The Tricks of Art and the Art of Tricks

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?)

As we careen towards Christmas the mind turns to gift giving.  It is natural to think of what to give the single most important person in one’s life: oneself.  I was looking at web sites for inspiration.  Naturally, some of these websites sold magic stuff.  And thus it was that I was reading the blurb on some trick or other and it slowly dawned on me, in a “hey! wait a minute!” moment - I already own this trick.  So cleverly was the ad written, or so slowly does my brain work, that I did not recognise a trick for which I had actually paid good money (well, money).

Of course, the trick was one that I had bought, played with for a while before realising and accepting that I had no hope of pulling it off in a real - as opposed to an imaginary - life situation.  I have quite a collection of such tricks.  I will not name any of them for the same reason that I did not attempt them: to do so would risk more self humiliation than my delicate ego could bear.

Suffice it to say that most of these impossible-for-me tricks were described as being “easy”, “with no difficult sleights” or “for the beginner”, or some such.  At any rate I was not brave enough to try any of them on actual people.  I am coming to the conclusion that I am not cut out to be a magician.  There are so many good magic practitioners around that the field is best left to them.

I saw a performance of Sam Powers at the Casino recently.  It was very impressive.  In case you don’t know, Sam Powers is a magician/illusionist.  He performs a variety of effects but his escape from a locked trunk routine has to be one of the fastest on the planet.  I was one of the audience asked onto the stage to check out the trunk and handcuffs before the trick and I could find nothing amiss with the equipment (which, of course, is to be expected). You may watch the performance at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUAPvshOkyU

Powers also does an excellent series of dove productions and some nifty close up magic including a torn and restored card effect. I can see why he won “Magician of the Year” five times.  If you get the opportunity to see his show you will certainly not be disappointed.

Searching on the web often turns up a lot of….dirt.  But, occasionally, searching patiently reveals a nugget of gold.  Such a nugget is the website Mallusionist (http://www.mallusionist.com/), a clever parody of the Ellusionist magic products website.

The person lurking furtively behind this site writes a blog under the name Presto (http://www.mallusionist.com/blog/).  If you have an interest in magic and think that some magician folk take themselves too seriously, then Mallusionist and Presto’s blog are worth a look.

Paul Syvret is a writer for Brisbane’s “Courier Mail”.  His writing style falls into the usual newspaper category of inane drivel.  On the Courier Mail website he revels in the tag: “He might make you angry, but he’ll certainly make you think.”  Actually, he makes me want to swallow my own tongue.

So when I saw his column in the 4 November Courier entitled “Scarcely sexy, Senator” I prepared myself for yet another expedition into the mental wastelands.  Surprisingly, I found myself agreeing with Mr Syvret.  He was arguing against the Communications Minister’s plan to censor the internet in Australia.  Minister Stephen Conroy has been seduced by the allure of North Korea, China and Iran in leading the fight against internet porn.   Mr Syvret mounts a stinging attack on the Senator in his column which, for me, was mainly spoiled when I read this sentence:  One presumes that by real sexual activity he means what occurs in the bedrooms of millions of Australian homes every day…in fact it was highly likely real sexual activity contributed to Conroy’s very presence on our mortal coil. Conroy’s very presence on our mortal coil? Pedantry beckoned.  The last time I heard mention of a mortal coil was in Hamlet’s soliloquy:

To be or not to be …. blah blah blah…..

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause.

Mr Syvret seems to use “our mortal coil” to mean our world, Earth, our planet, our street or whatever.   I always understood the “mortal coil” in question was the trouble and strife that come with life.  That is, the burden of being a mortal human being.  Mr Conroy may, perhaps,  share this mortal coil but I don’t think he can be present on it.

If anyone reads this and thinks I am wrong, please feel free to abuse or disabuse me.