The Tricks of Art and the Art of Tricks

Somehow I have agreed to perform a magic show in just over two weeks.  It is for a charity and the audience will be a mix of intellectually disabled people, their parents and carers. Not to overdramatise things, but this will be my very first public performance.

The performance will be at night at a disco.  As I write this there is a constant mental refrain in my mind.  (Note to self: obviously in my mind, idiot, not a mental refrain in my foot) This unhelpful self-talk is along the lines of “how did you allow this to happen?”  Answer: a shrug and foolish grin.  And the usual explanation that “it seemed like a good idea at the time”.  Free will indeed.

A disco, yes.  So some part of my brain decided that I needed a magician costume with BLING!!!!!!!  Obeying that decision I bought a jacket from the charity op-shop for ten bucks.  “Ten bucks” sounds cheaper than “ten dollars”, don’t you think?  I then spent about a hundred dollars on blingy stuff.

Most of yesterday was taken up with attaching the bling to the jacket.  Sewing is not my forte.  Naturally, I used mainly double sided sticky tape.  And pins. Also, some of the gold ribbon things can be ironed on with a hot iron. I still have a lot of stuff left to stick on.  The jacket is now mostly glitter covered.  The tape sticks to everything. I have wounds from sticking pins in my fingers - not deliberately - and burns on my hands from the iron.  The material in the coat wrinkled up where I ironed the stuff on.  I read the jacket’s label later and it said not to touch it with an iron.  It is microfibre.  Rather it was.  Now it I can hardly move my arms in this coat.  But it looks disco-like.

Of course, I have created a whole new source of anxiety for myself.  I now worry that the bling will detach itself from the coat during my performance, piece by piece, leaving me like an undressed Christmas tree wound around with straggling bits of tinsel and stuff.  This detritus will get caught up in my magical gestures and sleight of hand. I will end a pathetic figure in my shabby coat trussed up in sparkling glitter strips, punctured by pins, trailing a few torn gold ribbons and surrounded by a hundred dollars worth of junk.  And double sided tape that glues my feet to the floor so that I shamble, trip and stumble off stage to the noisy condemnation of all present.  Sigh.

I subscribe to some magic newsletters.  These contain news and lots of short columns containing a mixture of self promotion and advice.  One author invited emails.  I wrote to him asking for his advice about what tricks I should include in my act.  Probably sensing that I was a clueless fool wasting his time, he didn’t reply.  So I am devising my own act.

I read somewhere that about five tricks make up an act.  I saw an act in Melbourne in which the magician presented some large illusions with some very expensive-appearing apparatus that I don’t have.  He mixed this with smaller tricks.  I do have some smaller things like Multiplying Bottles, a Change Bag, Egg Bag and stuff like that.  After the first few tricks this Melbourne magician would, when the applause died down, stop, look around the stage and say out loud “OK .  What’ll I do next?” I think he was just prompting himself as I don’t really think he was expecting the audience to shout suggestions - “Do the bullet catch!”; “Can you escape from a building before it blows up, like Kris Angel?” etc.

I might use this approach.  I’ll just have all my stuff in a big box and after each trick rummage around in it until I find something I can do. Meanwhile the audience can talk among themselves.  This will save a lot of time preparing things and let me concentrate on getting the bling stuck on my coat. Presentation is everything.

My last post, the beginning of a list of things that annoy me, was angst-ridden.  Thus, some balance is called for.

It is time for a list of experiences that provide me with contentment, happiness or tranquility.  These include:

1. Spending time with my family.  This can simply be sitting around chatting; going out for a meal - or having one at home; working together; and being entertained by television, movies or games.
2. Painting, drawing or some other artistic pursuit.
3. Walking along a bush track with occasional vistas to admire.
4. Sitting and watching the sun rise or set, preferably with an ocean view.
5. Listening to a favourite piece of music.
6. When one of my magic effects works as close to perfection as I can achieve - to the delight and mystification of all concerned (including me).
7. Watching an expert - in anything at all - exercise their skills.  This might range from a carpenter hammering in a nail to Casey Stoner weaving his bike around the race track at impossible speeds.
8. Quietly admiring great works of art.
9. Cooking a satisfying and tasty meal.
10. Savouring a fine wine with the aforesaid meal.

Oh, I think I have balanced the angst.  In fact, I discover that I feel a lot better about the world! Oh frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!

A moment ago I decided to do something worthwhile with my time.  This feeling soon passed and I have now forgotten whatever it was I was going to do.  So I am writing this.

Something that occurs to me fairly often is: I am annoyed. I have been told or have read somewhere that it is not that something is annoying me but rather I am allowing myself to become annoyed by some outside stimulus.  Fair enough.  But I am not really keen to be annoyed so the idea of giving myself permission to become annoyed is somewhat annoying.

Well, on the basis that nobody actually reads these posts I feel free to write this list of things that annoy me:

1. When I iron some clothing and just as I am about to iron the last little bit of the (shirt or whatever) I find a big, indelible stain in a really obvious part so that I have to throw it back in the wash and iron something else.
2. The little bits of springy wire that get caught on the clothes line when the plastic part of the clothes peg breaks  and falls into pieces on the concrete.
3. Standing with my bare feet on the sharp pieces of plastic from broken clothes pegs.(See above)
4. When the cursor disappears when typing on this blog - this has just happened and I don’t know how to fix it.
5. Any kind of software published by Microsoft.
6. Having to replace light bulbs almost as soon as I put them in because the quality? control of the light bulb manufacturers is so bad.
7. Being tricked by the promise of long lasting, energy-saving light bulbs only to find that (a) Half of them don’t work at all and have to be replaced as soon as I put them in (see above re quality? control); (b) They take a long time before they warm up, or whatever they have to do before they decide to actually work, before you can actually see any light from them; (c) The promises of “11 watts equals 60 watts” or whatever are a gyp.  The brightness is nothing like that of the old ones; (d)They cost about five times the cost of the old-fashioned incandescent bulbs; (d) They are so fragile that screwing them in is like trying to screw a quail’s egg into a hole saw blade; and (e) They don’t last anywhere near the promised time.
8. The sound of leaf blowers.   I would take a lot of convincing to believe that these things are not the most annoying invention in the history of the world.  I think the primary reason they are so annoying is that people are driven by some evil demon to use them early in the morning or during Sunday afternoon siesta time.  Maybe if they actually did something useful there might be a reason to tolerate them.  But they are used only to temporarily move leaves from one place to another until they are blown back by the breeze.  Of course, then the nutbag owner has to get out again and move the leaves around.  This cycle is repeated until the leaves dissolve into dust.  Meanwhile, the neighbourhood has to suffer the most annoying sound in, as I say, the history of the world.
9. I bought a pair of shoes.  Only, they were not a pair.  Months later, when I wore them out for the first time, someone pointed out that they were two different shoes.  Similar, but different.  Now I am faced with going back to the shop, sans receipt or shoe box, of course, to persuade the retailer of the mistake and obtain redress. Or re-shoe or whatever.
10. Politicians.  In Canberra, and beguiled into sitting in on House of Representative question time, I lasted five minutes before I started reading the paper.  After twenty minutes I fled the scent and marvelled at Tom Roberts’ painting of the opening of parliament in 1901.  The poor fellow had to basically paint about three hundred portraits.  Must have driven him mad.  Listening to the drivel pouring forth from the clowns in parliament almost did for me.  But this is a whole other topic.
11. People who drive slowly along the road then speed up as they approach traffic lights and race through just before they change, leaving me to catch the red.
12. Banks charging me to withdraw my money from another bank’s ATM.  Neither of these banks has to pay a human teller to do it for me. And surely it all evens out anyway?
13. Anyone who wears short black socks with shorts.
14. People in front of me who have twenty items in the Express 8 items only queue in the supermarket.
15. Checkout operators who ping me for taking twenty items through the Express 8 items only queue in the supermarket.
16. People who play with their hair while looking at themselves in the rear view mirror at the traffic lights while the red light changes to green.  And they keep preening regardless.  What is wrong with these people? The only thing they have to do is watch the traffic lights and they just can’t do it!
17. Listening to the horse racing on the radio on Saturday afternoon.
18. People who block the supermarket aisles because they just DON’T MOVE FAST ENOUGH! How I wish for times past when chopping these people down with a sword was acceptable social behaviour.
19. Having to stop typing lists of things that annoy me because I start to become hysterical with annoyance.
20. (to be continued)

Outside the garden grows rapidly in the heat and rain. Weeds sprout and grow two metres in what seems like a week.  It has been too hot for me, with my delicate constitution, to venture out and attack them.  It is a hostile environment out there.

Hostility comes not only the heat and the weeds. Family pets are being eaten alive by giant snakes.  So the local newspaper says.  Before Christmas little Dot the darling little nine month old Jack Russell Terrier was stalked, and consumed whole by a python.

Before that, something similar happened to a goat.  By “similar” I mean the goat was eaten by a giant python.

Meanwhile, in our own street a friend coming home late at night was confronted with the sight of a python eating a wallaby.  Some years ago, while driving my son’s friend home in a nearby suburb, I came upon a large python stretched across the road.  It had a large lump in the middle and was slithering quite slowly towards a drain hole on the other side of the road.  As we waited the python gradually disappeared down the drain and we went on our way.  It made an impression.

The point?  It gives one a new appreciation of the meaning of pet food.  More like pet=food.

Reality can be disturbing.  I watch television sometimes as a relief from reality.  I prefer historical programs - almost anything will do because almost all programs are historical in the sense of being concerned about the past.  Television producers seem to believe that the past is real, concrete and unchanging. This is, of course, rubbish.  Anyone who watches television or reads newspapers knows that.  Stories about events are told in many different ways.  The “facts” keep changing.  So the past is whatever the author says it is. And as George Orwell said: Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.

Oh, too deep.  I just wanted to talk about stories of crime and criminals.  They are fascinating.  I pretend they are true because mostly the criminals are caught and brought to justice….by the police. This is, of course, quite hilarious since that old spoil sport, reality, tells us that there have been, and almost certainly still are, as many criminals at large in the police forces as there are freelancing as common criminals.

I can see the benefit in being a crooked cop.  The people pay you to protect them from the criminals so you have a permanent, steady wage. But you can also make a nice earner from protecting the criminals from yourself.  Everyone wins! (If “everyone” means you and excludes all others.)

Is all this true, meaning does this happen in reality (whatever “reality” means)?  Well, if you believe what you read in the newspapers and on TV and film then, yes, it is true.  My references are wide ranging.

Firstly, legend: In Sherwood Forest, the Sheriff of Nottingham was royally screwing everyone while carrying on a personal vendetta against the honest Robin Hood;

Secondly, a few movies: Captain Hank Quinlan (Orson Welles) in “Touch of Evil” (1958); In “Batman” (1989) there is a crooked cop called Lieutenant Eckhardt;  Detective Alonzo Harris in “Training Day” (2001); Almost the whole NYPD in “Serpico” (1973).  (I have obviously omitted many other films because there are too many crooked movie cops and in any case I don’t know them all. But I have purposely left out the Hong Kong movie “Infernal Affairs” (2002) because Inspector Lau was, strictly speaking, not a cop gone bad because he was bad from the beginning. Ditto the US copy “The Departed” [2006])

Thirdly, and more recently, many TV shows: “Blue Murder” (1995) which focussed on Detective Sergeant Roger (the Dodger) Rogerson; Chief Wiggum in “The Simpsons” (1989 and continuing);  and The Strike Team in “The Shield” (2002-2008).

Finally, public reports of inquiries into corruption in Australia:  Just read the report of the Wood Royal
Commission into corruption in the NSW police and the Fitzgerald Royal Commission in Queensland.  Currently, the Victoria Police are in the spotlight for, among other things, their policy of shooting first and asking questions later as well as the political infighting over the Police Union.  Also, just watch the news any week for the latest report on crooked cops.  We truly have the best police money can buy.

Which brings me to my point: Intelligent criminals join a police force and have a longer and more prosperous criminal career.

Actually, Melbourne is cold.  I was there last weekend in a suburb called Moonee Ponds.  I used to think this was a fictional place because Edna Everage hailed from there.  But it is a real place.  It has a shopping centre called, imaginatively, Moonee Ponds Central.  It has a poster of Edna at her fetching best with the caption that the centre is “the greatest thing to happen in Moonee Ponds since….ME!”  Maybe.

The last time I was in Melbourne, February, it was frying pan hot.  This time it was refrigerator cold… with rain.  Not rain as we get in Cairns, but a kind of cold, miserly drizzle.  And the days were so short it seemed that if you blinked it was dark again.

During moments of daylight I travelled by train into the city.  Getting around is not too hard.  The streets are set out in a grid.  As the city is mostly flat, walking is easy.

Mt first target was the Southgate building on the southern (naturally) bank of the Yarra.  This is a busy area with lots of tourists of whom I was not one.  I had a purpose.   I was headed for The Magic Store in the Southgate building.  The store is run by three magicians - Dean Atkinson, Glenn Hamilton and Kamal Bhushan.  All the details are on their website www.themagicstore.com.au which is linked to my site.

It is these three who make the store such a great place to visit.  I have not met Dean in my two visits to the store - he was doing a cruise ship gig this time.  Dean and Kamal used to host Magic Mornings each Thursday but, because of Dean’s absence it is in hiatus at the moment.

On my first visit, in February, Kamal helped me with some card handling and coin handling tips and was very patient in demonstrating tricks and answering questions.  On my latest visit, Glenn was behind the counter and demonstrating some tricks to a young audience.  I can see why he is a premier childrens’ entertainer.  He managed a group of charming, hyper-active little brutes firmly but with grace and humour.

After the kids went he answered my questions and demonstrated some tricks of which I bought a few.  I probably spent forty minutes in the shop and it was the highlight of my trip.

I suggest, with as much cliche riven panache as I can muster, that you should “do yourself a favour” and drop in and see the Magic Store when next you visit the Paris of the South - “You’ll love it!”

Do you find yourself saying “I am disinterested in going to the movies”; or “I am disinterested in saving the polar bears”?  If so, in the interests of gooder grammar, please note that this is an error. (Croakers please note: “gooder” is a deliberate solecism or “clanger”, as it were, to illustrate that I am no better than you.)

If, for whatever reason, you are not interested in going to the movies or in saving polar bears then you must say “I am uninterested in going to the movies…saving the polar bears” or whatever.

When  do you use the word disinterested?  The answer is: whenever you are unbiased.  So, the umpire of a sporting match must be disinterested in, but must not be uninterested in, the match.  That is, the umpire must not care who wins or loses but she must care a lot about how the game is played and make sure it is played within the rules.

Quite possibly most people ignore the distinction between disinterested and uninterested.  We rarely talk about whether an umpire is disinterested.  Umpires are usually “mugs” or “should be given sunglasses and a white cane”.

Lawyers, however, should be careful to use these words in their proper sense. Otherwise, educated people, such as yourselves, will think a lawyer is quite a dill, a real dimwit, if he bleats about being disinterested in going to the movies or saving polar bears. In such a case, scoff, jeer and lambast said lawyer as a skulking oaf without the brains of a gnat and even less of an education.  Do so with as much malevolence and vigour as you can muster.  Because, for once, right is on yor side.

I realised this morning that it is along time since I saw a dog chase a car.  I came up with some possible reasons for this: I don’t actually spend a lot of time sitting on a porch watching cars drive by (if I don’t see it does it happen anyway - you know the tree falling in the forest that no one hears thing);  The car-chasing gene has been eliminated by selective breeding; Dogs are more secretive about their car-chasing and do it when no one is watching; Cars no longer have a taste or smell that is attractive to dogs; Dogs realised there was no point - they caught a few cars and didn’t know what to do with them.  I dunno.  Feel free to posit your solution in a comment.

This observation inevitably leads one to thinking about the word “catch”.  Think about these sentences using the word “catch”: The dog is trying to catch a hairy nosed wombat. The dog is trying to catch a bus. The boy tried to catch a conestoga. The man is trying to catch a horse.  The woman is running to catch a plane.  Silly eh?

Incidentally, I have noticed that just about every day for the last month I have received a notice from WordPress of a new user registration on this blog. I have no idea what this means. But I can’t help getting the same presentiment of impending doom I get when I am eating an apple and find I have eaten half the sticky label that someone has helpfully put there to tell me what kind of apple I am eating.   And many of these new users have gmail or .ru addresses. The .ru signals a Russian host.  Ivan the Bear, my friend.

I read something on a web page somewhere suggesting these new registrants are not really people but “bots”.  And bots are to be shunned, if possible.  I somehow feel like a rabbit caught in the headlamps of a rapidly approaching semi-trailer.  Rather, I feel like I imagine the rabbit feels.  Maybe rabbits just think “Ooooh! Pretty lights! Must wait and see what happe..” SPLAT!

Should I be really worried or would mere paranoia suffice?

I think I have achieved ultimate apathy.  Looking at this blog, it is days.. no weeks… no months.. a really long time since my last blog.  Even if this is not the last word in apathy it must be getting close.

However, be that as it may (which it certainly will) things have happened since then.  Christmas has come and gone, a Global Financial Crisis have broken out and lots of other important things have occurred.  Including that I have travelled around the country.  Around Tasmania, Melbourne and Brisbane, to be precise.  All very interesting places with many, many different and varied people.  Once such person is a magician in Melbourne.  He is Kamal of “Magic Mornings with Dean and Kamal” fame.  “Fame” may be putting it a bit high.  Magic Mornings is a web thing on http://www.magicmornings.com.au/ and I guess not many people watch it.  Certainly more people than read this blog but that is not saying much.

I did spend money on my magic in Melbourne.  Kamal has a shop called the Magic Store.  He demonstrated some tricks and described some instructional videos that I JUST HAD TO HAVE.  Also there were some very handsome packets of cards crying out to be taken home and stored away for future use.

I, therefore, have my hands full of things to practise so I can generously display my mastery of these miracles of illusion for the entertainment and delectation of the privileged few.

Time and apathy are both against me so I must stir myself.

I missed an appointment with my friend Ray today.  My meetings with Ray started out with him tutoring me in Chinese and have now morphed into me tutoring him in Australian culture. Which leads me to the problem of learning languages.  I do claim that I have been half successful 50% of the time with learning Chinese.  It’s just that I lack application.  I have heard that it takes ten years to get good at Chinese (spoken and written).  That is way too long for me.

Some of my friends complain that learning Chinese is difficult because there are so many words that read or sound the same but mean different things.  What about “desert” (dry wasteland) which sounds different from, but is spelt the same as, “desert” (run away from the army)?  Also, consider “dessert” meaning pudding etc which sounds the same as “desert” (run away from the army).  Note that “desert” meaning something you deserve also sounds the same as the pudding “dessert” and the run away from the army “desert”.  This is not to ignore “close” (near) and “close” (shut).  If you look at an English dictionary you will find many, many, many other examples of two or more words that sound the same, or are maybe spelt the same, but which have different meanings. I think I am talking about homophones and homonyms.

My point is that it is not just in Chinese that you find these homophones and/or homonyms.  They must make life difficult for learners of English as a second language.

I believe that what really makes Chinese hard to learn is the writing system.  No one can look at a Chinese character they have not learned and really figure out what it means.  The most one can do is figure out what radical is being used and possibly work out what it just might sound like. But, beyond that, most of us ordinary people may as well be looking at a sentence written in Martian.

As a result of this failure with Chinese…  Actually, I would not class it as a failure, more a realisation that I do not possess the drive to learn the language properly.  Maybe “laziness” is the word I am looking for. However described, this problem has caused me to start to study French. (By “study” I mean occasionally to listen to a few sentences in French and sometimes read a few lines of French, with an English translation, naturally) So far, this has proven much more suitable to my listless language learning style.  I have found that lots of French words look like English words. These words sometimes have the same (or at least a similar) meaning as in English. Apparently, you just have to pronounce them with a French accent.  How hard can it be?  Time will tell although the verbs seen to keep changing and the word French people use instead of “the” or “a” seems to change from “la” to “le” with no apparent rhyme nor reason.  It is something about masculine and feminine nouns.

These features vaguely remind me what little I recall of the Latin that I failed to learn so many years ago. I am rather proud of my obstinate refusal to apply myself to Latin.  I had to learn some phrases parrot-fashion in my capacity of an altar boy in a Catholic church. Eventually, however,  my one-boy stand against Latin (demonstrated by my persistent and repeated failure in the subject) was gloriously vindicated when the Church, the last bastion of the language, gave it up (except maybe in the Vatican) in favour of the language of the place, the lingua loci, if you will.

I have heard it said that it is harder for a non-native speaker of English to learn English than it is for an English speaker to learn… some language or other. Well, I have, more or less, mastered , or, if not mastered, gained a working knowledge of, English.  This happened with very little effort, I may say, although I must concede that spending my whole life in Australia probably helped.

Nevertheless, I will continue to plod along in Chinese.  I am sure a smattering of the language will come in handy sometime. (Incidentally, do you not think that “smattering” is a funny word?)