tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-89086572024-03-15T18:09:15.161-07:00Uri Geller BlogOfficial Blog for Psychic Spoonbender, Uri Geller.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger35125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8908657.post-56836101179330551992011-07-11T19:09:00.000-07:002011-07-11T19:11:26.314-07:00Not Much NewsSeriously, not a lot of Uri Geller news to report on. <br /><br />Any interesting news you would like to share?Unknownnoreply@blogger.com391tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8908657.post-60334889305192022672009-08-09T09:02:00.000-07:002009-08-09T09:04:44.951-07:00My friend Michael Jackson<div class="content_box"><p>When the news came through that Michael Jackson had died, I simply did not believe it — even though I have been warning for years that the appalling crises that rocked his life were causing him unimaginable stress.</p> <p>He was a gentle, vulnerable man, who shied away from every confrontation and was prey to a succession of bullies and manipulators who cared nothing for the man or his music, only for his millions. It was inevitable that he would be driven into debt: as a businessman, he was unable to tell the dolphins from the sharks.</p></div> <p>They say that when a shark strikes, you can lose a limb without feeling a twinge. All the predators that circled Michael down the years took a bite from him, and I knew he could not endure it forever.<br /><br />After the financial maelstrom and the global frenzy surrounding his court case, Michael’s decision to stage a comeback was the right one — but he should never have contemplated doing so many shows.</p> <p style="text-align: center;"><a rel="lightbox" href="http://site.uri-geller.com/uploads/images/my_friend_michael_jackson_/xurimj.jpg"><img src="http://site.uri-geller.com/uploads/images/my_friend_michael_jackson_/xurimj.jpg" width="400" border="0" height="288" /></a></p> <p style="text-align: center;"> At the Hit Factory studios in New York</p> <p style="text-align: center;"><br />One would have been enough. Instead, he allowed himself to be persuaded into an extravaganza that even Elton John or Madonna would struggle to pull off. For Michael, with his health in tatters, and after so many years away from live performance, it must have been a terrifying, nightmare prospect.<br /><br />His sanity had been buffeted. There were rumours of skin cancer and drug dependency. But in the end it was his heart that gave out. I should not have been shocked — but I was, so appalled at the news that I slammed the phone down on the first journalist after calling him a hoaxer.<br /><br />The succession of calls that followed left me in no doubt. As all the news agencies, Fleet Street papers and TV stations started to demand instant quotes and tributes, all three of our house phones and the mobile were ringing simultaneously.<br /><br />All through the night, I felt numb. It wasn’t until the morning, when I had already gone more than 24 hours without sleep, that the real grief kicked in. As I talked to Carla Romano on GMTV by live satellite link, I was on the verge of breaking down in tears.<br /><br />What I remembered most vividly was Michael’s devotion to his fans. He drew on their love for strength, and his gratitude for their overwhelming affection was bottomless.<br /><br />I remember watching him in a New York hotel room, searching through every drawer and cupboard before he checked out. “Have you lost your passport?” I joked.<br /><br />“I don’t want to leave any gifts behind,” he told me earnestly. He took a soft toy from a paper bag that a fan had decorated with hearts, and clutched it to his chest in a gesture that had become familiar to me — Michael hugged every gift he was given, as though he wanted to absorb the loving energies into his heart.<br /><br />“Everything I was ever given, I’ve kept it,” he said. “I treasure them all. It’s the truth — I have packets of M&Ms from 30 years ago, when I was a kid. Some day, I’ll build a museum for it all.”<br /><br />For such a loving man, one of the biggest strains of all was being separated from his children. When he flew to England to visit Exeter football club with me and David Blaine, I knew he desperately wanted to bring his children, Prince, Paris and Blanket. And he could not: he knew the paparazzi would have rioted to get pictures of him with his sons and daughter.<br /><br />I believe Michael envied what John Lennon did when Sean was born — he wanted to drop out of the showbiz firmament and become a fulltime Dad. But Michael was a bigger star even than the Beatles, and it was impossible for him to become ordinary, even for a day.<br /><br />That caused him agonies of frustration. The loss of his own childhood wounded him deeply, but even more painful was to be ensnared in court cases and health battles when all he wanted to do was share their most precious years.</p> <p style="text-align: center;"><a rel="lightbox" href="http://site.uri-geller.com/uploads/images/my_friend_michael_jackson_/MJwkippa.jpg"><img src="http://site.uri-geller.com/uploads/images/my_friend_michael_jackson_/MJwkippa.jpg" width="401" border="0" height="271" /></a></p> <p style="text-align: center;">Michael in my wedding wearing a Kippa (Yarmulke)<br />As the calls kept flooding in, and I gradually became hoarse from all the interviews, I was astounded at the reaction of the media. Many journalists seemed devastated to realise that such a symbol of our times had gone. Every music-loving reporter in London was hoping to cheer Michael on his comeback — now none of us will ever see him perform again.<br /><br />For a decade, I have been accustomed to the hostility of the press, who have attacked Michael mercilessly for his eccentrities, his appearance and his friendships with adolescents.</p> <p style="text-align: center;"><br /><a rel="lightbox" href="http://site.uri-geller.com/uploads/images/my_friend_michael_jackson_/DstewJHaywMJUG.jpg"><img src="http://site.uri-geller.com/uploads/images/my_friend_michael_jackson_/DstewJHaywMJUG.jpg" width="401" border="0" height="278" /></a></p> <p style="text-align: center;">In my wedding with Dave Stewart and Justin Hayward</p> <p style="text-align: center;"><br />Now, the controversy is ebbing away. Less than a day after his death, his legend is being redefined, in a positive light. It is his music which shines.<br /><br />We will remember Michael Jackson for his heart-lifting songs, for his breath-taking dance moves, for his achingly poignant lyrics, for his magnetic, mesmeric charisma.</p> <p style="text-align: center;"><br /><br /><a rel="lightbox" href="http://site.uri-geller.com/uploads/images/my_friend_michael_jackson_/UG_MJ_NMansell.jpg"><img src="http://site.uri-geller.com/uploads/images/my_friend_michael_jackson_/UG_MJ_NMansell.jpg" width="400" border="0" height="291" /></a></p> <p style="text-align: center;">With Nigel Mansell</p> <p style="text-align: center;">We will remember how he could draw love from millions of fans and turn that into pure music energy. We will remember him as an icon, an idol and a unique phenomenon. Most of all we will remember him as the greatest Prince of Pop the planet has ever seen.</p> <p style="text-align: center;"><br /><a rel="lightbox" href="http://site.uri-geller.com/uploads/images/my_friend_michael_jackson_/NWS_ADN_OXFORD7.jpg"><img src="http://site.uri-geller.com/uploads/images/my_friend_michael_jackson_/NWS_ADN_OXFORD7.jpg" width="401" border="0" height="260" /></a></p> <p style="text-align: center;">At The Oxford Union</p> <p style="text-align: center;"><br />Michael Jackson had a probing mind, and many times we talked about life after death. Once we discussed Albert Einstein and his theory of relativity, which states that energy cannot be destroyed. My friend has died but he is a pure energy source now, and that will live forever.<br /><br />I believe he is shining as brilliantly as ever, in another life, with Lennon, and Presley, and Sinatra, and a twinkling of other supernovas. He burned brighter than any of them.</p> <p style="text-align: center;"><a rel="lightbox" href="http://site.uri-geller.com/uploads/images/my_friend_michael_jackson_/urimjdb.jpg"><img src="http://site.uri-geller.com/uploads/images/my_friend_michael_jackson_/urimjdb.jpg" width="342" border="0" height="303" /></a></p> <p style="text-align: center;">With David Blaine at The House of Commons</p> <p style="text-align: center;"><a rel="lightbox" href="http://site.uri-geller.com/uploads/images/my_friend_michael_jackson_/dblainecfc.jpg"><img src="http://site.uri-geller.com/uploads/images/my_friend_michael_jackson_/dblainecfc.jpg" width="423" border="0" height="257" /></a></p> <p style="text-align: center;">With David Blaine and Matt Fiddes in Exeter</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com281tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8908657.post-18300521238992203622009-05-30T17:57:00.000-07:002009-06-29T18:02:11.584-07:00Uri Geller: Keep Fit<p>I didn’t know that a quadruple heart bypass was even possible. I thought the maximum number of grafts was three. But when a friend of ours was told his angina had become life-threatening and that he must undergo one of the most serious operations possible, I realised there’s only one person more important than a brilliant surgeon — and that’s a responsible heart owner.</p> <div class="content_box_margin"> <p>Shipi and I dropped in to the London hospital where our friend, a lawyer we’ve known for over 20 years, is recovering. It’s a good thing Shipi never became a doctor — his bedside manner is appalling.<br />“I bet when they cut you open,” he announced, “the surgeons discovered you didn’t have a heart at all. I always said that’s what makes you such a great lawyer.”<br />In fact, the surgery cannot be carried out while the heart is still pumping. It has to be stopped while the new arteries are grafted into place: in order to save the patient, the doctor must first kill him.<br />Many of my legal friends tell me the biggest problem they face is stress. In a high-powered career, where the stakes are high in every case and clients can face ruin if their lawyer isn’t 101 per cent committed to his work, physical tension can destroy the body.<br />It doesn’t matter if you’re a non-smoking vegan who jogs to the office every day and never touches more than a half-glass of chianti: stress is a killer.<br />That’s why I’m delighted that my son, Daniel, has quit his work as a barrister in London chambers to retrain as a Californian lawyer. All that sun and surf will help him to relax.<br />My own health regime is focused on keeping fit. I’ve been a vegetarian for most of my adult life, I have no resistance to alcohol and couldn’t be a boozer even if I wanted, and I’m lucky enough to be able to afford full check-ups when it suits me — the National Health Service is a marvellous institution, one Britain is rightly proud of, but it’s no good if my appointment for a scan comes through when I happen to be on the other side of the world shooting a TV series.<br />Since a healthy diet is built into my lifestyle, the chief role I can play as a responsible heart owner is to take plenty of aerobic exercise. That doesn’t mean I have to don a pink leotard and dance round the gym to the sound of Wham! I only do that on Mondays.<br />Aerobic exercise is the kind that makes the body increase its oxygen intake. For best results, it should not be too intensive, and it should last at least 20 minutes. I always warm up before starting, to avoid straining my muscles, and I always cool off with stretches for the same reason.<br />My favourite work-out is on my static bike — I try to cover about 27km in 20 minutes, bringing my heart rate up to around 120 beats per minute and keeping it there while I work up a sweat. I also use a cross-trainer which works my arms, and I like to use weights for ten minutes or so: I could never get a Schwarzeneggar body if I trained 12 hours every day for life, but all muscle helps burn fat and the weights help keep my own weight down.<br />If I’m in a hotel, I might use the pool — swimming is great exercise, though I don’t like sharing the water with a crowd. And I usually find a flight of stairs to help keep me supple, even if it’s on a jumbo jet.<br />It’s important to know when to stop — and when I first discovered work-outs, moderation was a word that wasn’t in my vocabulary.<br />By my late twenties, soft living had made me overweight. My favourite foods were hamburgers, salami and especially brie, which is about 80 per cent saturated fat.<br />I wasn’t obese, not the way my American friends understood the word. Some of them couldn’t see their own feet, even if they lay on the floor with their feet propped on a sofa.<br />But I stood on a speak-your-weight machine in Manhattan one afternoon and realised I had motored smoothly past 85 kilos and was heading for 90kg... which means I was approaching 14 stone. As a former paratrooper and basketball player, I suddenly felt I’d turned into Orson Welles.<br />I got hooked on dieting, and that became bulimia. I also got hooked on exercise. Without taking medical advice, I started jogging for at least two hours a day, covering ten miles at a stretch. Then I’d drag myself to a bike and pedal for another 90 minutes. The flab evaporated, but I felt dizzy and depleted all the time.<br />My glycogen levels never climbed above a trough, and I was constantly tired. At the same time, my blistered feet and burning legs gave me constant pain.<br />In combination with my eating disorder, I could easily have given myself a heart attack.<br />My message to anyone who is reading this and who isn’t taking regular aerobic exercise at least three times a week: whether you’re 18 or 80, make an appointment to see your GP right now. Get your health checked over, and find out what levels of exercise you can safely target.<br />And if disability makes aerobics impossible, make sure you raise your fitness and reduce your stress in other ways, such as regular meditation. The mind is the most powerful exercise machine in the universe, and there’s no charge for using it to the max. Above all, liaise with your doctor, and make a pledge to keep fit... because whatever you’re doing today, I’m willing to bet that you wouldn’t want to swap places with my friend and his quadruple heart bypass.<br /><br /><a rel="lightbox" href="http://site.uri-geller.com/uploads/images/keep_fit/armchairfitness300509WS.jpg"><img src="http://site.uri-geller.com/uploads/images/keep_fit/armchairfitness300509WS.jpg" width="602" border="0" height="396" /></a></p> <p>when I look at this publicity shot of myself aged 62, and think back to the chubby youth I was at 28 in New York, I know which of us looks more in control.</p></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8908657.post-25791964054263330582009-05-29T17:54:00.000-07:002009-06-29T18:01:15.677-07:00Uri Geller: Twitter, Ezer Mitzion<p>*It’s an international phenomenon. Phenomena are my business. I should get involved. Right now I’m brushing my teeth with a new toothbrush.</p> <div class="content_box_margin"> <p>*Everybody’s doing it. It’s the future of the internet. Facebook is yesterday’s news. I left my old toothbrush in a Moscow hotel bedroom.<br /><br /><br />*It’s free publicity. Although, at the moment, I have less than 100 followers. And four of them are Hanna, Daniel, Natalie and Shipi.<br /><br /><br />*You don’t get many words into 140 characters, do you? Still, it’s a good excuse to play with my Blackberry. Like I need an excuse.<br /><br /><br />*I must stop in at Boots the Chemist and get an electric toothbrush. Either that, or fly back to Russia and collect the one I left there.<br /><br /><br />*If anyone in Moscow is following my toothbrush saga, please call at the Hilton and ask them to send mine back. I am now walking my dog.<br /><br /><br />*I am standing in an English field, typing on a tiny keyboard. My greyhound is chasing rabbits. This is a typical morning at home for me.<br /><br /></p> <p style="text-align: center;"><img src="http://site.uri-geller.com/uploads/images/twitter_ezer_mitzion_/tour_1.gif" width="292" border="0" height="88" /></p> <p style="text-align: center;"> Twitter account: GellerUri</p> <p><br />I’m Twittering. Or Tweeting. I’m not quite sure of the jargon, but the concept is simple: I can send updates from my beloved mobile phone to a webpage called Twitter, and anyone who signs up can instantly see what I’m saying. It’s like sending a text message to countless fans, instantaneously.<br /><br /><br />Every day I send texts to my children in America, just to let them know I’m thinking of them. Now I can do the same for everyone who watches my TV shows and reads my Weekly News column.<br /><br /><br />Some of the most popular Twitterers have millions of followers. When Barack Obama was on the election trail, his off-the-cuff observations were beamed via Twitter technology to voters from Cape Cod to San Francisco Bay, generating a wave of excitement and publicity which helped the first Hawaiian president surf into the White House.<br /><br /><br />Messages have to be ultra-brief, and are supposed to be answers to the question, “What are you doing?” Each one must contain no more than 140 characters, including spaces.<br /><br /><br />That’s about 25 words which, when I’m worked up, is about as many words as I say every three seconds. Space is a major drawback, but it also forces people to stay focused. If everyone was publishing five-page rants, most of us would never have time to read the Tweets, never mind write our own.<br /><br /><br />It’s the biggest sensation on the internet right now. Millions of new users are signing up. If you want to read my posts, my username is gelleruri — somebody has already registered as urigeller, without asking me first.<br /><br /><br />That’s a common practice — the rapper Kanye West went ballistic this month when he discovered that more than a million people were following a Twitter imposter who had hijacked his name. The account was quickly shut down, but it shows the power of the phenomenon: if a million or more sign up to read instant messages from a pretend pop star, the potential for real celebrities must be unlimited.<br /><br /><br />Who needs TV adverts for a new album or a television show, when you can reach a seven-figure audience with a Tweet?<br /><br /><br />Unlike most internet sensations, this one isn’t dominated by teenagers. MySpace, Messenger, phone texts and music downloads were all powered by adolescent excitement, but Twitter seems to be an adult obsession. Maybe if it can’t capture the imagination of the very young, it will be short-lived — most internet crazes burn out fast. I’m going to have some fun with this one while it lasts.<br /><br /><br />*Barney the greyhound is now out of sight. He smelt a rabbit in the next county. This is going to be a long walk. I’ll keep you posted.<br /><br /><br />***********<br /><br /></p> <p style="text-align: center;"><img src="http://site.uri-geller.com/uploads/images/twitter_ezer_mitzion_/Jules2007GUA230509B.jpg" width="300" border="0" height="400" /></p> <p style="text-align: center;"><strong>Ace pilot Julian Murfitt</strong></p> <p><br />My daredevil friend Julian Murfitt put on a display of acrobatics above my home this week, for a party of children from Israel who were visiting Britain with the Ezer Mitzion charity.<br /><br /><br />All of the youngsters are suffering from very serious illnesses, and the courage and determination they display in the face of frightening and painful treatments is inspirational. I always try to give them a day which will be just as much an inspiration.<br /><br /><br />I emphasize to the children how important their medical treatments are, and urge them to work hand in hand with their medical team, because the danger is that some might lose their faith when treatments become too painful. The sickness caused by treatments and, for instance, the loss of hair during chemotherapy, can be very traumatic for youngsters.<br /><br /><br />After Julian’s stunt-plane, an Extra 230, touched down, he explained to the children how he piloted it and what he experienced in the cockpit — and as he used his arms, his face and his whole body to demonstrate the extraordinary strains and stresses of acrobatics, he looked like he was dancing.<br /><br /><br />Next time, I’m going to film him and set it to music!<br /><br /><br />When the children leave, I give all of them my private phone numbers, including my mobile, so they can call me any time they need encouragement. It’s not unusual to get a call from a child about to go into the operating theatre, and some of the most moving conversations of my life have come like this, out of the blue.</p> <p style="text-align: center;"><br /><a rel="lightbox" href="http://site.uri-geller.com/uploads/images/twitter_ezer_mitzion_/EzerPianoB.jpg"><img src="http://site.uri-geller.com/uploads/images/twitter_ezer_mitzion_/EzerPianoB.jpg" width="500" border="0" height="375" /></a><br /><strong>Maestro pianist Uri Geller</strong></p> <p>What matters most is that the children take strength and hope from our words — I’m less concerened about the science of what is happening during inspirational moments. I used to think that I was sending an energy flow, but now I’m convinced that the healing power is latent in everybody, and I am just a catalyst, a tool the children can use to trigger their own inner energies. Next week I hope to reveal the incredible experiment which opened my eyes to this universal power.<br /><br /><br />***********<br /><br /><br />This spectacular chair was designed by the Israeli genius Ron Arad. We spotted it in the Timothy Taylor gallery in Mayfair, where Ron’s work is on show. If I’d ignored spoons and concentrated on chairs, maybe all furniture would look like this.<br /></p> <p style="text-align: center;"><img src="http://site.uri-geller.com/uploads/images/twitter_ezer_mitzion_/ronarad230509B.jpg" width="400" border="0" height="300" /></p></div> <!-- /left --><span class="fix"></span> <!-- /content2 --> <!-- /content -->Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8908657.post-57774586431946141872009-05-21T18:04:00.001-07:002009-05-21T18:04:58.436-07:00Tamas Vasary, Christine Wilde<div style="text-align: left;" class="content_box"> <p>It’s an unforgettable romantic moment when the pianist dedicates a song to a couple. Memories like those can define a love affair — that melody becomes ‘our tune’.</p></div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;" class="content_box_margin"> <p>These special moments are usually set in intimate restaurants or secluded bars, at family gatherings or on the last night of a magical holiday.<br /><br /><br />It was different for Hanna and me — the setting was the packed auditorium of the Royal Festival Hall and we were serenaded by one of the most celebrated concert pianists in the world, Tamas Vasary.<br /><br /><br />But as I told Hanna when the applause died down, Tamas once joined me in one of the most unusual requests of my life, and it was only fitting that he should dedicate another, 35 years later, to us.<br /><br /><br />In the early Seventies, I was invited to take a cruise from Bordeaux to Naples on board a liner called the Renaissance, with my friend Byron Janis and his wife Maria. Byron was one of the most successful pianists on the planet, an unparalleled interpreter of Chopin: he was to be performing on the musical voyage with another celebrated musician... and that is how I met Tamas.</p> <p><br /></p> <p><img src="http://site.uri-geller.com/uploads/images/tamas_vasary__christine_wilde_/tamasvasary160509WS.jpg" width="450" border="0" height="600" /></p> <p>Tamas Vasary<br /><br />Anyone who thinks classical pianists must be stuffy and serious has never met one. They’re just as riotous as any saloon-bar piano player in a movie starring Maria’s superstar father, Gary Cooper.<br /><br /><br />Egged on by Byron, Tamas and the other boys in the orchestra, I decided to recruit the passengers for a mass mindpower experiment. We were out on deck, in the blazing Mediterranean sunshine, off the coast of Spain, when I urged everybody to focus their minds on halting the liner.<br /><br /><br />All of us clenched our fists, screwed up our eyes and shouted, “One, two, three... STOP!!” Tamas shouted louder than anybody. Maybe it was his psychic energy that tipped the balance — he was an experienced conductor and well used to imposing his will on the elements.<br /><br /><br />Within two minutes, all of us felt the ship was beginning to slow down. Secretly I suspected the captain was in on the joke, and some of the passengers clearly thought I’d bribed the stokers. But as the liner drifted to a complete standstill, I decided to find out what was going on, and stopped one of the ship’s officers.<br /><br /><br />He had no idea why we’d stopped — and that was when I knew our experiment had been simply too successful.<br /><br /><br />It was nearly an hour before the engines shuddered back into life. Later I discovered that one of the metal fuel pipes had buckled, cutting off the supply.<br /><br /><br />For metal to bend spontaneously, at the precise moment that we were chanelling all our energy into halting the ship, was one of the most conclusive demonstrations of mindpower I have ever experienced.<br /><br /><br />I didn’t board a cruise liner for another 15 years, and when I did — in Bermuda, on the SS Britannis — I kept my thoughts away from the fuel lines. I noticed, though, several unmistakeable secret service types were watching me (this was at the end of the Cold War, when I was involved with the US delegation to the SALT II nuclear peace talks, so I’m not being paranoid... the surveillance was very real).<br /><br /><br />I didn’t give the dark-glasses-and-radio-headset brigade any demonstrations of how to halt a ship on the ocean — it might have given them ideas, and I had no intention of becoming a secret weapon against nuclear submarines. But on another cruise ship, in the English Channel, I did put mindpower to dramatic use — by revealing an eclipse of the sun.<br /><br /><br />It was the 11th of August, 2001, and a total eclipse was due at 11.11am. The day was overcast, and to everybody’s frustration we hadn’t glimpsed an inch of blue sky all morning.<br /><br /><br />I ordered everybody to focus their thoughts on burning away the cloud cover — and sure enough, the sun burst through, moments before the moon’s disc began to slide across it. We witnessed the whole of the eclipse, though across most of Britain it was wholly hidden by the grey skies.<br /><br /><br />The Royal Festival Hall on London’s South Bank looks a lot like the bows of a cruise liner too. Perhaps that was in Tamas’s mind when he called a halt during a concert by the London Schools Symphony Orchestra last month to dedicate Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No 15 to us.<br /><br /><br />***********<br /><br /><br />Scientists have always been eager to know if my metal-bending ability is latent in many other people, and the late Professor John Hasted at the University of London carried out comprehensive tests on a host of promising youngsters during the Seventies and Eighties.</p> <p> </p> <p><a rel="lightbox" href="http://site.uri-geller.com/uploads/images/tamas_vasary__christine_wilde_/wildes160509WS.jpg"><img src="http://site.uri-geller.com/uploads/images/tamas_vasary__christine_wilde_/wildes160509WS.jpg" width="400" border="0" height="300" /></a></p> <p>Christine and Robert Wilde</p> <p>One of them, Christine Wilde, visited my home with her husband Robert this week, and told me how metal still bent unexpectedly around her. I sent them off to one of my favourite restaurants on the banks of the Thames, and told her to mind the cutlery.<br /><br /><br />That evening, Robert emailed to say they had experienced two extraordinary phenomena after leaving my home. As they drove to the restaurant, Christine was holding the bent spoon I’d given her, and another straight one which I’d suggested she could use for practice. Without warning, it twisted in her hand — “in a downward direction,” Robert said, “with the bending stopping at precisely the same angle as your bent spoon. The two spoons were truly symmetrical... amazing!”<br /><br /><br />And as if that wasn’t enough, a key on Robert’s keyring bent during lunch. Christine must have a remarkable gift.</p></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8908657.post-11139706562533534202009-04-14T16:40:00.000-07:002009-04-14T16:42:40.514-07:00Spring Cleaning<div class="content_box"> <p>Ladies and gentlemen, Elvis hasn’t left the building yet. But he’s on his way.</p></div> <p>Hanna and I have been in a frenzy of spring cleaning since we came home from Amsterdam last week. Usually we’re glad to see the back of even the most luxurious hotels when a series is over — it’s great to be in a real house again.<br /><br />But Amsterdam was different. The TV company rented a canal-side apartment for us, so that the sight which greeted us every morning when we turned back the wooden shutters was the barges and the bicycles and the herons on the bridges.<br /><br />There was no room service, but there were also no noisy guests, or chambermaids with vacuum cleaners, or dining room odours. The place became so much like a home to us that we talked of buying it and popping over for weekend breaks. The airiness and simplicity were right.<br /><br /><br />We kept it clear of clutter. Instead of stacking up the newspapers and magazines, we chucked them out. Instead of filling the rooms with new suitcases, we used the wardrobes. And instead of buying mountains of clothes that would cost as much again in airline baggage excess, we dressed simply.<br /><br />That’s nothing new. It’s decades since I shopped like a professional. Paris Hilton probably blows more in one outing than I do in a year.<br /><br />But in Amsterdam, I experienced the pleasure of living in an apartment that, for a few weeks at least, was a real home — and enjoying a minimalist lifestyle.<br /><br />Our real home, beside the Thames, has been our spiritual base for 24 years. We love it more than anywhere on earth. But no one could call it minimalist. And when we walked into the family room, with its cushions, its crystals, its clutter and that lifesize wooden figure of Elvis, Hanna and I knew without saying a word: there’d be some changes made.<br /><br />We hired a skip. Into it went everything we didn’t need. At first I started small — in the bathroom. All the creams, lotions and shampoos that hadn’t been opened for years went out. Most were long past their use-by date... and though some of the products had cost me a walletful of dollars in New York or LA, I didn’t like the thought of rubbing Nineties chemicals into my skin.</p> <p style="text-align: center;"><img src="http://site.uri-geller.com/uploads/images/spring_cleaning/skip040409B.jpg" width="500" border="0" height="667" /></p> <p><br />Then I tackled the mountains of papers. I’d been ruthless in Amsterdam and I could do it again here — if I really want to find some article from a three-year-old Sunday Times, I’ll Google it. And my shelves were stacked three deep in books, which meant I could never see what I was looking for: now 80 per cent of my reference library has been packed into boxes in the shed.<br /><br />As Shipi and I carted the books down the garden steps, I said a prayer of gratitude that I hadn’t let my old friend Marcello Truzzi talk me into buying his library of parascientific research before he died. That collection comprised 15,000 volumes.</p> <p><br />Four or five exercise machines went into the skip, with tables, chairs and a pile of bric-a-brac. It was time to order a new skip. Some of the debris might have been salvaged, some of it could even have been worth a tenner on eBay — but who wants to pay the postage on a rowing machine?<br /><br />My heart ached when we reached the rooms that had been my mother’s. I picked up her glasses and realised they were lying where she had placed them for the last time, almost four years ago.<br /><br />Hanna put her arms around me. “Muti is in your heart,” she said, “not in this room.” She was right — we cannot keep it as a shrine. It’s strange to touch her clothes, her ornaments, her letters, and realise they are nothing but a cast-off skin, left behind when the spirit goes to a better life.</p> <p>We took the clothes to Oxfam, because I could not bear to throw her possessions in a skip. But I am relieved to have begun the clear-out, because I don’t want to carry the past around with me in a furniture van.</p> <p style="text-align: center;"><img src="http://site.uri-geller.com/uploads/images/spring_cleaning/crystals040409B.jpg" width="500" border="0" height="667" /></p> <p><br />While I have been busy with my live TV shows around the world, my children have both moved to California. It was easier to clear out their rooms, especially after I called Dan to ask if there were any books or toys from his childhood that he would like freighted out. “No way, Aba!” he exclaimed.</p> So I packaged up his collection of model planes, all 150 of them, delighted that I’d had the foresight to keep the boxes. Diecast models like these are worth so much more in their original packaging.<br /><br />All my soft toys had to go as well — about 200 of them. I plan to give these away to poorly children when they visit my home, but for now they’re in five wheelie bins, parked in the shed.<br /><br />We’re not clutter-free yet, and we’re a long way from minimalism. I think there’s another five weeks of clearing out before I can even think of repainting. But we’re getting there.<br /><br /><br />“It’s starting to look like home,” I said to Hanna. “Our new home.”Unknownnoreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8908657.post-66660868936348913412009-03-26T19:24:00.000-07:002009-03-26T19:29:09.990-07:00Finales, Ali Bongo2009-03-14 13:19 <div class="content_box"> <p>The next Uri Geller is a 12-year-old girl. Even her name sounds like mine — Yelle. With her father, Ghani, she cast a magical, mystifying spell across the finale of my Dutch show, and mesmerised the audience.</p> <p><a rel="lightbox" href="http://site.uri-geller.com/uploads/images/finales_ali_bongo/yelle.jpg"><br /></a></p></div> <div class="content_box_margin"> <p style="text-align: center;"><a rel="lightbox" href="http://site.uri-geller.com/uploads/images/finales_ali_bongo/yelle.jpg"><img src="http://site.uri-geller.com/uploads/images/finales_ali_bongo/yelle.jpg" width="450" border="0" height="338" /></a></p> <p style="text-align: left;"> </p> <p style="text-align: left;">The viewing figures shattered all records and the phone system went into meltdown as voters demanded this composed, charming child was crowned our winner. Rival channels threw on everything they had, including The X Factor and the movie Borat, but at one stage we had a whopping 44.8 per cent of the viewers. And Yelle was our trump card.<br /><br />Ever since the birth of spiritualism, 150 years ago, it has always been young women who prove the most natural “sensitives”. That is the word coined by parapsychologists to describe the mentalists and mediums who seem to possess the mindpower to read thoughts and even move objects.<br /><br />Poltergeists, for instance, almost always materialise around adolescent women, and it is teenage girls who are most likely to see religious visions. More ominously, the KGB’s massive research into parapsychology in the Sixties and Seventies focused heavily on young women as the Kremlin tried to subvert gifted sensitives for espionage and Cold War surveillance.<br /><br />I loved Yelle’s performances. She could make feathers float and sand move, hear whispers trapped in a wineglass and exert total mental control over the people round her. It was breathtaking.<br /><br />The studio was silent — and I must have been holding my breath, because I could hear my heart beating — as the Mask was unmasked. He was revealed as Hayashi, who had been the first contestant on the first series. The rules forbade him from returning, but by adopting a new identity as the Mask, he outfoxed us.<br /><br />Hayashi’s love of danger sometimes went too far, and I was forced on one occasion to halt the Mask’s act because I believed our celebrity guests’ lives were at risk from the razor-edged swords he wielded. And I made no secret of my disgust at the vampiric Vincent, who ate leeches and drooled blood.<br /><br />I’m delighted that the audience at home shared my misgivings. It’s interesting that my production team, who are investigating the possibility of taking the series to the Far East, say that in many Asian countries the more gruesome contestants would be banned. And in some places, including China, it is illegal to screen performances by mediums who claim to be in contact with the dead.<br /><br />Pure telepathy, on the other hand, is guaranteed to fascinate Asian viewers — which is just one of the reasons I predict that my successor, 12-year-old Yelle, is on the brink of becoming a major international sensation.</p> <p style="text-align: left;"><br />My German series also reached its climax this week — Jan Becker was the winner, and my protege David Merlini, the escapologist, joined us for a memorable show. But my European adventure wasn’t quite over...</p> <p style="text-align: center;"><img src="http://site.uri-geller.com/uploads/images/finales_ali_bongo/janbecker.jpg" width="301" border="0" height="295" /></p> <p style="text-align: left;"><br />Oliver Pocher, the German comic who caused a sensation on YouTube with his parody of me, was filming a new DVD in Berlin, and invited me to join him on stage at the O2 arena in Berlin. The last time I played to such a vast audience was in Rio de Janeiro during my Brazilian tour in the Seventies.</p> <p style="text-align: left;"><br />With the presenter of Germany’s Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, Gunther Jauch, seated beside me, I introduced Oliver as “Mortadeller the mentalist”. There</p> <p style="text-align: center;"><img src="http://site.uri-geller.com/uploads/images/finales_ali_bongo/PIC_0047.JPG" width="550" border="0" height="413" /></p> <p style="text-align: left;">were camera crews all round us, and the comedy was beamed onto Imax screens: every one of the 15,000 spectators had a perfect close-up of our faces from hundreds of feet away.</p> <p style="text-align: left;"><br />The next night we were in Rotterdam for a show with Rob and Emil, the mentalist duo, in front of a capacity audience of 1,500 at the Luxor theatre, where Bill Clinton recently lectured.<br /><br />Only then could we fly home. It’s been an adventure...</p> <p style="text-align: left;">I can’t wait to find out what happens next!<br /><br /><br /><br />******************************************************<br /><br /><br /><br />The outrageously funny magician Ali Bongo was one of my early detractors — he even went on Blue Peter in the Seventies claiming to be able to bend spoons, thoughwhat he did best of course was raise laughs. Kids and adults both loved his act.</p> <p style="text-align: left;"> </p> <p style="text-align: center;"><img src="http://site.uri-geller.com/uploads/images/finales_ali_bongo/alibongo.jpg" width="416" border="0" height="322" /></p> <p style="text-align: left;"> </p> <p style="text-align: left;"><br />Ali passed away earlier this month, and I was amused to read in his obituary that he once tried to visit me at my London hotel. He claimed I refused to see him, with the m</p> <p style="text-align: left;">essage: “I have no time for magicians! What do they know about my powers?”<br /><br />I don’t remember the incident, but I have to admit it sounds a lot like me at that time!<br /><br />What the obituary didn’t reveal is that Ali and I became friends in later years, and he greeted me warmly when we met in December at the 37th International Magic Convention in London. The event was hosted by David Berglas, who presented me with a special award.<br /><br />Ali, who was President of the Magic Circle, congratulated me heartily. When I heard, a few weeks later, that he had suffered a stroke at the age of 79, I contacted his niece and asked to speak to him over the phone.</p> <p>Ali sounded weak but content, knowing that he had been so lucky to devote the whole of his life to the magic he loved. That’s the greatest trick of the lot.</p> <p style="text-align: center;"><img src="http://site.uri-geller.com/uploads/images/finales_ali_bongo/Willi.jpg" width="375" border="0" height="281" /></p> <p style="text-align: center;"><img src="http://site.uri-geller.com/uploads/images/finales_ali_bongo/Eckart.jpg" width="375" border="0" height="281" /></p> <p style="text-align: center;">Caption: To promote the German series’ finale, I joined interviewer Stefan Raub on his chatshow. Other guests included Dr Eckhart von Hirschausen, whose book on positive thinking has topped the bestseller charts, and the children’s entertainer Willi Weitzel.</p></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8908657.post-71378619272938074132008-10-30T08:50:00.000-07:002008-12-06T08:55:21.439-08:00David Merlini<div style="font-family: arial;" class="content_box"> <p><span style="line-height: 115%;font-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB">With a name like Merlini it was inevitable that my protégé from Budapest would be a magician. From the moment I saw his act I knew he could become a world superstar. What I never imagined was that he would one day place his life in my hands.</span></p></div> <div style="font-family: arial;" class="content_box_margin"> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style=";font-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB">David Merlini held 500 celebrities, journalists and television executives spellbound at the Majestic Hotel in Cannes on the first day of MIPCOM, the $500m media fair, with a death-defying attempt to shatter the world record for surviving underwater without breathing. </span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style=";font-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB"></span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style=";font-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style=";font-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB">David Blaine held the title, after he spent more than 17 minutes submerged in a glass globe on Oprah Winfrey’s show earlier this year. But Merlini was confident he could seize that record, after spending more than a year in training. </span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style=";font-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB"></span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style=";font-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style=";font-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB">“I have held my breath for well over 20 minutes in my bathtub,” he assured me. “And I already hold the record for the longest underwater escape — you’ve seen the video.” </span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style=";font-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB"></span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style=";font-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style=";font-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB">He’s right, and it’s the most terrifying 10 minutes and 17 seconds ever filmed. Merlini was chained and handcuffed in a glass cabinet like an up-ended coffin in Hollywood, for a feat that was a direct homage to his hero, Harry Houdini. Unlike Houdini, he did not slip his shackles in a few swift movements, but wrestled with them constantly. </span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style=";font-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB"></span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style=";font-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style=";font-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB">“When you’re fighting to get out of chains,” David told me, “You use up a lot of blood oxygen. This time, I’m going to be perfectly still. The secret is not to hold your breath — it is to breathe out, at timed intervals, just a bubble or two at a time.” </span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style=";font-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB"></span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style=";font-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style=";font-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB">Merlini has accomplished feats of escape and endurance that have never been copied. He has been chained inside a steel box that was welded shut and thrown into the Danube by the world’s strongest man, Laszlo Fekete. He has been suspended from a helicopter by a burning rope, strait-jacketed in a refrigerator at minus 38F, buried in concrete up to his neck and dumped once again into the Danube, and frozen with 300 gallons of liquid nitrogen. </span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style=";font-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB"></span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style=";font-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style=";font-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB">But this time, I was afraid for him. As I ended my introduction and he was lowered into the tank in Cannes, I could not help remembering how I had imagined this scene before. At the climax of my novel Ella, the twisted guru who is controlling the heroine has himself submerged in a tank of water and drowned on live TV, convinced that Ella will bring him back to life in a televised miracle. </span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style=";font-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style=";font-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB">My tension must have been visible to the crowd. “You looked like a headless chicken on the stage,” my brother-in-law Shipi told me later, laughing. But my emotion was genuine and I couldn’t hide it: if anything went wrong, I might see my friend die before my eyes. </span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style=";font-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style=";font-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB"><img src="http://site.uri-geller.com/uploads/assets/charity/uri_-m_2_251008_resize_625.jpg" alt="uri_-m_2_251008_resize_625" title="uri_-m_2_251008_resize_625" width="625" border="0" height="413" /></span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><em style=""><span style="" lang="EN-GB">Uri beyond the panic (All photos are taken by Irene Hell) </span></em></span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style=";font-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style=";font-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB">As the clock ticked, the atmosphere in the Majestic was nerve-shredding. Merlini seemed barely to blink as he swayed inside the tank, a tiny bubble escaping his lips every twenty seconds or so. </span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style=";font-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB"> </span><span style=";font-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style=";font-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB">A roar went up as the countdown passed the record mark, and still Merlini showed no sign that he was ready to emerge. I could feel the blood pumping in my head. Nothing would induce him to quit — every second he was extending his grip on the record, making it more and more impossible for anyone ever to surpass him. </span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style=";font-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB"> </span><span style=";font-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style=";font-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB">After 20 minutes and 30 seconds I saw his eyes roll up in his head as he started to slump to the side. If he wasn’t already unconscious, he was slipping into a blackout, and at any moment his body’s reflexes would force him to gulp for air. </span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style=";font-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB"> </span><span style=";font-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style=";font-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB">There was no time to prise off the lid. In those few precious seconds, Merlini could drown. Security guards were standing on either side of the tank with sharp tools clutched in their fists, and I gave the order: “Get him out of there! Smash the glass!” </span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style=";font-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style=";font-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB">A ton of water exploded across the stage — and it was stained an ominous pink. As Merlini stumbled out of the wreckage, I saw he was badly cut across one side, on his arm and leg. </span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style=";font-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style=";font-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB"><img src="http://site.uri-geller.com/uploads/assets/charity/world_record_uri_251008_resize_625.jpg" alt="world_record_uri_251008_resize_625" title="world_record_uri_251008_resize_625" width="625" border="0" height="427" /></span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><em style=""><span style="" lang="EN-GB">Merlini just survived his bloody new world record</span></em></span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style=";font-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style=";font-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB">Paramedics at the scene bandaged his wounds and we rushed him to the city hospital by ambulance. There was a grim surprise for us there — the accident and emergency department was packed with people, some of them nursing serious injuries from car accidents and fights. </span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style=";font-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style=";font-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB"><img src="http://site.uri-geller.com/uploads/assets/charity/world_rec_251008_resize_625.jpg" alt="world_rec_251008_resize_625" title="world_rec_251008_resize_625" width="625" border="0" height="479" /></span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><em style=""><span style="" lang="EN-GB">Uri and Merlini. “Protégé” sometimes it means – nursing.</span></em></span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style=";font-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style=";font-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB">I asked Merlini how he was feeling, and he grinned: “I feel no pain,” he said. “I never do, not until the next day. It’s part of my secret — I can endure suffering that would kill a normal man, because I can shut off the pain.” </span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style=";font-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB"></span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style=";font-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style=";font-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB">I made certain that he wasn’t bleeding, then told Shipi to stand guard on Merlini’s place in the A&E queue. “We’re going to a party,” I said. </span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style=";font-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB"> </span><span style=";font-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style=";font-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB">And we did — the star-studded affair hosted by ProSieben’s CEO Guillaume de Posch. The point of MIPCOM, after all, was to introduce Merlini to the world’s TV bosses, and they weren’t going to come and visit him in hospital. </span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style=";font-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB"></span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style=";font-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style=";font-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB">When we returned to A&E three hours later, a very bored Shipi had almost reached the front of the queue. “You missed a great party,” I told him. That’ll teach him to call me a headless chicken... </span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style=";font-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style=";font-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style=";font-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB">Update: Merlini needed 15 stitches, and had lost about a litre of blood. He shrugged it off: “It’s all part of the game... the game of life!” </span></p></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8908657.post-9388481387406752182008-10-21T07:47:00.000-07:002008-12-06T07:52:16.797-08:00Uri Geller : KGB, Lev<div class="content_box"> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:Calibri;">As a teenager, I dreamed of being a spy. My imagination fed on cinema portrayals of the glamour and excitement of espionage, and my ego thrilled at the thought of sharp clothes, gorgeous girls and fast cars. My gift for mind-reading, I knew, would make me an exceptional special agent. </span></span></p></div> <div class="content_box_margin"> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:Calibri;">My mother was running a guest-house in Nicosia, Cyprus, with my step-father in those days. When one of our lodgers, an athletically built Israeli called Yoav, offered to teach me the rudiments of judo, I seized the chance to learn the skills of unarmed combat.<span style=""> </span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:Calibri;"> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:Calibri;">Yoav claimed to be a grain merchant, but I sensed there was a secret undercurrent to his meetings with shady, soft-spoken characters who muttered in Syrian and Egyptian accents. I sensed, too, that he was an expert with guns and explosives as well as martial arts.<span style=""> </span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:Calibri;"> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:Calibri;">Convinced that Yoav was a spy, I slipped into the attic of our house one afternoon to spy through a crack in the ceiling at our lodger as he studied maps with a contact. My ear picked out words in the whispered conversation that left me in no doubt they were discussing military matters. Some grain merchant... </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:Calibri;"> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:Calibri;">It never occurred to me that what I had seen could put my life in danger, and perhaps my parents' lives as well. I confronted Yoav, told him what I knew, and demanded to be recruited as a junior agent. When he told me there was no place for boys in the secret service, I gave him a demonstration of telepathy and psychokinesis, moving the hands on his watch with my mind.<span style=""> </span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:Calibri;"> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:Calibri;">Shocked that I had seen through his cover, and doubly amazed that I could reproduce the pictures in his mind, Yoav swore me to secrecy. He would train me as an agent, in return for my silence. For a few weeks, I acted as his go-between, collecting and delivering documents... and then he was gone, assigned to a fresh mission, and my life as a spy was over. I never got to drive an Aston Martin — in fact, the only high-speed chases I had involved Joker, my dog, who loved to belt after my bicycle. </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:Calibri;"> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:Calibri;">A decade later, after my mindpower abilities were extensively tested at Stanford Research Institute in California, I was approached by the CIA. At first, they seemed to expect little more from me than Yoav had: I was booked onto an airliner and instructed to focus on wiping the electronic files in an attaché case which belonged, I suspected, to a KGB man.<span style=""> </span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:Calibri;"> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:Calibri;">But there was a darker side to the US secret service in the Seventies. It seems incredible now and grimly funny — George Clooney is to star in a black comedy about their activities, with Ewan MacGregor, Jeff Bridges and my friend Kevin Spacey. It's called The Men Who Stare At Goats. </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:Calibri;"> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:Calibri;">I found nothing funny about the CIA operatives who asked me to stare, not at goats but at pigs. They wanted me to stop the animals' hearts with a psychic attack. </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:Calibri;"> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:Calibri;">I'm a committed vegetarian, but that wasn't why I walked out of the program. The bosses at Langley weren't just interested in killing pigs: they wanted to learn how mindpower could kill human beings. </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:Calibri;"> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:Calibri;">I'd love to see my CIA dossier. Chances are there's a drawerful of data on me in Russia's former KGB security archives too. This week I was introduced to a retired Soviet spy, Michael Evlashin, now a published poet, and asked him whether there was any chance I could take a look at my file.<span style=""> </span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:Calibri;"> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:Calibri;"><img src="http://site.uri-geller.com/uploads/assets/charity/kgb_181008_resize_625.jpg" alt="kgb_181008_resize_625" title="kgb_181008_resize_625" width="625" border="0" height="469" /></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:Calibri;"> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:Calibri;">"Sure, no problem," he said with a wicked grin. “Ask nicely and it comes in a presentation package, you know... with ribbons!” </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:Calibri;"> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:Calibri;">I think that's just the Russian sense of humour... </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:Calibri;"> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"> </p><p><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:Calibri;"> <hr /> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:Calibri;">The nights are drawing in, here in Moscow. That's great news for my TV series, because viewers want to get home early and enjoy a cosy night in front of the television. And we've got fantastic entertainment for them — one on our contestants lay down on a bed of broken glass this week and allowed a road-roller to run over him. Incredibly, he was able to get up without suffering a scratch. </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:Calibri;"> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:Calibri;">The combination of dark nights and brilliant television is delivering record-breaking ratings for us, above 20 per cent. We're already in talks about a second series. But winter is on the way, and in Moscow that means there's a bitingly cold wind. To keep the hibernation blues away, I'm flexing my most powerful muscle, my mind. It can supply all the sunshine a body needs.<span style=""> </span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:Calibri;"> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:Calibri;">My top tip for instant warmth is to tell my wife and children that I love them. Hanna and I have been together since the start of my career, and I have told her what she means to me a million times... but it always makes me feel great to say it again. Too many of my male friends are tongue-tied with the people who mean most to them: their emotions are bottled up, and that weakens their mental focus and energy. If you love somebody, don't be shy — say so! </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:Calibri;"> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:Calibri;">Professor Jane Plant, the government's chief scientific adviser, says we should all smile more to combat Seasonally Affective Depression, or SAD. "Smiling is a way of tricking your brain into thinking everything's OK," she explains. "People who are mildly depressed should do their best to show the world a happy face as that will improve people's reaction to you and lift your mood." </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:Calibri;"> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:Calibri;">Here's another tip: live generously. I shared a stage with one of the world's richest men, the diamond dealer Lev Leviev, at the weekend. He pledged millions of roubles to help Moscow's Habad orphanage, and with a flick of his pen poured an ocean of sunshine into the lives of a lot of needy children. </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:Calibri;"> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:Calibri;"><img src="http://site.uri-geller.com/uploads/assets/charity/lev_181008_resize_625.jpg" alt="lev_181008_resize_625" title="lev_181008_resize_625" width="625" border="0" height="469" /></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:Calibri;"> </span></span></p> <p><span style="line-height: 115%;font-family:";font-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB">I mustn't forget to mention one of my favourite techniques to keep stay sunny on the inside: get your hair done. I enjoy a brush-up from a stylist every week, as part of my preparation for the show. It's the fastest way to feel pampered and refreshed, and to send a message to your subconscious that you're a special person. </span></p></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com162tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8908657.post-44263024509140461122008-10-07T19:33:00.000-07:002008-10-07T19:35:48.911-07:00Amber room, Lisa Stansfield, Tzipi, orphanage, padlocks<div class="content_box"> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 9pt;" lang="EN-GB">Think of Russian treasures, and you might picture a Faberge egg or the bejewelled Tsarist antiques in St Petersburg’s Hermitage museum. But a Moscow newspaper has challenged me to track down a treasure much bigger than that... it’s an entire room.</span></p></div> <div class="content_box_margin"> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 9pt;" lang="EN-GB">The Amber Room was one of the wonders of the world, two centuries ago. Built in Germany and given by the Prussian royal family to Peter the Great, emperor of Russia, it was lined with carved amber across every surface — floor, walls and ceiling. </span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 9pt;" lang="EN-GB"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 9pt;" lang="EN-GB">Six tons of amber, worth an estimated L1bn today... </span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 9pt;" lang="EN-GB"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 9pt;" lang="EN-GB">The room was stolen by the Nazis, who boxed it up and shipped it back to Germany in 1941. By the time the war was over, the room had disappeared. Many suspected Albert Speer, Hitler’s architect, had commandeered it — one rumour claimed it was packed into 27 crates and hidden on board a ship that was sunk by a Soviet submarine. </span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 9pt;" lang="EN-GB"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 9pt;" lang="EN-GB">I believe the amber is underwater now but, as I told the editor of Moscowski Komsomolets, it is not lost at sea. My instincts tell me the Nazis deliberately sank the treasure in an inland lake or lagoon, and that other treasures were buried with it. </span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 9pt;" lang="EN-GB"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 9pt;" lang="EN-GB">I will use my dowsing gifts to try and track it down, though I am concerned that after 65 years underwater, the amber will have rotted. It will be an artistic disaster if nothing remains but an oozing mess. </span></p> <div style="border-style: none none solid; border-color: -moz-use-text-color -moz-use-text-color windowtext; border-width: medium medium 1pt; padding: 0cm 0cm 1pt;"> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; padding: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: 9pt;" lang="EN-GB"> </span></p> </div> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 9pt;" lang="EN-GB"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 9pt;" lang="EN-GB">Back in June 2006 I predicted that my old friend Tzipi Livni, then Israel’s Foreign Minister, would soon be Prime Minister. That took no psychic power — it was clear she stood head-and-shoulders above the other politicians of her generation for sheer drive, talent and intellect. </span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 9pt;" lang="EN-GB"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 9pt;" lang="EN-GB">Last month, with the resignation of PM Ehud Olmert, she was elected leader of the Kadima party and given six weeks to form a government coalition. I know she will succeed, and become Israel’s second woman Prime Minister, after Golda Meir. </span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 9pt;" lang="EN-GB"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 9pt;" lang="EN-GB">Why am I so certain? Because Tzipi and I used to play basketball together, back on the courts of Tel Aviv in the Sixties. Even though she was a dozen years younger than me, she was usually the tallest girl on the team, and she had an unerring aim. </span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 9pt;" lang="EN-GB"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 9pt;" lang="EN-GB">When Tzipi went for a slam-dunk, she hit the hoop as if she already knew the point was scored. That’s the kind of confidence and self-belief that has carried her all the way to the top in politics. </span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 9pt;" lang="EN-GB"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 9pt;" lang="EN-GB">Back then, I was obsessed with basketball. Most of the city’s schools in Tel Aviv had a court, and I would zip around on my Vespa until I found a deserted playground. If the gates were open, I’d start bouncing a ball around, and within minutes there would be a crowd of kids eager to join in. </span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 9pt;" lang="EN-GB"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 9pt;" lang="EN-GB">My favourite trick was to slam the ball through the hoop blindfolded. When I relied on my mind power senses, I was more accurate than when I used my eyes. To prove it I would sometimes ride my Vespa blindfold too. To Hanna’s relief, that’s something I grew out of.... but I’m still crazy about basketball. </span></p> <div style="border-style: none none solid; border-color: -moz-use-text-color -moz-use-text-color windowtext; border-width: medium medium 1pt; padding: 0cm 0cm 1pt;"> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; padding: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: 9pt;" lang="EN-GB"> </span></p> </div> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 9pt;" lang="EN-GB"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 9pt;" lang="EN-GB">Flying back from Moscow to London for an appearance on QVC, the television shopping channel, I got chatting to Rochdale’s soul diva, Lisa Stansfield. She was astonished when I bent a spon for her, and revealed that she has a deeply spiritual side to her personality. </span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"> </p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 9pt;" lang="EN-GB"><img src="http://newsite.uri-geller.com/uploads/assets/charity/lisa_041008_resize_625.jpg" alt="lisa_041008_resize_625" title="lisa_041008_resize_625" width="625" border="0" height="469" /></span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"> </p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 9pt;" lang="EN-GB">It’s almost 20 years since Lisa’s massive international hit, All Around The World, but she assured me she still loves soul music. These days she is branching out into acting — last year she starred in an episode of Marple with Geraldine McEwan, Alison Steadman and Juliet Stevenson. </span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 9pt;" lang="EN-GB"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 9pt;" lang="EN-GB">If you want a celebrity challenge, try naming a more impressive trio of theatrical talent than that. </span></p> <div style="border-style: none none solid; border-color: -moz-use-text-color -moz-use-text-color windowtext; border-width: medium medium 1pt; padding: 0cm 0cm 1pt;"> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; padding: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: 9pt;" lang="EN-GB"> </span></p> </div> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 9pt;" lang="EN-GB"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 9pt;" lang="EN-GB">One of Moscow's Habad rabbis, Yacov Fridman, left me speechless when he explained how the Jewish Habad movement which he helps to run in Moscow has distributed over L130m to the needy, much of it donated by Russia’s new breed of billionaires. </span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 9pt;" lang="EN-GB"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 9pt;" lang="EN-GB">The rabbi invited me to see the charity at work with a visit to one of the city’s orphanages. We had a wonderful time — the children were full of life and energy, and that always inspires me to entertain... there wasn’t a spoon, a fork or a hairpin left unbent by the time they waved us off. </span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"> </p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 9pt;" lang="EN-GB"><img src="http://newsite.uri-geller.com/uploads/assets/charity/orphans2_041008_resize_625.jpg" alt="orphans2_041008_resize_625" title="orphans2_041008_resize_625" width="625" border="0" height="469" /></span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 9pt;" lang="EN-GB"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 9pt;" lang="EN-GB">Maybe I should take up a collection on the show, and ask viewers to each send one piece of unwanted cutlery to the charity. Or perhaps that’s not such a great idea — with six million knives and forks, the orphanage would have no room for the children. </span></p> <div style="border-style: none none solid; border-color: -moz-use-text-color -moz-use-text-color windowtext; border-width: medium medium 1pt; padding: 0cm 0cm 1pt;"> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; padding: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: 9pt;" lang="EN-GB"> </span></p> </div> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 9pt;" lang="EN-GB"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 9pt;" lang="EN-GB">As we were strolling over a bridge towards the Kremlin, Hanna and I were fascinated to see six or seven trees festooned with padlocks. My first thought was that they were artworks created with leftovers from KGB dungeons during the Cold War, but when we looked more closely we saw there were notes and ribbons attached to every lock. </span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"> </p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 9pt;" lang="EN-GB"><img src="http://newsite.uri-geller.com/uploads/assets/charity/padlocks2_041008_resize_625.jpg" alt="padlocks2_041008_resize_625" title="padlocks2_041008_resize_625" width="625" border="0" height="469" /></span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"> </p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 9pt;" lang="EN-GB">Hanna worked it out: these were good-luck charms, hung there by newly-weds. It’s an old Moscow custom for a couple to celebrate being locked together for life. </span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 9pt;" lang="EN-GB"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 9pt;" lang="EN-GB">Hanna and I have been together nearly four decades, but it’s never too late to celebrate. I’m going to find the biggest, shiniest padlock in all the city’s luggage shops and add it to the top of a tree. </span></p></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8908657.post-77907499899633595592008-06-25T19:37:00.000-07:002008-06-25T19:39:26.858-07:00Crystal Skull<table style="width: 826px; height: 66px;" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tbody><tr><td rowspan="2" width="90"><span style="font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:85%;"><strong></strong></span><br /></td> <td bg width="736" style="color:#2801aa;"><table border="0" cellpadding="15" cellspacing="0" width="100%"> <tbody><tr> <!-- InstanceBeginEditable name="top" --> <td><span style="font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:85%;"><span style="font-size:180%;color:#ffffff;"> </span></span><br /></td> <!-- InstanceEndEditable --></tr> </tbody></table> </td> </tr> <tr> <td width="736"><br /></td> </tr> </tbody></table> <!-- InstanceBeginEditable name="content" --> <table align="left" border="0" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" height="281" width="283"> <tbody><tr> <td height="271" width="273"> <img src="http://www.uri-geller.com/articles/weekly-news/2008/Images/070608-crystal.jpg" height="325" width="243" /> </td> </tr> </tbody></table> <p class="TXGaz8pt">Cinema in Istanbul is a spine-tingling experience. Turks have no inhibitions about displaying emotions — Hanna knows that I can’t watch an old-fashioned tear-jerker without a box of mansize tissues, but she has never seen me weeping, wailing and blubbing like the audience in the multiplex tonight.</p> <p class="TXGaz8pt">And it wasn’t even a romantic movie. This was Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.</p> <p class="TXGaz8pt">The audience only wept during the soppy bits, of course. The rest of the time they were punching the air, whooping, cheering and threatening to leap at the screen and attack the villains. The next movie I see at the Piccadilly Odeon is going to seem very tame in comparison.</p> <p class="TXGaz8pt">I left the cinema with my hat brim over my eyes, cracking an imaginary bullwhip. It’s been the same ever since I was a boy, sneaking into the Tel Aviv movie-house with my friends to see John Wayne movies: I imagine for days that I am the hero. I even used to try and copy Wayne's walk and his drawl.</p> <p class="TXGaz8pt">But this time I had a good reason to play the leading role. I once embarked on a quest for a crystal skull of my own — and only turned back when I became convinced my family was in danger.</p> <p class="TXGaz8pt">Regular readers will know I have a passion for crystals. They energise me, and my home and garden are filled with them, some taller than I am.</p> <table style="border-collapse: collapse;" id="AutoNumber4" border="0" bordercolor="#111111" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"> <tbody><tr> <td width="100%"> <p class="TXGaz8pt">About ten years ago, I purchased a lorryload of crystals from a Yorkshire warehouse. When the delivery driver threw open the rear doors of the truck, I felt like Ali Baba at the mouth of his treasure cave.</p> <p class="TXGaz8pt">Heaped across the floor of the Transit were glittering crystals. Thousands of them. Some as wide as tree trunks. Two of them were too large to go through the front door – we had to struggle around the house and throw open the patio windows.</p> <p class="TXGaz8pt">I tried to count them, and to sort them. I gave up. I found 50 agate slabs, and 120 amethysts. There were five vast amethyst bowls besides, hewn hollow and electric with purple. At least 200 quartz spurs were more than four inches, and the pebbles and semi-precious chippings numbered thousands. Maybe tens of thousands.</p> <p class="TXGaz8pt">Crystal conducts energy, and amplifies it. Sceptics who scoff at this idea ought to read about the use of crystal in Nasa’s space program, which on later missions used stones that had been exposed to low-frequency vibrations – the rocks would store the energy and slowly release it, batteries of vibrations, imitating the Earth’s natural energy field.</p> <p class="TXGaz8pt">These crystals helped astronauts’ bodies to maintain a physical memory of Earth while in zero gravity, and so to remain safely in orbit for long periods.</p> <p class="TXGaz8pt">I did not want my crystals to take me into space. I needed them in the grounds of my house. Between the swimming pool and the River Thames, I had designed a waterfall to flow under a Japanese bridge. The grotto is shaded by a willow, and it is here I come when I am drained of energy and lost for words. It is my haven. I stock it with all the energy I can lay my hands on.</p> <p class="TXGaz8pt">By this pool, I began experimenting with my mountain of crystals. I laid fifty of them in the pool, in a circle. I made a pyramid in the circle. And then I lifted out the stones and rearranged them in a Star of David. There are at least 150 crystals in its 12 sides.</p> <p class="TXGaz8pt">News of my purchase must have made waves among crystal traders, because a few days later I received an offer through a Mexican friend who knew where I could buy one of the fabled Crystal Skulls of the Mayans.</p> <p class="TXGaz8pt">The Central American priests who worked with crystal up to 12,000 years ago have been forgotten – along with their religion. But their artefacts still retain power.</p> <p class="TXGaz8pt">One skull, discovered at Lubaantun, Belize, in 1927 by the explorer FA Mitchell-Hedges, was tested by Hewlett Packard at their Santa Clara labs in California. Scientists reported the artefact, apparently sculpted from a giant rock crystal by craftsmen who rubbed it with sand for an estimated 150 years, emitted inexplicable lights, noises and scents.</p> <p class="TXGaz8pt">The skull that I was offered was said to be even larger and more powerful. It had a million dollar pricetag, and I was prepared to pay that, if it could be proved genuine. But a series of nightmares, over three nights, made me uneasy. I rarely have bad dreams, and when I do they are usually about my war experiences. These nightmares were vague, with their meaning out of my reach.</p> <p class="TXGaz8pt">I decided to find out more about the myth of the crystal skulls, and was horrified to realise that all the Mayan icons were reputed to be guarded by a curse that slays any who mock it. Archaeologists who treated the ancient religion with disrespect sometimes met fates as gruesome as the doomed explorers of the Tutenkhamun expedition.</p> <p class="TXGaz8pt">Crystal stores and amplifies energy, and if priests 12,000 years ago had locked curses into the skulls, I knew I did not dare bring one into my home, where it could fix its baleful glare upon my family.</p> <p class="TXGaz8pt"> </p></td> </tr> </tbody></table> <table style="border-collapse: collapse;" id="AutoNumber7" border="0" bordercolor="#111111" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="81%"> <tbody><tr> <td width="31%"> <img src="http://www.uri-geller.com/articles/weekly-news/2008/Images/070608-crystal1.jpg" height="325" width="243" /> </td> <td width="69%"> <p class="TXGaz8pt"> </p> </td> </tr> </tbody></table> <p class="TXGaz8pt"> </p> <p class="TXGaz8pt">****</p> <p class="TXGaz8pt"> </p> <p class="TXGaz8pt">Our whole planet could be built around a crystal skull, as big as the moon. Any alien civilisation which could construct a world must have engineering powers that are beyond human imagination, but many serious scientists are open-minded enough to accept that the Earth’s core may be crystalline, even if it is not skull-shaped.</p> <p class="TXGaz8pt">Iron becomes a hexagonal crystal under immense pressure. After observing that waves travelling through the planet on its north-south axis moved faster than waves traversing east-west, seismologists Lars Stixrude and Ronald Cohen reported in the journal Science: “The very strong texturing indicated by our results suggests the possibility that the inner core is a very large crystal.”</p> <p class="TXGaz8pt">This crystal also appears to be rotating slowly, suspended in liquid metal. And if that notion isn’t strange enough, consider the findings of a group of Russian scientists in the Sixties who mapped the world’s paranormal focal points and discovered a network of connections which formed a giant crystal pattern over the surface of the planet.</p> <p class="TXGaz8pt">The USSR’s parascience budget was colossal — the Kremlin believed they could win the Cold War with mindpower. And they took the findings seriously: the USSR Academy of Science’s journal, Khimiya i Zhizn, demanded, “Is the world a large crystal?”</p> <p class="TXGaz8pt">They published diagrams showing the world was criss-crossed by a 12-sided geometric shape, called a dodecahedron, containing 20 equilateral triangles – a perfect crystal structure.</p> <p class="TXGaz8pt">The key points included the Bermuda Triangle, areas of high solar radiation, temples and holy sites of ancient peoples, such as Easter Island, places with unique wildlife colonies, such as Lake Baikal, exceptional mineral ore deposits, earthquake faultlines, including western California, and the central African site of a spontaneous atomic explosion, 1,700 million years ago.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8908657.post-5660708875958480862008-06-01T10:39:00.000-07:002008-06-01T10:41:00.412-07:00Famed psychic transfixes Turkish television<a href="http://www.turkishdailynews.com.tr/article.php?enewsid=103584"><b>Step right up for a look behind the scenes at a live Turkish 'reality' show where the medium is the paranormal. Welcome to the world of Uri Geller. After frightening the TDN with his famous spoon bending and mind reading, Geller says show business is a cover for his gift’s other uses</b></a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8908657.post-65234825701098215412008-03-27T18:53:00.001-07:002008-03-27T18:53:35.332-07:00ProSieben Orders Second Season of Uri Geller Format<h3>ProSieben Orders Second Season of Uri Geller Format</h3> <p> <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:documentproperties> <o:author>Irene Lew</o:Author> <o:template>Normal</o:Template> <o:lastauthor>Irene Lew</o:LastAuthor> <o:revision>1</o:Revision> <o:totaltime>1</o:TotalTime> <o:created>2008-02-27T19:54:00Z</o:Created> <o:lastsaved>2008-02-27T19:55:00Z</o:LastSaved> <o:pages>1</o:Pages> <o:lines>1</o:Lines> <o:paragraphs>1</o:Paragraphs> <o:version>11.512</o:Version> </o:DocumentProperties> <o:officedocumentsettings> <o:allowpng/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:zoom>150</w:Zoom> <w:displayhorizontaldrawinggridevery>0</w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery> <w:displayverticaldrawinggridevery>0</w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery> <w:usemarginsfordrawinggridorigin/> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--> </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">MUNICH, February 27: The season finale of </span><span style="font-family: Verdana;" lang="EN-GB"><i>The Successor—The Next Uri Geller</i></span><span style="font-family: Verdana;" lang="EN-GB"> on ProSieben last night outperformed the average rating for its competitive time slot by 80 percent, and a second season has been ordered for next year.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Verdana;" lang="EN-GB"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">Up against <i>CSI: Miami</i></span><span style="font-family: Verdana;"> and <i>House</i></span><span style="font-family: Verdana;">, the episode </span><span style="font-family: Verdana;" lang="EN-GB">scored an 18.1-percent share in the 14-to-49 demographic, according to ProSiebenSat.1 Media, above the 11.7 percent 2007 channel average for this demo. In 14 to 29, meanwhile, it scored a 29.8-percent share. With up to 4.8 million viewers watching the first season, <i>The Next Uri Geller</i></span><span style="font-family: Verdana;" lang="EN-GB"> was the highest-rated show premiere for ProSieben over the last year and a half.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Verdana;" lang="EN-GB"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Verdana;" lang="EN-GB">The show, marketed worldwide by SevenOne International, is also faring well on the Dutch channel SBS 6, where the local version is scoring an average 22.8-percent share. NBC aired a version last year and the show has also been picked up by CTV in Canada and Nine Network in Australia. It will launch on the Hungarian channel TV2 later this spring.</span><span style="font-family: Verdana;"> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Verdana;"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">“This show is a real attention-grabber because Uri Geller succeeds in intriguing people,” says </span><a href="http://www.worldscreen.com/interviewscurrent.php?filename=Richter.htm"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">Jens Richter</span></a><span style="font-family: Verdana;">, the managing director of SevenOne International.</span><span style="font-family: Verdana;" lang="EN-GB"> “</span><span style="font-family: Verdana;">With the latest successes in Germany and The Netherlands, we are eager to see Uri capture further international audiences as well.”<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Verdana;"><span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <span style="font-family: Verdana;" lang="EN-GB">—By Mansha Daswani</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8908657.post-38436889635041378902008-01-24T20:42:00.000-08:002008-01-24T20:45:05.569-08:00Paranormalist Uri Geller works his magic on German TV show<table align="center" bgcolor="#ffffff" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="760"><tbody><tr><td><img src="http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/images/0.gif" border="0" height="2" width="1" /></td></tr></tbody></table> <!-- START OF DATA RETRIEVE FROM DB --><!-- END OF DATA RETRIEVE FROM DB --> <!-- START OF DATA PRESENTATION --> <table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="465"> <tbody><tr> <td> <!-- if this alrticle doesn't belong to a tv section, display Main picture --> <table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tbody><tr> <td colspan="3"><img src="http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/images/0.gif" border="0" height="10" width="1" /></td> </tr> <tr> <td rowspan="2" width="10"><img src="http://www.haaretz.com/hasite/images/iht_daily/D190108/urig.jpg" /></td> <td rowspan="2" width="10"><img src="http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/images/0.gif" border="0" height="10" width="12" /></td> </tr> <tr> <td style="vertical-align: text-bottom;" valign="bottom"> <span class="t11"><br /></span> <span class="t11"></span> </td> </tr> <tr> <td colspan="3"><img src="http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/images/0.gif" border="0" height="8" width="1" /></td> </tr> </tbody></table> <!-- End of Main picture display --> </td> <!-- Start of Talkback object positioning ------------------------------------------------------------ --> <td align="right" valign="top"> <!--set the TalkBack object --> <table dir="rtl" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tbody><tr><td colspan="2" align="right"> <br /> </td> </tr> <tr><td colspan="2"><br /></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="2"> <map name="TalkBackPicMap"><area coords="53,26,110,43" href="http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/objects/pages/SendResponse.jhtml" onclick="PopUpWin('/hasen/objects/pages/SendResponse.jhtml?itemno=946135&cont=2','ResponsePage','600','650','yes');return false;"><area coords="8,25,43,42" href="http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/946135.html#resp"> </map> <br /></td> </tr> <tr><td height="10"><br /></td></tr> </tbody></table> </td><!-- END OF TalkBack object --> </tr> </tbody></table> <!-- END OF DATA PRESENTATION --> <table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tbody><tr> <td colspan="2"><br /></td> </tr> <tr> <td colspan="2" valign="top"><img src="http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/images/0.gif" border="0" height="2" width="1" /></td> </tr> <!-- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- --> <!-- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- --> <!-- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- --> <tr> <td colspan="2" class="t18B" valign="top"> Paranormalist Uri Geller works his magic on German TV show </td> </tr> <tr> <td colspan="2" valign="top"><img src="http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/images/0.gif" border="0" height="3" width="10" /></td> </tr> <!-- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- --> <tr> <td colspan="2" class="t11B" valign="top"> By <a href="mailto:assafu@haaretz.co.il" class="tUbl2">Assaf Uni</a>, Haaretz Correspondent </td> </tr> <tr> <td colspan="2" valign="top"><img src="http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/images/0.gif" border="0" height="5" width="10" /></td> </tr> <!-- ------------------------------ Article Tags ---------------------------------- --> <tr><td colspan="2" height="1"> <span dir="ltr"><span class="tagTitle">Tags: </span><span><a class="tagsText" href="http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/tags/index.jhtml?tag=Hayoresh" target="_top" onmouseover="this.className='tagBack tagsTextOver'" onmouseout="this.className='tagsText'">Hayoresh</a></span><span>, <a class="tagsText" href="http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/tags/index.jhtml?tag=Uri+Geller" target="_top" onmouseover="this.className='tagBack tagsTextOver'" onmouseout="this.className='tagsText'">Uri Geller</a></span><span>, <a class="tagsText" href="http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/tags/index.jhtml?tag=Germany" target="_top" onmouseover="this.className='tagBack tagsTextOver'" onmouseout="this.className='tagsText'">Germany</a></span></span> </td> </tr> <!-- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- --> <tr> <td><br /> <!-- --------------- Display Advertisement if Exists --------------------- --> <span class="t13">For those using Berlin's public transportation in recent weeks, it was <br />difficult to avoid the penetrating glance of Uri Geller, which could have been directed either at them or at the teaspoon he held in his hand.<br /><br />The portrait of the Israeli magician stared out at passengers from large billboards advertising his new TV show, "The Next Uri Geller," which aired for the first time last week on the German commercial channel ProSieben. The premiere of the show, which is based on the popular Israeli program "Hayoresh" ("The Successor"), attracted a large audience (more than 20 percent of viewers aged 14-49 tuned in) and received particularly extensive media coverage.<br /></span><table align="right" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tbody><tr> <td rowspan="2"><img src="http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/images/0.gif" border="0" height="10" width="3" /></td> <td class="t9">Advertisement</td> </tr> <tr> <td align="right"><iframe marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" hspace="0" vspace="0" bordercolor="000000" src="http://dclk.themarker.com/html.ng/site=Haaretz_Eng&adsize=300x250eng&hposition=99&hlayer1=&HaaretzCatgory=&hlang=ENG" frameborder="0" height="250" scrolling="no" width="300"></iframe><br /></td> </tr> </tbody></table><span class="t13">On the show, 10 "mentalists," as they are called in Germany, compete for the title of Geller's successor and for a prize of 100,000 euros. Geller himself appears as a guest and displays the psychic powers that have made him famous in Europe and elsewhere- bending cutlery and repairing electrical appliances.<br /><br />Many members of the country's media debated with typical German seriousness whether the paranormalist from Tel Aviv and the program's 10 contestants were experts at deception or possessors of authentic magic powers. "Is Uri Geller a wizard magician- or a charlatan?" wondered the daily <i>Die Welt</i> on its Web site, after Geller promised on the debut program to fix electrical appliances with his powers, via a TV set.<br /><br />"I put the broken television remote control next to the set," wrote one surfer, "and after Uri Geller said in Hebrew the three magic words 'ahat, shtayim, shalosh' ('one, two, three'), the remote started working again." Other surfers and television critics accused Geller of lying and of using magnets.<br /><br />The German network claimed during and after the broadcast that it had received a huge number of responses: more than 20,000 phone calls, letters and e-mail messages, many of them from people whose electrical appliances came back to life. Geller himself reported that 1,600 e-mail messages were sent to his handheld computer, and later announced to the press: "I've never encountered such a huge response."<br /><br />Television critics were more skeptical. "The search for a successor hints at the fact that Geller will retire after the program, but that is turning out to be a false hope," suggested a writer for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. The critic called Geller "a sad sight," and criticized the network for the air of mystery in which it casts the contestants, instead of admitting that they are chosen for their sleight-of-hand talents.<br /><br />On the program's Web site, a lively discussion developed surrounding explanations of the magic tricks. Several surfers talked about the trick in which one of the contestants "stopped" his own heartbeat for half a minute. "All you have to do it stick a golf ball in the right place<br />under your arm," explained one.<br /><br />Geller, who originally captured German audiences with his television appearances in the 1970s, spoke about those appearances and the experience of returning to perform in the country. "When I landed at the Munich airport recently, customs officials asked me to bend teaspoons. They had seen me when they were children on West German TV," he said in an interview with the weekly <i>Focus</i>. He also mentioned that he had had eating problems and was once bulimic, and once again recounted the mystical experience he underwent in Tel Aviv at age 4, when he ate soup<br />and discovered that his spoon had bent.<br /><br />Many German newspapers also told their readers about the embarrassment of the team that had produced the Israeli program, when surfers revealed online just how Geller was able to pull a magnet out from behind his ear and held it between his fingers.<br /></span></td></tr></tbody></table>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com35tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8908657.post-3601371138550650762007-11-27T16:45:00.000-08:002007-11-27T16:49:17.235-08:00Uri Geller - UFO's, metal-bending and the PSI War.<div class="articleBy"> Brendan Burton </div> <div class="articleDate">November 24, 2007<br /></div> <div id="articleImage" style="visibility: visible;"> <div style="margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; float: left; width: 200px; text-align: left;"> <img src="http://www.americanchronicle.com/articlePics/article43794.jpg" width="200" /> </div> </div> <p>"Uri Geller." Two words which seem to invoke passion in anyone who has read about or seen this truly remarkable person. Yet if one is lucky enough to meet or speak to the man himself, you quickly realise what a disarming and genuine person he really is.</p> <p>So why all the fuss?</p> <p>Uri says that he first became aware of his mindpower at the age of four. He was eating, when the fork he was using bent and snapped. His mother, a member of the Freud family, was not surprised at his ability and nurtured his childhood accordingly. It was this acceptance, rather than denial, which enabled his self belief. A belief, Uri says, is inherent in all children, it is social conditioning which creates the denial.</p> <p>After getting wounded during the Six Day War, Uri left the Israeli Army, and worked as a fashion model by day, and at night started to give displays of his mind-power with the support of his brother, Shimson ( Shipi ). His extraordinary demonstrations quickly became well known and he soon developed a professional stage show. Nothing really strange about the story so far, yet word had spread. Far enough to warrant the mysterious Andrija Puharich to enter the scene ( see http://www.forteantimes.com/artic/126/nine.html ). </p> <p>Puharich had been working previously with the equally mysterious, Dr Vinod, drawing together 'channelled' information on the principles of 'The Nine' and was a pivotal figure in the 'contactee' movement. Under the wing of Puharich, Uri was flown to the USA, where he was introduced to astronaut Edgar Mitchell, and physicists Hal Puthof and Russel Targ. In December 1972 he allowed himself to become the subject of a scientific study undertaken at the prestigious Stanford Research Institute at Menlo Park, California.</p> <p>I asked Russel Targ to comment on his experiences resulting from the SRI experiments:</p> <p>" Uri was at our laboratory at SRI for six weeks in 1973. He showed remarkable ESP perceptual ability to describe and draw hidden pictures. He was by no means the best person to visit our lab and carry out this type of remote viewing, but he was certainly better than the average bear in this capability. He did not bend any metal under acceptably controlled conditions, but I have since that time seen and done paranormal bending under excellent conditions."</p> <p>He went on to give an account of his personal experiences of PK:</p> <p>"My co-author Jane Katra, a spiritual healer with small delicate hands, rolled up the bowl of a teaspoon at a PK party with Jack Hauk last year. She was quietly meditating (waiting for the party to end, so that we could go home) when she screamed!</p> <p>The bowl rolled up 180 degrees in her closed fist, and frightened her. We took a picture of the spoon and put it, with its picture into a plastic bag. By the time we arrived home, the bowl had bent an additional 90 degrees, 270 in all. I wouldn't know how to create such a smooth roll, even if I took a spoon to the lab. At the party, I later bent the bowl of a similar spoon by brute force, damaging my hand in the process. The bowl creased sharply as I broke the back of the bowl. It looked nothing like Jane's.</p> <p>The following month we had another opportunity to go to a PK party. Northern California does have some advantages. At this party Hauk (a metallurgist from Boeing) had one-foot long, 3/8 diameter aluminum rods as objects for bending. Holding one of these rods in my two hands, I had the experience of it getting springy. As I bent it back and forth with my eyes shut, I finally had the impression that it froze in the bent position. This turned out to be about 30 degrees.</p> <p>Neither I, nor my two athletic sons could bend a similar rod whatsoever, without putting it over a knee, which is again quite a painful undertaking."</p> <p>The results of the experiments and studies, which presented an " existence of one or more perceptual modalities through which individuals obtain information about their environment " were written up in 'Nature' magazine. </p> <p>Hal Puthoff says of the SRI experiments;</p> <p>"Our publications make our statement, and our personal feelings are congruent with what we've published. And in the intervening years of listening to the criticisms of the skeptics we have yet to be shown any viable reason to reassess our position."</p> <p>This particular point in time seems to have been a key point in the 'Geller phenomena', as the resulting response of disbelief and claims of poor scientific method from a small group of skeptics, resulted in a rise in publicity for Uri which lead to an intrigued media clamouring for his presence. From this point on, Uri became famous for what he is perhaps best known for now, 'spoon-bending', although even the smallest amount of further glance reveals other phenomena displayed by Uri, including, remote-viewing (RV).</p> <p>So what about skepticism? A small group of hardened skeptics seized the opportunity of the SRI experiments in order to debunk the phenomena. However, debate still rages to this very day and even a cursory glance at skeptic newsgroups on the Internet reveal that some of the key issues and players are *still* picking over the bones. One of the key points held by some skeptics, is that the 'Nature' editorial is evidence that the experiments lacked sound scientific protocols. However, the editorial appears to have been based on the opinion of three ( I have been unable to identify who they actually were ) people. The fact that the CIA continued working with Targ and Puthoff for many years seems to indicate that the CIA found significant cause. ( see: www.biomindsuperpowers.com/Pages/CIA-InitiatedRV.html )</p> <p>Geller, of course, has moved on. When I spoke with him he revealed that he became uneasy about the motives of some of those who pertained to 'debunk' him. Indeed, there appears to have been a 'PSI war' sparked as a result of Geller's demonstrations. So deep and intractable became the 'war' that Geller felt he had no choice other than to protect himself through the Courts. Law suits were filed and won, yet the campaign to 'expose' Uri became a quagmire of personal attacks as the 'skeptics' failed to provide proof of their assertion that he was somehow 'cheating'. The resulting mess perhaps affected the both the face of 'skepticism' and the progress of scientific co-operation from other people who claimed ownership of similar phenomenal skills. Something quite ugly appeared to have reared its head within the guise of 'skepticism'. Geller, perhaps wisely, walked away and chose to regain his true 'self' which had taken rather a pounding! ( When I spoke with Uri, he told me that he still meets with scientists and accepts the positive motive behind scientific discovery, it seems it is the adversarial 'pseudo skeptics' which Uri has washed his hands with, not skepticism per se. ) Indeed, one only needs to look at the highly credible witness testimony of people like Dr Werner von Braun , Dr EW Bastin and Dr Edgar Mitchell ( see: www.tcom.co.uk/uribiog3.htm ) to see that some of the most credible academics in the world have witnessed both the bending phenomena up close and first hand. Some of these people even witnessed the objects *continued* bending after Uri had touched them.</p> <p>Skeptics often claim that these people are not experts at recognising the tricks and tools of deception, yet how do we explain the witness accounts of some of the worlds finest stage magicians, also seeing the first hand 'bending' phenomena? ( see: www.tcom.co.uk/uribiog3.htm ). The testimony of these people alone show that Uri Geller is perhaps NOT the 'Parlour Trick' charlatan some pseudo-skeptics claim.</p> <p>The ability to 'bend' metals by 'mindpower' is known as 'psychokenesis' ( PK). I asked theoretical physicist, Dr. Jack Sarfatti for his experiences of PK:</p> <p>" PK means action of mind on matter at a distance. The matter is "outside" the "body" in some cases as in the alleged "Geller Effect".</p> <p>This requires "signal nonlocality" that violates quantum physics.</p> <p>There is a larger physics "post-quantum physics" that permits "signal nonlocality".</p> <p>Quantum physics is a limiting case of post-quantum physics in the same way that classical physics is a limiting case of quantum physics.</p> <p>Consciousness generation is a post-quantum physical process in strong violation of the uncontrollable local randomness of quantum physics. Indeed one can make a sequence of limiting cases of physical theories ;</p> <div style="margin: 5px 5px 5px 0pt; float: left;"> </div> <p><script type="text/javascript"><!-- google_ad_client = "pub-8947388409604770"; google_ad_width = 300; google_ad_height = 250; google_ad_format = "300x250_as"; google_ad_channel = ""; google_color_border = "FFFFFF"; google_color_bg = "FFFFFF"; google_color_link = "000084"; google_color_url = "31659C"; google_color_text = "000000"; //--</script>Post-quantum physics -> quantum physics -> classical physics.Within classical physics we have:<br />Non-Riemannian Einstein-Cartan torsion-gravity physics (AKA Einstein's Vision of "Unified Field Theory 1929-55) -></p> <p>Riemannian zero torsion gravity physics (AKA Einstein's general relativity of 1915) -></p> <p>special relativity of 1905 -></p> <p>Galilean relativity of Newton's mechanics of 17^th Century."</p> <p>Sarfatti has some intriguing insight as a witness to the 'bending' pheomena.</p> <p>"I have seen things ( PK) in my trip to Brasil in 1985 shown to me by a General in the Brasilian Army, allegedly from a UFO that landed in the Amazon jungle, that is like what Uri did with metal but even more complex than what I saw Uri do in 1974.</p> <p>It's like the Crop Circles evolving into more and more complex forms."</p> <p>Another credible witness to the Geller 'phenomena was Metallurgist and US Naval scientist, Eldon Byrd. Before his untimely death in late 2002, Byrd had had the opportunity to observe Uri first hand.</p> <p>I asked him what these observations revealed:</p> <p>"I first became interested in "paranormal" (in quotes because the phenomena will be "normal" once we understand the mechanisms) phenomena in general after seeing Ted Serios on the Alan Burke TV show (many years ago). The host was a skeptic, but changed his mind after Serios imprinted images on a sealed and guarded video tape.</p> <p>I first became interested in metal bending after meeting with Uri Geller in the Washington, DC area when he came to do a demo at George Washington University. I first got involved in studying metal bending after Geller altered the memory of a new shape memory alloy of nickel and titanium called NITINOL, invented at the US Navy Government Lab I where I was working at the time.</p> <p>There were analytical tests run on NITINOL that Geller had altered, including electron micrographs, density, photographic, and microscopic. Other tests on Geller material I did not conduct included electron microscope photos of broken keys, cracked gold rings, broken needles, and water imprinted with energy.</p> <p>I have made many direct observations of Geller performing telepathy, mending broken watches and clocks, and sprouting seeds. Some of these I have experienced myself, as a recipient."</p> <p>Q: What is your 'up to date' knowledge of PK and do you have any thoughts regarding the future understanding of PK?</p> <p>Byrd: "I developed several theories about how PK might work in the metal bending phenomena. As a physical scientist I have always been more interested in phenomena that produce hard analyzable data, rather than the soft statisical pablum of parapsychology.</p> <p>Recently I have become acquainted with new information on how the mind can interact with biological processes; I have altered my previous theories. That is how science progresses--not with "proof", but by coherency. We are close to understanding how intention can create action at a distance."</p> <p>During the eighties, Uri moved away from demonstration to put his skills to a more practical test. He began prospecting for minerals and was successful enough to have created the bulk of his fortune by doing so. He also became increasingly positive about his belief that ordinary people could, with personal faith, use similar skills themselves. He took an interest in writing and developed an interest in the medium of the 21st century, the Internet ( see www.urigeller.com )</p> <p>So what can be learned from this phenomenal story?</p> <p>It seems, Uri Geller is the real deal. The fact that I have been able to track down and get up to date responses from some of the key figures in this story indicates that what became known as the 'Geller Phenomena', is still held by many people with credible scientific backgrounds as being a very real ability of human 'mindpower'. Indeed, Targ speaks of 'PK Parties' amongst the intteligentsiai, Govt sponsored physicist bending metals bars using the power of their minds.</p> <p>In his book, 'Mind Medicine' ( Element Books, 1999) Uri sums up what this 'mindpower' is;</p> <p>"I believe it represents a deep wisdom that we all inherit form our forebears and which, once harnessed, can effectively give every one of us much greater knowledge and insight into out lives. I believe that with such awareness comes healthier minds and bodies. Some of us learn how to tap into this energy earlier than others; some come upon it through trial and error. Others cannot explain it but trust it totally. Its power is formidable and this frightens those who have not yet reached the point of understanding the potency of such an invisible force."</p> <p>I sought out the opinion of Dr Susan Blackmore regarding Uri. She provided an interesting perception:</p> <p>" Although millions of people believe in extra-sensory perception, ghosts, UFOs, crystal powers, and the tenets of astrology - the evidence for ESP is controversial (at best), and the claims of astrology demonstrably false. However, people don't want to see endless meticulous experiments with nothing but negative results. Viewers, and the producers who are their slaves, seem to prefer conspiracy theories, beings from outer space, scientists who cover up the truth about our mental powers, and Russians with strong accents who can move trains with their teeth or bamboozle TV presenters with children's party tricks."</p> <p>In respect of Geller, there is too much credible witness evidence to suggest that he is just employing mere trickery. Indeed, if such were the case, he would be perhaps even more of a phenomenal person, having maintained a level of deceit so powerful it has managed to fool some of the most credible academics in history, people with high level security clearances, physicists, metallurgists, astronauts, magicians, politicians and world leaders, in short - the kind of people we tend to invest our trust into.</p> <p>Such supposed 'trickery' to such a large and grand scale has certainly never been done before, and leads even some of the most skeptical to consider: "This can't be possible....... can it?"</p> <p>For more discussions on the inside take of some of these issues check out <a href="http://www.openmindsforum.com/">Open Minds</a></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8908657.post-90123693543825982172007-11-23T19:32:00.000-08:002007-11-23T19:42:19.286-08:00Will Uri Geller Win Criss Angel’s $1,000,000 challenge<p style="text-align: left;"><a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://redirect.alexa.com/redirect?http%3A//www.openmagic.info/criss-angel-secrets/will-uri-geller-win-criss-angels-1000000-challenge/trackback/">Will Uri Geller Win Criss Angel’s $1,000,000 challenge</a><br /></p><p style="text-align: left;"><br />Dark was Criss Angel who dared Uri Geller $1,000,000 on the Phenomonon magic tricks television series <a id="KonaLink0" target="_top" class="kLink" style="text-decoration: underline ! important; position: static;" href="http://www.openmagic.info/criss-angel-secrets/will-uri-geller-win-criss-angels-1000000-challenge/#"><span style=";font-family:";font-size:11;" ><span class="kLink" style=";font-family:";font-size:11;color:#0000e0;" ></span></span></a>. He tried and explained Criss Angel tricks but what was in a certain envelope and then rapidly cut Geller off when he appeared to intuitively Begin zoning in on it’s content. What was in the certain envelope were the Book of Numbers 911. When Criss Angel asked Geller what was in the envelope Geller for some reason began rattling of dates that unknown to Geller were zoning in on the contents. We revealed phenomenon secrets and other Criss Angel tricks but if Uri Geller said Angel was Max Born on the 19th , just 1 day prior to Geller’ s birthday and he had bent his 1st spoon when Angel was 1 years old. A nervous Angel, knowing what was in the envelope apace cut him off, and diverted attention by chop-chop gap the envelope.</p><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><p style="text-align: left;">On yet some other Recent show Angel challenged co - host Uri Geller as to what was in the envelope. Criss explained “I will spray on you a million dollars of my personal money right now if you can tell me particular inside information of what’ s in here right now, “Uri seemed willing to try but the show touched on . Criss Angel of mindfreak proven that he had, or brought with him his million dollars.</p><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><p style="text-align: left;"><ibed bgcolor="#FFFFFF" flashvars="videoId=1321233750&playerId=900841604&viewerSecureGatewayURL=https://services.brightcove.com/services/amfgateway&servicesURL=http://services.brightcove.com/services&cdnURL=http://admin.brightcove.com&domain=embed&autoStart=false&" base="http://admin.brightcove.com" name="flashObj" width="486" height="412" seamlesstabbing="false" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" swliveconnect="true" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/index.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash"></ibed></p><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><p style="text-align: left;">This is the thought of Dick Brooks , a managing director of the noted Houdini Museum in Scranton, PA is a nationally known paranormalist, psychic research worker and managing director of Scranton’ s Psychic Theater. A few phenomenon tricks will be revealed on this site but he has been called by many a “Supernormalist”. The theater is currently presenting America’ s longest running and well reviewed extrasensory show and session. In phenomenon some tricks explained here, telekinesis , unseeing vision ,<span style="font-size:85%;"> mentalism that ends with an attempt at recreating an old time sitting. The presentation explained the story of phenomenon and revealed tricks in the edifice going to the Houdini </span>era that were caused by various events that included a execution , suicide , and electrocution. People at phenomenon don’t reveal nor will explain their tricks, instead they explore the pros and cons of such events.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8908657.post-50160949328141765382007-11-04T10:04:00.000-08:002007-11-04T10:11:12.529-08:00A Chat with Uri Geller, NBC’s latest “Phenomenon” - An Interview in Monsters & Critics<div style="font-family: arial;" class="eightcoll"> <script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript"><!-- document.write('<div class="toparticleimage"><img src="http://media.monstersandcritics.com/articles/1367978/article_images/headline_1193164151.jpg" alt="Israeli mentalist Uri Geller, host of The Successor, is in Cannes to promote his paranormal talent show distributed by the German Company Seven One. EPA/ASM CORBIS OUT" class="thumbnail" /><p>Israeli mentalist Uri Geller, host of The Successor, is in Cannes to promote his paranormal talent show distributed by the German Company Seven One. EPA/ASM CORBIS OUT</p><\/div>'); //--> </script><div class="toparticleimage"><img src="http://media.monstersandcritics.com/articles/1367978/article_images/headline_1193164151.jpg" alt="Israeli mentalist Uri Geller, host of The Successor, is in Cannes to promote his paranormal talent show distributed by the German Company Seven One. EPA/ASM CORBIS OUT" class="thumbnail" /><p>Israeli mentalist Uri Geller, host of The Successor, is in Cannes to promote his paranormal talent show distributed by the German Company Seven One. EPA/ASM CORBIS OU</p></div><p class="date"> <!-- Author Start -->By April MacIntyre <!-- Author End --> Oct 23, 2007, 18:18 GMT </p> <p><script language="javascript" src="http://www.monstersandcritics.com/javascript/pagebreak.js"></script> <script language="javascript"><!-- var showPageNavTop = 1; var showPageNavBot = 1; var showPageNavAll = 0; var PageMarker = '<!--page--\>'; var PageContent= 'Nurturing the power of positive intentions has created a lifetime of success and happiness for Uri Geller, the avatar for all of today’s biggest mind-over-matter gurus and spiritualists like Deepak Chopra, Tony Robbins, and even Marianne Williamson. \n<p></p>\n<p>Known for his writing, peace brokering and his spoon bending events, he is first and foremost a proponent of the power each of us has within our own minds to direct our lives. Powerful thoughts add up, according to Mr. Geller.</p>\n<p><div class="\'article_image_right\'"><img src="http://media.monstersandcritics.com/articles/1367978/article_images/uricloseup.jpg" height="207" width="277" alt="Geller" /><br /><br /><div style="width:277;text-align:left">Geller</div></div></p>\n<p>“Negative thoughts have a biochemical property, you can actually see them on a computer, or machine that measures you brainwaves,” shared Mr. Geller. “The Universe listens to your thoughts, and visualizing them can equal materialization.”</p>\n<p>“I am not a healer; I am not a miracle worker,” claims Mr. Geller in an interview with Monsters and Critics. </p>\n<p>“My wife and I open our home in England to terminally ill children, and what I call the placebo effect happens during the acts of bending spoons as I draw the audience in, talking to them, it is always a positive reaction.” </p>\n<p>NBC President Ben Silverman was “blown away” when he saw the Israeli original show “The Successor”, a runaway hit in Israel that featured the <em>Sabra</em> (Israeli born) mentalist and motivational icon Uri Geller, a national hero in his homeland. “He had goose bumps,” said Mr. Geller.</p>\n<p><div class="\'article_image_left\'"><img src="http://media.monstersandcritics.com/articles/1367978/article_images/crissangel.jpg" height="263" width="350" alt="Angel" /><br /><br /><div style="width:350;text-align:left">Angel</div></div></p>\n<p>The show “Phenomenon” is a direct spin off and both Uri Geller and Ben Silverman used the power of positive thought to summon superstar Criss Angel to come on board for the special five live show tapings, with a bonus 2 hour special on Halloween. "I thought no way could be get Criss Angel, but Ben really pushed for it."</p>\n<p>“I am being kept away from the contestants, and from what I know I am being freaked out by some of them,” said Mr. Geller, who promised “Phenomenon” would be a triumph of entertainment value, and pure mesmerization for the audience.</p>\n<p>How Uri Geller and Criss Angel came together was in Geller’s words, pure positive thinking on Silverman’s part. It worked, and Geller had high praise for his partner in the live show experiment that promises to shake things up and bend some minds.</p>\n<p>“Criss Angel got to where he is because of the power of his mind; he was driven and uses the power of his positive mind to reach his life’s dreams.”</p>\n<p><div class="\'article_image_right\'"><img src="http://media.monstersandcritics.com/articles/1367978/article_images/urigeler.jpg" height="341" width="204" alt="Geller" /><br /><br /><div style="width:204;text-align:left">Geller</div></div></p>\n<p>The live show is based on a successful Israeli version judged and monitored by Geller, which achieved a historical record-breaking viewing audience. The show, similar to “American Idol” is being produced next in Germany, then Holland and then perhaps Australia, according to Mr. Geller, when I asked about his follow up to filming more for a season two here in the United States. </p>\n<p>“The Universe answered my request,” shared Mr. Geller.</p>\n<p>The series showcases 10 carefully selected mentalists who will compete live against one another each week by demonstrating a wide spectrum of mystifying talents on a panel of celebrity guests who experience the illusions along with the studio audience. </p>\n<p>“There will be friction with him (Angel) if there are competitors who claim paranomality and then he tries to debunk them on the spot, as he has suggested,” said Mr. Geller. </p>\n<p>Geller and Angel will assess the contestant\'s talents each week and offer their uncensored opinions. Ultimately, the fate of the winner is in the hands of the viewers at home, who will vote to determine which competing mentalist will receive the grand prize of $250,000 and become the next great mentalist. </p>\n<p>Mr. Geller freely admitted he has his share of skeptics and detractors. </p>\n<p>“Years ago, Johnny Carson invited me on his show, that was when you knew you had made it big, in the United States, to appear on his show. </p>\n<p>What I didn’t know was he was an amateur magician, and Johnny set me up, he made a joke of it, and I sat there on his show for 20 minutes, being made a fool of.”<br />“But I learned from it, that there is no such thing as bad publicity. </p>\n<p>The next morning I woke up, slightly depressed, when I got a call from Merv Griffin, who said, ‘Uri, I want you on my show.’ Then Mike Douglas called,” added Mr. Geller, who shared his favorite quote from Oscar Wilde with me: “There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”</p>\n<p>“I can sum up my approach to in two words: Be Positive. That means a positive approach to good ideas from every source and every age in history. Forget about fashion, switch off the cynics. Say ‘Yes’ aloud.”</p>\n<p>“The skeptics and the cynics failed miserably,” finished Mr. Geller.</p>\n<p><a href="http://www.nbc.com/Phenomenon/games/bendyourmind/"><strong>LINK-TO-NBC-PHENOMENON-GAME</strong></a></p>\n<p> ###</p>\n<p>"Phenomenon" - Wednesdays (8-9 p.m. ET) on NBC - Premiere date: October 24, 2007</p>\n<p>Two-hour Special on Halloween night, October 31 (8-10 p.m. ET) </p>\n<p>The series is, based on a successful Israeli version judged and monitored by Geller, which achieved a historical record-breaking viewing audience, is a Granada America/Keshet Broadcasting/Kuperman Productions co-production in association with SevenOne International. SevenOne International controls the worldwide rights to the program. </p>\n<p>Experts: Uri Geller & Criss Angel<br />Host: Tim Vincent<br />Executive producers: Suzy Lamb, Michael Agbabian and Dwight Smith<br />Creator: Format devised by Keshet Broadcasting Limited, Kuperman Productions Limited, Explorologist Limited<br />Director: Alan Carter<br />Supervising producer: Melanie Balac<br />Executive in charge of production: Mark Johnson<br />Line Producer: Tim Gaydos<br />Set designer: Anton Goss<br />Lighting designer: John Morgan<br />Wardrobe designer: Carrie Cramer<br />Graphics: SG Arts<br />Origination: Los Angeles</p>\n<p> </p>'; PrintArticle();//--> </script></p><p> Nurturing the power of positive intentions has created a lifetime of success and happiness for Uri Geller, the avatar for all of today’s biggest mind-over-matter gurus and spiritualists like Deepak Chopra, Tony Robbins, and even Marianne Williamson. </p> <p>Known for his writing, peace brokering and his spoon bending events, he is first and foremost a proponent of the power each of us has within our own minds to direct our lives. Powerful thoughts add up, according to Mr. Geller.</p> <div class="article_image_right"><img src="http://media.monstersandcritics.com/articles/1367978/article_images/uricloseup.jpg" alt="Geller" height="207" width="277" /><br /><br /><div style="text-align: left;">Geller</div></div> <p>“Negative thoughts have a biochemical property, you can actually see them on a computer, or machine that measures you brainwaves,” shared Mr. Geller. “The Universe listens to your thoughts, and visualizing them can equal materialization.”</p> <p>“I am not a healer; I am not a miracle worker,” claims Mr. Geller in an interview with Monsters and Critics. </p> <p>“My wife and I open our home in England to terminally ill children, and what I call the placebo effect happens during the acts of bending spoons as I draw the audience in, talking to them, it is always a positive reaction.” </p> <p><a itxtdid="2951465" target="_blank" href="http://smallscreen.monstersandcritics.com/features/article_1367978.php/A_Chat_with_Uri_Geller_NBC%92s_latest_%93Phenomenon%94#" style="border-bottom: 0.075em solid darkgreen; font-weight: normal; font-size: 100%; text-decoration: underline; color: darkgreen; background-color: transparent; padding-bottom: 1px;" classname="iAs" class="iAs">NBC</a> President Ben Silverman was “blown away” when he saw the Israeli original show “The Successor”, a runaway hit in Israel that featured the <em>Sabra</em> (Israeli born) mentalist and motivational icon Uri Geller, a national hero in his homeland. “He had goose bumps,” said Mr. Geller.</p> <div class="article_image_left"><img src="http://media.monstersandcritics.com/articles/1367978/article_images/crissangel.jpg" alt="Angel" height="263" width="350" /><br /><br /><div style="text-align: left;">Angel</div></div> <p>The show “Phenomenon” is a direct spin off and both Uri Geller and Ben Silverman used the power of positive thought to summon superstar <a itxtdid="4217102" target="_blank" href="http://smallscreen.monstersandcritics.com/features/article_1367978.php/A_Chat_with_Uri_Geller_NBC%92s_latest_%93Phenomenon%94#" style="border-bottom: 0.075em solid darkgreen; font-weight: normal; font-size: 100%; text-decoration: underline; color: darkgreen; background-color: transparent; padding-bottom: 1px;" classname="iAs" class="iAs">Criss Angel</a> to come on board for the special five live show tapings, with a bonus 2 hour special on Halloween. "I thought no way could be get Criss Angel, but Ben really pushed for it."</p> <p>“I am being kept away from the contestants, and from what I know I am being freaked out by some of them,” said Mr. Geller, who promised “Phenomenon” would be a triumph of <a itxtdid="4349399" target="_blank" href="http://smallscreen.monstersandcritics.com/features/article_1367978.php/A_Chat_with_Uri_Geller_NBC%92s_latest_%93Phenomenon%94#" style="border-bottom: 0.075em solid darkgreen; font-weight: normal; font-size: 100%; text-decoration: underline; color: darkgreen; background-color: transparent; padding-bottom: 1px;" classname="iAs" class="iAs">entertainment</a> value, and pure mesmerization for the audience.</p> <p>How Uri Geller and Criss Angel came together was in Geller’s words, pure positive thinking on Silverman’s part. It worked, and Geller had high praise for his partner in the live show experiment that promises to shake things up and bend some minds.</p> <p>“Criss Angel got to where he is because of the power of his mind; he was driven and uses the power of his positive mind to reach his life’s dreams.”</p> <div class="article_image_right"><img src="http://media.monstersandcritics.com/articles/1367978/article_images/urigeler.jpg" alt="Geller" height="341" width="204" /><br /><br /><div style="text-align: left;">Geller</div></div> <p>The live show is based on a successful Israeli version judged and monitored by Geller, which achieved a historical record-breaking viewing audience. The show, similar to “American Idol” is being produced next in Germany, then Holland and then perhaps Australia, according to Mr. Geller, when I asked about his follow up to filming more for a season two here in the United States. </p> <p>“The Universe answered my request,” shared Mr. Geller.</p> <p>The series showcases 10 carefully selected mentalists who will compete live against one another each week by demonstrating a wide spectrum of mystifying talents on a panel of celebrity guests who experience the illusions along with the studio audience. </p> <p>“There will be friction with him (Angel) if there are competitors who claim paranomality and then he tries to debunk them on the spot, as he has suggested,” said Mr. Geller. </p> <p>Geller and Angel will assess the contestant's talents each week and offer their uncensored opinions. Ultimately, the fate of the winner is in the hands of the viewers at home, who will vote to determine which competing mentalist will receive the grand prize of $250,000 and become the next great mentalist. </p> <p>Mr. Geller freely admitted he has his share of skeptics and detractors. </p> <p>“Years ago, Johnny Carson invited me on his show, that was when you knew you had made it big, in the United States, to appear on his show. </p> <p>What I didn’t know was he was an amateur magician, and Johnny set me up, he made a joke of it, and I sat there on his show for 20 minutes, being made a fool of.”<br />“But I learned from it, that there is no such thing as bad publicity. </p> <p>The next morning I woke up, slightly depressed, when I got a call from <a itxtdid="4324921" target="_blank" href="http://smallscreen.monstersandcritics.com/features/article_1367978.php/A_Chat_with_Uri_Geller_NBC%92s_latest_%93Phenomenon%94#" style="border-bottom: 0.075em solid darkgreen; font-weight: normal; font-size: 100%; text-decoration: underline; color: darkgreen; background-color: transparent; padding-bottom: 1px;" classname="iAs" class="iAs">Merv Griffin</a>, who said, ‘Uri, I want you on my show.’ Then Mike Douglas called,” added Mr. Geller, who shared his favorite quote from Oscar Wilde with me: “There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”</p> <p>“I can sum up my approach to in two words: Be Positive. That means a positive approach to good ideas from every source and every age in history. Forget about fashion, switch off the cynics. Say ‘Yes’ aloud.”</p> <p>“The skeptics and the cynics failed miserably,” finished Mr. Geller.</p> <p><a href="http://www.nbc.com/Phenomenon/games/bendyourmind/"><strong>LINK-TO-NBC-PHENOMENON-GAME</strong></a></p> <p> ###</p> <p>"Phenomenon" - Wednesdays (8-9 p.m. ET) on NBC - Premiere date: October 24, 2007</p> <p>Two-hour Special on Halloween night, October 31 (8-10 p.m. ET) </p> <p>The series is, based on a successful Israeli version judged and monitored by Geller, which achieved a historical record-breaking viewing audience, is a Granada America/Keshet Broadcasting/Kuperman Productions co-production in association with SevenOne International. SevenOne International controls the worldwide rights to the program. </p> <p>Experts: Uri Geller & Criss Angel<br />Host: Tim Vincent<br />Executive producers: Suzy Lamb, Michael Agbabian and Dwight Smith<br />Creator: Format devised by Keshet Broadcasting Limited, Kuperman Productions Limited, Explorologist Limited<br />Director: Alan Carter<br />Supervising producer: Melanie Balac<br />Executive in charge of production: Mark Johnson<br />Line Producer: Tim Gaydos<br />Set designer: Anton Goss<br />Lighting designer: John Morgan<br />Wardrobe designer: Carrie Cramer<br />Graphics: SG Arts<br />Origination: Los Angeles</p></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com30tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8908657.post-89381441686094833622007-10-24T08:40:00.000-07:002008-12-11T02:11:09.830-08:00Uri Geller's Today Show Appearance<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEVerMOxQBQ1JrRXCPcnzID_D5jfgt4C1OAIJnoBnIQH1TV1FxvC_NZPtYAw_pCWUcEFl9Sruz4_eeDoOrWW_pT9x9dwZFoJ8zjyTX8u5JROmY406GOEMTbUGqBpZ532IGY0H2GA/s1600-h/Uri_Today_show.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEVerMOxQBQ1JrRXCPcnzID_D5jfgt4C1OAIJnoBnIQH1TV1FxvC_NZPtYAw_pCWUcEFl9Sruz4_eeDoOrWW_pT9x9dwZFoJ8zjyTX8u5JROmY406GOEMTbUGqBpZ532IGY0H2GA/s320/Uri_Today_show.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5126041951217586418" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br />To watch the entire interview visit this link :<br /><br /><a href="http://video.msn.com/video.aspx?mkt=en-us&vid=b10a3e4a-9dbe-4ae0-b312-b2418e014510">Uri Geller on The Today Show</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8908657.post-7161357647285710912007-10-22T19:04:00.000-07:002008-12-11T02:11:10.012-08:00Phenomenon Billboard at NBC Studios in LA<div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSxvyY6OGJ6RmUFzxS8PaJ6XkKSUjbVv_4buXqS_mdgVFbklXcjJVQr4WnflBvnXVDns0t6cEGARSukFX8061sE3dYnU3LYYPDQyRtC9Irtamxyc_s39pLNL6Devnw60dY2cjz_Q/s1600-h/BillBoard%2520013.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSxvyY6OGJ6RmUFzxS8PaJ6XkKSUjbVv_4buXqS_mdgVFbklXcjJVQr4WnflBvnXVDns0t6cEGARSukFX8061sE3dYnU3LYYPDQyRtC9Irtamxyc_s39pLNL6Devnw60dY2cjz_Q/s320/BillBoard%2520013.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5124347489398264834" border="0" /></a><br /><blockquote></blockquote><blockquote><span style="font-weight: bold;">Phenomenon - Premiers Oct 24 8PM on NBC</span><br /></blockquote><br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com22tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8908657.post-22485011095556059742007-10-21T07:56:00.000-07:002007-10-21T07:57:28.947-07:00Lara Lewington Interview<p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">12/10/2007</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> By Lara Lewington<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p align="left"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style=""> </span><span style="font-weight: bold;">The celebrated cutlery-bender is taking his hit Israeli television series global. He talks to Lara Lewington</span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p align="left"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p align="left"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span>Uri geller divides opinions. People look at his “magic” skills and either agree that he is a psychic, or accuse him of being a trickster. He prefers the term “mystifier”.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p align="left"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span>Now the 60-year-old Israeli is out to mystify a whole new audience. Geller is moving from bending spoons to breaking </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";">America</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";"> as the Simon Cowell of an X-Factor for illusionists.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p align="left"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span>How he plans to do this is not actually mystifying at all. Geller is relying on a good old-fashioned reality-TV show to win over American hearts and minds.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p align="left"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span>In The Successor, Geller passes judgment on young magicians who hope to take up his spoon-bending mantle. The show was such a hit on Israeli TV that NBC has bought it for the </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";">US</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";"> market.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p align="left"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span>Yet it will not follow the Israeli format exactly. Instead, NBC is sexing it up.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p align="left"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span>“They wanted to make it more mystifying and mysterious, so they came up with the name Phenomenon, which sounds much more powerful,” says an excited Geller.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p align="left"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span>Along with American magician Criss Angel, he will be an expert panellist on the programme, which will be screened weekly from October 24. Viewers will phone in to vote for the act that has most impressed them, but Geller and Angel retain the power of veto.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p align="left"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span>“We have the power, the expertise and the know-how to judge” which competitor has “the power, the charisma and the act”, says Geller.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p align="left"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span>He may be on to something. Industry insiders are predicting that this could be the latest reality format to spread around the world. After its run in </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";">America</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";">, it is heading for </span><st1:place><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";">Europe</span></st1:place><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";">, starting with a series in </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";">Germany</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";">.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p align="left"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span>“People think because of what I do I’m looking for an individual with powers, and I’m not, because The Successor is really about many things,” explains Geller.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p align="left"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span>“It’s about the performance, talent, personality and character of the competitor. It’s about the way you deliver your act, and most importantly it’s about the astonishment factor.”<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p align="left"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span>Geller has received strong support from the chairman of NBC, Ben Silverman. He is the man taking his chances on Phenomenon being a hit Stateside, and has a reputation for recognising a good format.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p align="left"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span>As Geller says: “Ben Silverman had the vision to take The Office, to take Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? to the </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";">United States</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";">. When they asked him why he commissioned the show — after all, they said, Uri is controversial — he answered: ‘Because when we watched The Successor, my hair stood on end’.”<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p align="left"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span>Viewers may be forgiven if they detect a hint of ego in all this, but Geller is having to share his show with a man who is an even bigger name in magic than he is.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p align="left"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span>Criss Angel, who has a large US fan base, specialises in illusions, “mentalism” and escapology. He is one of the rare few to have converted a hit Broadway magic show into a success on the small screen, with Criss Angel: Mindfreak.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p align="left"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span>Geller says that Angel is reportedly being paid £100m to perform at the Las Vegas hotel The Luxor — “but I can only quote you what I’ve read in the gossip columns”, he says, adding: “When I drove down LA’s Wilshire Boulevard, there was a billboard of Criss as big as the Hilton Hotel.”<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p align="left"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span>Geller can comfort himself that Angel is little known in the </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";">UK</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";">, beyond a few tabloids briefly linking him to the troubled pop star Britney Spears.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p align="left"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span>Geller himself has been a controversial character over the years, with some people mesmerised by his abilities and others cynical.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p align="left"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span>“For many years lots of things have been attached to my name. People have called me anything from a magician, to a mentalist, to a psychic, to a ‘mystifier’, to a miracle worker. Yes, everything. I mean, I’ve even been called a trickster. You name it, I have been called nearly everything. I love to be called a ‘mystifier’. After all, I have amazed and mystified millions of people in the world.”<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p align="left"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span>Whereas many young boys dream of being a fireman or astronaut, the young Geller spent his formative years in Tel Aviv with other ambitions in mind. “I was three years old, when I was eating soup, and suddenly the spoon bent in my hand. That was the first time my association with an energy, a power or a talent came.”<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p align="left"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span>More intriguingly, he believes the source of his abilities may be inherited. “It comes from my mother’s side, because she’s related directly to Sigmund Freud. Very few people know this, but my name in my passport is actually Uri Geller Freud.”<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p align="left"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span>No stranger to reality TV, in 2002 Geller appeared on ITV1’s I’m a Celebrity, Get Me out of Here. Even though it was well publicised that he was a vegetarian, he proudly admits: “I was the first person on the history of I’m a Celebrity… to eat living bugs.”<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p align="left"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span>Does he feel these programmes can keep working? “Some reality shows are better than others. I think that reality television is still going to flourish. People think it’s peaked, but no way. It’s exactly like the magazines such as the National Enquirer, OK! or Hello!. People are interested in celebrities, people are interested in gossip. People are interested in the lives of others; people are interested in the mysterious things. The universe and beyond. Shows like ours, like Phenomenon, will always be intriguing.”<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p align="left"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span>So back to the question of who is right about Geller — the fans who believe in his talents, or the doubters who do not.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p align="left"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span>For what it is worth, I can add a personal experience to the debate. A few years back, I interviewed Geller about his well-publicised friendship with pop star Michael Jackson.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p align="left"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span>During our conversation, he asked me to take off my necklace — a choker with a curved metal pendant hanging from it.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p align="left"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span>He rubbed his fingers over the metal pendant and, as I watched, it bent. Simple as that — he was not even touching the part that contorted.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p align="left"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span>I could not find any logical explanation for what happened right before my eyes. Later, I asked if he would tell me how he did it.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p align="left"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span>He replied: “If I am asked, ‘Uri, tell me how do you do it,’ I simply answer that I’d rather it be a mystery.”<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p align="left"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span>Mystifying indeed.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p style="text-align: center;" align="center"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";"><!--[if !vml]--><img src="http://www.uri-geller.com/pics/lara001.jpg" shapes="_x0000_i1025" height="197" width="130" /><!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span>Born: Tel Aviv in December 1946. His original name was Geller Gyorgy<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span>Family: Geller was born to Hungarian- and Austrian-Jewish immigrants to </span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";">Palestine</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";">. He claims to be distantly related to Sigmund Freud on his mother’s side<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span>Early life: Geller says he first became aware of his paranormal powers when he was three, after a light from the sky knocked him to the ground. He served as a paratrooper in the Israeli army and was wounded in action during the 1967 Six-Day War. His early career was as a nightclub entertainer in </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";">Israel</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";">. He moved to </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";">America</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";"> in the early 1970s<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span>Geller trivia: He speaks four languages — Hebrew, English, Hungarian and German. He has been chairman of English football club </span><st1:place><st1:placename><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";">Exeter</span></st1:placename><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span><st1:placetype><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";">City</span></st1:placetype></st1:place><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";">. He owns a 1976 Cadillac adorned with thousands of pieces of bent cutlery, given to him by, among others, John Lennon and the Spice Girls. He says he has been anorexic for many years<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span>Jewish identity: Geller is the president of the International Friends of Magen David Adom. He also says he that his friendship with Michael Jackson — </span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";">Jackson</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";"> was best man when Geller renewed his wedding vows — ended over antisemitic comments the star allegedly made<o:p>.</o:p></span></p><span style="font-weight:bold;"></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8908657.post-72574205582779994492007-10-13T13:53:00.000-07:002007-10-13T14:12:38.814-07:00Uri Geller And Criss Angel Present : Phenomenon<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Uri Geller and Criss Angel Present Phenomenon. The New ground breaking reality show on NBC.<br /><br />Beginning Oct 24th, Wednesday, 8pm EST on NBC. Don't forget to watch <span style="font-weight: bold;">Phenomenon</span><br /><br /><br />Check out the trailer below running currently on NBC!</span><br /><br /><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dyYtOScXcFdDLMnBiX-jqABDmSUNSGHUEYSEk7BSlkolz8f_j0ClIwx6qtvDSPup27oMR_lbjL_6LQ' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8908657.post-60916591035702690772007-10-05T20:26:00.000-07:002007-10-05T20:28:49.592-07:00Los Angeles<p class="MsoNormal"> <span style="font-size: 9pt; font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB">What I love most about Los Angeles is the sense of being inside a movie. Anything is possible, the more dramatic the better. All you have to do is dream. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <span style="font-size: 9pt; font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB">At dinner last night with my TV producer, Suzy Lamb, I heard a wonderful story about Jim Carrey, the comic star of The Truman Show and Bruce Almighty. In 1987, a 25-year-old unknown, Jim drove his old Toyota into the Hollywood Hills and parked on Mulholland Drive. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <span style="font-size: 9pt; font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB">The city which was spread out before him, like angel dust on the hillside, had never heard of him, but he was going to make sure it did — and the rest of the world with it. Taking a scrap of paper and a pen, he wrote himself a cheque, “for acting services rendered,” and dated it Thanksgiving Day 1995... eight years in the future. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <span style="font-size: 9pt; font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB">The cheque was for ten million dollars. </span></p> <p class="articleText"> </p> <table align="right" border="0" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" width="350"> <tbody><tr> <td><img src="http://www.uri-geller.com/articles/weekly-news/2007/Images/150907-mindfreak.jpg" height="243" width="325" /></td> </tr> </tbody></table> <p class="MsoNormal"> <span style="font-size: 9pt; font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB">Jim Carrey believed in his own talent so vividly, and was so unswervably committed to turning his dream into reality, that he easily outstripped his goal. By 1995, he’d broken box office records with The Mask and Dumb And Dumber, his worldwide grosses were estimated at more than half a billion dollars, and he commanded a cool $20m a picture. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <span style="font-size: 9pt; font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB">Throughout my career, I’ve been urging people, “Believe in yourself and anything is possible.” But if your self-belief needs a boost, jump on a plane and come to Los Angeles. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <span style="font-size: 9pt; font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB">And bring some sun-cream... it was 110 degrees in the city yesterday, and out in the California desert today, on a dry lake bed at El Mirage, the thermometer is bursting out through the glass. It’s hard to believe California is on the same planet as England — we had more rain last month than this desert has had in a century. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <span style="font-size: 9pt; font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB">I’m here with a crew of around 80 technicians to shoot a promo for my show Phenomenon with Criss Angel. He’s internationally famous, but in the US there’s no one bigger — more members of the public would recognise his face than could name even the President. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <span style="font-size: 9pt; font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB">I was introduced to Criss about an hour ago, and he struck me as a charming, thoughtful guy. Shooting an entire series with him promises to be a fascinating experience. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <span style="font-size: 9pt; font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB">We have to survive this promo first, of course. Unbelievably, as well as contending with the naked sun and 115 degree sands, there are billion-watt lamps over our heads. I’m wearing a special jacket designed to absorb or deflect all the heat — otherwise, I’d look like I’d just stepped fully clothed out of a swimming bath. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <span style="font-size: 9pt; font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB">And of course we have an air-conditioned trailer. That’s not a Hollywood luxury... it’s a life-support system. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <span style="font-size: 9pt; font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB">I can’t wait to see the finished promo footage. There will be amazing, stunning special effects. And I have no lines... it’s all about the way I stare into the lens. The location was chosen for its eerie open spaces and the other-worldly glow of its cracked, white sands. For me it’s a unique experience — I’ve never shot anything like it. </span></p> <p class="articleText"> </p> <table align="left" border="0" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" width="350"> <tbody><tr> <td><img src="http://www.uri-geller.com/articles/weekly-news/2007/Images/150907-nat-criss.jpg" height="243" width="325" /></td> </tr> </tbody></table> <p class="MsoNormal"> <span style="font-size: 9pt; font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB">Yesterday we were at the NBC studios, with Jay Leno’s Tonight Show shooting next-door. I was astonished to see a team of 18 people for an ordinary photoshoot, taking publicity stills for newspapers and magazines in the run-up to the show’s launch. It really drove home to me what a massive business NBC is — one of the big three television channels, in the country that produces most of the world’s biggest TV shows. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <span style="font-size: 9pt; font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB">The Tonight Show, when it was compered by the late Johnny Carson, was the scene of my greatest professional humiliation, in 1974. My detractors have never let me forget that night: my dowsing and mind-reading abilities deserted me, in front of an audience of countless millions. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <span style="font-size: 9pt; font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB">Johnny, who was an amateur conjuror and a sceptic about the power of the mind, thought he’d caught me out. I knew I was simply having the worst off-night imaginable, like a tennis star who freezes on match point. But it was a turning point for me, and I learned more from that disaster than I could have possibly discovered by any easy route. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <span style="font-size: 9pt; font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB">Yesterday I was interviewed by NBC’s publicity team, who wanted to know what will make Phenomenon a show unlike any other. The answer lies with the character and charisma of the contestants. It’s about natural-born showmanship, creating acts that make the hairs stand up on the back of your neck. </span></p> <table align="right" border="0" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" width="350"> <tbody><tr> <td><img src="http://www.uri-geller.com/articles/weekly-news/2007/Images/150907-Criss-Nat-Me.jpg" height="243" width="325" /></td> </tr> </tbody></table> <p class="articleText"> <span style="font-size: 9pt; font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB">And it’s about the audience too. I’ll be urging viewers to video any phenomena that erupt spontaneously in their homes while they are watching — they can email the clips to us and we’ll be able to screen them live on air. That’s a genuinely thrilling prospect. </span> </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <table align="left" border="0" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" width="250"> <tbody><tr> <td><img src="http://www.uri-geller.com/articles/weekly-news/2007/Images/150907-peacock.jpg" height="201" width="150" /></td> </tr> </tbody></table><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> <span style="font-size: 9pt; font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB">Shipi and I were amazed to find ourselves standing under a mural depicting NBC’s logos down the decades. The rainbow swatches started out in 1956 as a peacock... with eleven feathers. Regular readers will know I regard eleven as much more than a lucky number: it signifies a connection to the cosmic consciousness, a gateway to infinite possibilities. It’s no coincidence that this peacock has eleven brilliant feathers. </span></p> <table align="left" border="0" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" width="250"> <tbody><tr> <td><img src="http://www.uri-geller.com/articles/weekly-news/2007/Images/150907-Criss-Me.jpg" height="243" width="325" /></td> </tr> </tbody></table> <span style="font-size: 9pt; font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB">My daughter Nat, who lives and works out here in the movie industry, has been driving me and Shipi round in her Mini Cooper. It’s the quintessentially British car for a very English young lady! But we’re off to Germany in the morning, and it’s a sure bet that my next despatch won’t be coming from a 115 degree desert. Fortunately, we’re booked on an airline where the seats </span><span style="font-size: 9pt; font-family: Arial;" lang="EN-GB">recline fully, into beds. I’m going to need mine!</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com25tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8908657.post-20918236361167281122007-10-04T19:04:00.000-07:002007-10-04T19:12:53.009-07:00NBC Phenomenon PreviewPremieres Wednesday, October 24 8/7c<br /><p>New LIVE competition that will blow your mind!<br /> <strong><br />PHENOMENON on NBC</strong> </p> <p>Mystifier/artist Criss Angel ("Criss Angel MINDFREAK") and famed mentalist Uri Geller will host this mysterious live competition series in which they will conduct an intensive search for the next great mentalist. The series tests 10 hopeful mentalists who must compete each week to demonstrate a wide spectrum of mystifying talents for a panel of weekly celebrity guests and a studio audience. Geller and Angel will assess the contestants but ultimately the winner's fate will be determined by the viewers at home. In addition to voting, each episode will also contain an interactive component to engage the at home audience. <a href="http://www.nbc.com/Video/index_scet.shtml#cat=2202">WATCH PREVIEW NOW</a></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com20tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8908657.post-20015201910359283062007-09-27T20:37:00.000-07:002007-09-27T20:39:30.319-07:00X-teacher, Prince Naz<!-- InstanceBeginEditable name="content" --> <table align="left" border="0" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" width="350"> <tbody><tr> <td><span style="font-size:100%;"><img src="http://www.uri-geller.com/articles/weekly-news/2007/Images/080907-naz.jpg" height="263" width="350" /></span></td> </tr> </tbody></table> <p class="articleText"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" ><span lang="EN-GB"> Prince Naseem Hamed, the former world champion boxer, was famed for his flamboyant ringside entrances, and I was secretly hoping that when he visited my home this week he'd arrive on the back of a gold-plated elephant, draped in a cloak of peacock feathers. For Naz, even that might have been low-key — he once had an elevator built at the Manchester Arena, to convey him to the ring, and for the demolition of another opponent he strutted up a catwalk runway.</span></span></p> <p class="TXGaz8pt"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" ><span lang="EN-GB">His smile was so broad, as he stepped from their car with his family on our driveway, I couldn't be disappointed. Naz is such an infectiously charismatic character, with a charming wife and three delightful children, that he doesn't need the razzle-dazzle — it's all in his personality.</span></span></p> <p class="TXGaz8pt"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" ><span lang="EN-GB">We first met more than a decade ago, at a TV studio, and I was so impressed by his star quality that I picked our photo together to be the icon for my website's gallery of celebrity photographs. Throughout my career, I've always kept a camera close at hand, and it could have been a rock star, from Elton John to Alice Cooper, or a movie hero, a political leader or even a great artist such as Dali who symbolised the cavalcade of famous names.</span></span></p> <p class="TXGaz8pt"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" ><span lang="EN-GB">I chose Prince Naseem, I think, because his pose radiated confidence and positive energy. One flash of that thousand-watt smile was like being hit by a bolt of inspiration. He wasn't simply the world champ — he believed he was the very best that ever had been or could be.</span></span></p> <p class="TXGaz8pt"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" ><span lang="EN-GB">His left-hand punch was so powerful, it frequently knocked out opponents with a single blow. But that was only half the story — he was credited with the fastest reflexes that had ever been seen in the ring. Naz dodged punches the way Superman dodged bullets.</span></span></p> <p class="TXGaz8pt"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" ><span lang="EN-GB">I told him of my training sessions with Muhammad Ali in the late Seventies, when we worked on visualisation techniques which the three-times world heavyweight champion had evolved instinctively. "Ali saw punches coming in slow motion," I told Naz, "because he believed he could literally slow down time. It was the power of his mind, not his fists, which defeated opponents."</span></span></p> <p class="TXGaz8pt"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" ><span lang="EN-GB">"That's exactly what I do," Naz replied, his brilliant smile giving way to a moment's seriousness. "That's why I'm the Greatest too."</span></span></p> <p class="TXGaz8pt"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" ><span lang="EN-GB">I'd love to take the confidence that bubbles out of Naseem Hamed and bottle it. We'd be trillionaires, because he'll never run dry. At its source is an unshakeable faith that he can be the very best at whatever he devotes his life to being, whether it's a boxer or a father — he's a dedicated family man.</span></span></p> <p class="TXGaz8pt"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" ><span lang="EN-GB">It can't be bottled, of course, but that doesn't mean the rest of us have to go without. Every human being is born with a well of self-confidence. Believe in yourself, and it starts to flow. The more it flows, the more you believe, until you're standing in a deluge, a cloud-burst of super-confidence. To start it gushing, all you have to do is create that first drop, with the magic words: "I believe in myself!"</span></span></p> <hr style="height: 3px;"> <p class="TXGaz8pt"> </p> <table align="left" border="0" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" width="350"> <tbody><tr> <td><span style="font-size:100%;"><img src="http://www.uri-geller.com/articles/weekly-news/2007/Images/080907-joy.jpg" height="263" width="350" /></span></td> </tr> </tbody></table> <p class="articleText"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" ><span lang="EN-GB">My former teacher Joy Philippou, who taught at my school in Cyprus back in the Fifties, celebrated her 80th birthday with a party at Los Toreros, a fabulous Spanish restaurant in London. She had a great deal to celebrate, because as well as clocking up eight decades (she makes me feel so young!) Joy was also basking in the afterglow of a brush with fame... on the X Factor.</span></span></p> <p class="TXGaz8pt"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" ><span lang="EN-GB">Dr Philippou, to give Joy her proper title, is a multi-talented woman: president of the Body, Mind and Soul International society which promotes holistic health, and the author of more than a dozen books. But as she demonstrated to the TV judges, she can also play the violin, the mandolin and the Hawaiian guitar — without instruments. Joy is a musical mimic, and like the best ventriloquists she doesn't even move her lips: the sounds come through her nose.</span></span></p> <p class="TXGaz8pt"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" ><span lang="EN-GB">She was one of a record 150,000 applicants to try out for the show, and she made it through the first rounds to the X-Factor 'Boot Camp', at Haythrop Park Hotel, Enstone in Oxfordshire. That wasn't a happy experience, though — the organisers admit this part of the show is "an endurance test," and Joy felt that she and other older contestants should have been warned how tough the conditions would be.</span></span></p> <p class="TXGaz8pt"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" ><span lang="EN-GB">With 200 other hopefuls, she spent four hours waiting in line on a Sunday night, and three-and-a-half hours more under a hot sun the next day, without so much as a toilet break. "There was no talking allowed," Joy said — "it really was scary."</span></span></p> <p class="TXGaz8pt"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" ><span lang="EN-GB">I know from my experience presenting Successor in Israel, and from my intense discussions with the producers of the forthcoming US version, Phenomenon, that it's essential to generate levels of tension and rivalry between performers on talent quests. That's what helps to make them such compelling viewing. But I believe it's going way too far when elderly ladies are subjected to hours of physical discomfort.</span></span></p> <p class="TXGaz8pt"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" ><span lang="EN-GB">Luckily, Joy is well able to stick up for herself. She concluded her performance by asking the judges if they thought they were running a concentration camp, and then told reporters that Simon Cowell was a "sadistic psychopath".</span></span></p> <p class="TXGaz8pt"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" ><span lang="EN-GB">Good for you, Joy! Any teacher who could keep me in line during my teens has got nothing to fear from television tyrants.</span></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com32tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8908657.post-82608786075489394622007-09-21T20:35:00.000-07:002007-09-27T20:36:47.443-07:00Arts & Cushions<p><span style="font-size: 9pt;font-family:Arial;" >Sometimes I sit down to write this column and an idea hits me for something completely different - a song, a piece of jewellery, an unbreakable umbrella. Or, in today’s case, a book. </span></p> <p><span style="font-size: 9pt;font-family:Arial;" >It’s a detective thriller about an Elvis impersonator who doubles as a serial killer. Every victim is murdered in a homage to one of the King’s hits - trampled to death with Blue Suede Shoes, garotted with a Good Luck Charm, or All Shook Up in a concrete mixer. </span></p> <p><span style="font-size: 9pt;font-family:Arial;" >Unless the editor gives me another 100 pages or so, I don’t think I’ll have room for a whole book today. If you can find a copy of my novel, Dead Cold, in a second-hand shop, you’ll get a taste of something similar, though - the psychic detective is a Sinatra fanatic and the blowtorch-wielding villain is Too Close For Comfort! </span></p> <p><span style="font-size: 9pt;font-family:Arial;" >As I was writing the book, Sinatra’s greatest albums were blasting from my stereo, providing the soundtrack. And that fabulous music came rushing back in my head when I saw Ol’ Blue Eyes staring at me from a window in London’s Wigmore Street. </span></p> <p><span style="font-size: 9pt;font-family:Arial;" >The shop specialises in art fabrics, with cloth painted in the style of geniuses like Dali and Warhol, or embossed with images of screen icons such as Marilyn Monroe. As soon as I saw the cushion decorated with a stark, black-and-white portrait of Sinatra, I had to have it. </span></p> <p><span style="font-size: 9pt;font-family:Arial;" >“That’s why they called him the Chairman of the Board,” joked Shipi, testing the cushion for softness. </span></p> <p><span style="font-size: 9pt;font-family:Arial;" >He started us all off. “Sinatra was the godfather of Lounge music,” Dan declared. “You Make Me Feel Sofa,” I said. </span></p> <p><span style="font-size: 9pt;font-family:Arial;" >Hanna trumped us all, though. As I settled onto my new cushion, she nudged me and said, “It Was A Very Good Rear.” </span></p> <hr /> <span style="font-size: 9pt;font-family:Arial;" > </span><p><span style="font-size: 9pt;font-family:Arial;" >There’s a marvellous restaurant, the French Horn, close to my home, with a reputation for extraordinary cuisine which brings visitors from all over Europe. I was introduced there to a energetic and visionary man, Richard Tibber, who told me over dinner that he was managing director of Zeon watches. </span></p> <p><span style="font-size: 9pt;font-family:Arial;" >“I’ve been in the watches business my whole career,” I exclaimed - “stopping them, starting them and making them spin. I’ve even halted Big Ben twice. Maybe I should be designing watches for you.” </span></p> <p><span style="font-size: 9pt;font-family:Arial;" >Richard loved the idea, and now the Uri Geller Positive Energy range is about to go into production. These are exceptional timepieces, powered by the kinetic energy of the owner’s body, with a piece of crystal embedded in the back which will be in constant contact with the skin. </span></p> <p><span style="font-size: 9pt;font-family:Arial;" >I have decorated the faces of the watches with symbols that focus on time’s infinite, unending power - the infinity sign, the 11-11 pairing and Einstein’s formula e=mc2 which defines all matter as energy. </span></p> <p><span style="font-size: 9pt;font-family:Arial;" >Even the glass cover of the watch is unique: some are encased in transparent pyramids. I chose that design for two reasons, the power of pyramids and the resonance of ancient Egyptian motifs. </span></p> <p><span style="font-size: 9pt;font-family:Arial;" >No one knows how a pyramid of the correct proportions, such as the Great Pyramid of Cheops, on the Giza Plateau outside Cairo, focuses energy, but there is no doubt of its extraordinary effects. The pyramid of glass and steel in my garden is constructed to exactly the same ratios, and everyone who steps inside it is struck by the sense of serenity and rejuvenation which floods through them. </span></p> <p><span style="font-size: 9pt;font-family:Arial;" >The potency of Egyptian symbolism has been at the front of my mind this week as I work on my latest line of jewellery. It’s going to feature brooches, earrings, necklace pendants and bracelets modelled on hieroglyphics. </span></p> <hr /> <table border="0" cellpadding="15" cellspacing="0" width="100%"> <tbody><tr> <!-- InstanceBeginEditable name="content" --> <td> <table align="left" border="0" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" width="350"> <tbody><tr> <td><img src="http://www.uri-geller.com/articles/weekly-news/2007/Images/010907Solly.jpg" height="243" width="325" /></td> </tr> </tbody></table> <p><span style="font-size: 9pt;font-family:Arial;" >One of the most sacred symbols of orthodox Jewish worship are the tefillim or phylactery, boxes containing holy Hebrew scripture which are worn bound to the head and arm, especially at prayer time. I was delighted to meet a shy young Jewish man, Solly, who visited my home with a gift of the tefillim from Rabbi Elvaz in Jerusalem. </span></p> <p><span style="font-size: 9pt;font-family:Arial;" >The rabbi was a fan of my show, Successor, earlier this year, and wanted to send me a thank you gift. It’s a good thing he sent Solly along too, to help me tie it properly. </span></p> <span style="font-size: 9pt;font-family:Arial;" > <!-- InstanceEndEditable --></span></td></tr> </tbody></table> <span style="font-size: 9pt;font-family:Arial;" > </span><hr /> <!-- InstanceBeginEditable name="content" --> <table align="left" border="0" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" width="60%"> <tbody><tr> <td><img src="http://www.uri-geller.com/articles/weekly-news/2007/Images/010907AnnieKevans.jpg" height="243" width="325" /></td> </tr> <tr> <td><img src="http://www.uri-geller.com/articles/weekly-news/2007/Images/010907AnnieKevansMe.jpg" height="243" width="325" /></td> </tr> <!-- InstanceEndEditable --> </tbody></table> <p><span style="font-size: 9pt;font-family:Arial;" >Annie Kevans is one of the most prominent portrait artists in Britain, whose career took a leap up when the noted collector Sir Charles Saatchi bought out her last exhibition, lock stock and barrel. Saatchi, who is married to the domestic goddess, Nigella Lawson, has often been criticised for his policy of buying art with a JCB digger, but there’s no doubt he can make a young artist’s reputation with one flash of his chequebook. </span></p> <p><span style="font-size: 9pt;font-family:Arial;" >The dynamic Flora Fairbairn, founder of the Collect Contemporary consultancy, contacted me to say Annie had completed a portrait of me. I explained that I have a policy of rarely buying art (I didn’t mention the Sinatra cushion) but I was always happy to exchange pieces. </span></p> <span style="font-size: 9pt;font-family:Arial;" >Annie and Flora were intrigued, and when they brought the portrait over I fell in love with it. They selected a piece of hand-decorated Poole pottery in return. The painting went straight on my wall, and it’s causing fewer problems than the sculpture by Gavin Turk which was delivered this week - it’s the rear bumper of a car, and at the moment it’s in our garage. I’m having some trouble persuading </span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com13