By now whatever has hit that fan will have hit. It doesn’t matter to me whether or not you agree with what I did. The main thing to bear it mind was that I did SOMETHING.Those who may complain about the details, the ethics of fighting fire with fire or whether or not we have to take some sort of higher moral ground need to step aside and let FORCE ONEdo what it has to do. Every day that goes by with the likes of Browne, Coffey and whoever pitches the woo in your neighborhood is a day that denies bereaved people their right to have peace with their departed loved ones, sick or diseased people proper access to competent medical care and the personal freedoms to be able to decide for themselves what and how their own futures will play out.

Don’t get me wrong. I have little confidence that the rubes who lined up alongside me that night will ever care a whit about truth or what a person like Sylvia can do. They don’t care, take joy in dwelling on the misfortunes of others or are blissfully and willingly ignorant. I have pity on them all, but the head of the snake must be removed to have any lasting effect.

It was never my sole intention to try to save any of them from what they crave anymore than how I might vainly attempt to dissuade a drug addict or a alcoholic from destroying their life. I would like to make difference for them , but I’m not stupid enough to think standing up and calling Sylvia out as a fraud in the crowd that night would have made any difference at all. In fact, it’s my opinion that I would have been booed and abruptly removed like any of the countless other people who have tried in vain to call her out on her treachery in public. People make choices and they have to live with them.

No, I was going for something more dramatic and hopefully more effective. It was SYLVIA HERSELF whose bow I meant to send a warning shot across. She now knows that there will be people like myself standing in line with the other sheep no matter where she goes. If there is any doubt left in her mind that she is not safe to tread the boards unchallenged, last Tuesday night at the Universal Amphitheatre should have given her pause to consider. Hopefully, FORCE ONE has lighted a fuse in the hearts and minds of many other outraged citizens (skeptical or not) who previously might have thought they were helpless in the face of these monsters. The first prong of my two-pronged pitchfork was to get in her face.

I have always admired Tyrone Power’s supreme moment in “Nightmare Alley”(1948) when as mentalist The Great Stanton, he gets the entire audience in the palm of his hand by blurting out a rambling bunch of pre-planned “visions,” then crumples into an unconscious pile on the stage. I have tried this ruse a few times in seance situations and always found it a show stopper. When I have had the nerve to apply this technique, I will lie perfectly still until someone wonders aloud if I’m okay or attempts to rouse me by shaking me back into consciousness. This is albeit a shaky premise for the standard crowd, but in this instance at Universal; this was anything but a standard crowd and as any good skeptic knows, extraordinary claims require, …well you know, …extraordinary bullshit. I have always admired Tyrone Power’s supreme moment in “Nightmare Alley”(1948) when as mentalist The Great Stanton, he gets the entire audience in the palm of his hand by blurting out a rambling bunch of pre-planned “visions,” then crumples into an unconscious pile on the stage. I have tried this ruse a few times in seance situations and always found it a show stopper. When I have had the nerve to apply this technique, I will lie perfectly still until someone wonders aloud if I’m okay or attempts to rouse me by shaking me back into consciousness. This is albeit a shaky premise for the standard crowd, but in this instance at Universal; this was anything but a standard crowd and as any good skeptic knows, extraordinary claims require, …well you know, …extraordinary bullshit.

In the few minutes I had to cobble together my plan that night, I had to make a choice of my own: stay in the comfort zone and go home that night unfulfilled or go over the top and face the consequences. I chose the latter.

Most of the audience had been given red tickets as they entered which were to be used as a raffle. If your number was called, you were invited to come down to the stage and get in line for a reading. Since I arrived quite early on, I had not been given a number, but I figured… who would check the numbers anyway? If I just got up and came down to the stage, nobody was likely to look at my ticket. I was fully prepared to go up anyway.

As it turned out, three other people from a local skeptic group had been given tickets. When I told them during intermission what steps I had already taken and that I really wanted to shake up the audience, each kindly proffered their ticket.

But wouldn’t you know it, …the last number Montel called out was indeed my number! Providence? Hmmmmmm. Maybe it was my spirit guide or something. I might not have been able to summon the courage I needed to get up if it hadn’t been a genuine number, but when I looked down at the ticket in my hand, there it was. I knew I had to act. My number was up.

On the way down to the stage area and while I listened to the other questions, I determined that I would go into a trance of my own, playing on Sylvia’s own psychic shtick, acting as if the voices of the dead people I had memorized from my list were speaking through me to her. I wanted to tell her they were angry that she had put their parents and relatives through such pain. It worked beautifully, but by the time I had uttered the second name, Montel(who has obviously been hired to “moderate” Sylvia’s answers, prime her and keep her on track) began to interrupt as both of them quickly figured out what was going on. It would have been difficult to continue any other way and make any sort of dignified escape from the spotlight at that point.

So, staying in character; I pulled a “Tyrone” and slumped to the floor, making sure to take the microphone and stand with me for good measure. I stayed inert with eyes closed on the floor for several seconds waiting to hear what would happen. I was shocked when I heard no further comment from Sylvia about me or my condition and that she quickly went right on with the next person in line. That alone should have told any compassionate human beings who happened to be in the audience what an uncaring individual she is. I might have been dead for all she cared. Truth is, – she probably hoped by then that I was dead.

Soon I could hear one of her handlers tell the usher to call 911. I quickly surmised this ballgame would be a big mistake for me to continue. I wasn’t about to incur any ambulance bills, carry on my act to the hospital or fake anything any longer. I told the assembled throng that I was okay and shambled up the stairs accompanied by two Amphitheatre guards.

I was escorted to a back stage area, where the in-house first aid person showed up to check me out. She was a nice helpful young lady in her twenties who skillfully took my pulse and blood pressure. Both turned out to be normal. She was as puzzled as everybody else. I tried to tell her that I might have just lapsed into a light trance or not eaten enough that night, but when she began to take out triplicate paperwork that looked official, I knew the game was up. The guards had gone back to watching the show, so I spilled the beans to her. I told her I was a psychic investigator who was investigating the claims of Sylvia Browne and trying to get her to look like the fraud she is in front of the audience. She lightened up and was very interested in a non-official capacity. And now here’s the kicker as far as she was concerned:

After telling her in no uncertain terms that I was a skeptic and out to nail this phony medium, she asked me for a reading! Unbelievable! She actually said to me, “Will my husband get a good job soon.? For me, this was one of the most surreal parts of the whole evening. This was a staff EMT person! She was trained in science and facts, yet she still thought I could give her some sort of advice even after I told her I was an outright fraud.

We are in deep trouble folks. If this sort of situation isn’t ripe for reality television, I don’t know what is.

You can’t write comedy like this.

For those wondering what the second prong of my two pronged attack was, it was my own way of trying to generate some curiosity in the same names I blurted out to the audience that night. I trusted (perhaps naively) that many people would want to know who exactly I was talking about. This part of the deal make take years to really make a difference, but it was worth a shot.

Before leaving for the show that night, I typed up four sqaures on a sheet of 8×11 copy paper with these names in bold 30pt. type:

Opal Jo Jennings

Terrence Farrell

Saga Mine

Holly Krewson

Lynda McClelland

No explanations were given, just those key words and names in bold black print. I then copied around 60 copies of this page, then cut them into quarters, giving me 240 tight little notes I could comfortably fit in my coat pocket.

I got to the Universal Amphitheatre early. In fact I was one of the first people there. Right away I went into the men’s restroom. Once I was sure I was alone and not seen, I took out my bundle from my pocket and put small piles of these “announcements” on every flat sink, urinal and toilet surface I could find. In a venue like the Universal Amphitheatre, this is considerable. The restrooms are large lounge areas that service dozens of people. After finishing my distribution of these mini-flyers, I went into the main room and waited for the place to fill up. The room only partially filled, leaving huge gaps of seating. I would say it was about a third full, and even this space was curtained off from the room’s full potential. As we got closer to showtime, I went back in to see if anyone had “cleaned-up” my little diversion. Everything was still there as I had left it.

Right after it was announced that there would be a fifteen minute intermission (to allow Sylvia’s son to do readings and her husband to sell cheap jewelry in the lobby) I went back to check on the restroom. It was still basically untouched.

After everyone came back into the room, it was assured tha a goodly proportion of the male crowd had either seen these “prompts” or had them in their possession. I could have printed www.stopsylvia.com on them too, but decided that to do so would only be something easy for the believers to ignore or throw away in their righteous indignation.

With just the names, my hope was to engender curiosity. Or if the people reading them already knew what these key words represented, spur them on to anger or some display of dissension. Granted, it was only males I was allowed time enough to cover, but my feeling was that most of the women were died -in-wool- shut eyes (believers) and that men or husbands who may have been dragged to the show by their wives would be more likely to share my angst.

At the end of the show as I was walking through the lobby, a guy came up and showed me one of the yellow notes and asked, “…What’s this all about?” I shrugged and replied that I didn’t know but that it was weird that those were the same names I kept hearing in my head. I suggested that he go home and Google them and see what comes up. He then asked me to sign his paper. I scrawled my name and turned away, but not before he asked to shake my hand. Apparently, at least one person was already on my team. I’m still not sure what he thought. After all, I’m not a mindreader…

I can only hope several hundred other people might stop and think about what they heard. This is what I do. This is what YOU should be doing if you have the will to make a difference. Think up your own stratedgies, It needn’t be quite as confrontive or dramatic. But DO SOMETHING!

In a strange up-date to my previous post: As I mentioned earlier, one of Sylvia’s lines that was memorable to me was telling someone that “coins” would be a sign that their spirit guide was trying to reach them. Most of us find a coin or two in the street once in awhile and we don’t attach any particular significance to it. It just happens. I never thought much of it but to remind myself when this occurs that, “…a penny saved is a penny earned.” Today when I came to work, I found a pile of pennies placed next to the bottom of a light pole outside. Of course, searching for deep meaning in this after my experience, I was momentarily struck by the oddness of this event. Here was a pile of coins – not just one or two. Was it a sign? I counted them out and there are 52 pennies. Could this be the Saga miners or some of the other dead entities trying to tell me they are with me? Weaker minds might think so.

AND THIS JUST IN:Through sources I am not at liberty to divulge, Sylvia’s own spirit guide Francine has contacted me in a dream (as well as posting as JREF’s Swift blog and here at skepticblog in the comments section) letting me know that afte Sylvia’s December 29th performance, she is no longer interested in being involved in any capacity with Sylvia Browne. She has handed in her resignation vision to Sylvia after having reached her limit with Browne’s trashy behavior and has now offered to become my own spirit guide to help me in my FORCE ONE endeavors. Stay tuned for more thrills…

JREF Swiftblog and Sylvia Gets Punked Video at: http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/swift-blog/825-sylvia-browne-one-cool-cucumber.html

“And the crowd was stilled. One elderly man, wondering at the sudden silence, turned to the Child and asked him to repeat what he had said. Wide-eyed, the Child raised his voice and said once again, “Why the Emperor has no clothes. He’s naked!”

– The Emperor’s New Clothes

Keep Em’ Freaked…

French One-Sheet Poster for “Nightmare Alley” – Mandatory Viewing for any skeptical thinker! Available at Amazon.com