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This is about a show from the first German season of “The Next Uri Geller” from early 2008. You can also:
» Show all my reports from the first season.
» Show everything about the second season 2009.
» Show really all articles about Uri Geller.

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General reading tips (German): GWUP info page, GWUP special site.

Intoductory remarks

First, a little poem of mine:

so you say that – achad! –
real powers he got?
 
these “powers” are – shtaim! –
not worth a mere dime
 
is it mystic? – shalosh! –
no way, golly gosh!
 

achad, shtaim, shalosh: Hebrew for 1, 2, 3

And a perfectly matching current cartoon by xkcd:

(via BA)

The show from 22 Jan 2008

Celebrity guests: Katarina Witt, “Galileo” presenter Aiman Abdallah and actress Christina Plate. And three police officers are stooping this time to be would-be trustability suppliers (cf. Lawblog (2nd paragraph; German) – they’re supposed to just enjoy the show and sometimes pretend to supervise the show).

Contestant 1: Nicolai Friedrich

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< ?php if (is_single()):?>

This is about a show from the first German season of “The Next Uri Geller” from early 2008. You can also:
» Show all my reports from the first season.
» Show everything about the second season 2009.
» Show really all articles about Uri Geller.

< ?php endif;?>

General reading tips (German): GWUP info page, GWUP special site.

The contestants’ contracts

Skeptiker (GWUP) and Stern report about the contracts – among other things, the contestants would originally have had to sign that they “have distinct mental and intuitive abilities, such as mind reading, telekinesis, sugestion or autosuggestion”.
» More (in German) at Stern!

The contestants’ web sites

In my first show’s summary, I was wondering:

The question is how much the contestants are behind the “real powers” balderdash which also was clearly shown in the short films introducing them – or if they rather submitted to the show’s demands.

And checked their websites. I should do this for the other five contestants, too, of course (my translations):

• Dr. Lord Jack Nasher, “Management Psychology”, also gives courses. „Jack Nashers Mind Mysteries are demonstrations of human perception deception. [...] a performance with psychology, knowledge of human nature and pure deception – not forgetting irony.“ The lord didn’t even give a basis of paranormal for ProSieben’s short texts.
• Alexander Hartmann: „In my show I do things that seem inexplicable to most people to create extraordinary moments. My goal is exclusively to offer good entertainment – not to claim or prove the possession of any supernatural abilities.“
  
• Farid (by the way, are there any clearly laid out pages on MySpace?) writes: “Farid has already entertained his audience with professional magic when he was 10. [...] A new and modern kind of magic.” Not really extensive, but for itself, it doesn’t sound bad. But if he really stands behind what the ProSieben website says that he has said: “I remember it clearly: as a little child, I was raised out of my bed one night like by ghost hand”, then:
  
• Thorsten Strotmann Magic Entertainment: A “magician, magic artist, entertainer, infotainer, host”, who, on the one hand, presents himself quite businesslike, on the other hand unfortunately also writes: „Mental magic: thoughts are energy. [...] As a child, he already recognized that he has a special gift and can grab energy and thoughs on another level. [...] As well, he can influence energetically “charge” objects by the power of his mind.“
  
• Leo Martin, “staged communication”: “[...] suggestive communication, perception deception and attention guiding. He creates illusions in the heads of the people and makes them do things that they wouldn’t have considered possible beforen.” Sounds rather psychological and magic-artistical than supernatural. ProSieben, by the way, writes “…have been able to before.” You can read this as a small but relevent difference towards more balderdash…

And I still think: In any case, a magician who doesn’t think too lowly of himself should not have applied for such a show in the first place.

Geller about his powers

On the one hand in an interview of the Berliner Kurier (all my translations):

“? So you do have telepathic abilities?
! Without a doubt.
[...]
I beleive I had been given an extraordinary paranormal energy.”

On the other habd in the Magische Welt (magic world), the independent German magazine for magic artists:

“I don’t claim anymore that I have supernatural powers. I am an entertainer, I want to do a good show. My entire character has changed.”

Now what?

The show from 15 Jan

At the beginning, press reactions are mentioned and shown in the background – only briefly and only positive ones, there must be a relation. And did Geller really say, “we don’t claim to have supernatural powers, we just want to enjoy it”? So really the new, more conservative line, if you will? (Cf. above.) Well, hopefully not the most interesting thing this evening…

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It was terrible! I wasn’t even watching TV, when suddenly I heard a drawer in the kitchen open, a spoon came flying and turned on the TV! A strange guy seemed to loudly clear his throat – and that on ProSieben which I don’t even have in my channnel list! Very closely I evaded a second spoon that came rushing with full power, smashing the remote control so that I couln’t switch channels anymore!

Aaaargh!

Okay, joking aside. More notes about yesterday’s “event”, the first edition of this German show, which to me only was an event because I had blogged live…

• English readers probably find a lot of info on CSI (ex CSICOP), or watch the (English) videos at the first of the following German links: GWUP-Infoseite zu Geller; GWUP-Blog (including funny video); special page that also informed live/a>.
  Also (also German): trick explanations on Welt.de und at the tz.
• The question is how much the contestants are behind the “real powers” balderdash which also was clearly shown in the short films introducing them – or if they rather submitted to the show’s demands. In any case, I think a magician who doesn’t think too lowly of himself should not have applied for such a show in the first place.
   
  Addendum:
  Nicolai Friedrich Update 16 Jan: clearly writes about magic tricks used to write that on his HTML site – in the German Flash version only, he writes (translated) that he’s “able to transfer his mental abilities to his audience so he can create telepathic connections between people, look with the viewers’ eyes, move objects with the power of his mind and take a look into the future.” So he adapted himself to that stupid show motto.
  Hayashi (Ryan Lam): Found no homepage, but in show announcements, he’s quite often called magic artist, e.g. “European champion of magic”;
  David Goldrake: Homepage currently not accessible, only the Blog. In a press release there, he’s named an “illusionist”;
  The couple, Duo Sonambulo: In that lengthy Flash animation, the word “entertainment arts” is mentioned once, but much too often for my taste, they talk about paranormal stuff;
  Vincent Raven: (my translation:) “No magic show, but a mystic spectacle from the past awaits you.” – “an artist of illusion and fantasy invites you to a world of the strange. Illusion show in mystically staged atmosphere. Vincent Raven seducts you into the realm of myths and spirits.” Umm, well…
• The performances were, in part, quite okay, but nothing to sweep you off your feet. Especially that raven guy’s “world of the dead” communication trick playing with the feelings not only of the celebrities (who probably had been paid well enough), but also many viewers, was somewhat questionable.
• Ratings: 3,85 million (12,1% market share) aged 3+, 2,69 million (20,1%) aged 14-49; only RTL with US series had more. ProSieben can probably be satisfied. Just a pity that way too many are probably not skeptical enough…… (source: teletext and Quotenmeter.de)
• Updated: About the brief guest I had mentioned, Dr. Friedbert Karger: He used to be at the Max Planck Institute for plasma physics and apparently had himself become confused by a “Poltergeist” so much that he’s quite popular among parascientists now… The show’s producers were probably glad to have found a doctor title holder to utter “confirming” statements, forgetting about the proven existence of magic tricks.
• The visitor numbers here were quite good for me, but blog seemed to be rather listed sufficiently high in the search engines for the search combinations of “Uri Geller” and “Son[jy]a Kraus” to attract visitors… a few critical ones, luckily, also came, but also one who search for “next uri geller what do you have to say to throw spoon down from tv set”.
• Live blogging is quite exhausting – I certainly won’t do that again for this show. If at all, I’ll just watch the recording time-shifted to be able to skip over uninteresting parts.

» Detailed explanations (German) at “The Tricks”.

» Take a look here at all my posts about Uri Geller «

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This is about a show from the first German season of “The Next Uri Geller” from early 2008. You can also:
» Show all my reports from the first season.
» Show everything about the second season 2009.
» Show really all articles about Uri Geller.

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Alright, I decided – after last night’s post about the advertising “documentary” – to watch “The next Uri Geller – Incredible phenomena live”, since I “have” to ad my two cents, and I couldn’t do that “blind” – I’m no real mentalist, y’know, and even less a real supernaturally gifted one (though I could use James Randi‘s million, actually).

And I don’t mind magic tricks, anyway, I just hate it when they claim that these are real “inexplicable” phenomea and the like..

The GWUP (German) wants to accompany this show, too, of course, and also blog live. And I made my attempts at live blogging, too – quite stressful…

Host for this show is Stefan Gödde – known (or not) from BIZZ, taff and Stars on Ice. Geller says about him (my translation): “I already met Stefan once in Munich. He is a very talented, likeably young man. I couldn’t wish for a better host.”

I can understand that. Criss Angel, who hosted the US edition of this show, is an experienced magician himself who also caused some problems for Geller (see Wikipedia, or David’s D-Blog here); Stefan Gödde, on the other hand, is just a simple presenter, from whom you probably cannot expect something like this, unfortunately. Even if he described himself as “a little skeptic” at the beginning who likes to be fascinated.

Read now the result of my live blogging:

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