hypnotism for magicians weekend

zuroph

myself and ??? Are heading to try out anthony jacquins hypnotism course this weekend. I'm currently in d airport bar. Hopefully we'll have some good stories to tell here monday.

6th

Damn I should have suggested you interview him!

I was also gonna make a joke about not keeping us in suspense about who's going with you "myself and ???"

zuroph

Ridiculously amazing weekend. I now have the closest thing I will ever have to superpowers. Full trip report to follow once I've gotten some sleep.

???

Right, finally recovered enough to post a report. All I can say is that it was excellent. I went already hypnotising people without issue so didn't get as much of a benefit out of it as some of the others but I still found it great. (The we is me and my mate Mike).

Friday we arrived at the hotel from the airport. Most people were staying in our hotel so we met them in the bar and had a few drinks with them. Went off to bed drunk.

Saturday we were all up early, course started at nine. Kev and Ant picked us up from the hotel and took us to the convention centre. The first half of the day focussed on magnetic fingers, magnetic hands, the eye fixation induction and the handshake induction. We ran the drills on each other and quickly discovered that one or two of the people were piss easy to hypnotise and were in for a world of bullying later on... The teaching at this stage was great, everything was clearly explained and mistakes were corrected.

At around two we hit the town for lunch. After lunch we hit the streets and started hypnotising. Most people made an approach and got at least the set pieces. Lot of fun. I, stupidly, decided to approach the street preachers and got accused of doing the work of the devil, cue argument in which they even went as far to invoke Pascal's Wager. Funny stuff.

We then hit the bar, Revolution. This is when things went bad for the Chimp, Amit Beldani, one of the assistants, is renown apparently for bullying them. The poor guy was soon dancing (break and river), convinced he was Michael Jackson, hiding under a table because he thought he was naked, unable to see anyone else, unable to see stools which meant Ant was doing the most amazing 'levitations', forgetting stuff, orgasming any time anyone shook his hand, getting stuck to a lot of stuff and admitting things that may or may not be true but are still bloody funny. We had permission from the bar to approach guests so again most people did. Over the course of the evening I think everyone got somewhere.

Around 1.30 we headed back to the hotel. We hit the bar (after seeing if the 'massage parlour' around the corner was open for Amit) and drank some more. We went to bed around 3.30.

Up bright and early and seriously hungover on Sunday morning. Again Ant and Kev gave us a lift in. Sunday was much more relaxed with discussions of the night before and the use of hypnosis in magic, the chimp got bullied some more, Ant demoed an extraordinary effect and many other relaxed chats about hypnosis were had.

We left for the airport at five or so, Ant kindly gave us a lift in. Home at nine, two days to recover!

All in all a great weekend, worth every penny. Ant is an even nicer guy in the flesh than he is over the internet (though he is suprisingly short!!!)