talkmagic.co.uk

Free Tibet? I'll take it!

damn u beat me too it... how about all the tea....??

Well I went to have a look at the Guardian with the intension of getting one but did not bother... its just chip fodder.. I would'nt worry about it.

Guardian on Saturday cost £1.50, Observer on Sunday cost £1.90 so unlikely to appeal to those wanting free secrets.

Shouldn't we now change the name of this thread to reflect that it was in LAST Saturday's paper?

I can't disagree with Joe Carr. Lots of people (laymen) know that I'm into magic but no one has so far this week even mentionned the Guardian giveaway last weekend.

Storm in a tea cup me thinks

dat8962 wrote:Shouldn't we now change the name of this thread to reflect that it was in LAST Saturday's paper?

OK, title reduced a bit to make it timeless !

Nice to see everyone is so blase about exposure. Surely there is a principle at stake here, or does no one actually care?

Exposure has been going on for years and magic is still with us. I have not come across anyone who has read the Guardian article other than on here!
In the first volume of Harry Lorayne's Apocalypse there is a nice column he wrote regarding on his thoughts on exposure and believes the layman would remember an inept magician exposing something rather than an article.
This is true and there are far more inept magicians around than exposure articles in the newspaper.

Although there was this one time where I happened to perform spongeballs for this spectator where she knew the false transfer (never got caught out on that before) and did not hesitate to tell her friend(most annoyingly).

Guess why? She just bought her son spongeballs a few days ago and the person showed her how to.

My fault? Hers? No one's?

Sometimes, if a comedian tells a joke which you already know the punchline of, you still laugh if their delivery is good. If people are entertained by you then they won't really care if they know how it's done.

The best bit had to be the magic secrets revealed. A small hint at actually how to do the trick, but mostly revealing the secret for secrets sake...smashing the watch in the bag. I'm glad I don't make a living out of magic! Anyone notice the little Kiddie section of magic at the back? If a slick young chap started to do magic at that age dressed like that I would of thought he were a pimp...

Lord Freddie wrote:I have not come across anyone who has read the Guardian article other than on here!

True, this is the first I've heard.

I'm late to this. Sorry: I overslept. Anyway, I ground my teeth when I knew these sections were coming out, and ground them again when I saw the heading which was essentially 'Secrets! Revealed!' - that's to say, no suggestion of teaching the reader the trick, because they might want to learn it, but simple, gratuitous exposure.

However, I punished my teeth needlessly, I reckon.
First, the tricks:
No one not genuinely interested in magic would have read more than a couple of them. Honestly, the prose was absolutely punishing; plus telling you where to place cards/fingers/whatever, though vital, is just innately dull. I'm very much against exposure, and not of the school that believes an audience will enjoy a trick when they know how it's done, if it's done well. (A bad magician can make a fab trick tedious and vapid while a great one will make a tiny one marvellous, but the audience still needs not to know the secret: otherwise it's not magic, it's just some person talking/moving about, there's no mystery or awe or surprise.) But, seriously, the wounding misery of the text means being alarmed by these Graun pieces would be like a bunch of programmers fearing for their jobs because C++ books are openly on sale in WH Smith's. OK, I was irked by some of the box outs - 'Key Cards', for example; which the author mentioned, he said, in the belief that 'everyone knows about them already' (which I know isn't true, and, if it were, would merely make explaining them redundant anyway, yes?) - but otherwise I exhaled with relief.
Next, the 'exposures'. Here, I can only suspect the author of displaying honour. It's been mentioned that Card on Ceiling was exposed, but it wasn't really. It just said how the card stuck to the ceiling. Well, if you asked *anyone* who'd seen CoC, I'm sure they'd tell you they assumed the card had some sticky stuff on it - but that's a piffling detail. They want to know how *their* card (possibly when it was inside the pack, inside the case) became stuck to the ceiling. And take the explanation of the Rising Card - a special pack that contains a weighted pulley system. It's more exposing how magicians might have done it fifty years ago than any of the ways they'll be doing it now.

Overall, I thought it was nothing to get worked up over. In fact, more likely to make magic look less sad - by giving it the leg up of being a two-day promotion in a national broadsheet - than ruin the tricks of anyone with more than a passing interest in the art.

Oh, I have, by the way, no association whatsoever with the journo who wrote/conceived the pieces.

It would be interetsting, if perhaps highly difficult, to conduct a poll of those who bought both papers for non magical reasons and see how many, if any, tricks and secrets they could now recall. Or did they just use it for more useful purposes such as lining the kitty litter tray.

somebody bought a copy in for me the other day...they said "here you go, i dunno what's in it, i didnt bother reading it..."

they handed it towards me like it was used toilet paper...and in a way, it was...