Thu, 19 May 2005

review: mr magnifico’s afternoon distraction
Mr. Magnifico’s Afternoon Distraction, a kind of variety show for children and unwed mothers, is well-hosted by Mr. Magnifico, who walks out from behind a Lynchain red velvet curtain dressed in the sort of suit you see Seventh Day Adventists wearing, a pair of knockoff Ray-Ban Wayfarer sunglasses and a dark red fez. He’s holding a martini glass and obviously a bit loose already, slightly slurring his sibilance-stripped s’es, and as he introduces the day’s performers (a new bit by the Eight Dollar Puppet Theater, a “narrative clairvoyant” who professes to have psychically discovered and transcribed Bruno Schulz’s missing novel The Messiah, and an Edification Playhouse story about the dignity of employment) he shows a handful of shiny nickels to the kids in the audience and then throws the handful offstage, and as the kids bolt up and scramble for change Mr. Magnifico sets himself down among the moms and starts in about how he used to be a sailor. Magnifico whistles out the side of his mouth and his assistant Fabulous Jiminez takes the kids into the other room, where they make paper-mache masks which are later sold to west coast upscale boutiques as Guatemalan conquistador masks while Magnifico mixes more martinis, cues the house band and plays vaguely pornographic cartoons from the ’50s until the kids come back to the main room. At this point the actual proper show begins, now that the audience is primed for the sort of sophisticated fare Magnifico favors: he refuses to descend into the sort of scatological material (“working brown”, he calls it) so popular among his competitors on The Heinous Anus Happy Hour and Purple Poopitudinous Presents. Mr. Magnifico bypasses all this with the gentleman’s art of prestidigitation: all of his tricks somehow end up with Magnifico and two special helpers from the audience chained inside a trunk and buried alive for about thirty minutes while the day’s performers do their thing. On this day, tragedy strikes as the Eight Dollar Puppet Theater bursts into flames as part of some elaborate retribution from one of the other notorious puppetry gangs working this side of the Mississippi and three kids, already horrified after seeing their mothers seemingly buried alive fifteen minutes prior, go into shock and have to be taken to the studio cafeteria for pudding. Finally, Magnifico and moms appear from behind the red curtain to a smattering of applause turning to gasps as Magnifico realizes he has somehow made his pants disappear. Fabulous Jiminez covers his boss’s indiscretion with his cape of gold, refracting the stage lights and blinding one of the cameramen. A spurned husband, disguised as a portly eight year old, rushes the stage screaming “Sic semper adulteris!” and firing three round before being crippled to death by security, at which point various moms flocked to Magnifico’s side, only to find that he had seemingly caught all three bullets between his teeth. At that point I had to get up to go to the bathroom, and by the time I got back the show was replaced by an old episode of Captain Steele. Two thumbs up.
(12:13.05.19.2005) [/ana] #