Spencer Horsman at Illusions: Magic Bar and Lounge - Baltimore

As my wife and I ambled about the Federal Hill neighborhood of Baltimore, MD, we passed a curious looking building with a marquis advertising a magic & comedy show that very evening.

Here are the facts:

Every Friday & Saturday at 9pm (though it really didn't start until 9:30 or 9:45)
$7. Or, to quote the owner, 2 for $14.
2 drink minimum. But they have a couple decent beers for $3, a few OK ones for $4, and some good ones for $5.
We laughed almost the whole time. 

So, if you went for the cheapest possible route, you are talking about $13 per person plus tip, and this is not a case of "you get what you pay for".  Spencer's comedic timing is on par with his ability to amaze. One moment he is dropping a clever anecdote, the next he is retrieving a purloined twenty dollar bill from within a newly cut orange, then he is hanging upside down and attempting to escape from a straight jacket ala Harry Houdini.

You can barely even see a movie for $13 a person, and most theaters don't have the beer and single malt scotch selection of Illusions.

Be warned, he does call on members of the audience to come up and assist. If you don't want to go on stage, keep your mouth shut about it being your birthday, how far you drove, and please don't go with the kinds of friends that will volunteer you into participating.

You should see this show if you are in Baltimore on a Friday or Saturday night and have $13 plus tip.

You should not see this show if if you are in Copenhagen and only have 2 Euros.

The Town - 2010

Is all the world mad?????

This movie is held in high esteem by moviegoers and critics alike, and for the life of me I cannot figure out why. The basic premise is so far from believable that it took an extreme effort to even pay attention. The pace of the story moved from 5 minutes of high tension robbery to 45 minutes of the most unconvincing romance ever played out on the screen, continuing that cycle until the movie eventually fizzled out into closing credits.

Lord grant me the strength to continue reviewing this pointless shell of a film.

My BS detector was firing high pitched sirens in my brain every time one of the "characters" had to "act" in a "scene". Granted, I know very few professional bank robbers, "people" from Boston, or FBI agents. Even with a lack of expertise, I know fake when I see it... and those characters were just plain fake. The icing on the cake was that after all the crime, murder, drug abuse and so forth, the creators of the film had the audacity to dedicate it to the good people of the Charleston neighborhood of Boston, AKA Sir Not-appearing-in-this-film.

If you have not seen Heat, watch that instead of this movie.

If you have seen Heat, re-watch that instead of this movie.