for the love of god..
just caught a little of this taiwanese magic show on tv.
two words:
MY GOD.
the premise of the show was as such: two taiwanese street magicians would roam the city performing for strangers. hidden cameras would capture their responses and reactions to the unusual spectacle. while this appears to be a rather sound plan for a tv show, the producers simply HAD to screw it up by interspersing the programme with performances by american magicians. this made the street performers look (sadly) rather amateurish.
as the show drew on, it became worse.. it had <i>no focus</i> at all. large scale stage illusions by the pendragons were followed up by candid-camera style capers involving mice in eggs, flash cotton, and a horrible presentation of shinkoh’s twisting arm illusion.
after a while, lennart green was featured, probably the best part of the show, and while i was still reeling from a live performance of his fabled top shot, snap deal and amazing misdirection, his routine ended and i was once again subjected to the performances of the taiwanese magicians.
sigh.
the final straw came when one of them stepped into a schoolhouse and proceeded with a HORRIBLE, CRASS and utterly DEMEANING presentation of a classic ace assembly routine. never have i seen the art of magic being degraded like that! it was horrifyingly inelegant. he broke just about every single rule regarding magic, presentation, patter and misdirection. he then proceeded to commit cardinal sin #1 - he revealed the secret on tv. he gave away the braue addition TO A BUNCH OF SCHOOLKIDS.. all the while speaking with that irritating taiwanese-mandarin-baby accent. i will never live this down. braue is probably spinning a tango in his grave.
he then invited a giggling preteen girl to “try it out”. she practically murdered the effect. i couldn’t bring myself to watch. that’s when i switched over to suria. when i switched back, the credits for the show were running. thank goodness.
that idiot has just devalued one of my favourite effects. i feel ashamed of being an amateur magician as he’ll be categorized neatly with me, though i can safely say i’m better than him. at least where cards are concerned. i will probably never perform that effect again. the pain is just too much.
disgusting.
Gary @ 16 Jun 2004 :: Old Deadjournal posts :: No Comments »