The trick.

“Turn your blog into a bestseller!”

That’s what the book promised.

“Every great magic trick consists of three parts or acts. The first part is called "The Pledge."”

Sorry, I’m multitasking. I was learning movie magic, Christopher Nolan style, but got distracted by the slight of hand in my lap.

No, not that slight of hand.

My iPhone. It’s in my lap. It says, “Turn your blog into a bestseller!”

Their pledge: Rainbows and unicorns popping from printed blog pages while cherubs of joy roll out heavens red carpet welcoming my prose. God’s hand reaches down from the clouds dressed in a black and white hand-tuxedo, complete with thumb-knuckle top hat, tapping down the stairs, complete with Fan dancers flagging the aisle to greatness. How can I miss?

Ok, so the big God hand routine is a little overkill. You tell the big guy. Last time I critiqued his choreography he sent me to retail-gatory.

“When you can make angels Gangnam Style on the head of a pin, then you can stop watching people stick fragrance bottles in their nostril.”

Ok, slight break to reality. Yes, people really do stick fragrance bottles in their noses. No, not just up to, in. Maybe their olfactory sensors need physical contact. I dunno.  To me the best way to smell cologne is to spray it, but these odd others believe that the day old dry down odor on an atomizer nozzle plugged into a socket of nostril hair is the true whiff to a scent.  Trust me as an ex-professional: Don’t go touching store fragrances without an alcohol wipe.

And that’s, one to grow on.

But I digress. Where was I?  Oh…hand of God dancing in the nose of blogging for dollars.

“Oh, look at the nugget I’ve found!”

Yeah, this 200-page huckster was pitching it to me.  Black hat and carnival red coat barking a pledge that a mere $13 could make me just as famous as the next guy.  Never mind that Amazon had 60 plus copies in their used department and that I can’t even name one famous blog to book author, not even the creator of this pulp.

“you had me at hello.”

I don’t usually buy into this stuff. I know that the flow-bee is just a vacuum, and that the bullet only replaces every appliance in your kitchen if you never used them in the first place. Still, I blog!  I want to write a best seller!

And I’m not alone. So does a pin load of Gangnam Style dancing pop-opaths. We’re all part of a culture of instant notoriety whores looking for a trick. Andy Worhol promised we’d all be famous by the year 2000, and some of us were sleeping through our turn; we want it back, all 15 minutes, with interest. We’re counting.

PT Barnham believed something similar about one being born every minute.

“This way to the egress.”

And that doesn’t stop us from lining up for the next big thing: insta-fame! To prove my point, the aforementioned blog book, according to Amazon.com, is frequently sold with “Platform: Get noticed in a noisy world.”

Noisy world?  I’ll say.  Psy and Rebecca Black are screaming ditties over YouTube rabble while a father and daughter duet out-cute every singing head with a collection of their favorite songs to realize their dream of staring in a car commercial.

“The second act is called "The Turn". The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it do something extraordinary.”

Yeah, dad and daughter just sit on a couch and lull you to like them. “Come, sit with us.  You’ll like us.  We’re cute.”

Me? I’ve got a blog and 8 readers and cat that poops on the floor.  I can’t compete. Hey, I’m not complaining. I’m ahead of half the rabble, but in a world where every rabble rebel with super powers is vying for a bit of fame, flaunting my power of invisibility seems like an ill-conceived notion. If this were a reality show going for fame, the only reason I wouldn’t get voted off is because nobody saw me.

“Weren’t there seven contestants left? I only count 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, plus the dancing God hand…who’s missing?”

Yeah, I’d be disqualified by default while Dad and Daughter stomp atop a heap of broken bodies. Dad beats down every contender with a bloody broken guitar neck while daughter holds the Kardashian award for unwarranted fame high above her head in one hand and Rebecca Black’s bodiless head by a fistful of hair in another.

“Friday, this b---!”

Maybe invisibility isn’t all that bad.

That’s the problem with our society.  No, not the girl swinging a silenced Rebecca Black like a detached Barbie skull: that needed to happen.  That’s survival of the fittest. No the true crime here is that we’ve given fame such prestige. 

“That's why every magic trick has a third act, the hardest part, the part we call "The Prestige"."

Ok, not the same thing…or is it?  Fame is all smoke and mirrors.  It’s not skill or talent it’s all about where the light hits while the cameras are looking. It’s never been about talent. Talent is a red herring painting the town blue. There are millions of talented people who aren’t famous. Take John Doe. He’s incredibly talented at whatever he does.

Fame is all about one person looking at another and going, “why am I watching them? I could do that too, so why are they famous?”

Then that person tells one of their friends, “Hey…”

Then that friend says, “Hey, maybe you could, but I could too, and better…”

Then that friend tells a friend, “Hey, you know what that dork Bernice told me? She thinks she can do this…”

…And so on, and so on…

Fame is popular now, and that’s why hucksters are latching onto it.  Back in the Ronco era, it wasn’t about fame. It was about survival. Pocket Fisherman? Who hasn’t gone on a trip and forgotten their pole?  Mr. Microphone? What Douchbag hasn’t gone, “Cat calls just aren’t working anymore. I need a better way to get a girl’s attention.”

Life’s too easy now. There is no struggle to find a pole or insult women. These things are right at our fingertips. Our new love is ourselves, and we want to get popular just by blogging about it. Right now, we don’t need survival; we need fame.

And now there’s an app for that. Ok, maybe not an app yet—that’s next—but there is a book, and right now that book says I need to name drop for my SEO.

Lindsay Lohan

Ok, that’s done. See, SEO, if you don’t know, is one of the tricks that this book will teach you for setting up your blog. It’s all about getting seen, because if you’re going to be famous, you need to be seen.

Now, the trick is that so does everybody else.  They’ve convinced themselves that being seen is important, and that puts them in my way like a crowd of crazed girls at a Bieber concert.  See, we all still buy into fame like it’s something important. There’s always at least one person watching and the first glimpse is free.

Then we want more.

And that’s the prestige.