Don't be a hypnocrit!

    California has its "T.O." as well: Thousand Oaks, as opposed to "Toronto, Ontario". We felt right at home with our host, Marc Bachrach. We began the day at an anthropological experience, a "networking" meeting where 80 or so local businesspeople have coffee and make a thirty second pitch for themselves before breakfast in a local hotel, under the auspices of the local Chamber of Commerce. They do this once a week. There were lots of clever catch-phrases, including the lady garden expert who wasn't just your average "mow'n'blow" person. There's a mingling session, and then one chosen person makes a ten minute videotaped pitch to the room. There were lawyers, mortgage and insurance brokers, yoga instructors, cosmetics and fashion jewelry vendors, electricians and plumbers, internet marketers and website builders, several clinical hypnotists, and one comedic stage hypnotist as well (Marc), "CJ the DJ" who is also a drug and alcohol counselor - any calling you can imagine. Here is Marc in the centre, CJ on the left, and Melissa from St. John, New Brunswick.     

    One fellow, a former funeral director, is a sharp marketer. He sells all kinds of stuff, including, as he reminded us twice, headstones; today he was peddling a special caddy that is fixed to the outside of your car window to allow prospective clients who see your car in the parking lot (the car itself is, of course, a mobile billboard covered with lettering describing his services) to take your business card away with them. There was quite a bit of interest, but Marc cracked the room up with his interjected question: "Jim, can you put the business card caddy on your headstone?" 

    We toured and took a few photos in the Reagan Museum, not far from Marc's house. It is a shrine, nay, a temple, to "The Great Communicator" - a man who, in spite of ideological reservations I can't shake, I have to admit that I admire. He appears to have been a caring man who served his nation well during difficult years in the domestic economy and in the international political circus. 

    We put in a full work-day in the evening: we were Marc's roadies, helping him with equipment set-up and tear-down, and taking video and stills of his stage show. The performance this time was at UCLA, to a gathering of fraternity (Delta something) and sorority (Chi Omega) students. We expected to see sixty odd in the audience, but there were at least double that number packed into the room and foyer - standing room only. 

    I still can't get my head around how it works, and I wonder what sort of hallucination experience the subjects had during the process, but there were nine students on a row of chairs facing their peers, using their shoes as cell phones to deal with telemarketers and sex phone callers, smelling horrible smells and delicious ones, holding audience members by the ears to smell the delicious smell through blowholes in the top of their heads (you didn't know people had blowholes in the top of their heads?); being elbow inspectors in the crowd, losing their bums and trying to find them in a pile in the corner, then attaching the wrong ones and going around trying to recognise their own on their fellow subjects and grab it back; being James Bond, rolling around and shooting at snipers; being the roadrunner and squeezing the noses of audience members with a loud "beep, beep"; accepting academy awards (they each won, and all were awarded at the same time); forgetting the number 7, even when it is in the title "Snow White and the .....?"; forgetting their own name and being convinced that every new name they heard was theirs, and insistently trying to introduce themselves to Marc using their new name; having their feet stuck to the floor; winning a surf competition...and many other weird situations. 

    The highest point was when the young men became pregnant, went through contractions and childbirth right there on stage, and the young ladies had to pair off with them to be their birth coaches. Here's a very special slideshow of the photos Deb took - it'll be almost like being there yourself. It sure was a fascinating experience. The audience had been cautioned to control and contain their enthusiasm, and to be participants in helping the subjects maintain their hypnotic state, but it was still a wild and outrageously funny evening. 

    Marc is a superb couchsurfing host, musician, entertainer, and a very funny guy. We finally got home at 3:30 a.m. after "dinner" (almost breakfast) at Denny's, and the following day we slept late, said our farewells and drove to L.A.