The ‘Mythbusters’ guys got the point

By Chris Smith/THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

Nobody should feel foolish if they left the “Mythbusters” show last weekend in Santa Rosa wondering if Adam Savage really was shot through the arm with a crossbow arrow loosed by his TV buddy, Jamie Hyneman.

Adam Savage didn’t really take an arrow in the Santa Rosa show.

Even Jim McKeith, a Kaiser emergency-room doc who took his son to the Savage/Hyneman show at the Luther Burbank Center, thought he might have witnessed a painful stage accident.

Dr. McKeith was so concerned and curious he went home and shot an email to Adam Savage.

“I remain confused as to whether you were actually shot in the arm with the cross-bow bolt,” he wrote. “You didn’t play it for laughs yet you returned to stage with a gauze wrapping that appeared to be blood stained.

“I have seen plenty of injuries, even with arrows, but am completely unsure.”

McKeith received a prompt reply from Sandra Kimberly, who represents the “Mythbusters.”

“I’m happy to say that Adam was not at all injured in that gag,” Kimberly wrote. “We realized that the way that was performed left the audience perplexed …”

Read the PD story about the “Mythbusters”

Kimberly vowed that Adam and Jamie will change that part of the act and in the future will bust the myth of an on-stage impaling by revealing the concealed arm brace that, when triggered, projects the ends of a crossbow bolt from each side of Adam’s forearm.

The things people come up with.