Podcast: The Ride - Criss Angel's Amystika with Jason Woliner

Episode Date: August 18, 2023

Jason Woliner (Paul T. Goldman, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm) returns to the show for the finale of Sin City Nights to discuss Criss Angel's ill-fated Amystika show. And engage in some good old fashioned parody satire parody. Allegedly, allegedly, ALLEGEDLY. Drenched After Dark at Marquee Nightclub ft. DJ Spider up at The Second Gate: Patreon.com/PodcastTheRide Listen to Podcast: The Ride Ad-Free on Forever Dog Plus: http://foreverdogpodcasts.com/plus FOLLOW PODCAST: THE RIDE: https://twitter.com/PodcastTheRide https://www.instagram.com/podcasttheride BUY PODCAST: THE RIDE MERCH: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/podcast-the-ride PODCAST THE RIDE IS A FOREVER DOG PODCAST https://foreverdogpodcasts.com/podcasts/podcast-the-ride Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Forever, dog. Warning, the following podcast is the final installment of our Las Vegas month. It contains garbage fans, efficient firefighters, Rich Little's personal YouTube videos, and magic set to new metal. Get ready to have your mind freaked as Jason Walner returns to talk Chris Angel's Amistica on Podcast The Ride, Sin City Nights. Welcome to the last Podcast The Ride Sin City Nights. The final penny in the Little Shop of Horrors penny slot.

Audrey 2 will grow no more. Sadly, I'm Scott Gerrard, near Jason Sheridan. I'm out here in the desert, digging my grave. Boy, how much money do you owe that little shop of horror penny slots? Mike Carlson, fellow host, has a weapon pointed at me. Just like the end of the one scene in Casino.

I'm about to finally do it. We're about to make a new haunted casino property blossom or haunted A's stadium. So you're saying I'm about to kill you, bury your body in the desert, and then build a casino on top of you so it's haunted. So you're saying I'm about to kill you, bury your body in the desert, and then build a casino on top of you, so it's haunted.

So it's haunted like the Luxor. Wow. So as you can see, things took a turn. Sin City Nights was a bad idea. It destroyed the podcast, destroyed everything. Can you imagine the people

when they go to this hotel, and they're like, well, there was this ghost, but he was just sleeping in our bed all day. Like he was haunting us, but it was really but he was just sleeping in our bed all day. Like he was haunting us, but it was really, he was just kind of like lazing around. That's Jason's ghost. Yeah, yeah.

Steve was watching. Didn't bother me. He turned King of Queens on the TV and he's been watching a six hour block. He started smiling. Yeah. He said, don't disturb my slumber and put ghostly earplugs in.

Yeah. So that would be nice. That would be like a real novelty, I feel like. Well, look at that. You got the story in. I knew we wouldn't escape the month without the retelling of the Jason falling asleep. Yeah, but it was in a different context.

So it was a smart way. You did. The ghost context did add something to it. That's right. Hey, well, we're here. We're wrapping it up. And before we shoot Jason in the head, well, we're going to have a little bit of fun on the way out.

You know, we've done a lot. We've done so much in this series. We've talked 90s Vegas. We've talked modern Vegas. We went to Vegas. We blended some groove. But there are two big missing presences thus far in this series that we're going to rectify here on the last one. One is today's topic, Las Vegas's loudest illusionist chris angel we

love to talk chris and we're gonna do it and we're gonna do it with the help of somebody who has been on almost every podcast the ride series i don't think we've done an extremely barely an extended thing uh without our guest uh you know somebody we can trust somebody we can count on that's why we call him the harland rust of podcast the ride from paul tigelman and parts of the movie film it's jason waller hey guys thanks so much for having me back great to be back so happy you could do it your firm guiding hand much like sheriff rust i don't know is he a sheriff i don't know what are you there's so much mythology we've been focused on so much other stuff find out when we all surely go see rust the day it

comes out and what will definitely be a theater and not an awkward like to be released well the tension of that movie is going to be like is it the scene yet like is it oh oh they're in the church like it's gonna be if you if you see an exterior but then wait it was a trick and then just a horse went by and you don't go into the church it's good like like that yeah we'll all be on pins and needles is the first look it's horrible it's a horrible tragedy he the man should be executed probably right after but just for his Trump impression. But in that scene, like the first half of the scene, like he'll like, what's going to happen is like, it'll be whatever it is, a showdown.

And he pulls his gun and then there'll be a cut. And suddenly he'll be like 30 pounds fatter. He'll be like all tired looking. Like it'll be suddenly you're into reshoots. Bags under his eyes that look like you drew it with a marker. Every time you would see him, then he would get puffier bags under his eyes. He happened to rust.

He's going to be all bags for the second half of the movie. He's had three kids, too. You can tell in his face. New kids since. The only thing that can ease my pain is more children. Wait, what were you saying? I said he needs to keep working because he's had so many kids. He's got to put those kids through college, you know?

Wait, when's it number 14? When did that happen? I just love every time I come here. I was originally referred to as the Alec Baldwin of Podcast the Ride because I had done it a bunch of times, much like he at one point had hosted SNL a lot of times. At one but in the before time before the stuff happened

yes they would allow him on the show. Now we always have to talk about this horrible tragedy for a few minutes There's no way to have jokes about a genuine Avoiding something actually terrible. Yeah yeah well yes. well that's why i propose uh

could i now be maybe known as the kevin spacey of podcast the ride in that um i'm innocent of any wrongdoing oh that's right yes it has passed through several courts of law yes there is not a problem that means problem i'm back I'm doing well I'm working again Completely accepted Three of my accusers Have been found dead That's true Look it up

Yeah he's right Look it up Kevin Spacey Kills people But those ones Aside Most media Is not willing to cover it

The way we are here On Podcast The Rock So until it gets more out there And and we've been through the trials. Yeah, well, absolutely. Take it. The Kevin Spacey of Podcast the Ride. The completely innocent man of some things. Jason, I'm so happy you could close out Vegas with us,

especially because we've spent so much of the last over a month talking about things that have gotten our attention because of you. We've talked a little bit of Criss Angel and Kablib. Copperfield, of course, comes up all the time and the Blue 32 show. You can't not talk about it. Before we dive into Criss specifically, I mean, I guess, what was my question? I guess like, are those like your two favorite findings

or is there like some hot new Vegas finding of yours that you're willing to share or anything you think's like on the bubble? You've just like gotten, brought so many amazing souvenirs back from Vegas. Those are, I mean, yeah, Chris, I mean, yeah, the Copperfield show I've seen seven times now, I think.

Wow. And it's one of my favorite things in the whole world. And Chris, yeah we've seen we've seen a lot of his shows we've seen him through a lot of phases i'm excited to chat a mystica yeah um his great folly perhaps and uh it's pure numbers wise the numbers aren't good i went i went uh earlier this year i think um there's nothing on that level right now uh except i did see Rich Little's show, which is worth seeing. Oh, man. Mike was so disappointed.

We wasn't playing. The weekend we were there. It was a rare weekend off. Did he die? Is he dead? Dude, you're dying. It's possible. Imagine that's the only reason we wouldn't be playing.

It's crazy. It is like a living funeral for a person who's there, like three feet from you um but all of his jokes he's like so right wing and it's all about how like biden is an idiot and like and kamala what the hell is she smiling about all the time does he try to do kamala i hope i think he just does maybe a smiling face um but most of the show is him kind of like settling old like grudges and just like like bashing people who are long dead where he'll just be like i forget there was a who is that it was like a character actor from the 60s and he's like i was guest hosting for johnny one night and Oh, the guy who played the really, like, was it the Nazi?

It wasn't the Nazi. The really flamboyant Dick Shawn, I think, in the producers. Right. Okay. And he's like, this guy, I don't know what he was on, but this guy was a damn idiot. And then he just moves on. Like, there's no joke.

So it's really just him on stage talking about who is now dead was an idiot or bothered him. Is Dick Shawn in Captain EO? Is he the guy, Captain EO, the hologram guy? Yeah, I think you're right. That might be my only con. To tie it into things. Yeah, I think you're right.

There is a way. Did the audience seem to know who he was? How old was the average audience member? Very old. Probably in their 70s. Yeah. I went with a few friends, and we were the only people younger than that. And what was the venue?

The venue is the comedy club in, I believe, the Tropicana, which is like a chain. Maybe it's like the Laugh Factory or something, but it's just like a depressing room. Well, because it's getting demolished. That's going to be gone in a matter of months, I think. Rich may as well they're just gonna leave him in there yeah let's just implode a man too while we're at it and then he does caricatures of people that he'll show on a screen and then the it like they speak in like a really kind of ghoulish way and so he's doing like impressions with himself like back and forth and then it's like

mostly youtube clips it's like he sits there and watches clips of his life for about half the show he just like moves to the side or doesn't or just maybe he's blocking the screen i don't know he doesn't just sits with you and watches basically yeah twitch stream it's a live in person yes stream from a man who would not know what that phrase meant. No. He does Obama, I know, right? Well, he does see Twitches sometimes. He does Obama.

He did not. His Obama wasn't great, I will say. You don't say. Was that the newest impression he does? Probably, yeah. I mean, there's Biden, but I've seen his biden on huckabee on the talk and it is just kind of an old man which is what he is yeah not a stretch he doesn't have a take on it you're saying no not just that he might fall asleep in the middle of a sentence yeah

but not trump's old trump is very old yeah sure um but he But he's, I can't, I say that, the man has energy. We know this. He loves to shriek. He loves, yeah, he's becoming more twisted and gnarled day by day. Trump?

Yeah. Sure. Yeah. Demonic. You don't even have to mention that. It's just a given. Oh, well, Rich hopefully will be there next,

when we go next. So we can do a Rich episode. It's worth, you guys should go. You would enjoy it. It's very cheap. You guys should go. You would enjoy it. It's very cheap. And there's no one there. You can sit like three feet from him.

Does he take questions around here? They're building a dugout. Like as it's happening around us, the visitor's dugout is being built. Oh, for the baseball stadium. Yeah, for the baseball stadium. You've referenced this several times and you've had to like Then we're blank And then you go Because they're building A baseball stadium there

It's odd It's very odd You know Do you think Rich Little Could play one night At the Sphere for me? For you? With the clips

Because now we can find out There's a clip component To Rich Little's show Oh they project him In the Sphere Yeah We could see him Get some 240p

Quality clips At 160k Or whatever the sphere is. He's still mad about Obama phone. You know, he's still mad about that. What's that? You stumped me twice in a minute. Well, the government used to give away phone service to low income people because it is like, it's better that everyone has phone service. It's better for emergency services.

So then as phone service gravitated towards mobile phones, they started giving away basic mobile phones. So someone put up a video saying, I got my Obama phone and Project Veritas and Fox News just went nuts about it. It sounds like Jason could fill in for Rich Little on tonight.

Yeah. Your current events whisperer. Yeah. It was like a tan suit era scandal. Yes. You know what he does? He does What a Wonderful World as a duet with him as Louis Armstrong

and a Kermit the Frog on his hand that he's puppeting. And his Kermit voice is, I think, very similar to his Obama voice. Oh, my God. Yeah, we'll do it next time. Well, he's pulling from the Danny Gans playbook. He's one of the last, yeah, classic Vegas impressionists, like a Danny Gans type guy. Yeah, yeah.

I know you did the screening recently where you showed a project that you did that was based on Danny Gans, and that sent me down the Danny Gans rabbit hole where he definitely does Louis Armstrong, Wonderful World, definitely does Kermit. Didn't think of bringing them together. That is a good impression crisscross that makes no sense.

Shadaya, that project is secretly on YouTube. We put it up. I made a fake Las Vegas trailers account. Whoa. And I put it up six years ago, and no one has discovered it. I looked at it the other day. It's got like 140 views. And they're all me reloading it to see if anyone discovered it over the past six years are you willing to speak about this on the yeah

i might as well spill it right sure oh my god happy to have the exclusive this thing is so funny it's called billy glimmer it stars ben stiller as a las vegas uh style impressionist along the lines of uh danny gans the late danny gans um so a big movie star has been in a secret video for years without any years it was like a demo video we made we were maybe gonna make a movie about it or then it became maybe a web series then it became a secret youtube video podcast the ride bonus content i'm so sorry of hollywood projects um but if you look if you look it up on it was announced at some point as a web series and then it never happened we did shoot this one

thing it's on youtube maybe uh podcast ride fans keep it our little secret for now you check it out but yes let's let's see if someone uh discovers it but they didn't find it with this username top las vegas entertainment show that's so funny i thought so if you look at that account i made They didn't find it with this username, Top Las Vegas Entertainment Show. That's so funny. So if you look at that account, I made that account, and I just put up a bunch of Vegas trailers and then hid this among them. I assume someone would be like, what the fuck is this? It's Ben Stiller. There are so many accounts actually like this, though.

Yeah. You start looking up Vegas stuff. Yes. no one ever found this one wow you can feel free to subscribe it will never post another video i can promise you that i've lost the password secret stiller just for the cliffords thank you for that this thing is this video is so funny and i like when you screened it i was dying at it and then i watched i was and then i watched the like i wonder what it was I was dying at it and then I watched I was and then I watched the like I wonder what it was based on and was it exaggerated in any way and the actual Danny

Gans sizzle reel is funnier precisely what you yeah is only because only because of the accident quality of he is trying to make people laugh but then you aren't laughing the way he's intending but you're laughing in a new 2023 way. There's a lot of layers to him. I think the real Danny Gans video is funnier because it's real. Yeah, he's not trying to, yeah, it's just hard to beat it. It's so insane. He'll just announce an impression singing premise that makes no sense. We're like, why are these people together?

And then like, ladies and gentlemen, Michael Bolton with featuring Dr. Ruth and then do a bad Michael Bolton when a man loves a woman and then switches characters. He better wear a condom. Why?

Why? That's the punchline? And then audience dying. Dying dying an audience of 27 000 people laughing harder than i've seen anyone laugh anywhere i've been in a supposed comedy career never have i seen an audience even sat in an audience that's killing the way danny gans is killing it's crazy i saw this is only tangentially related, this morning I was sent a clip of the guy

who played Kevin from The Office in front of an OfficeCon group of attendees, and there was a kid dressed as him, and he just whispers to the kid, like, identity theft is a crime, and I've never seen a crowd laugh harder or longer than this clip. Camera shaking, like drop it.

I'll never see anything where it goes over with the audience. Oh, I love Office. Sorry. I love Office fandom. I love it. It's going to. Yeah. This is.

Yeah. Where is this hitting? Where? What will Office fandom be like in 10 years? You gave a lot of your savings account to that Stanley sequel series that is being returned to you now. I sent $25,000 to the actor who played Stanley on The Office for his project to make a Stanley spinoff, but he sent the money back to me.

So sorry. I'm sorry you have that money again. Yeah, no, I want him to have it. What a waste. I'm trying to get it back to him. I'm trying to send him cash in an envelope. You're trying to find him on Venmo. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah. Can I at least buy lots of Stanley action figures? Yeah, yeah. Just want to spend this on Stanley. Funko Pops. I'll buy Stanley Funko Pops. There, yeah, yeah. Can I at least buy lots of Stanley action figures? Yeah, yeah. Just want to spend this on Stanley. I'll buy Stanley Funko Pops. 400 of them. Okay, well, these are great tips. Thank you for the secret video and the rich little tip. We gotta

go. We'll go. But let's talk about what's next. He's quite old. Well, you're good. Mike, if it lines up with your sphere trip, you must go and I'd like to apologize to Lindsay in advance.

I've seen you too. Oh. Yeah. Cool. Yeah. No, I wish I was. Is it cool though? How many impressions

is Bono going to do? I think very little. Well, if he does the mirror ball man and if he does McFisto, these are different voices at least, different characters.

Let's talk about the real, you know, the greatest entertainer who has not gotten the spotlight in this series. He closed out Celebruary long ago, but we got to talk about him here, and that's Criss Angel. Jason, you joined us for that. You did a little guest appearance in the Kablip episode. That's right. We did a little guest appearance that's right we did a little episode uh where we talked about about some of your your initial uh chris angel fandom your chris angel journey um so you know not to

reiterate too much of that but you know it's you you did the human giant sketch which is based on him but you didn't actually like it was years later that you actually saw a mind freak with your own eyes which was revelatory, seemingly. A few years, yeah. While he was doing the show Believe, that was his collab with Cirque du Soleil that was kind of short-lived and I think very acrimonious. I got confused about when it became Believe. I even saw him and I don't i don't know if it was believe or mind freak it was at luxor believe was at luxor i think and it had like weird circ elements like a

bunny rabbit that like run like and weird little people and like you know it had like a bunch of that kind of stuff yeah then i saw believe i think and then i think he changed the show to Mind Freak and now it's at Planet Hollywood and I went and saw that initially it was a version of the show but live for many years then this Cirque du Soleil thing that I did I'll get to this quote

I don't know where this is from but one of the most brutally reviewed shows in the history of Las Vegas this will be a recurring theme of the episode is his tortured relationship with critics who try to drag him down um but that was the first he is the trump of magic we said it before everybody's after him um we and then years later i was there with some friends and we saw the mind freak show and that's kind of what like i wasn't really obsessed with him. We did the thing on Human Giant,

and saw his show, and it was funny and dumb, but it was years later, we went back and saw Mind Freak, and got, like, truly obsessed, and told everyone, like, oh, you have to see it. He's doing a crazy thing, partially because of that

childhood cancer segment that becomes, like, a laser dance party that's this, just, we talked about it last time. It's just insane. I forgot, I re-l this just everything. We talked about it last time. It's just insane. I forgot. I re-listened to what we talked about, and I forgot that some of this involved a woman in a bald cap. Yes.

Who gets cured of her childhood cancer. Yes. Insane. That's madness. There is also an illness angle in the Copperfield show, too, right? Mm-hmm. You mean that Blue is dying? No, no.

There was before Blue even comes out, at least when I saw the show. Oh, the guy with the sister who died that he makes the guy levitate? Yes. Which is also in one of the prime time TV specials. Okay, okay. Oh, wow. Wait, but it's always in there? So is this a thing that he-

I've only seen the show once, but it was in there is so is this a thing that he i've only seen the show once so i but it was in there and the guy whose sister died uh not to give too much away is there every night yes i see oh that's nice at least all seven times that i've been there he's got somewhere to go uh he may you know he may be in on it could could be a plant situation but or maybe just a big fan it was his sister's dream that he that i think david uh levitate him wow now he gets to do it every night over yeah now multiple times a night david owns him now yeah um i also forgot that in in our initial chris angel talks the aspect of him being best friends with gary oldman that is a funny detail. And through a Mystica, I'm sure we'll talk about,

we learned about his other best friend. Wait, which? Mike Hammer. Oh, that. We'll get into it. Yeah, I don't know who's closer with him. The fictional detective? No, no, no. I'm getting ahead of myself.

Yeah, we'll learn all about Mike Hammer. I mean, like, really, if you, unfortunately, we'll learn all about Mike Hammer. If you like it really if you unfortunately will learn all about my camera if you google gary oldman chris angel just photo after photo something he tweeted this one this was my favorite they're best friends always kissing people i love gary oldman the best of the best class act and insanely talented so on it he's my friend. Just, yeah, so much. I went to Chris's Hollywood Walk of Fame ceremony

just as an observer. Oh. And Gary Oldman introduced him and gave the speech. They are truly best of friends. Do we know where this, Gary Oldman doesn't feel like he's from the same universe as Chris Angel. I think he just looks like a kind of dignified guy.

Are you thinking of Commissioner Gordon version of Gary Oldman? Yeah. Am I applying some air and some class? Yeah, we might be projecting. Or the Churchill. Yeah, yeah. Not much the dilapidated slow horses, Gary Oldman. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, much of the dilapidated slow horses. Gary Oldman.

Yeah. Yeah. More of like the Chris Angel's best buddy, Gary Oldman. Yeah. Yeah. The true, the truest true Gary Oldman.

True romance. Gary Oldman would be best friends with Chris Angel. Like, what do you think they talk about? God, I don't know. Or is it only, what if it's only public?

You think Gary Oldman's eating at Kablip? Ooh. That is a crazy image. You gotta come out. you think they talk about god i don't know or is it only what if it's only public you think gary oldman's eating at kablip oh that is he made it crazy you gotta come out i'll comp you i'll comp you gary if he's staying at his house maybe they get in like the limo and go possibly maybe i don't know has he made him has he like gone dirt biking with him in the beautiful moapa valley definitely so should we get into how we found like basically they announced that chris it was like announced in years before it came out that chris was doing a new show was going to have a show that followed his mind freak show and uh it was called a mystica and it was like his dream project and it was going to be about his life's a magic show about his life story yeah and so we were all we all got on a text thread

and we're like well we absolutely have to go see this and then i think we were like we either bought tickets we're about to and then the show got like postponed just like okay right like it got yeah i think there was like there was a three month that i remember oh maybe there were yeah yeah that makes sense there were and then they started and but we're like oh if we yeah if this is about his life this is going to be like we have to see this also i think we had a hunch that it wouldn't last very long yes sure yes and spoiler listeners if you're curious to see chris Angel's Mystica, you cannot. This did not make it out of 2022. Well, unless they get the international tour off the ground. I'm optimistic.

I'm optimistic. Just some numbers. Okay. Opens May 2022. Closes October 2022. Now, that is not a long run for a theatrical endeavor in any respect no but especially in vegas yes oh you mean where things run for forever years and like mind freak is still pulling like 1200 people a night well is it that's what the los angeles review journal said but they made sure to note that the closing night

of a mystica uh for a theater that seats 1400 there were 150 people there oh my god wow we did the same as in the weeks leading up to our trip so we got a little group together and we were like we're gonna go to vegas which mike and jason were invited to where they were not cut out of the you guys can do it but you but you could have experienced the magic. Yeah, but I had COVID, so I didn't go. Mike and COVID. Oh, you're right. Oh, because it was right after New York.

Yeah, yeah. I was out of town. I said that Mike and I were two of the designated comedy survivors. Like us and Tim Heidecker were not on the trip. You guys texted. You agreed. You texted Tim. Yeah, yeah.

We texted fellow Forever Dog host, Tim Heidecker. Friend of the show, right? Friend of the show. We've texted. You agreed. You texted Tim. Yeah, yeah. We texted fellow Forever Dog host Tim Eidecker. Friend of the show, right? Friend of the show. We've never met. I don't know. Sure. I don't know. I don't know.

And because this was like, it was you guys and Eva and Tom Sharpling and John Daly. Yeah. Yeah. It was like a big comedy contingent. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. It sure was. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. comedy contingent it sure was so many of you pulled it off like got together and we're gonna and you know anticipation is building as we're you know trying to settle on a date to do it

because little flickers of information keep coming out about it and how it is different and why it goes deeper and hits harder than the typical chris angel show and by the way i guess that you know the typical chris angel show already because i was looking at reviews of like the main one and the reviews often are like there were like five tricks over the course of 90 minutes yeah it was it's a lot of loud music uh a lot you mentioned last time so a lot of loud music. You mentioned last time, Jonathan Davis from Korn. Oh, my God. So much Korn music.

Did a bunch for it. And it's all stuff of that style or kind of this evanescence variety. And then a lot of like, I also saw reviews saying like, if he was doing illusions or something, I couldn't tell because he was blasting strobes at us the entire time. So I don't know exactly what he did or didn't do um so but basically the you know the main show and we should say this is this was a collaboration with franco dragone yes who uh was a major director of cirque du soleil yeah he was uh uh i think chris says a big part of establishing the look feel and, and language of Cirque du Soleil.

Directed all the major shows from 85 to 98. That is so a big figure. And he passed away in the fall of 2022. And then I believe that part of influenced the decision to close a Mystica. Although he passed away in Cairo, so it wasn't like he was... What was the order of events, though? Did he hear it was closing and that was too much for him?

No, no, I'm saying he passed away and then they announced it. The show killed him. That's what I'm suggesting. The show killed him. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Seeing his name on an ugly billboard killed him. Killed his body.

He got one text from somebody like, hey, I saw the show. then he came out when we were there he was there yes we got we were graced by the presence of franco himself franco comes out with chris right yes yeah in the beginning and what does he say i don't also i was very drunk when we saw this show no me as well and only got more so as it went. So I was relying on some, well, in this case, a smuggled video. And I knew the risks of filming at a Criss Angel show via you, Jason, because I know you were kicked out of a show.

I had been previously removed. Yes, and forced to delete all your photos in front of a watching guard. But no, we got a little special intro from the two minds, from Dragone and Chris. I don't remember if this is anything interesting, but I'll

play it. What you have been through, because this could be a model for the young generation. So this is a message of hope love and light and we hope you enjoy this presentation ladies and gentlemen and by the way make sure if you bought a ticket you're gonna stick around oh yes uh okay so not much there but it's a story of hope it's a story of love and light of love and that's that's all big stuff that's heady stuff to get into it's bigger than your run-of-the-mill magic show deals with.

And then before we went on this trip, I found on Vimeo a video from August 2000, so over 20 years old, called Criss Angel's A Mystica. And it's before anyone knew who he was, this crazy kind of kind of 80s, like hair metal kind of song. It's like, into a Mr. Car. And it's this like Terminator knockoff robot walking. And Chris does this thing.

It's up there. It's still up there. I looked today. Um, and it looked crazy. It looked great. And I was like, Oh wow.

He's been, this is the show he's been planning to do for 20 years. We're going to see like this guy's masterpiece, which is like the zone you want to be in of just someone like what was so great about his other show about the childhood cancer thing it was like oh this is such a bad idea and in such poor taste and no one's saying no to him and i was hoping that this whole show would just be that of just like oh you're getting this kind of dim-witted guy's life story who thinks his life is like so important and heavy and melodramatic um and and so the expectations were very high when we saw this show well and the

mythology you know before we even get into what it is i just want to build the picture of what we're coming in with because there is the there's the legend of this we know that it is a prequel to his regular show a show with no story a show that's a bunch of stuff and a rave in the face of childhood cancer how do you do a prequel to something that is just not a plot um so there's that um then and there's the the discovery that a mystica is a word that he uses in lots of things. He tried to mount a show. He posted on his Instagram, I forgot about this, an old photo that says, a mystica, this was my license plate 25 years ago.

Like a young, much like a very jerseyed out Criss Angel. But it's like all caps crazy with an emoji. Crazy, mind blow. Is he saying that this, like it wasn't a vanity plate? That that just happened to be the letters he got when he got a car? It was a sign. I got some random letters and I knew I had to turn it into a show. Doesn't he also have an Amistica tattoo?

Oh, does he? And he didn't name one of the kids Amistica, did he? I know he has all these words that he recurs. What's the thing that it's that elusia i believe elusia is his coffee wine or wait the coffee i think it's the coffee and one of his children yeah elusia is one of the kids i think so yeah yeah okay so there are a number chris basically chris angel's a guy who thought of four words 25 years ago and his whole career has been about like just releasing them one by one.

Sure. And then all caps the caption on that, never give up on your dream, fire. So the more this builds, we're like, boy, this is completely what is in this guy's heart, and it's his personal story. But then bits of information you're getting that we're probably texting to each other on the way to it just make it seem stranger and stranger one fact i didn't remember this that the show was originally titled mr smiles and molly yeah i don't do you remember what that refers to i feel like we knew it at one point i don't remember is it in the show was there a toy that's mr smiles or i think it was probably cut from the show possibly much like uh christos but we'll get to that i was trying to remember that okay well that's a detail so we found out from just

researching it the original name was of the show was not a mystic it was called mr smiles and molly and it was actually announced and there's an article in the las vegas review uh journal from 2021 which is like oh very right before it opened i think so he had i mean like everything it's like this whole plan and then he's like fuck it just call it a mystica this is dumb like it is like he like the name of mystica is almost like when you're a kid and you just like write the same word in your notebook like a hundred thousand times or he fixates on these things or like when you think of like a fake production company name if you did that like little filmmaker scott in high school like yeah you like make your logo you make your logo before

you make anything yeah yeah getting that stu c s perfect yeah yeah it's like america the mystical is that what it means yeah what is let's talk about the phrase what it was something it's like america the mystical is that what it means yeah what is let's talk about the phrase what it was something it's like a yeah is it a mystic that never occurred to me that it's america but oh it's like it's a whole country for magic basically well he's very patriotic that's another thing about chris angel but he said the the the back half of the word was for swastika. What? No, he didn't say that. That's daring. We're getting into some actual comedy.

We should have kept that going for two minutes. Yeah, we would have. He's like a big Nazi guy. Martin and Lewis, Siegfried and Roy, Alan and Rossi, Penn and Teller, Donnie and Marie, and now Mr. Smiles and Molly. That's how this article begins.

We're talking about Dragone and Criss Angel collaborating in a new venue under that title, and it was going to be some, it wasn't going to be anything like what we saw. It was like a club. It was interactive, immersive euphoria is how they described it. Dragone says it's a bold fusion between the world of electronic music and theater. They didn't announce where and when a surreal pre-nightclub experience it sounds nothing like the show we saw by the time we saw it

it's not even a magic show it's what the what was it it was like well okay one thing we realized that we didn't know until we were there is is that Criss Angel is basically not in the show until like the last 15 minutes. Yes. Well, there was this question in the lead up to it and in the press in the lead up to it, that like, wow, it's Criss Angel's new show, but will Criss be in the show at all?

And I found an interview where he kind of like, first of all, here's an article uh uh one thing one thing to say here too is that um i we found that um chris had i'd say lost the the like uh what do you he he like the vegas press has had a very very cantankerous relationship with Chris, a very combative relationship where like some stories have been written about this guy that are rough. So people I think the Vegas press was like excited to watch this thing fail and looking for cracks because I'd see articles called like there's something called Vital Vegas and a a writer named sam novak and these guys i think all pretty after chris so quotes chris angel the most hated fraud in las vegas wow one of the nastiest shit balls i've ever encountered and these are the places that are supposed to just be posting puff pieces of hey check out chris angel's new show at planet hollywood and instead they are they posting, they are trying to take this guy down.

Wow, that's like, you know, like whatever, Mice Chat being like this motherfucker Bob Iger or something. Like the theme park press, which is a very favorable thing. You don't see it. It's usually extremely positive. No, so it does seem rare. So one of these sites said- Well, because also you want access in the theme park world.

Yes. Well, anything that's like a niche market that has a press, quote unquote, has to be very favorable because you just get iced out if it's not. Like Podcast the Ride. Like Podcast the Ride. Except Vegas, yeah. You just, well, I think he was, there's a famous story, I think, was it this one or something that he kicked a guy out who had written about him.

Do you have that? It was this guy. It was Sam Novak, who I just mentioned. He was writing for something called Vegas 411. He wrote an article called, I Was Thrown Out of Chris Angel's New Show. Much like James Dolan, which we talked about, kicking people out of the garden who've been uh critical of him yeah and that was good he was right to do it and he was great he was absolutely correct don't mess up mike's uh attendance at the sphere uh um uh so he wrote a big angry article he just like he was in

his seat about to start and then two suited men come up to him and like wait no this cannot stand and then he wrote a bit like a very defiant article my expulsion from chris angel's show was nothing more than censorship blocking the public's access to information damages tourism and the entertainment community blah blah blah calm down yeah and then he goes on to say i am a longtime fan of co-creator franco dragone i've uh it is my dream to one day see his down house of dancing waters in macao he is a biggest dragone head but he was yanked away from getting to experience dragones possibly final work uh and certainly worst work and that's a guaranteed worst thing he's ever been part of so this is the tenor of the press going into this so when rumors start leaking about this show

they're asking questions. Here is an article I found, I think, from Vital Vegas. The biggest problem is probably the terrible name of the show. The second biggest problem is it's unclear if Criss Angel actually appears in the show. Try and spot him anywhere in this promotional video for a Mystica, which is true. The little videos he put out, you can't make heads or tails of them. It's just like screaming and lights and maybe a guy on fire and i you you can't figure out what he's not in most of the show and then we found out afterwards that he was like so basically the

show we saw he showed up towards the end he showed up at the beginning to introduce it then it's this like kind of really half-assed like play about his life that wasn't even it wasn't like funny like you wanted to be it was just like this kind of like scary wasn't but like lazy like no actual impressive physical feats the only impressive was like a guy came out and did card magic and he was like very good this big big like muscle-bound guy which is had like making thousands of cards appears like that was incredible a guy did like a houdini water torture escape and like was just like trying to get out of this box of water for like three and a half minutes or something that was like oh yeah he looks like he could die yes um and and but he chris tries to keep a presence in it regardless you hear his voice you hear his

voice and in that part he says like this guy's about to hold his breath. Please do it along with him. What? Your luck. Like in solidarity. Wait, what's the quote? Your, oh, do it. Please.

You don't have to bet your life along with it. He does. So you're encouraged to hold your life along with it. He does. So you're encouraged to hold your breath along with the tank guy. I was going to say, I did find, again, the Las Vegas Review Journal kind of gave a definitive answer after the show closed of Criss Angel's presence in the show. Right. It says, Angel himself did not appear in the production other than in voiceover after performing the goth magic character Christos,

that's Christos with an X, in the first few shows. Which, by the time we saw it, he shows up at the end and does a trick, but then we read a review saying that Christos, or Xristos it's X X R I A yeah with an X at the beginning Xristos they were like Christos his like devilish you know joker character but when we saw it he

clearly was just too lazy to put on the Christos makeup because he just showed up did some tricks and left and then we found a clip of him on a morning show in vegas talking about he said like that's right i'm currently in the show we're like what he's planning on just like fully like this was so fully what we expected to see like his opus and it was so much just like a cash grab that he thought it was like a larry sanders kind of thing like he thought he could just like a a Hank, something Hank would do. He would put his name on something and be like, these idiots don't care. Well, he did that the first night.

And then he's like, I'll phase myself out. And he just really overestimated the amount that his name above a banner. If you give people a bad show, and the other part of the show that was massive was the comedy portion

of this guy mike hammer and look everyone look we're all living our lives i don't want to shit on everybody but like it wasn't you know our cup of tea this wasn't the kind of comedy that we like no it was a kind of comedy that involved bringing up audience members of certain ethnicities that's what he did and then we found a clip of him on his Instagram doing the exact same thing. It doesn't matter what they said their name was. He would just make a sound. Oh.

And it was just like full racism. Yeah. And we would just watch. Just like, what the fuck is this? It's like a half an hour of just like racism or being like a pig towards women. And that was just like, oh, this is like so it's like it was just boring and then yeah the show sucked it was really it was terrible it's really bad yes it's so he's clearly trying to build this like where where do i go from here where do i i've got my nightly show

but i'm getting bored with it and i would like to make some more money so could I attach my name to another thing there's a question of if I'll be maybe I'll be in it and I'll certainly be a presence in the voiceover so you're getting the Chris Angel vibe but after and then we'll get the reviews that I'm sure will be great reviews after that first month where I am in it kind of for 15 minutes and then we will phase out even that 15 minutes and i will not be in it at all he thought this plan would work i mean variety shows i guess work in vegas but it was like very expensive and and the like cirque de soleil element you should go to like you go to like that show car or like the state if you're seeing that it's like the craziest thing you've ever seen.

The whole stage moves 360 degrees. It's mind-blowing. It's like kilts and goes almost vertically. It's killed people. It's an incredible show. And this had people kind of spinning around. There was nothing physically impressive that you would see in a Cirque du Soleil show.

The magic, yeah, there were two impressive magic tricks, not by chris angel and then like 40 minutes of shitty comedy so much just like comedy pseudo magic but they're not really mostly comedy and by comedy we mean questioning the last names of people who are different than him but there was one truly wonderful bit in the show yes that we haven't talked about yet well let me okay before we get to that just to build to that although i think i've alluded to it on the show before but the um you talk about there wasn't anything impressive like a big circ stage that uh that rotated and everything um jason you're forgetting about the house the big house you remember the big house right that's

lived with you since april 2022 and we saw it look i've i've forgotten a lot of this show um well you're gonna wonder how you could have missed this big house but when i show you this video where chris angel this is on his instagram chris angel is next to a house that's almost as tall as him. Wait, was that in the show? It was, and I faintly remember this. But wait, listen to how he builds this thing up. And the caption is, my new house cost over $1 million, but it can do what no house in the world can. My house is the most sophisticated technological piece of magic

or illusion in the history of my art. There's nothing even close to it. And it's price tag over a million dollars. Find out why. Check out a mystica coming to Planet Hollywood. Wait, what did it do? I don't

remember. No, he's just lying. I remember the house being rolled out and maybe something was projected onto it. And I found another video where it seems to split open. I think it opened. Yeah. But that's very... What came out of it, though? Any Broadway show, there was just like...

Nothing? There was like a desk and then an actor came and sat at the desk. I need to find out what was in the house. There was nothing impressive or memorable about the house. For him to claim that is the most impressive thing in the history of his art, and to stack that, you've got dragone. Yeah, that's just a pure lie.

Do you think he's going to listen to this? That's like... If he does, will he just do to like a lack of Criss Angel... How do we fit? Well, we all have... If we have his ear, what he just do to like a lack of Criss Angel? How do we fit? Well, if we have his ear, what would we like to say? Well, you can hear it in the recording that I'll play in a little while. Oh, you did get to, you talked to him. That looks like a child's playhouse.

Uh-huh. That like where I grew up, if there was like the outskirts of a hurricane pass through, you would go outside afterwards and they're like, oh, Playhouse is gone. Like that doesn't look like a thing that would cost a million dollars. I don't know how it did. And I didn't remember it in the least. It looks like a doghouse for a St. Bernard. Yeah.

It's just like a big doghouse. How could you possibly spend a million dollars? It's a doghouse yeah and i think it collapsed on stage i think so i think the roof like maybe it didn't work the night we saw it it might was it part of the tornado bit i don't know but maybe like in like wizard of oz or something it was supposed to like fly anything that i'm sure you could talk to any of us who were on that trip no one can recall what so what'd you think of the house all of us blank was there a house it didn't the house didn't land but something else did

you're right i talked about this briefly on this on the second gate but let's actually let's hear it from your perspective jason i'm trying to remember this set above it at one point he does a memorial to his dad because that's always part of shows like this and then i think he implies that his dad this was like a tribute to him or something i i just wrote a note that i was going through our like i message thread trying to piece together what this show was yeah and i think the dad deaths segues into he talks about the like the great tornado that hit Las Vegas and then simulates. It hit Las Vegas? Yes. Is that real?

There was one in like 2019 or something. Someone posted on the thread. That reasons? Yeah. Is that your duster? Like, anyway, he creates a tornado in the theater. They wheel out, what, three giant fans on stage that are like 20 feet tall.

Taller than a house a house taller than a million dollar house and they just turn them on and they just create a tornado inside it which means they are just blasting garbage like into your mouth like so much just garbage starts flying just more trash than air and trash and confetti every just flying around this whole place and we were all like wow this is actually pretty cool and then it's like and then it keeps going for like what felt like 15 minutes so we're all just like screaming laughing because this thing doesn't stop nothing else is happening and it's just like flying around going everywhere and it's like really like we had we had drinks they were going into our drinks they went into our mouths even had not gotten to a glass of wine

maybe it had a couple sips and then now it's all just sopping up. It's full of garbage, yeah. Like literal toilet paper. It's just, I don't know. I'm not going to ask if it's recycled or not, but even clean toilet paper. Toilet paper, paper towel, confetti, cardboard. Yeah, just like hitting you in the face. Sometimes it's just like a big roll.

It's like something big. You would say, ow, once in a while. Yeah, it was so funny funny we were all just looking at each other like we couldn't believe it was real and that's how he closed the show i think you just they do an encore of the trash tornado they did the and now for the ending the middle again i think because it's all on the floor already and the fans just whip it right back up and spin it around again and it was on the floor already and the fans just whip it right back up and spin it around again and it was on the, do you remember it was on the floor

at the beginning of the show because they don't, I think they don't clean the theater. So that's where the garbage starts. It starts on the floor? Yes. So you're walking into a theater full of garbage?

Yes. It's a spoiler. It's a spoiler on the floor. This trash is from my dreams. You'll see. Oh, it was so good though. I mean, I would have, you know. And that's when they said that.

So the show abruptly closed like a few months after. Like, yeah, we see it. Dragoon drops dead. The show closes. And they lie. Like, everything with Criss Angel is just a lie. And he's like, we're closing it so we can get ready for a big European tour. It's like, there's no way they can travel those garbage fans.

They wouldn't fit on an aircraft carrier so the talent of the show really is just ownership of giant fans that's what he's really displaying i bought these or leased them i don't know oh the other thing another detail he does he saws a woman in half his female sidekick with the giant saw do you remember this scott and then he goes he tells the crowd i go through a lot of women but i always keep the lower part and we're all like oh have sex with a pair of legs and a vagina it's like hey fellas isn't that what we all want get rid of that get rid of that part that talks and laughs and loves. We found out in a review that they said this joke has survived like four Criss Angel shows. Somehow I didn't remember it or see it before, but like he loves that joke so much he's been doing it for like 15 or 20 years. You also, when you were on previously on the Ka-Blip episode, you brought up a joke.

This was before we had seen the show and you brought up a joke where he like, it just like the the width of something that's gonna get cut through or a blade or something and yeah it was three inches three inches and he did exactly that in this yes it was always he brings a guy up from the audience and he's like how thick do you think that is and the guy's like i don't know three inches and he's like three inches i bet you've said that before just like bring up a guy to humiliate him say his small premise is that he said it he said this like three inches okay do you want to do this or not yes it's hard i'm sorry don't make me say it out loud those jokes do in the room can i ask nothing did well no one was laughing i mean no my camera my camera eats shit eats shit it does terrible that was the other thing we saw so in the weeks leading

up to it i would check the like tickets like the the seating chart every night and see like no one's going to this show and when we were there like yeah there were over a thousand empty seats i think right like yeah yeah entire areas that you you could, they were also starting to give away tickets completely for free. They're just like, how do we get bodies into this? It was not free for us because, Jason, you had the determination to meet him because he was offering this for anyone

who bought a certain level of ticket. Oh, yeah. Wait, so they said like, because there were more people there, we looked right before the show started and it was still completely empty besides our row and then we went there and there were like a few hundred people there and then you had a meet and greet after the show where if you bought a ticket you meet chris angel and then we get online with like a few hundred people and then someone's like this line is only for if you paid for tickets and like

a hundred people leave it's's like, oh yeah, everyone here is just comped to like, like they're just like handing out tickets in the casino or, you know, beforehand or like half the place, like taxi drivers. They're just like, please come,

come be body. See the show. As soon as we saw it, they cut the ticket prices. They slashed them 25%. Um, but so we did, okay.

So we did that meet and greet. Yes. And we waited to meet him and you get a picture and i was wrecked and yeah i was somebody handed me a drink that they decided they didn't want i was gonna wrap it up because i did get my drink down before all the toilet paper went into it uh and by the end of the line by the time we got to him i was definitely like oh boy and now i get to meet chris angel whoa and i also i was so just like blown away by the thing and in the spirit of it and just laughing so hard and the the sheer volume of trash on the floor was so crazy that i and i'm sorry if I embarrassed you or anyone I was with, or if you noticed or cared, but I just like took a lot of the long strings of toilet paper and just wore it like so many scarves.

And I had it like draping down for me, almost like, you know, like the way Chris would dress with a bunch of like danglies and spider webs. So I'm draped in trash and drunk as we step up to actually meet Chris Angel. So we go up to meet him. So I was recording the audio. I do have a clip. I weighed whether or not to play this. It's very embarrassing.

It's extremely intimate. This is me very drunkenly, like, gushing to Chris Angel. It was magical to watch because I was like, who's going to do the talking here? Not realizing you would do 100% of it. I went in so hard and also was not shy about my opinion of Mike Hammer and his comedy. I was trying to save the show.

I was trying to make the show something better, something more entertaining. So this is, let's see. Let's see. Thank you so much for all that you want. We love you so much. better something more entertaining um so this is uh let's see if let's see we got we got a few notes less less comedy let's hammer more of your life we need more of your life in the show. Your life is incredible. All those scenes were mind-blowing. One more, one more.

Paper in my mouth. Oh, one more, one more. I got so much paper and plastic in my mouth. It was the most I've ever had. It was immersive. It was, yeah, it immersed so much paper in my mouth. I really, I really loved it so much. I'm so, like much I'm so like

I'm like just that's why we're here we will we will we love you totally immersive more of your life

directed then Tom sharply he directed Borat like he just says that as we're walking away and he said what he's like

oh okay like I think Tom was like just like this is not like a mentally disabled guy. I know you might think that from how he's just telling you how much he loves you. I thought it was very constructive. I thought it was very kind and complimentary. I was trying to help, but it's definitely embarrassing to listen.

I love you. You're incredible. Your life is incredible. Your life is incredible. Your life is incredible. I remember that in the moment. You know what? My metaphor for it, you know what it felt like to me was like, you know, in Taken, when Liam Neeson's on the phone and his daughter is going to get taken and he says, just shout

anything you see, just like until you're out of the room say anything you see about who's taking you and that's how i've that's how that interaction seemed to me was that you were like i know i'm only gonna have 30 seconds here oh yeah and if i could get any of my real thoughts into his brain and register them so i'm just going to fill the air with opinions from second one to second 30 and shout them all. And maybe one will actually impact, you know, what I wasn't counting on was how phoned in the show is.

And that is ultimately, and I'm sorry if you're listening, Chris, but I do think he's a lazy man and I don't, I don't think he really tried. And what I was hoping for is like the Chris angel, like masterpiece, like really trying to be like,

this is what's moving to me this is my life this is like how i want to be remembered and so to see it that night and see how phoned in it was and and just like a bunch of you know filler basically it's and and so much bad comedy and then of course we go through his instagram later and see like mike hammer like there besides gary oldman i think is his like best friend in the world they comment on each other's posts constantly so i was like i definitely wasn't winning any uh any like saying no with chris angel by saying you gotta cut that mike hammer guy he sucks he's not funny oldman sucks that movie the churchill movie is boring but i'm letting him do interviews cut him from your life a few

months later that he posted due to recent unforeseen events a mystica is being converted to a touring show for international locations chris angel will continue to feature and promote the production on his new television series chris angel's magic with the stars which was a show that he um he did uh so basically they're like look we already filmed the show he's gonna be talking about it in every episode but the show is closing because no one is seeing it um the timeline is really insane of just what befell chris angel in this in this stretch of time. Show opens in March. We saw it in April.

September 30th, Dragone dies, which so funny to have, like just the way this evolved. We're like, have you heard of Franco Dragone? Why, no, I have not. Suddenly we're on a text thread and I'm talking about Dragone every day. Wow, Dragone.

And Dragone's part of it. The legend Dragone. And then we're there. Drag, Dragone. And Dragone's part of it. The legend Dragone. And then we're there. Dragone is here! Dragone is in front of me! Viva Dragone! Several months later, Dragone is dead. From zero presence in my life at the beginning of

2022 to deceased at the end. This morning, I watched a video and Scott, I sent it to you. It's like four or five minutes. It's from a channel on YouTube with a very generic name,

like iHollywoodTV. And it's Chris talking up a Mystic so hard, and he's like so... I said it was very Trumpy, because he's just talking such a big game, and he's like so i said it was very trumpy because he's just talking such a big game and he's like there's 75 illusions some video i don't think there were three illusions uh yeah maybe that was his trailer on his because he has his own account with very intense

trailers plugging his shows and it was just so odd compared to what i knew your guys's experience was big fans and been racist comedy and then we left yeah yeah and garbage in your drinks he was on this morning show and what when he well okay you heard how we described the show now here's him before people had seen it it's my story of how i became chris angel but it's really everyone's story it's the first spectacle after covid we're bringing back optimism it's the purest form of magic the magic of emotion this is how he is billing what we've just described as a grab bag hit or miss variety show yeah very big on saying it was the first big new show back after covid you know there's video of me walking down las vegas boulevard not a car in sight and you can see a bus go through the background and he's like it was so weird yeah it's not a car you know

um but uh the the tv show the magic with the stars do you know the detail about that well here i was gonna say in the timeline okay so so september 30th dragon dies october 14th some headlines for magic with the stars is this what you were gonna bring up probably just two weeks after his like is the guy who shepherded his show, then like, all right, I guess I'll focus on my TV show. And then? Again, the Las Vegas Review-Journal. In published reports, R&B star Genuine was left gasping and lost consciousness after attempting a water escape routine,

proving there is high risk on and off stage in Angel's Empire. So he almost after his partner dies then I contend that was almost certainly faked to try to get some press for the show.

Oh, I hadn't thought of it. I hadn't thought of it at first and then someone was like, there's no way. No. Like, I think, yeah, that sounds like we got to get people writing about this. What if I almost kill Genuine? Do you think Genuine was in on it, or he's like, we'll leave him hanging for a couple minutes. You know, he locked the tank. Wait for it. Wait, not till I give the signal.

Sorry, Genuine. wait for it wait when not till i give the signal sorry genuine you'll see it it's gonna get out it's gonna get butts in the seats that you show it's hard to say because magic is like professional wrestling it comes from the lineage of carnies where it's just like oh this could be amazing or it could be amazing and you might also be lying it just might also be a lot of lies, you know? Wait, and when was the Kblip fire? So, okay, so September 30th, Dragone dies. October 14th, Genuine almost dies. October 16th, the final of Mystica is blamed on the death of Dragone,

but also it was not, nobody was ever there. Then, I think early November, reports of arson at his restaurant, Kblip. Kblip almost burns down, as an article pointed out, an event that was oddly left unreported by the media. I think we're all still confused. We did an all episode about it.

I think we're still confused about the details of the Kaplip arson. I think Chris set his restaurant on fire to try to burn it down. It didn't work, seem, work seem in keeping and as typical with everything he does it was like done incompetently and lazily and it didn't work the guy can't even like get his shit together do a proper insurance scam insurance scam i do fire stuff all the time

we got a guy in the show he's gonna run through on fire it's gonna burn the restaurant up they just they like one one wall got singed on the outside, and they put it out. Damn. It didn't count on how good the Overton fire department was. Neighbor runs out. Is everything okay? Should I call?

No, no, it's fine. Wilhan, no, it's probably better if it burns. Honestly, this place is ancient. You'll be glad it's gone. He's trying to tell the firefighters, no, it's okay. Don it burns, honestly. This place is ancient. You'll be glad it's gone. He's trying to tell the firefighters, no, it's okay. Don't worry about it. It's going to die. It'll be fine.

You're probably more needed somewhere else. The great city of Overton, there's probably someone having a heart attack. Come to us last. Circle back around. Oh, my cat's in a tree a block away. Go get the cat. I can hear it. Do you hear it? Get my kitty out block away. Go get the cat. I can hear it. Do you hear it?

Get my kitty out of the tree, not the restaurant. I don't care. I'm just remembering now, wasn't a mystic a part of some COVID relief money scam? Well, I got all that too. Sorry, Scott. We don't mean to interrupt you. No, no. It's just things come back to us.

We made such a mistake not getting the COVID money for this podcast. We really did. I really think we could have done it. I think PPP loans are like the most successful scam in the history of the country. I know, and we should have done it, and we didn't. Yes. I am mad about it. Kind of legitimately upset with us for not doing the scam.

Okay, wait, Scott. Okay, you're ahead of me on this. The number I had forgotten. The number? Well, do I build it up? Okay, all right, i'll do this uh uh loans uh given to his company magic revolution llc 6.6 million dollars i'm reading 11 million on that well you see that is filled in by the 4.3 million given to angel productions worldwide okay so that's when you

add them together 11 million okay so i forgot this aspect of it and it makes everything click into place is that he had this name he thought of when he was 13 kovat happened and he's like the government's giving drag on the government's good they split the money drag on has a you look at his wiki a massive history of tax fraud alligators yes a huge scandal in 2012 sc 2012. No, these are both fucking scammers who were like, Chris Angel's like, give us the late show,

get $11 million, put together a show for a few hundred thousand dollars, and the show will be disaster enclosed, and they fucking kept the money, and then Dragone was probably going to spill, and he fucking killed him.

Allegedly, allegedly, allegedly. Chris, I'm not feeling good about this. I said it allegedly for everyone in the room. Chris, it is getting too hot. I'm not feeling good about this. I said it allegedly for everyone in the room. Chris, it is getting too hot. I'm not feeling good about this. Shut up, dragon. I'm going to clear my head in Egypt for a little while.

Yes, you do that. I got you a trip to Egypt, dragon. Or he suggested it. Why don't you go take a nice, relaxing trip? I fucking killed him and then closed the show. Oh, my God. I have no doubt in my mind. It is weighing on me

so much, Chris. I'm not like you with your magic and your secrets. I have to tell what my secrets are. Get in the big box. I want to show you a new trick. I have an ass in there. I've always wanted to show you. That was the other thing. He auctioned off all of his tricks like a few years ago. Do you remember that?

Yeah, right. He sold everything. He sold all his wires and big cages and i okay this was a covid relief scam that's that's what a mystica was i can't believe we forgot that part of it yeah we had wait because a mystica the subtitle was like the mystery revealed right like it is called a mystica the secret revealed that was the full name of the show it's still listed as that on chrisangel.com they forgot to take down the page on chrisangel.com it still says get your tickets now with the official trailer and um the secret revealed yeah the secret is that it was a covid scam can you i think there's never been an episode that would make one person more furious maybe of any podcast if you know what he might i mean because i know um

i met this magician harrison greenbaum uh a really talented guy funny guy who does the the show in new york new york and um he did that fake kablit menu website oh yeah chris's lawyers pounced on him so let me know if you guys get any emails. Yeah, sure. Well, you might know before us. It might start with you. No, everything I say is satirical, obviously. This is a comedy podcast.

It's an important comedy podcast about theme parks. And that's where all we're, we make up crazy make-em-ups. Yeah. Stuff that we don't think. The cold open of this episode is just one of us saying allegedly dozens of times. You can't already satire. We just need to spray allegedly's all over this episode like so many bits of trash being spewed out by giant fans. A hurricane of allegedly's.

100% killed him okay only you with the borat money here you know jason's uncomfortable he brings up the guest's money not the first time Hey, come on. He did Borat. We all know Borat. Yeah, we all love Borat. Oh, my God. Jason doesn't have a good word. This has a good arc to it, though. We did solve the mystery of the Mystica. Yeah, it is.

The mystery has been solved. What is the mystery? Solve it. It might take you months. You might have to do a podcast about it. He might be proud of us for figuring it out. Yeah. Because we figured out the mystery.

Boys, you did it. So many people, so many fools did never learn, never figured out the true secrets. It was like the producers, though. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, there was a lot of- But with some new tricks that they didn't even, the producers themselves didn't figure out. This was kind of, I mean, there's so many scams around this time, and this is just one of the most high-profile ones.

There was another guy, I mean, this is lower scale scale but there was a comedy hypnotist named mark savard and he got three hundred thousand dollars presumably to keep his show open that's the idea of the loans as well now you have to keep working and keep paying people and then as soon as he got it he said well due to mask mandates uh we're closing we got it these masks uh but like why the i know i'm with you mike i think every and i think everybody everyone listening should be upset that you didn't get in on the loans too oh i assume that people listening didn't get in on the loans most of them the people who did are laughing and laughing at us of course the fools we had an actual business we know it's like registered.

That's right. Guests to pay. And yes, even though COVID did not impact the production of the show in almost any way. Well, there was a half second delay when we would make a joke and not know if the other thought it was funny. Yeah, there would be all these times where we'd go like, no, no, no, you go. No, no, no, you go. And I'd have to cut those out when I was editing. That's worth 100K. Yeah, you deserve $100,000 for your editing suffering.

Yeah. Well, look, we will start it when Trump gets back in. We'll retroactively do it. Yeah, when the next one. The new round. What do we, I mean, that's it. We cracked the mystery. Any final observations about this thing?

Is it possible to run this through? I've like half-assedly tried to do a like the rules of blackjack with the things that we've talked about. Like what should these things have done? Should they have hit or stood or doubled down or cashed out? What should have happened to Chris? Did he not do enough? Should he have done a third show? Is that the problem?

I think he did cash out. I think he did the ultimate cash out. We were expecting too much of him, I think. His heart's not in it. I think he's a businessman and he's just in it to grab cash. And he grabbed cash while we all ate trash. There you go.

Yeah, for us, it was a trash grab. And I did. I wore it. I proudly wore it, and I had a good time doing it. I wouldn't have done it without you. Jason, thank you for being the lightning rod that got me to a mystical, to a magical evening. You also took us to the underground house that was also about cryonics. That was a very strange experience.

Yeah. Yeah. There was a whole other weird scheme being run, whatever the underground house is. Do these places find you or do you find them? I don't know. I just keep my eyes out for stuff. We found out there was an underground house in Las Vegas. Wait a second.

In 2016, it was listed at $48 million. The Cryonics house? No, this is a different one. Okay. Okay. Listener, if you want to know what we're talking about, there's a really easy and fun way, which is look up the Imagine Dragons music video called, I believe, Monday. Watch this music video.

And this was entirely filmed in this bizarre underground house that's meant to be like an indoor-outdoor house, except it's all in a bunker, so that it's meant to survive an apocalypse. We were in the place where this was filmed. Undergroundhouse.Vegas, and that's the house's official website. And yeah, it was built as a bunker, but I don't think it had any kind of nuclear bunker qualities. It's just underground,

and I had no plan that you could live there. So it couldn't survive? survive no i think it has like a ventilation system so you can breathe air but if there was like a nuke you would just die pretty quick i think you could survive there's like 16 hours of air that you would live on and so everybody in the underground house would get a lot of phone calls like hey you got any room in there and then lots of people rush down and then just die two seconds after everybody. I bet it's still for sale. It's 3970 Spencer Street, Vegas.

It is still currently listed at $5.9 million. And if you look at the listing history, yeah, it's been on Zillow 188 days, but we went more than that ago. So I think it's probably taken off and put back and you know with a different price of a few times uh and uh it was built in the 60s it's really cool i would oh yeah it was listed in 2019 for 18 million dollars um it's a we it's weird it's a weird house you never want to live there um you go insane living it's cool to walk around it was run by a guy who was like a big cryonics guy Yeah he had like a cryo chamber And he talked about how

His body was gonna be in there For like 40,000 years And whatever It felt It had kind of like Sex house kind of vibes It felt like Yeah there were like poles

And yeah I think you could rent it for parties It was like a club random With a cryonics chamber Right easy Mike Easy Don't get too excited. They weren't doing tours.

So I'll give you another little scoop, a little confession here. Oh, God, I'm so glad you're reading this. We had to pretend that we were interested in buying it. And so I emailed the realtor and I was like, hey, you think you could get us on a tour of this underground house? He's like, yeah, do you want to buy it?

I was like, yes. And so we can't afford that so we had to pool like the finances from like a bunch of us on the trip and send financial statements and be like and i said yeah we're from a company i'll i'll read what i texted the thread for our backstory when we were heading over i was like everyone remember we are from a yet to be announced venture considering buying property as a vegas headquarters we're working mostly on metaverse focused ventures with an ai machine learning bent as we gear up we're also launching a vertical and streaming production and so i was like everyone remember this is what we're doing and i don't think i remembered there was an ai this is

well this is 2022 a little ahead of the curve and so the guy gave us a tour but i think he could kind of see through us that we just wanted to check out the underground house but you can do that with any you know realtor even mansions you just have to convince them uh that you could afford a down payment so between like four of us we showed if we had a you know you showed your eva one of them you showed your real financial information. I had to. That was the only way that they would let us in. Sound like IMDBs and stuff. And then this guy's other business, he was a very sweet guy and showed us around. And then he sold this money.

Do you remember? He sold money with gold in the money. He's like, this money will never lose value. He sold gold and embedded his own cash. He made it? It's not like a U.S. currency that he just like- No, it's like, I don't know if it has his picture instead of a president, but basically it's like, he's like, this is money that cannot lose value because there's gold in the money.

Okay. Can I hold the money? It's called- Sure you can. Goldback, maybe. Is this it? What? Are goldbacks legal?

I think this is it. They are not accepted as legal tender by the federal government. Goldback has a Wikipedia page, and check out Goldback if you want to survive in our coming apocalypse-y kind of world that we're going to be

entering pretty soon. Listeners, here's your hot tip get all your money into gold bags and and if like a but you know hey if a bunch of listeners met and got along at the groove blender and decided we get along great we all like to live in las vegas forever together then just send all your information to the underground house go to the website and i love the idea just invite us over once in a while let us come party at the house that a dozen fans all share together oh with waist-high stacks of goldbacks yeah we promise we won't take your gold back scrooge said one vegas goldback is worth three three dollars and 75 cents at the end of 2021. So that's not too bad. Okay. They've been appreciating.

Jeez. Okay. Well, hot tip. Oh, now it's worth four bucks. Hey, shit. Is that just while we've been recording? The world's first. In the episodes so we can find goldbacks.

Just check out goldback.com, the world's first physical interchangeable gold money that is designed to accommodate even small transactions. How's the website look? Rep definitely all right i'm gonna put all my money in gold backs okay okay well then i'll sit here i'll start winding it down while you while you get out your wallet and start and make make your first gold back this is great i'm a certified wallet inspector so i'll i'll start the process uh um but uh uh for now i'm so glad we caught you before you became a goldback millionaire uh jason walter you survived podcast the ride sin city nights thank you for closing it out with us we couldn't do especially this month uh without you what an honor thank you guys what always a pleasure happy to come over and shit

talk and burn bridges criminate make enemies and uh criminate myself anger uh people who have been litigious against people you know i mean chris like you think there's a possibility that chris angel hasn't killed people well we'll all be the first to find out. If I die, this will be crazy to listen to, if I die mysteriously now. And weirdly, you know what was so... Well, we dedicate the series to Jason Wallner's memory. At a certain point, I just wouldn't be able to buy a ticket to his show.

I've been thrown out of there. I've harassed him. You yelled a bunch of stuff at him while meeting him. Your life is incredible. You said your life is incredible in a way that he could maybe question. I also like, remember, I might have said this on the show too,

that we said we all went to Kablip, and he was like, uh. Come on! You're arrested. That is a commitment. We all live in Los Angeles. We flew into this town, drove an hour, more than an hour outside. Based on the lie that's on your website that says 45 minutes.

Bullshit. We did the drive. That's hour 15 minimum. We all did it. And three of us are wearing the shirts. And your response is, eh. There's more shirts in the hotel rooms, too, because you i mean that's right like eyeballing security he was dripping with disdain at the indignity of having to meet fans because the show was not

selling tickets like this was not what he wanted to be doing look the hogs are gonna oink at me this is what it well also you know one more thing just before i write it down do you remember how for i don't know what order to present this in. You say that he phoned it in and yet the stress seemed very high with him because he's trying to mount this show because we all went out to dinner at the nice restaurant next to the theater.

And then we were, I think I went to the bathroom and then I came back like I'd seen a ghost, but better than a ghost. I can't believe we forgot this part of the story. There's a little room. It's like the private dining room and the walls are lined with nice bottles of wine

and he is in there. It's him and it looks like he's got like a bunch of papers out like as if he's doing his taxes. It looks like he had a bunch of receipts out and he had little glasses on like what Homer wears when he's dealing with business. Little half glasses. Hmm. And I think glasses on like what homer wears when he's dealing with business little half glasses and uh and then and i think you then tried to tap on the glass yeah yeah i tried to get his

attention i tried to talk to the guard and i was like hey oh hey we're seeing him we're here to see this show the guy's like yeah he's not talking to you yeah mr angel's a very busy man mr angel's a busy man so you escort it out of a theater, escort it out of a Ruth's Chris. But then, I was going through Instagrams from this era, and there is a photo of exactly what we saw. A view of him in the little wine room with the half glasses looking so stressed out and here is the caption my life a tortured creator striving to turn imagination into reality months of creative challenges focused on achieving that one incredible moment that makes it all worthwhile then in the blink of an eye i'm back to the monster i created and have become a slave to.

I mean, the incredible moment is checking his account balance to see like the COVID money came through. That's the moment that made it worthwhile. Is it in yet? And the stress is definitely like, what do you mean I got to pay the dancer? It's like as like the money that he's like trying to like scam is getting less and less with how expensive the show is. Like it's fucking garbage. How much could it cost?

Well, it's like a whole theater full of paper. You're going to need like a thousand bucks a night. It's trash. Take it out of the trash. You reuse it. Go to the dumpsters. It's what they deserve. It gets in people's mouths, Chris.

It's got to be clean trash. Yeah. Ah, they must have clean trash in my mouth. These demanding sons of bitches What do you mean there's syringes in the dumpster? People get stuck with syringes People probably use them There's no liquid of any kind in the syringes anymore

There might be nice stuff in the syringes Get some high They're probably all junkies All these loosers Yeah, people are going to look like the end of the movie Beethoven That's what I think, Greg. The show was meant to tank and close. Actually, when you go on Ticketmaster, you would go on,

and if you search Criss Angel, a Mystica would not show up. He did not put his name in the title of the listing. So even if you're a huge Criss Angel fan and we're going to Vegas, you couldn't even search and find that show. So what I think probably happened is he was just like it'll we won't spend any money on it it'll close and you know move on and then and we'll keep the money and Dragone was probably like Chris we can turn this around we can make this better Chris and and the Dragone magic it's in me yeah I can do this and that's why he you know had to pay the price which could have been the price of a meal or it was a gold back transaction we don't know

jason has not fully defined what the price was do you think anytime like one of his like employees is giving him trouble he's like you look stressed maybe you need a trip to cairo okay i'm backing off chris forget it chris, Chris. I'm fine. I'm fine. I know this really nice spa. There's a great jacuzzi you can get in with a lid that closes on top of it. Genuine knows all about that one.

Genuine almost took a trip to Cairo. Alright, I survived you long ago, so let me now say, well, let me ask, I'm never sure when i make this offer but let's exit through the gift shop is there anything you'd like to plug no we're uh we're striking yeah nothing right that's right you can't yes i'm not plugging i'm not no i have

nothing coming out right now everything's unless new york times i don't know if you oh when does this episode come out soon it might be out oh out. Oh, well, I've heard. August 20th, New York Times, there's going to be a mention of my animatronic robot, Dale, that I built and have been performing with in Los Angeles. Yes. I could probably do a whole episode on that. Jason, if there is any possible Dale interaction, if we could have him, if we could... I don't want to go supposing because dale is a mind blow dale is more mind-blowing than even chris angel's incredible

house it really genuinely you have like you really have like created something pretty unreal better than anything disney's done lately yeah i agree being that disney's not doing anything lately uh so yeah uh read about jason's animatronic cowboy in the new york times i'm so psyched about fingers crossed maybe it'll get cut but uh yeah yeah check it out um geez great well congrats and thanks for closing out the series with us so happy to have you uh as for us we really hope you have enjoyed podcast the ride sin city nights uh for anybody who came out to the groove blender thank you so much uh hope you've enjoyed kind of getting off of your regularly scheduled theme park programming we've really loved it if you want to do this again if we

should do a sin city nights to raise your voice i don't know to who to us it's not like you have to tell forever dog to let us no i don't know it's. It's up to us. Write to the Las Vegas Press. Let them know to give us good reviews. And if we see an article, then we'll do another one of these. But I hope so because there's so much Vegas I think we left on the table. And I'd love to do more. Thank you, Mike, for the Sin City Nights theme.

It's a banger. Thank you, Aaron, for the logo. It's wonderful. We now, after all this stuff, after a bunch of mega episodes we are going to take a summer break at least two weeks on the main feed uh uh and but don't the the party keeps going on the patreon oh yeah uh as always uh so bonus episodes are there patreon pockets are at the second gate or on the vip tier club three all of that at patreon.com slash podcast the ride. But for now, the Sin City nights are over. The dawn

is coming across the breaking across the horizon. And I guess we go back to mostly Anaheim and Orlando days. Yeah. Mostly. But you know, sometimes. Talk about a lot of fucking other bullshit too.

Mostly Aerosmith. It, but mostly Aerosmith. It's like a hop in the grave. Oh yeah. Bye Jason. All right. And now for Jason's trip to Cairo. Forever. Dog.

This has been a Forever Dog production. Executive produced by Mike Carlson, Jason Sheridan, Scott Gairdner, Brett Boehm, Joe Cilio, and Alex Ramsey. For more original podcasts, please visit foreverdogpodcasts.com and subscribe to our shows on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Keep up with the latest Forever Dog news by following us on Twitter and Instagram at Forever Dog Team

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