This was when I lived in NY. BF and I were picked from the audience and he dealt a poker game and explained everything as he did it and I was a foot away and STILL I couldn't figure out how he did it. It was also fun because it was early on in our dating life and it was kinda cool to be picked as a couple.

and I was a foot away and STILL I couldn't figure out how he did it.

This is considered to be the greatest form of sleight of hand. Only five or six people in the world can really do this.

Ricky Jay is the coolest.

some of the rape scenarios were more stressful than anything we do normally.

It's pretty hardcore. One of the kinds of scenarios Model Mugging has is called a reversal. The muggee lies on the ground as if asleep in bed or on a beach or something and the attacker pins her. You have to go from being completely passive to effectively responding to the attack. In my level 1 graduation class I was lying down and the mugger got on top of me and started telling me to spread my legs and all kinds of nasty stuff. I only know this because I have a tape of the graduation. The whole time he was pinning me and spewin' the filth I was looking for an opening so I could begin to fight him. Which I found and took advantage of quickly. (By "he" I mean the character the puffy guy instructor was playing. The instructor wanted me to succeed in beating the crap out of him.)

Actually being the one who was attacked in that situation was actually much easier than watching myself on tape being attacked. Because during the attack I was focused on what I needed to do to get out of the situation--not responding to what he wanted me to do. What he wanted was for me to get so scared and freaked out by what he was saying that I would freeze and do nothing to defend myself.

Jay entertained a packed house during a City Arts & Lectures appearance Thursday night, and hinted during an interview that he would love to bring his card-trick-themed "On the Stem" production to San Francisco. His favorite printer, Patrick Reagh, lives in the area, as does Persi Diaconis -- a Stanford statistics professor and sleight-of-hand icon with a career path as strange as Jay's.

t whimpers

Ricky Jay is the coolest.

WHY isn't he on Deadwood this season?! I loved him and his character.

We do have people that freeze when presented with yelling, usually because of a past history. But freezing at yelling is some of what we're trying to get them past, and it's hard to do without, well, yelling.

I get that. Freezing isn't my problem. Wanting to go to "end this - now" is. Of course, that's what you're teaching.

I ADORED getting asked up onstage at Ricky Jay's show and sitting at a table with him while he dealt a rigged poker game.

Wow. Ricky Jay is fantastic. That's so cool.

Totally jumping in to the conversation, but Besty or anybody, do you know if you can or should iron black-out lining?

I think the key differences between the MM rape scenarios and the krav ones is the performer -- when I work with my partner, and s/he pins me down, there's a natural limit to how uncomfortable they're comfortable making me. So it stays pretty physical.

When we up the stress it's usually in standup scenarios -- having a gun held to my head while being showered with obscenities is terrifying, but ... different from the rape scenario. Less personal. Less dirty.

when I work with my partner, and s/he pins me down, there's a natural limit to how uncomfortable they're comfortable making me.

I'd imagine. That's one of the reasons the MM organizations have such strict rules about relationships between instructors and students.