Levitating some of the unsexiestly- dressed magician’s assistants, ever. Complete with the shocked-mouth-on-hand expression he employed perpetually.

It’s been awhile since I’ve been to a magic act, but with magicians who keep acts looking twenty years old, all I can say is, thanks for making me feel like a kid again.

If there’s anybody I’d immediately associate with those cheesy home magic kits in future, it’d be “Dr. Alexander, a.k.a. ‘Master Magician Alex’”.

Performing today to a crowd growing increasingly restless, the thickly-toupeed magician probably went through every cheap trick in the book, from pulling flowers out of handkerchiefs to sticking knives in a girl in a box.

Put it this way: it’s been a long time since I’ve seen a magician’s wand employed for a trick.

I can only imagine how the audience felt during his previous 24-hour, non-stop, Guiness Book entry-making show.

To be fair, there were one or two tricks he performed which left me stumped. But the majority weren’t too difficult guessing; moreover, I’m notoriously naive, so if you can’t get a trick past me, you can’t get a trick past anyone.

Except for some newspapers, I don’t know how anyone could get past the home-made props (cardboard city), the trigger-happy sound FX man with the constant drum rolls and cymbal crashes (not to mention the cheesy recorded dog barks, knife swishes and babies crying)…

And that Safri Duo song, thumping jarringly for the three-hour performance. Oh my word. That’s going to stick in my head for awhile. The only time they played something different was during the costume changes, where they played bhangra music—now that was a cultural surprise.

At one point, he dropped one of his doves that he was using for a trick and instead of taking flight or fluttering softly to the ground, it dropped with a thud, like a brick.

If anything, he’s worth a cheer or two from the Indian Nationalists, though I think he knows it too, because he played his National anthem for the closing, and draped all the girls with the flags for it. And the standing ovation, for that, he got.