Getting nailed 🔩

Hello, it's me Artsimone.

I had this grand idea to speak with the most regular, very normal, and painfully ordinary people. Boring that's what they seem like from first glance or first listen. But really they are concealing something from us. It might be a naughty secret, the most bizarre profession you've ever heard of, or a hobby that will make you go, how the bloody hell did they get into that? And it gets even better because I have no idea who these people

Hey, I'm Anthony. I am from the Gold Coast and I used to be a carpenter, so outside of my work, I am a very keen surfer. Keen not necessarily good, but I am keening and also proud father to two wonderful, wonderful little girls. But there is a secret that I don't think Art Simone's going to get about me because it's not the kind of thing that you would hear in everyday conversation.

How are you going, Anthony, very good.

How are you.

I'm doing very well. That would love you to meet you. Where are you streaming in from today?

I am on the sunny Gold Coast.

Oh, I'm so jealous.

I love the Gold Coast only because it's just so disgustingly tacky and so am I.

I love every single bit of it.

Get me down Cavil Avenue with all the drunk bitches hanging out in front of the McDonald's, or you know, just Oh, I love it.

I love it. I've got a star casino, spend lots of money.

That's pretty humid. Now that's gonna play havoc with your hair.

Well, the good news for you is my hair is plastic, so it'll survive. I'm going to describe you are very clean cut, good looking guy. You're in a nice at the moment. You're well kept, but slightly generic.

Maybe I've done this on purpose. Maybe I'm trying to throw you off the same.

Well, I'm just I'm just trying to say there's nothing like strange or like interesting to describe about you. You're just like a nice looking person. Let me throw the ball back in your court. There's a lot more to describe on your screen. What you're looking at, isn't this?

There's glits and glamour and shiny stuff and hair and makeup.

Everywhere exactly, so please, I'm not being rude. I'm just calling it as I sees it, all right, all right, So yeah, surfing.

You'd like to say, so you'd like to keep fit? Is that your like exercise?

Yeah? That is my main form of back side be a very active person, like to be like to be out and about, like to be doing stuff.

I'm running busy bee down all right, busy bee. Okay, all right, you've got two kids. That's lovely. And you used to be a carpenter, so you're good with wood.

I I am good with the wood.

I'm just I'm just checking, okay. And how long did you carpenter for the carp and teer?

What's the word?

How long did I mess around with wood for? Is the question? Yes? Ask So I started my own business when I was twenty one back in the UK. So had the business for about six or seven years, and then then that I went belly up.

Oh okay, so it didn't go well, Okay, failed business.

Writing that down as well.

Okay, I'm going to ask you three questions, and from the answers to those three questions, I have to try and work out what it is you're concealing from me. So question number one, do you speak any other languages?

So? I kind of do so. When I was at school, I learned German, so I speak a very small amount of German. If you know any German, don't start speaking to me in German because I won't be able to interpret what you say. There is another language that I understand. However, if I tell you, it might give a little bit too much away, so I'm still going to keep it a secret.

I reckon you can talk Simlish. I reckon, that's what it is. That's what you're hiding from me. Simlish. Yeah, it's what they speak on the sims the video game.

I reckon.

You're like, oh what Similish, no idea, But secretly you're like habadu badabad sababat okay. Question number two are you skeptical about anything?

Yes, I am skeptical about some things, one of them specifically being I'm quite skeptical of I suppose the psychic realm. But I like to say I'm curiously skeptical, So I'm not a hard skeptic, whereas I'm curiously skeptical, so I'd say no way, but show me some proof and I might go along with it.

Your psychic world, okay, well, I've met a lot of psychos in my life so and I've had no problem.

With them, So slightly different world. But the.

Third question I have for you is what would your superpower be?

Am I only allowed one? Or can I have two? Yeah?

You can have two, that's all right.

Yeah. One of them would be to be able to read people's minds, and then the other one would be I reckon, be really cool if you could stop time?

Stop it? Do you want the day to be any longer? Can you please?

You're just going to look older quicker than other people. We don't want that, all right.

Let's can I let me put a tweak on my superpart. Yes, I can freeze time and freeze aging without the use of any botox.

That's agreed.

All right, that's fun then, Okay, as long as I'm happy to get wiser, just not older visually. Okay, I think I've hit my peak and it's all downhill from now. Okay, let's recap failed business.

Let's recap nothing interesting about this guy visually wonderful picture of him on this podcast.

Actually this is the joy of the podcast.

Okay, you just you know, you never know what's going to come out of my mouth. So no see from the Gold Coast former carpenter went tits up.

Two kids like to serve. So you're active, good for you, busybody like that.

You can almost speak a bit of German, but then you can also understand another language that you can't tell me simlish clearly. Okay, you're skeptical of the psychic realm, yet you want to read people's minds. I'm just you are just really challenging me today, aren't you, Anthony.

Okay, so.

I'm going to say that you have actually you've put up a few of these things to like throw me off the sand. But I reckon you are the inventor of the SIMS. I reckon you like work in computer computers. That's why, like your setup's really nice today, and you you're like actually a secret computer nerd and you invented the SIMS and simlish, am I right?

No? And I'm a friend. You put me down, and you've now even referred to me as a.

Nerd computer nerd it's a difference.

But you're wrong. I'm a mentalist, which means that I read people's minds for a living. So I've been a mentalist for or just over twenty years. Got into it through doing magic and got more interested in the human mind and the way that it works. A mentalist indeed, a mentalist?

What the facts are? Mentalist? Ah?

So Anthony is not the inventor of simlish. No, he is a mentalist, and I have no idea what the hell that is. It just sounds like something my mum would call me, Mom.

Are you listening? All right? We have just met Anthony and I found out he is a mentalist.

Anthony, what the fuck is a mentalist? Please tell me? I want to know. I want to know.

I describe it as I lie for a living, and I lie by pretending to be psychic. Can'ce the reason why I'm skeptical about the psychic industry because I give the illusion of being able to possess psychic powers when I know that there's a method behind what I'm doing. The way that I like to say is you've got magic and hypnosis, and mentalism sort of lives in the middle of those two things. So no one goes to sleep, and well, at least I hope no one goes to

So what do you exactly do?

So if I'm at a conference and Anthony you come out and go, hello, I'm your mentalist today, what happens?

It depends on what I'm doing, So it'd either be doing a show or a keynote. So if I'm doing a show, I would come out and then perform demonstrations of apparently reading people's minds, well while the entire time saying I'm not actually reading your mind. If I'm doing a keynote, then what I would do is I'll come out and I will use my demonstrations of mentalism to share one of my other skills, which was the other language that I understand, which is body language. Ah.

I see, yeah, it almost sounds like a sideshow thing.

Yees. So it's pretty much an act that was very popular back in the vaudeville days, where you would have the mentalist stand on stage and apparently read the minds of everybody in the audience. So it's been around for years. I think it's made quite popular by the TV show The Mentalist with Simon Baker, where he used mentalism powers to go around and solve crimes. I don't solve many crimes. I just stand on stage and be entertainings.

Yeah, so it's er a performer essentially.

I am former, not a computer nerd.

So why do you like to go like to essentially be honest and say I'm a mentalist and I'm actually not reading your mind?

Like why do you do that? Instead of being.

Like, ooh, I'm a psychic and look at me, go like, why did you choose that instead of the other.

For exactly the reason as to the way that you you've just described it. Of waving your arms and going, oh, look at me, now, that's not me as as a performer, as you've already pointed out, I'm very I'm very plain. There is nothing special about me. Wow.

You're really holding on to it now, aren't.

You, Anthony, I've been emotionally scarred.

Oh my goodness, they've got a bruised ego here everyone, I'm bruis ego. Nah, you're fine. So you like that style of it. How did you get into it then? Like, were you a performer before any of this? No, because it's like a big jump to go from being a former carpenter to now standing on a stage in front of people.

I suppose in a way you could look at it as I've gone from doing carpentry to performing miracles. It's quite biblical in some sort of senses. But I'm not a natural performer. If you had asked me when I was eighteen, if I had stood up on stage in front of a group of people, you would have got a very quick answer. If not really nervous, really nervous, socially awkward. When I was younger, it's one of the

No, I totally get it.

It means yeah, you can be like, hey, don't look at me, look at the magic trick. I'm doing it for the same reason I'm covered in glittering makeup and here because it's fun, and it can be like.

Don't look at me, look at this.

So how did you go from doing magic at the pub to making it your full time job?

So when I had the carpentry business back in the UK, one of my clients used to run a cabaret night once a month and he heard that I did a bit of magic and asked if I'd go along and do a few tricks at his cabaret night. Now, this was the first time that I'd ever been asked to do it in what I would call it professional setting, actually being asked to do magic at an event rather than doing it at a pub because I'm trying to

Ever.

Mother, I'm going to be making this third bottle of wine disappear.

That's what I'd do.

Yeah, but I got pulled back for the next about year and a half, so I couldn't have done too bad a job in that first one. And then that one thing led to another. Obviously, It's like anything in this entertainment. Well, do you have to do those really shit gigs?

Tell me about it.

I've had my fair share of shit gigs where absolutely everything goes wrong.

But do you ever get it wrong? What's the worst thing that's happened?

I don't know. Okay, this was the worst gig that I ever been booked for. So this was back in the back in the early days of my performing careers. This was I wasn't that comfortable on stage At this point in tom I used to do a lot of roving, and an agent had booked me for a wedding in Sydney, and I did do my due diligence and ask enough questions. Now, mentalism involves a lot of spoken word. There's a lot of you having to understand what it is that I'm saying.

That would have seemed like eternity. You'd be like, oh, do I get out of here.

The other story which I have, there's a picture behind me of a routine which I do. It's it's kind of the thing that I've been known for, which is playing Russian Roulette with nail guns. So four nail guns, one of them gets loaded, I read the person's mind, and then three of the nail guns are fired at me. What the fuck?

What's this got to do with reading minds? Why are you playing with guns? Now? What is this nail guns on?

You should know theeter. That's what it's all about. It's my moment.

I'm trying to just bridge the How do you go from reading someone's mind to them being like, actually, I could get four nail guns and like almost like stabbed myself with one, Like what hell ha.

So this piece, this Russi Roulette piece, came about because I was doing a TV piece and I needed something big and good and something that would be memorable. So I've always liked the idea of Russian Roulette type of effect. Me being a carpenter in my former life obviously lends itself to nail guns. The whole thing kind of worked out.

See that's clever though, because if you had started this interview with a nail gun next to you, I would have thought you were very remarkable, just saying so, I can understand why you wouldn't want to use it for like a big TV gig, etc.

So you know you should have brought the nail gun. Maybe I would have had a different opinion.

Well, okay, I'm sorry for not bringing her ol guns. So these nail guns, they're all fired into me. Some of the three of them are empty. One of them is loaded. I had one of them fired into me. Now, these nail guns have gone a little pin that pushes the nails. When the nail comes out, it's got a pin. Now, even the empty ones have still got the pin inside them. So the person fired the gun into my stomach, but the gun had been bent, so the firing pin pierced

It wasn't the one with the nail. I haven't flicked up yet. Don't worry. So have you stopped using a nail gun or no?

I still use a nail gun.

How do you even come up with the idea to use a nail gun? Like, how do these tricks start?

Do you just sit down and try to work out some tricks and test out to see if they'll work.

In a way. Yes, So I would just I would sort of think in my head what would make a really good show piece. I would take a collection of all the techniques that I know in order to achieve a certain outcome. Now, there are some mentalism effects out there that the other mentalists have shared, so they could be their routines. But then then I'll put my spin on it. I'll put my personality that average nothing extraordinary personality. I'll then put into the trick.

Oh really, never upset a mentalist. This is this is probably a mentalist game. Now, this is the game now trying to wear me down, make me feel guilty.

An't you you would drop it? Now I will drop it.

I'm still confused how this works. So you don't read people's minds, but you kind of do. Are you just manipulating people? Then it is a mixture of different things.

There will be some things where I'm using linguistic deception to make you say certain things. Other times I might be using hypnotic suggestion, so the words hypnotist produced but without putting you to sleep. Yeah. Other times it's down

To be honest, what is the magic and mentalism community? Like, are they all right or are they all like a bunch of like protective people that are like, no, don't talk to me, you might steal my trick.

It is a strange world. It is a strange world. I do think that a lot of people who get into magic were probably similar to me in that they might have been slightly socially nervous, socially awkward. So I think there's a lot of that in the magic world. You've also got to remember it's a world of secrets. We try to hide everything. So as you get into the magic world and you start to build a reputation, that's when you will start to have that really supportive

No, I mean that sounds like the drag community too. It's like you start as a drag queen, you go, oh, how do I do my makeup? And everyone's like, you'll work it out. Yourself, go on, get out of here, love, because that's a very secretive thing. You know, we all have special application techniques.

So is there a lot of rivalry in your world?

Dalling.

Of course there is in terms of like being accused of stealing other people's ideas and pagiarism and all this kind of thing.

Oh, there's a scandal at the moment because someone's stolen my specific mix of a show that I do and they're performing it at the moment, and I am very upset about it. They're going around doing my custom Kylie Minogue Medali and it's mine because I paid for it and I organized it. So yes, there's lots of stealing that happens.

Ah, So what can you do if somebody is stealing other people's material? Does everyone gang up with their wigs and makeup on and chase them with pitchfork? So what happens? Or did they get outsted on the internet? What happens?

No, you just get over it.

You just get over it because you know what, you can take my mix, but you can't take my personality. So it's fine, you can have it, Love, I needed a new one anyway.

That's what sets you apart. From it from everybody else is having that point of difference because it's you who's doing it. Yeah, anybody could do the trick, but could they do it like you?

I think it's time that you did one on me. Do you want to do? You want to do? You want to be mental on me? Be mental on me?

All right? I have got here four bags. I put some numbers in front of them. What's inside each one of these bags is a block of wood with a hole in it.

Not a fucking nail again, lead have it?

You learn aad the dear and a nail.

So you've got four paper bags. Each of them are sitting behind a number from one to four. All of them have blocks of wood in them, but one has a nail sticking up out of the wood.

I like where this is going.

So what I'm going to do is I'm going to take them. I'm going to mix them around a little bit. And one I promise you is I'm not doing any weird dodgy stuff, not like you'll be doing.

So I'm paying so much attention.

Okay, Now, be honest. You don't actually know where about the nail is at all? Do you? No?

But I think it's number three.

You think it's number three. Yeah, Well, this is either going to be the end of the podcast very very very quickly, or it's gonna be a moment of amazement for you. This is what's gonna happen. Art. You're gonna say any one of these numbers. The number that you say, I'm gonna slam my hand as hard as I can onto the bag. So my hand is literally down to.

Your choices, all right, Jesus if it goes wrong, Okay, I will feel a bit of a prick.

Yeah, that's an applaud to that one. I like that one.

That was good. So choose one of the bags one, two, three, or four. We're gonna slam my hand on whichever one you say, which one you want.

To go for?

Art Three, Number three. That's when you thought that the nail was in though, wasn't it. Yeah? Okay, I thought that you and I had built some rapport. I thought that we had almost become friends. However, you're now asking me to slam my hand down on the very bag that you think has a nail in it.

Yeah, but when you put the block in there, you could have taken the nail. Lad I didn't say what happened on the inside.

You are so skeptical. Here we go, number three, There we go, one, two go. That is one out of the way. We left with three dogs. Were left with three bags.

So you've just smashed your hand against it. You don't have a hole in your hand. The nail wasn't your fire.

No blood.

Okay, we've got three bags left. Okay, forget the numbers of the bags. Now the brown bags now have colors assigned to them.

We've got red, blue, yellow, red, blue, yellow. I'm trying to influence your choices. This is red, this is blue, this is yellow. Which color would you like me to squash? Red? Blue or yellow?

Yellow?

Red? Blue? Yellow? This one here? One, two, three?

Oh my god, are you bleeding?

No? No, no blood, trust me, blood no blood. If that goes wrong, you will know audibly because I will screen.

You should do a Halloween version where everything goes wrong? Would that be fun?

Well, because I could probably only do it once a year because for the rest of you I'll be trying to recover.

No, it could be fake.

You should do like one trick where you've got like blood capsules in one of the bags, Like, oh, trick, char it was just tomato sauce.

We could collab, We could collab. I think I feel a collab coming on.

Okay, we're left with two bags. I want you to name two two famous people. Name two famous people for me.

Oh, Sonny and share.

A good choice? Good choice. So this one's Sonny, This one's Share.

Kill Sonny, kill Sunny. Same share? Keep share, yeah, keep sharing? Okay, so wait, now there's two bags left.

You have a fifty to fifty chance of smashing your hand down onto the nail and butchering your hand.

Ha ha, do it? Do it?

One? Two? There we go? Sonny, is God leaving us just one used before I have taken If I reach in and grab out the nail. There it is, there, the block of wood with Oh you managed to avoid me getting stabbed. Well done you. I'm not covered or surrounded by sandwich bags. There we go. Were you impressed with that one after?

You know?

Yeah?

I wasn't until the last one. Until the end, I was like, all right, just gonna smash them all. What's the point of that?

What?

So you've just you didn't smash the last bag.

You saved share that would be stupid.

And you opened up Share and there was the woodblock with the nail. Indeed, I don't know. I don't know what happened.

Now, I just messed with your head, didn't even mess up your hair to do it.

So Anthony isn't the inventor of simlish. He is actually a mentalist. Oh wow, that was really impressive actually, but I kind of.

Wanted to see him get nailed.

You've been listening to an iHeart Australia and Kiss production Concealed with artsimone. Listen to free on the iHeart app and listen to your arts content. Oh and be sure to check out the socials to see Anthony's wood Yes