Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Entertainment/2014 December 14

= December 14 =

A Game of Pool (1961) ?
In this episode of the original Twilight Zone, Jack Klugman and Jonathan Winters (in a rare serious role) play a form of pool I'm not familiar with. As far as I can determine, these are the rules:

1) A coin toss determines who breaks first.

2) Each player tries to sink every ball except the cue ball. Each ball sunk counts as a point.  When a player misses a shot, the next player gets his turn.

3) When they are down to just one ball plus the cue ball, they re-rack all but that one ball, and play continues.

4) First player to 300 points wins.

So, what form of pool is this ? StuRat (talk) 00:04, 14 December 2014 (UTC)


 * See Straight pool. Deor (talk) 00:12, 14 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Yep, that's it, thanks. Apparently it has gone out of fashion since then. StuRat (talk) 06:22, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

The song The Way You Look Tonight
I'm looking for a slow version with a male singer and (mostly?) a simple, effective piano accompaniment. Not recent, but not too old either. I probably heard it on a CD. Not much to go on, but that's about all I can remember. Never mind. I found it; it was done by the Jaguars. Clarityfiend (talk) 07:45, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

Box office
Can anyone help me find box office data for The Kite? It says here that the film (Le cerf-volant in French) was a commercial success. Fitzcarmalan (talk) 14:40, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

looking for a comic cover blog :(
Hello, I remember i stumbled on this comic-cover blog, featuring FUNNY, COOL, BIZARRE OR ODD" comics(covers) (those were tags in the blog) and they featured only comic covers but not from a certain era I think, more like everything from the 40s-00s just anything with a cool, funny, odd or bizarre cover.. :(  I've looked through all of the google links and I can't find it, it was a big blog with probably 100s of pages. (i tried the top results when looking for those  tags and it didn't seem to be them)

any help appreciated 157.157.160.93 (talk) 15:16, 14 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Superdickery.com, perhaps? Warning:  apparently the original site has viruses, but a virus-free version reportedly is available.  John M Baker (talk) 02:02, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

Thank you, that is really similar, but I remember it had so many various comics, even from Russia! So not only golden age or just superhero comics, but just all kindss of weird, random, funny comic covers! I remember it was up earlier this year or late last year at least. but thanks! 157.157.177.123 (talk) 07:04, 17 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Perhaps the Copacetic Gallery? John M Baker (talk) 00:01, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

Rope magic trick
I was recently at a cabaret show, and there I saw a magic trick. A woman's hands are bound behind her back, and a rope is woven around her upper body through her armpits. Then a member of the audience wearing a jacket is asked to come on stage. He stands in front of the woman with his back to her and a curtain is pulled over them, enclosing them fully from all sides. When the curtain is drawn down a few seconds later, the woman is still bound, but is wearing the man's jacket underneath her ropes. Then the woman is freed from her ropes. How is this done? I suspect that the bondage is loose enough for the woman to free herself and tie herself up again without outside help. Is this true? J I P &#124; Talk 16:45, 14 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Who binds the woman's hands and so on? Where is he (or she) standing at the end of the trick when the curtain comes up again? Then I wonder what the purpose is of asking a supposed "member of the audience" to come on stage. The trick would seem to be the same if there was just a jacket hanging on a coat rack on stage next to the woman. Are we supposed to believe that "member of the audience" doesn't notice what happens to his jacket, that it is magically taken off his back by the woman behind the curtain without him noticing? That is probably just a distraction but it is not immediately clear to me what its purpose is. As to how the woman ends up wearing the jacket underneath the rope the simplest hypothesis is that there are two jackets and two women (and of course that the "member of the audience" is not a member of the audience at all). The weak point of this hypothesis is that this would require more than two salaries. Contact Basemetal   here  17:27, 14 December 2014 (UTC)
 * The woman is bound by a stage performer, not by a member of the audience. When the curtain is drawn back, the woman and the man are standing in the same positions as they were when the curtain was originally pulled over them. Notice that the curtain is small enough to only cover the woman and the man. I'm not talking about the main stage curtain here, but a cylinder-shaped curtain only about a metre or two in diameter. The member of the audience is really just a member of the audience. I can verify this because he happened to be my work colleague. I don't think there are two identical women. There were only four women in the entire cabaret performance - the presenter, who also acted in tying the woman up, and three dancing girls, one of whom was tied up and the other two managed the curtain. J I P  &#124; Talk 17:32, 14 December 2014 (UTC)
 * How many seconds does the small curtain stay down? Contact Basemetal   here  17:45, 14 December 2014 (UTC)
 * About twenty seconds, at the most. It's actually pulled up from the stage floor rather than down, but I think the effect is the same. J I P  &#124; Talk 17:48, 14 December 2014 (UTC)
 * If the man (the performer) is hidden with the bound woman during that time, why are you assuming that she frees herself and ties the rope back again over the jacket without outside help? And if I understand you correctly, the purpose of picking a member of the audience is to "prove" that there is only one jacket, that there was no jacket prepared in advance? Contact Basemetal   here  17:57, 14 December 2014 (UTC)
 * The man who is hidden with the bound woman is the member of the audience, not a performer. The performer only ties the woman up before the small curtain is drawn up, and remains outside the curtain in full view at all times. You're right about the jacket. J I P  &#124; Talk 18:11, 14 December 2014 (UTC)
 * If you "can verify" that the man was not a performer "because he happened to be my work colleague", why not ask him what happened? --65.94.50.4 (talk) 18:54, 14 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Apparently he had to stay with his back to the woman and not look and since he's a law abiding Finn he never thought of looking behind him anyway. Some of us of course would have done just that . One further question to the JIP: Did the woman take the jacket off of him while they were hidden, i.e. was he still wearing his jacket at the moment the curtain hid them both from view, or did he hand over the jacket beforehand? Contact Basemetal   here  20:00, 14 December 2014 (UTC)
 * The man was still wearing his jacket when they were hidden, the woman only took it off of him behind the curtain. I know that at least in this case, it was not a shill but a genuine member of the audience. I note that Wikipedia has no article about the gypsy rope mystery or gypsy mystery rope. Is there enough material available about it so I could use it as a reference for an article? J I P  &#124; Talk 17:12, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

It's called the gypsy mystery rope effect or something similar. At least one of the Google results should explain how it is done. In the two videos listed there both have the audience member help tie up the girl. In the Chinese one the audience member does a good job of being surprised that his jacket is gone. CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Sunasuttuq 20:22, 14 December 2014 (UTC)


 * In the YouTube video uploaded by user "gypsyrope", a bit of the trick is revealed in the way the woman wraps the rope around her right wrist. The rope is tied around the wrist and then she makes a flourish and the rope swings around and around that wrist.  The rope is then tied to the left wrist.  She keeps them close but they aren't actually bound that close.  The rope can simply be unwrapped from the right wrist.  This gives her about a foot of rope between the two wrists.  The knots used aren't really inspected by anyone, so the ends could be knotted together but not actually binding her wrists at all.  Once she has her wrists free (when the curtain is up) the man with the jacket (who I don't believe is an actual member of the audience) can help her get the jacket over her arms and then tuck the rest under the ropes.  You'll see when the curtain comes down that it isn't tucked under the ropes on one side.  Like they ran out of time and just had to go with what they had done instead of getting it exactly perfect.
 * Also, since the woman is behind the man while the curtain is still down, she could be getting her wrists free before the curtain even goes up. It would help if we could see the trick from the side but I doubt even the audience had that good of a view of her hands as she stood there before having the curtain raised.  Dismas |(talk) 00:30, 15 December 2014 (UTC)


 * I was the guy inside the curtain once and I have no idea how the woman pulled off the trick. I felt my jacket being pulled off and then a few seconds later she was wearing it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 190.166.239.18 (talk) 12:37, 3 February 2017 (UTC)