Yeah!! Magicians are just big FAKES!!! Right??
Who hates organized magicians??
Woot - I spawned a new thread without even trying!
If we make the predication that the supernatural is not “real”, then by definition, magic is fake.
That aside, some tricks are neat to watch, but I’ll take a skilled acrobat, contortionist or unicyclist over a magician any day. The people in Cirque du Soleil have any magician beat for raw skill hands down.
I think you miss the point completely: there is absolutely no point in watching a magic trick if you know how it is done, except perhaps for another magician wanting to see how well it was done. Of course it is all trickery, as anyone over the age of seven knows, but well presented magic, magic that defies the mind’s gravity, is entertaining, as is trying to work out how it is done. Magicians HAVE to be secretive, or else magic as an entertainment would die.
Wanting to be told how it is done is like wanting to be able to do a unicycling, or a juggling trick without the hard work. You probably only look at the answer page to the crossword as well. The defying physics chit-chat is all part of the act, it is not a constant state of mind. Any magician that has you with " mouth perpetually open and having several weeks of sleep and every spare thought-time interrupted by the constant thought of “How did he/she do THAT?”" has succeeded completely and totally in his act. Why should that lose him respect?
Could it be that you just hate being fooled?
Nao
Um, isn’t that what we do? 
Haven’t you ever ridden past someone whose mouth is gaping open and they have that all-too-familiar question written all over their face: “How does he DO that?” And then you smile inwardly with your self-content and evident superiority. You unicyclists make me SICK!
(a tongue-in-cheek post, as I think yours was…)
Actually, this raises an interesting question. What do people really think when they see us? I’ve been accused of showing off on multiple occasions. And I just do basic riding on my Coker.
Same here. The tricks are fun to watch, but they bug you when you know that it’s fake and you have no idea how they did them. With acrobats, you know what they are doing is real, but it still looks impossible and you still don’t know how they do it. Of course, unicycling seemed impossible at first, until I got the hang of it!
Dear BillyTheMountainBike,
Nice thread title. Thank you. They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
P.S. - did I spell your name right?
Watch some of the manipulation magicians, the things they can do with a pack of cards amaze me at least as much as the best unicyclists.
They have raw skill too.
Nao
No: they are afraid that no one will want to see their magic if everyone knows how it is done, in exactly the same way that if everyone could wheel walk then wheel walking would no longer be impressive to anyone. Some unicycle to impress, some as a social thing, others to be alone. Which are you? The third?
Nao
So: you want no mystery in your life, nothing unexplained, never to be able to wonder exactly how life began? What the universe really is and whether we had a big bang? These must cause you constant sleepless nights. How do you cope with the mysteries of women? There is something few men have come fully to terms with. Profile: Interests: Linux: very telling: everything has to be logical and neatly laid out on the plate for you, ready cooked, already solved, or with neat and tidy instruction sheets?
At age three, I saw my first rainbow. None out the adults there knew any more than that it was a rainbow. But it impressed the hell out of me and even now, I can still picture the scene with that very same rainbow. It was a source of wonderment and mystery, never frustration or anger, for many many years. In some ways it still is. Long may it be so. Although I know know how it was formed, I don’t need the knowledge. The event needed no explanation to be enjoyed. And so with magic and with…
Where is the logic in being angry because you cannot solve a magic trick?
Nao
How can anyone want to know how everything works, to have no questions left in his life. Why do you NEED to know how the magicians trick works, and why have you no respect for it unless it is clever manipulative trick involving hours of painstaking practice? The performer may have put a lot of thought into inventing that trick.
I feel rather sorry for you, your life seems to lack that rainbow and you seem to want to kill any sense of the unknown.
Nao…not really believing much of what you said.
The main thing I like about magic, are the card tricks, which is what I’m working on, street magic, like David Blaine, and everything with levitation. I don’t care if there are strings attached, or setting up\rigging your cards for the tricks, its fun to perform.
I am happy to be amazed and bamboozled. Even if I knew how it was done I would probably forget and be amazed all over again. That people can trick others in this way so as appear to do magic is fascinating. The mind, although an amazing thing is also easy to fool sometimes.
Having said that, I find card tricks boring. I like big tricks.
Cathy
Speaking as one who used to perform magic…well, yeah. I like magic.
No, for me it’s the close up sleight of hand tricks, with cards or anything else. With the big tricks I always have the thought in the back of my mind that there is a team of backroom guys doing all the hard work, whereas close up solo stuff is very skillful.
I also like it when magicians/illusionists and others like Derren Brown recreate so-called miracles or show how they can do the same as faith healers, psychics or mediums.
I agree, close up magic is what I used to do, and its really amazing when it’s right in front of your face, but the magician’s hands are so fast and smooth you simply can’t tell what is going on…its awesome.
“Billy” goes well with “Goat”… how about BillyTheMountainGoat? BillyTheMountainDew? BarelyTheMountain? BillyTheHill? BillyTheMound?
Sorry, I should get back to work…
i like what they do i just wish they wouldnt pretand to be all WOooOO special cuzz they can do illusions… i mean thats all it is… so why not call it was it is the art of illusion… not magic…
I donno about other magicians, but I never played around with silly illusions back when I regularly performed…I just did plain magic.
[QUOTE=gkmac]
I have similar reactions when it comes to being presented with those mensa style puzzles and dilemmas, such as the one where the bloke returns from home and takes the lift to floor 8 and then walks up the stairs to floor 16, even though he wasn’t into exercise and the lift was in full working order.
QUOTE]
I don’t think those are either logical or Mensa style puzzles. They are quirky problems and usually either you see the answer or not. They are not really intelligence type problems and success in them is not related directly to IQ ( as measured by such as Cattell).
You should take the Mensa entrance test. Hardest test I ever did, I even nearly got annoyed with it because it gradually became obvious that it would be impossible, because of time constraints, to complete all of the paper. It was designed that way. And the questions gradually got harder as well.
Interesting to see how you would react. I came out with my mind steaming, but buzzing with excitement because of the extreme challenge I had just faced. It didn’t worry me any longer, once I left the room, that there were questions unsolved and unread.
I am a little surprised you do puzzles: what if you could not solve them? Would you have to look up the answer? Or suffer another sleepless night(s)?
For a woman I have an unusually logical mind, but I have learned that there is far more to life than heavy reliance on that. Thinking and acting outside of that logical box is great fun.
And apologies, I have never used Linux, in any of its flavours, so the version you use tells me nothing.
Nao
[quote=“Naomi”]
Sexist?
Hey now… please keep in mind that magicians are fake. But illusionists are teh real thing.
PS. My brother is commonly called a magician, but is really an illusionist… that’s what he does for a living.
I know what you’re meaning and I think that’s what the very first thread was about. Apart from the illusion bit. The fact that magicians are all “wooo I can do magic, I’m better than you” is a bit annoying.
I reckon GKmac and Naomi should rent a room to discuss this further. If you stopped talking you might have some fun.
T.