With a night off from SyFy Radio, and recovering from a ruptured ear drum, I thought it might be fun to watch the A&E live special of "Mindfreak" with Criss Angel, especially since it was happening about a half our or so from Airlock Alpha world headquarters in Clearwater Beach.

There Angel -- a popular Las Vegas illusionist -- was planning on making a daring escape from the roof of a hotel that was just minutes from being imploded. He would have to pick his way through a series of locks, get up a few flights of stairs, pick some more locks, and catch an escape helicopter in time to get away from the nine-story building as it's reduced to rubble.

The trick by itself as presented was hardly an illusion. Picking locks fast is not what an illusionist makes, so you knew there would have to be some twists to all this.

And there were. Angel struggled to unlock the first door from the balcony he was in, to the point where he had to kick in a window. He gets into the room, and struggles with the next locks.

He gets in the stairwell -- apparently, no stairs exist below him because they need to be removed for implosion -- and he runs out of time as he tries to unlock the final padlock that would let him get on the roof to safety. Suddenly, all the multiple views go out, and the building is imploded, leading you to believe he was stuck inside.

He wasn't, obviously, because this is where the illusion part comes in. Except it wasn't much of an illusion. A camera crew runs searching for him in the rubble, and find him in the grass in front of the rubble covered in dust, but with nary a scratch on him.

Exciting, wasn't it? Especially as the helicopter had to pull away with him still trapped inside ... there were so many scenes where Clearwater officials said they didn't want to be known as the place of Criss Angel's final stunt, but we knew it wouldn't be.

The sad part about it is that even the "illusion" part was nothing more than a camera trick. And if it's a trick of the camera, is it really an illusion?

I remember as a kid, we would watch every single David Copperfield special. My favorite one was when Copperfield walked through the Great Wall of China. Of course, he gave a story about how bones were found in walls and such from those who had attempted the illusion before and were unsuccessful. As a young kid, I believed every minute of it.

To this day, I couldn't even begin to tell you how Copperfield did the trick. He was just absolutely amazing.

Sadly, Angel fell flat. He showed a couple of smaller pre-recorded tricks in Las Vegas, including popping a girl out of nowhere and turning a car into a bunch of girls, which were quite impressive. But the hotel escape trip was just ... sad.

First of all, Angel took a random member of the crowd into the hotel to show his stunt area. However, they only got as far as the hallway. For some reason, he never took them into the stairwell at all, or even down the hallway. That's a big red flag for me, because he did show them all the parts that I felt were "real" ... but none of the parts I thought were not "real."

The biggest inconsistency in watching the stunt again is that Angel gets out of his handcuffs, and puts them in his pocket. One of the cuffs, however, are hanging out of his right pocket.

When he kicks in the window and gets into the hotel room door, the cuff is still hanging out -- not just partially. This thing is dangling.

But then we jump into the stairwell where there are a number of cameras that show his ascent of the stairs. As he ascends the stairs, the cuffs are still there. But when he gets to the roof to unlock the last padlock, the cuff is suddenly gone. Yet there was absolutely no opportunity for him to push it into his pocket.

When he is found later, the camera crew seemed to know exactly where to go to find him. And when I say he was found in front of the rubble, I mean he was in front of safety fence.

Anyone watching this -- and I'm sure I'm hardly alone -- were able to easily figure out that at least the final 90 seconds were pre-recorded. Although it's likely the stairs below were gone as was shown to us in a pre-recorded segment, they were not shown live, so how do we know there wasn't a chute or rope there waiting for him?

As everyone is watching the pre-recorded footage of him trying to get out, Angel instead has already made his way outside of the building, outside of the safety fence, and awaits for the camera crew to come to him after the implosion.

Sorry, that's not an illusion. That's a trick of the camera we've seen in far too may Mission: Impossible movies.

I wish there was more. For many people, I'm sure, it was entertaining ... and while there was a small part of me watching it live wondering if something did go wrong (it didn't hurt that he had to break a window, to help bolster the fear that the trick was going horribly wrong on top of the warnings about it raining and it being harder for him to pick locks even though it didn't appear to be raining), I just wish I didn't have it so easily figured out so quickly.

So call me a spoil-sport all you want. I like good tricks, and good illusions. I think Criss Angel definitely is capable of them.

But this just wasn't one of them.

Michael Hinman is the founder and site coordinator of Airlock Alpha, writing out of Tampa, Fla. He can be reached at mhinman@airlockalpha.com.