This past weekend, I went to my third installment of the annual murder mystery party. Those of you who are my long term readers will know that there is a theme to the event, this year’s was old Hollywood, and everyone is given a character to play. Each character has certain goals to achieve during the course of the evening and in the process you are supposed to figure out who the murderer is of one of the characters earlier in the night. Two years ago I was a shaman of an island. Last year I was a crooked, gambling doctor. This year, I was a mentalist. My character’s goals were the following:
- Get myself booked on a TV show.
- Become a spiritual advisor to a rich and famous Hollywood star.
- Get an agent.
- Help out my friend, another character player, any way I could.
So, essentially, what I have to do is go around and talk to the other characters – agents, producers, actors, etc, and try to swing a deal. I do this all in character of my own, in my case, a mentalist. Yes, I know, playing such a character was a complete and total stretch for me, I don’t know how I accomplished it.
Indeed, I brought along a few mentalism effects including my bending spoons, hypnotized spoon, and floating dollar bill (well, that last one is more magic than mentalism). But I also grew out a goatee for two weeks beforehand in preparation for the movie. My goal, of course, was to look like my favorite mentalist – Derren Brown.
Gee, we look like twins (look through the glasses).
But after the party was over, when I got home I shaved it off. I did not like that goatee at all. I found that it got in the way; it was kind of pokey and felt kind of “sticky” around the edges of my mouth. I was looking forward to removing it, even if it did make me look pretty cool. I considered speaking with an English accent as well but thought better of it. My accent totally sucks.
As I was saying, while at the party every character has their own goals, and mine are above. One of my special powers was the ability to hypnotize people by getting them to look into my eyes or have them stare at my watch. Once hypnotized they would say or do anything I told them but would stop being under my spell after 10 minutes. My character was not supposed to do anything nasty, and so I didn’t.
Now here’s the thing: my character accomplished his goals in the first 20 minutes. The first person I spoke with was an agent and we swung a deal. I spoke with a TV producer and got a commitment for a TV deal or a part in a movie (gee, if only it were that easy in real life). I even had a couple of Hollywood types entertain the notion of me becoming their spiritual advisor, although of goals 1 & 2, they were not and AND but actually an OR. I also managed to secure my good buddy character a role in a movie, although that came later. I provided assistance to him the entire game (except at the end).
Having accomplished my goals, I started to wonder what to do. Well, I decided to go about trying to solve the murder. I had already made a list of notes of people who might have had a motive before the game began. Then, during the game, I used my other abilities to get people to reveal secrets about themselves and then use that information to draw some conclusions. And in the end, after the game completed, everyone put in their votes for who they thought the killer was.
I scrutinized who I thought the killer might be, and I narrowed it down to two characters. One character I spoke with for about 5 minutes and got nothing useful other than that he seemed incompetent, and the other character I never even spoke with at all. As it turned out, I was missing some important information about both characters but I didn’t find that out until after the game. I wasn’t sure who it was, but I guessed that the odds were 2/3 to 1/3 that one lady was responsible for the death of the main character. I discovered that the murder victim was having an affair with two people – a famous producer and an up-and-coming actress (who I never spoke with). I figured that the up-and-coming actress got mad at her beloved about the other women and conspired to kill the guy. She was the only one I could think of with a clear motive. Ergo, I put her name down (the mafia doing it for the money didn’t make sense; they need him alive to collect the debts). Other characters did not have a clear motive, or when I asked them their secret it ruled them out. It was really a process of elimination and a guess.
When time came to reveal the killer, I got it right! Booyah! Not only that, but I was the only person to get it right out of everyone at the party! As it turns out, I got the motive right but there were details that I had missed; it turns out that didn’t matter. What does matter is that I was right and I was the only one to get it right.
I felt pretty good about that.
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