You don't even have to be a gamer to enjoy QuakeCon.  They had a number of entertainers come in to kill the (practically nonexistent) time.  I wish I remembered this guy's name.  I really need to write some of this stuff down.  He was in the BYOC area doing card tricks and informed us that we had to go see him at 6:00 along with the hypnotist following him.  I took some videos of the card tricks, but the BYOC area was too dark to see them well, so I won't bother sharing.  I will, however, post lots of pictures of the show.

He started off with some typical magic tricks.  Here he's "using chi" to determine if the card holder is lying or telling the truth about the card he's holding against his side.

The above trick was new to me, but another magician performed it later, so I guess it's somewhat standard routine.  He "hammered" a large nail into his nostril...

... then had an audience member pull it out.  Something sprayed out.  "Oh!  It's blood!" (dramatic pause), "No, it'snot."

Here he demonstrates how to remove an inflamed appendix.  The guy was a riot, but the magic tricks were just a warmup for the main event: hypnosis.  After a while he finally introduced the amazing hypnotist he had talked so much about...

... himself, with a different jacket.  He started off by demonstrating the power of suggestion.  The premise was, if you puckered up along with him when he took a bite out of that juicy lemon, you were a good candidate for hypnosis.  As he was cutting open the lemon, somebody from t he crowed yelled out, "Lemon party!"  He just stopped in his tracks and laughed, then said, "You need to get out more."

He then requested volunteers.  It was a mad rush, and there were far more volunteers than seats available on stage.

Some of the volunteers didn't give up so easily.

The lights were turned down low and the hypnosis began.

After bringing everybody into a state of relaxation, the hypnotist began manipulating his subjects, lifting each of their arms and telling them it was stiff as steel; immovable.

Some of the participants were a little more relaxed than others.

"Relax."

Now they're convinced that there's something funny on television.  I might as well point out, if you haven't noticed already, that these two people were the "stars" of the show.  They were the hypnotic equivalent of being wasted.  As you'll see later, they believed pretty much everything they were told.

Now it's a more serious show.

Hypnosis can even increase people's perception of gravity or make them feel they're stuck to the ground and can't get up.

Plop.

Now he tells everybody that there's an awful smell coming from the person sitting next to them.  Then he went around and asked people what was wrong.  About all he could get out of them was, "Gak,"  or "Ghagch," as seen in the above picture.  The only two intelligible response he got were, "You're supposed to shower at QuakeCon!" and, "I think this kid $#!% his pants!"

Next he told them the smell was worse, and it was coming from them.  "Why didn't anybody tell me I smelled this bad?!"

This was the best part.  He assigned people different occupations and various other nonsensical things.  The guy holding the chair is a superhero.  I didn't catch what name he gave himself, but his self-proclaimed superpower was that he could hear everything.  The girl to his right just received a new shoe phone.  Every time the hypnotist said "stuck", it would ring.  She didn't try to take it off  before answering it.

This fellow was a dancer and showed off his killer new dance move.

I don't have a picture of it, but the look on one girl's face when somebody walked through the cement she just spent the past several minutes smoothing was priceless.  It was the same girl who pulled the nail from the entertainer's nose earlier.

Here the hypnotist tells his subjects that they've bet their entire life savings in a horse race, and the louder they yell and harder they stomp, the better their horse does.

It was pretty chaotic.

Some people were on the verge of tears when their horse lost.  "It can't be that bad, can it?"  All she could do was whimper.

This guy dropped to his knees and started pulling out his last few dollars from his wallet.  "But wait, you don't have a ticket!  If you placed a bet, you'd have a ticket in your hand.  You forgot to place your bet!"  It took a lot of convincing for some people.  One poor kid had a piece of paper in his hand and started freaking out.

"When I turn around, you'll notice the strangest thing.  The back of my suit has completely fallen off."

Now when he said this, I was just imagining the back of the suit jacket falling off, but judging from the reactions, most people pictured a lot more than that!

Some people even tried to cover him up with sheets of paper, jackets, whatever they could find.

The real kicker was when the hypnotist said that the back of his suit repaired itself and the front had fallen off.  This guy totally flipped out.  I wish I had a better picture, but the other one was just a big blur.  At that point, the hypnotist decided to really mess with them and started doing this little dance.  Step, step, hop hop hop.

When it was all said and done, several people had completely turned their chairs around so they wouldn't have to look at his frontless suit.

Last picture!  The participants are convinced that they're glued to their seats and can't get up until the hypnotist shakes their hands.  Some people were rather eager to go.  One guy about walked off the stage with his chair.

There were several other things that happened that I simply was not able to capture on solid state storage.  He had the hypnotized people (hypnotees?) go back into the audience for a bit and say/do different things when he said certain words.  Some examples are, "Somebody stole my belly button and I want it back!", "I've got on my leather underpants and I'm looking for a date!", and the two "stars" acting as Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner.

One thing I seemed to have missed was when the hypnotist dropped pieces of paper on the ground saying they were large sums of money, and that whoever picked it up had the option of keeping it or returning it.  Most of the people opted to return it.  He was rather impressed and stated that he had never had that many people return it before.  I think it's just a testament to the fact that gamers are generally good people.

[continue to page 4 - Speeches / Q&A Panels]