Our boy Derren has made it to today's New York Times. What's amazing about this interview with him is that it is not in the features/arts sections of the paper, but on page A4, the hard news section of the, paper, surrounded by articles on India and Pakistani tensions, and Tsunami repercussions. A full half page with a large photo.

Mr. Brown is interviewed by Sarah Lyall. Derren duplicates a picture she has drawn of a dress with stripes and circles on it. Though Ms Lyall insists that she purposely kept the conversation away from clothing, Derren duplicated her drawing almpost exactly, although his stripes were going in the opposite orientation to her original drawing. Derren suggested that Ms. Lyall might have been unconsciously influenced in her drawing by the geometric design on the carpet of the room in which he was being interviewed.

"Journalists tend to be very easy to do this with," he says.

"I'm purposely ambiguous I realize, but the moment I explain something fully, the level of amazement disappears."

Derren is a committed skeptic. "I would love to be proved wrong. I would love to see a ghost. I would love for somebody to sit down and give me a psychic reading that I just can't explain."

My favorite bit: "Recently [Brown] used his talents to defuse a situation in which an aggressive youth approached him on the street yelling 'What are you looking at?' (Mr. Brown responded with a rapid series of dversionary non sequiturs, he said; the man burst into tears.)"


Is Derren preparing himself for the United States? He seems like a guy who gets restless easily and wants to keep challenging himself. We'll see.

Jack Shalom

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/26/intern......mp;8hpib