Alright, I have been super busy in my real life lately that I have been not updating as much. So here is a small topic I want to talk about. I am always fascinated by the construction of card sleights. If you have read The Paper Engine this topic will sound very familiar. I think many magicians feel that just because a move is based on sleight of hand, it means it is impervious to detection. If you don’t believe me, then watch all the horrible Youtube videos of people doing magic. On the camera, it is glaring of faults during the sleight, but yet magicians still put it online for everyone to see. Why? They think the notion that the move is constructed to be hidden that it MEANS its perfect by default.
I hate when magicians say “Well, its good enough. They are laymen, they don’t know what I am doing.” That excuse makes by default, for me at least, that the construction of the move is horrible to begin with. Just the mere fact that you need to say that to other magicians is either you don’t practice enough or its just a bad move to begin with. Now I know that from time to time I show magicians sleight of hand that is pretty out of shape. Many magicians ask me to do Raise Rise but I don’t perform it much anymore and most of the time I chop through it. The main difference is that I would never show that to a laymen.
Now many will say, “Well… magicians know what you are doing, you can’t fool them.” This is true. But the difference is that when you perform a great control example, they will either be amazed that you can perform it so well or ask you to do it again. Just because they know you controlled the card to the top doesn’t mean they aren’t impressed by the way you performed it. But who cares about magicians. You are trying to fool the general public.
So before I blah too much longer, I wanted you to comment about what you feel about it. The biggest barrier for a magician is to realize that not everything he does is as “good” as he thinks. The next post will be about how to make that sleight of hand better. The truth is that it ISN’T the performance of the move that is important… It is, but what is even more important is how you get into the move and get out of the move. More on this later. Again, I appoligise for the lack of posts.
—UPDATE—-
Alright, fuck it. I had some time. here is the video. Hope someone gets something out of my blabbing.
Password is Dai “______” all lower caps. If you don’t know this…. you shouldn’t be in magic.
Sorry for not updating… been really busy. But I really want to talk about is how one gets in and out of a control. I will be discussing how I get in and out of the cascade control. What I find wrong with the way many people do theirs. Be on soon… Hopefully.
Posted: February 13th, 2009
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Back from Peru and oh what a crazy city it is. The convention was a heavy hitter, full of magicians. Pitt Hartling, Juan Tamariz, Henry Evans, Jeff McBride… you name it, they were there. Well… don’t say Dai Vernon, he wasn’t there.
What I noticed greatly was the style of magic in Latin America. They like card tricks per-say but it is much different than the American style. Most people do card magic being seated with a close up mat. Lots of counting or math tricks for the average magician. So many were infatuated with me because I showed them something different. The cascade and cherry control were the hit of the convention. I probably had to perform it to literally everyone there and did it over 500+ times. It was quite surprising how many I fooled with the move. Probably 90% of the magicians there were using just the double undercut to control the card. Something interesting to ponder about.
Even watching the close-up competition was different. Many had full on characters to act and there were only a handful that did more technical sleight of hand. I was extremely happy that my friend Alex Linian won 1st place in the close-up card magic competition. As you know, he is the creator of the trick “Puncture”. After winning the award, he told me that the only other award he won was 4th place at Tannens magic camp. Quite a step up to be the best in Latin America.
The sessions at night were great. Although most of the time I was teaching someone the cascade or cherry control, I did meet a few magicians that has great hands. Pitt Hartling was kind enough to hang out and the 2 tricks that he did fooled me. It’s a good feeling to be fooled. Lennart Green even called me out to perform a few tricks for him.
I did film quite a few stuff, but for now I can not show any of it. In a month you will be able to see the footage we shot. We got Pitt Hartling, Alex Linian doing a variation of the one handed top palm that is incredible and also Ernesto’s controls and forces. I can’t say what they are for but the time will come and everything will be clear.
So what’s the video below then? Well its the short montage of what Peru is like through my eyes. I didn’t get a lot of footage but you can get a taste of what the city was like. Hope you enjoy. I know the blog hasn’t been really “fun” in the last few weeks, I will get some good shit on here soon.
