De Nieuwe Uri Geller—Hoax or not?

I, like a lot of other people, wondered if possibly the guest judge would be Michael Jackson. It just seemed to fit. I thought it answered his secretiveness on the previous show and his lack of response when asked if it was Michael Jackson over the internet. I didn’t get my hopes up too much, but I thought that there was a strong possibility.

Now, I know that there are many people out there that are mad at Uri Geller, because they believe that this was all a hoax to raise the number of viewers. His secretiveness about this mystery person was just to raise peoples’ hopes so they would watch the show.

Now, I’m not sure what to make of this. If he was truly supposed to have a mystery guest, the reason given behind this man (he slips up and says “he” and “him” instead of “this person” on April 9) not coming is strange to me. The reason given? This person is too controversial and the questions that surround him would not be appropriate for kids watching the show. Uri Geller’s exact words are, “It would not have been right to show this to kids watching De Nieuwe Uri Geller.” This? He had said before that he wanted to hypnotize the guest. Is that the “this” he was talking about? Come on, kids watching the show have probably seen worse than a hypnotization of a controversial person. I mean, before The Joker’s most recent act he almost always did something with blood and gore. Isn’t that worse?

Viewers are given a warning:

Waarschuwing!
De meeste optredens in deze show zijn levensgevaarlijk alleen
goed getrainde, professionele mentalisten kunnen deze uitvoeren
Doe dit
thuis nooit na!

Warning!
Most performances in this show are
dangerous, and only highly trained professional mentalists can perform them.
Do not try this at home!

If this doesn’t keep people from letting their kids watch the show, then I don’t see how a hypnotization would upset them.

I just wonder if he will ever have this mystery guest on the show, because I would love to know who it was supposed to be.

Believe.

How to spot a lie—Ben Evenstad, Brian Oxman, and the last photograph

So as most people know, Brian Oxman came out a few months ago and said that the last photograph that National Photo Group took of Michael Jackson was a fake. He said that instead of it being Michael lying inside the ambulance, it was Michael laying on a stage, and that Ben Evenstad and Chris Weiss somehow photoshopped it.

Let’s look at these interviews again. First, Ben Evenstad’s interview: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VR-HSc2aM4.

0:35 He talks about his friendship with Michael Jackson and shows pictures of them together.

1:00-1:30 Check out Ben Evenstad’s eyes. He keeps looking up and to the right. The only time he looks to the left is when he is remembering Chris’s name. If he was trying to remember this entire event he would be looking up to the left.

2:45 He is asked if there was an issue with selling the photo. Check out his eyes again. Every time he pauses to think of what else to say, he glances up and to the right.

4:05 “Chris and the other people that were there that day and the other d…and uh, are a part of that agreement are going to make a lot of money.” After he slips, he quickly looks off to the right and keeps repeating “and uh” until he has come up with something to say.

If you watch him throughout the entire interview, you will notice that he hardly ever looks at the interviewer. He either looks to the right or he looks down at the ground and never keeps eye contact for more than a few seconds. To me, he seems extremely nervous.

Second, Brian Oxman’s interview: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbGrrNyMpZY.

0:30-1:05 “The photograph that it is taken from is Michael laying on a stage with his head leaning back.” Did you catch the head shake “no” at the end of that?

0:45 “It could possibly be a real picture, but I’d give it a 99.9% chance that it was photoshopped.” He shakes his head “no” throughout this part as well. 99.9% chance that it was a fake? Where have we heard that before? Uri Geller said that there was a 99.9% chance that his mystery guest would show up and he didn’t. Interesting, but you decide if it is connected.

0:55 He says, “It is a fake”, while shaking his head “yes”.

The biggest question to me is that if Brian Oxman knew that the photo was not real why did he wait eight months before saying that it was a fake? Better late than never, I guess. Still, I do believe that the picture is a fake, but I don’t believe that it is a photoshopped version of Michael lying on a stage. I mean come on. If you can make the picture that was shown at 0:40 in the Brian Oxman interview look like the picture in the ambulance, good for you I’d love to see it, but the angles are completely off, and I don’t see how it will work. Instead, I believe that over the course of those “other days” the picture was staged, because without that picture many more people would be questioning his death.

Believe.