Who remembers Uri Gellar?

[trekgeezer]

http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=834#more-834

[Derf]

I do! I do! What do I win? 

I started reading that article and was about to point out that Randi had duplicated at least most of Gellar's feats using slight of hand, but then the article did that for me. I remember that my family had the Amazing Kreskin ESP board game when I was small. It wasn't really a game, but instead it let you test your psychic abillities to make a pendulum swing and some other goofy stuff. Apparently, I don't have "the gift." 

[fortunato]

Do you think Gellar ever made jokes about spooning?

[Poogie]

Yes, I also remember him. The only way I can bend forks,spoons and knives is to drop them in the garbage disposal.  I also remember when they were bringing up all this proof that he really was a fake, by adding acid or something to the utensils. But I enjoyed watching him. 

[trekgeezer]

Derf mentioned Kreskin, who I always enjoyed watching. Unlike Gellar, Kreskin never claimed to have any super powers. He did always have his host hide his pay check among the audience. According to Wikipedia there were 9 times he didn't find it.

[Yaddo 42]

His heyday was before my time, but I'm aware of his story. Being a skeptic myself, I tend to side with James Randi on this. used to see him demonstrating various paranormal frauds on the old Johnny Carson show. My favorite was when he did psychic surgery on Johnny on stage, with all the usual gross out sounds from the audience, even as he assured them it was fake. At one point he "removed" a suspected "tumor" (IRL chicken guts so I'm informed) from Johnny, took a good look at it, said, 'Nope, that goes back in,' he then "put it back in" and continued on. Great laughs from the audience.

My only experience with bent spoons was a game we used to play during lunch in high school. One guy would bend a spoon until it broke from the handle. He would then spin the spoon part using the broke end as a pointer and ask the "magic spoon" questions. "Who will die first?" "Who will be the last to lose their virginity?" "Who will (fill in the blank) sleep with first?" Typical high school/Ouija board type stuff. One day he asked it "Who is the biggest slut?" and gave the spoon a hard spin, after a long time it stopped and pointed between two people at our table to point perfectly at a girl at another table with a rep for being easy. Big laughs all around after that one.