cleaning. Instead I have become a creeper, searching out peripheral people in my life, people I know are interesting, outrageous, and live every moment of their lives on Facebook. I told myself I need to break free so I turned to a forgotten source of secrets to satisfy my need to know, William Poundtone's three book set, Big Secrets, Bigger Secrets, and Biggest Secrets.
Who knew there could be enough secrets to fill three books, but Pounstrone does a mighyt fine job. Open the books randomly and discover...
- if there are really backward messages in rock music. (he tested suspect albums with amazing results)
- what goes on at Freemason initiations...the whole story including speculation about the electric carpet
- lab results revealing KFC's secret ingredients
- if Walt Disney's body was frozen and now lies in a secret cryonic vault beneath the Pirates of the Caribbean exhibit at Disneyland
- how did magician David Copperfield make the Statue of Liberty disappear in a live television broadcast
All that and more is packed into these books about things people have been trying to keep secret. American institutions, public and private, love to keep secrets fro us - secret sauces, secret initiation rites, secret handshakes.
All in good fun. That's what I thought at least, and perhaps much of his information was supposition and fabrication. But then, years ago I had the opportunity to do a phone interview with magician Harry Blackstone Jr. He was appearing at the Capitol Civic Center and the director asked me to write a publicity article for the event. Blackstone and I had a great conversation. His father was a noted magician as well and so going into the family business, so to speak, came naturally to him. He educated me on the evolution of magic, and the various styles. Toward the end of the conversation, I asked him about magicians' feeling about William Poundstone revealing how, in words and pictures, many major illusions are constructed. After his rant, I was pretty sure that Poundstone had indeed encroached on sensitive territory.
These are rather old books, you might have to get them from one our fine area libraries. Never fear, plenty of secret revealing books appear each year. Hmmmm...maybe more next week.
Stay safe. Stay healthy. Laugh often.
The room mate...she knows her name and that's about it. Mabel.
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