Smiling in USA (New York)

AND NOW TO THE FAIRYTALE...

Now New York smiles a bit more

Welcome to the first part of Mr. Magic and The Habit Breakers smiling adventure from New York, Texas and The Caribbean. This one take place in New York, where we performed in ladies underwear, did magic tricks on Wall Street and delivered an award to the television star David Letterman. When you scroll down the page, you can read the following chapters of adventure from New York.

- In the big city jungle

- MIB – Men in Blondes

- The Danish Queens

- Magic on Wall Street

- The David Letterman Award

- Stars on pirate-radio

In the big city jungle

The first part of our tour, which would lead us through USA to The Caribbean took place in New York. We made friends with a nice, young guy, who lived in one of the most criminal areas of the city – the Bronx. We could live with him through our stay in his house, which he shared with a bunch of unemployed musicians. In this messy house, that was just barely standing, breakfast and common sense were replaced with booze and drugs – it was quite a different lifestyle to what we knew from home. Everywhere the house was covered in leftovers, empty bottles, plain mess, dust and hair from the big German shepherd dog Yoko. There was no running water, so it wasn't possible to shower, and if you needed to go to the bathroom, this could be done in the drummers drum. This is the words from Thomas and Jesper in USA.    

Our goal on this first destination was to perform in the underground environment of New York. With our the magic tricks and creative effects, we hoped to really get to know the locals.

Before leaving we had many considerations about our way of travelling, and we decided that a part of the adventure should be not to make any contacts or arrangements beforehand. We would arrive  at an unknown airport and just see, what would happen. Our only guidelines would be our plans and ideas, which might seem unrealistic to many. After landing a huge work began where we needed to find the right people, establish contacts and afterwards convince them, that we were able to perform professionally. Then we needed to make the arrangements of our show. Everything had to happen within 2-3 days, which gave us a lot of work to make the pieces of the puzzle fall into place. (Continued below)      

MIB – Men In Blondes (LIPS 1/2)

The first evening in New York we went to a Drag Queen restaurant, which we had heard a lot about: LIPS. Our eyes fell on woman behind the bar, who seemed quite pretty and charming, and she would have been, if it wasn't for the facts, that she normally bears the name Frank and has a penis!

Thomas had made a T-shirt with Frankie's portrait from a photo, he had brought from home. When she saw the t-shirt and heard our joke, that the t-shirt was bought in Denmark, where she was a famous face, neither eye nor thigh was dry. With this simple action, we had made a contact and made friends with the “women”, who looked upon us as a strange couple of visitors. They didn't change the way they looked upon us, even though we revealed how the shirt was really made, and they got a sneak peak of some of Jesper's tricks.

The following day we contacted them again telling them about our purpose of visiting NY. The employees, the tenant and the owner thought a lot and talked back and forth, about weather they would let us perform as drags or not. It is a place, that makes a living of giving professional shows, which means that people can't just walk in from the street an jump on stage. Furthermore they are proud of their way of living and they had to consider if we would ridicule their environment. The end of this story is that they agreed.

The day before our show we saw New York from a different angle. We went shopping like a couple of chicks. The employees at LIPS had one condition to help us: that we would go all the way. So we went shopping for panties, stocking-lace, bra, make up, wig and everything else. It was very different than the world we normally live in.  A local New Yorker told us this: “ People here are freaky, but not as fucking freaky as you guys!” 

A few hours before show time we took the subway from the Bronx with our suitcases bursting with women's clothing and make up. I don't dare to think about if the other passengers had known this, then we might not have arrived safely.

At LIPS we were greeted by Gusty Winds – a “woman” at nearly 260 kg, who would do our make up makeover. The result was both fascinating and frightening. One thing was to wear this thick layer of make up, something else was to wear the wig. In this instant a merely physical and mental change happened, because she had done the job so well. We both felt a change in character and we became one with the place and its team. A crazy example of this change was the consideration about how to use the toilet: Standing or sitting!? This was a weird and a bit disturbing experience, which we found funny – but we both agreed that this was something we didn't need to try again. At the same time it became very important to us to tell the flirting “girls”, that we were straight and for the record both had girlfriends at home.     

Shortly after we had to jump into the very small lace panties, which had the job to make sure that every private part stayed in place. Afterwards we put the dresses and the high heels on, and then the red-necks from Kjellerup was ready to take over New York as Drag Queens. As a gesture to the Danish royal family we called ourselves “Pink Mary” (not Bloody Mary) an Magic Margaret.

(Continued below) 

The Danish Queens (LIPS 2/2)

While we were waiting in the basement under the restaurant, we could hear how the room above filled up with guests. It was a Wednesday night, which meant a round of Bitchy Bingo, where the players could win certain pieces of toys, which we will not mention how to use.

Suddenly our names were called and to the sound of the applauding crowd, we flounced up the steep stairs in our high heels. Thomas played the guitar and we started the show with a rewritten version of the ABBA-classic Dancing Queen transforming it to “We are the Danish Queens”. Then Jesper performed with his lively stuffed animal (raccoon) made cigarettes vanish, made a bunch of balloon animals (both regular and some not so fit for children), and he blew up a condom with his nose. Everything went as planned with the only exception, that when Jesper wanted to light a magic pot, one of his gloves caught fire and he jumped around the stage  resembling a great, big, faggot firework with his hands on fire. The audience laughed, but they forgave this incident, when the fire in the pot transformed into to living gold fish. Then it was time to deliver the final song, which was “Always look on the bright girls of LIPS” - a rewrite of the famous Monty Python song.      

On their tour of the U.S.A., Lütken and Grønkjær visited the underground of New York. They stayed with locals in a junkie hangout while performing as drag queens in a nightclub at night.

They also visited one of the most watched television shows The Late Night Show to hand the TV star David Letterman their mark of honour The Smiling Knight Award, which was presented for Letterman’s never-ending work spreading smiles and laughs night after night.    

A moment after we were standing in the basement sweating, and we quickly agreed, that we had passed the exams with a fair and fine performance. In the perspective that we had never done anything like this, you can call it a success. With more experience and more time to rehearse we could definitely have pulled of a better show, but we are proud of how it went. No matter how confident you fell beforehand and no matter how used you are to being on stage, this was a huge expansion of our limits and it is something that we will never forget. One thing is to perform at Torvecaféen in Kjellerup (a small town in Denmark), which can be hard enough. But to impress the audience of New York is completely different. Not many places in the world can boast of more live performances than this city, and only few places, people are harder to impress. When you add a relatively foreign language and a humble costume, you really feel vulnerable. But we got the chance to perform professionally and  we got a great amount of attention, which we only can describe as a victory, when we deal with a city the size of New York.

Magic on Wall Street

The everyday life of the locals at Wall Street was temporarily changed, when Jesper  went to Wall Street to entertain the locals. Jesper performed street magic in front of businessmen and policemen – both types known for not wanting to loose control.

“Since I didn't tell them, that I am a magician but just “randomly” went over and made things happen right in front of their noses, the reactions were completely diverted.

Some laughed out loud, while others turned aggressive, when their burning cigarettes vanished right in front of them.

Everything was filmed by Thomas, who had a hidden camera in the thumb of his glove.

This chapter is over. You can see the video by following the link below. The New York adventures continues below in the following chapter.    

The David Letterman award

In every country that we travel to, we choose one person, who we believe do something extraordinary to spread smiles. As a crazy idea we wanted to honour the famous tv-host David Letterman with this award.

We knew, that the show each week receives thousands of mails, so we got very surprised, when the producer and stage manager Biff Henderson, who is known from the show, decided to meet with us to receive the award.

We got even more surprised, when we arrived at the CBS studios and a whole camera crew awaited us with the instructor in front, ready to film the seance. We didn't expect this from one of the worlds most watched television shows. But in the end it was the Americans on Broadway who got caught by surprise, when Biff Henderson was raised to knighthood of The Smiling Fairytales Society. This wasn't done with a regular sword, but with one made of balloons. As a smiling medal we gave him a piece of Danish culture: A piece of Danish fiber-bread with salami, remoulade and roasted onions. Biff Henderson got so confused, when we afterwards did a few magic tricks and blew up condoms with our noses, that he dropped his medal – the piece of bread – on the floor in front of the running cameras.    

After these experiences in New York we hit the road towards Texas, where we replaced the feminine lifestyle with some testosterone – life as a cowboy. Afterwards we ended in The Caribbean, where we sought the voodoo-environment. A lot of the locals still believes in voodoo and actually performs death rituals and sacrifices.

Read more about these adventures under USA: Texas and USA: Caribbean, which you can see in the menu on your right.

Guest stars in pirate radio

We made other visits at American media after our happening on David Lettermans The Late Show.

We visited some underground media afterwards. Through our new friend from The Bronx (see the left picture) we were invited to visit a radio station, which was the complete opposite of the CBS-studio. It was a grand and very special experience to be a guest star on the legendary pirate   

radio in Nyack. The air-cowboy Johnny Silver (number two from the left in the picture) has throughout years made fun of the bigger radio stations, when he sends without permission from his own studio. More than once has he been close to getting caught by the media business FBI – which is called FCC, but every time he has escaped. 

We were invited to give the show a visit, and we had accepted the challenge. We told about our tour, life in Denmark, gave a small performance of our songs and tricks, while we opened a few beers, and the host smoked a joint – everything on air. At the same time we gave the radio host a sneak peak of life in Denmark, when we played music by Poul Kjøller, served salt licorice and “Gammel Dansk”- a Danish bitter. Everything was something, that he almost chocked in. This was a type of radio-show, that could not have happened in Denmark, because both technique and the content of the show was somewhat outre character. For example when Johnny Silver gave all his attention to his joint, and then forgot the technique, which resulted in amounts of private talking on air or complete radio black out. And through all this time the hosts black Labrador Retriever ran around in the studio barking or sniffing the guests in their private parts.      

We were on air LIVE in more than two hours, and the listeners could call or write with questions for us through all this time. The listeners must have been as strange as the host, because it was some weird questions, that we got. We got calls from people,who wanted to hear our opinion on everything from Hamlet  by Shakespeare to the Danish participation in the Iraq war.