Who should we emulate, exactly?

Jan 26, 2008
419
1
Sweden
The problem lies in that magic as presented most of the time is terrible outdated and magicians are to proud to see that.

Has anyone here seen the old sitcoms like Married… with Children or Cheers? They will always be classics but they are terrible outdated that its hard to watch them today and take it seriously.

Take a look at some more modern sitcoms like How i meet your mother, Two and a half men or The Big bang theory, anyone here seen them?

Then compare the old sitcoms vs the new modern sitcoms. You will see that they have keept developing and moved forward keeping it current all the time.

Well, Magicians are still Married… with Children.
 
Jul 13, 2009
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Blanket statements much Wallmott? *runs and tells Dan Sperry, Reza, Bizarro, William Draven, they are all out dated*
 
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The problem lies in that magic as presented most of the time is terrible outdated and magicians are to proud to see that.

Has anyone here seen the old sitcoms like Married… with Children or Cheers? They will always be classics but they are terrible outdated that its hard to watch them today and take it seriously.

Take a look at some more modern sitcoms like How i meet your mother, Two and a half men or The Big bang theory, anyone here seen them?

Then compare the old sitcoms vs the new modern sitcoms. You will see that they have keept developing and moved forward keeping it current all the time.

Well, Magicians are still Married… with Children.

You care to clarify that statement with examples of what you mean, because I'm going to call foul on that statement if you don't.

You also chose one of the worst sitcom's to serve as your example, as Married with Children ran for god now... how many years? You DO realize that those principle actors probably never have to work again from the residuals they made from that show.

So, yeah. IF that formula works I'll take it. I'd take only 1% of their success and still be happy, I'm not greedy.

Also as Keo pointed out, your blanket statement doesn't apply to everyone. It's too broad to have any relevance. I for one don't feel that my magic is dated.
 
Criss is a very special individual. He has corporations behind him and the only reason he is famous or has money is because the U.S is so big.
Noone cares enough to see what the real picture is, as i figure people just look at it cheer and change the channel. I'd like to see how many actually rant Criss on their time off.

Okay, maybe a few dudes who sit down at work and start jabbering about what they watched on TV last night might discuss it but lets face it, i would probably not even mention Criss when i was on a date with a girl or out with my friends. There is more important matters to address. The common public looks at the show because it's flashy. Criss dares to do stunts like getting hit by a card etc. Thats HIS STYLE. The only ones really ranting are US, fellow magicians who really see whats going on behind the scenes. I mean, people look at magic for entertainment not because someone does camera tricks. They just don't care enough, they want to spend their 10 minutes wisely(how wise it is to watch Criss is everyones own choice, i'd rather watch a documentary on Synthetic Life).

Thats just my two cents to this thing, as i see both Steer and Brad are somewhat leaning towards these terms.

Now addressing the fact of why the Letterman show got negative responses because the magicians did some classic stuff.

You see the majority of the old guys in magic practically practice the same mentality. And thats their choice, the lesson to learn here is to add spunk to your own effects and make them personal. A simple ACR routine could be fitted to every need. You just have to brake out of the system and get your own stuff together, find your own character the person YOU want to be.

Putting the work to be original and to be from another system is hard but it's rewarding. I can pretty much draw a line here where i live in Estonia. We have a handful of magicians here and EVERYONE does their own theme. Although yes it would be noticed if two do the same thing but we are striving at different things not because we have to but because WE WANT TO. I for instance love mentalism and spiritualism, another dude does his own stuff, meaning that he is a mixture of everything but he performs everything in a magic sauce, we have a classical magician, a kids magician, close up guy, bizzarrist and a few more. We all strive to do what we love.

You don't have to be like others, no one is telling nobody that. We have to be the best we can, in what we want to do. There is no rule stating that magic should be performed this or that way, you have to find your focal point and roll with it.

Just my two cents to this decently informing topic.
M.
 
Jan 26, 2008
419
1
Sweden
Also as Keo pointed out, your blanket statement doesn't apply to everyone. It's too broad to have any relevance. I for one don't feel that my magic is dated.

I did not say that it does apply to everyone.

I said most of the time.

Like i would say most of the music that i hear on the radio nowdays suck.

Its not the same thing is saying that all music on the radio sucks.
 
Jul 13, 2009
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Well since I find delight in ruining people's nights let me just pick apart the post that I am addressing.


The problem lies in that magic as presented most of the time is terrible outdated and magicians are to proud to see that.

I sort of agree with you in that magician's are still with cards and coins when compared to the rest of the world, which is on e-money and e-gambling. It isn't that magicians are to proud to see that the presentation they are performing is dated material. It is that they have performed it over and over to great success. I am certain you have heard the phrase, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

Has anyone here seen the old sitcoms like Married… with Children or Cheers? They will always be classics but they are terrible outdated that its hard to watch them today and take it seriously.

No they are not "hard to watch them today and take it seriously.", I still enjoy those sitcoms and continue to learn actual morals from the show. To bring your analogy back to magic. Your logic suggests to me that VHS tapes of A1 media or other media made from the past, though classic, is outdated and therefore hard to take seriously.

Then compare the old sitcoms vs the new modern sitcoms. You will see that they have keept developing and moved forward keeping it current all the time.

Well, Magicians are still Married… with Children.

"Well, Magicians are still Married… with Children."
This is the blanket statement that I am talking about.

To continue my analysis of your comparison, Dan and Dave (Magicians modern) are the same as Tony Slydini (Magician of the past). I think anyone with a bit of sense will see how silly your original statement is.


Hope I sufficiently ruined your night completely,

Silver
 
Sep 1, 2007
3,786
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You also chose one of the worst sitcom's to serve as your example, as Married with Children ran for god now... how many years? You DO realize that those principle actors probably never have to work again from the residuals they made from that show.

For the sake of argument, The Honeymooners was also very successful in its time. But if Jackie Gleason made the exact same pitch, wrote the exact same scripts, and presented it the exact same way today as he did back then... do you think it would be as successful? I'm pretty skeptical.

There's not much in the way of TV that can be considered timeless. The material is out there, but there's not much of it. Mostly, we appreciate things like sitcoms as a product of their times.

Similarly, many of the Old Guard are a product of their times. I read an essay by Richard Osterlind at one point where he briefly talked about comedy. Predictably, he said swearing was a no-no. Fair enough. Profanity should not be a substitute for wit. But he went on to describe who he thought the most timeless and enduringly funny comedians were: Bob Hope and Red Skelton.

I had to put the book down and try to evaluate if I had read that correctly, because no one I know under the age of 30 ever found either individual all that funny. Hey, I grant that Bob Hope (before he started phoning it in) had a tight sense of comedic timing, but he was a product of his time.

When my generation thinks of a timelessly funny comedian, Jerry Seinfeld is the name I hear the most often. I hear a few other names like Stephen Fry of course, but the point is that Richard Osterlind is speaking for the time he grew up in and during which he made his professional career. I agree with him in principle, but it's the fine details where things have changed.

The archetypal magician personas, the cheesy uncle, the used car salesman, and all those other overly simplistic tropes have moved from the realm of standard to cliche. They're stereotypes. I believe that's why audiences reacted to the Letterman appearances the way they did. They're saying things like, "Are these guys being bad on purpose?" When you hear those words, something has gone seriously wrong.

To go back to black metal for a second, the genre (debatably) went through three different phases. In the first phase was the bands who would lay the groundwork. Venom started out by taking the apocalyptic dreamscapes of Black Sabbath and injecting more aggression and violence into them.

Hellhammer (which would later become Celtic Frost) pushed the music into ever bleaker directions. The early Hellhammer tapes were a thing of legend. No one had ever heard anything like it before. When Celtic Frost came forward with their debut album, Morbid Tales, the title track asked the question, "Are you morbid?"

Mercyful Fate amplified the shock rock theatrics of Alice Cooper. King Diamond wore Edwardian suits and ghoulish face paint on stage. The songs they wrote were like miniature horror movies or chilling ghost stories.

And finally Bathory melded artistry with practicality in their recording. They didn't have enough money to record anything really high quality, so they simply wrote music that made the most of the lo-fi production.

This was what many consider the first wave of black metal, most of which wasn't even technically black metal itself once the genre coalesced. Hang on, I am going somewhere with this.

The second wave of black metal started in Norway. At the forefront were bands like Mayhem, Burzum, and Immortal. These were young guys who listened to the works of Venom, Hellhammer, et al, and decided to continue this new direction. They created a genre defined by its anti-mainstream ethos. How much so? This is a picture of one of Mayhem's vocalists, Per Yngve Ohlin, known on stage as "Dead":

Dead3.jpg


Keep in mind also that this is the tamest picture of him in existence. This entire band was completely goat****. Some of the songs Dead penned include Funeral Fog, Freezing Moon, Buried by Time and Dust, and Necrolust. DO NOT do a search for Dawn of the Black Hearts. Trust me on this one.

Over the course of the late 80's and into the early 90's, a rush of similar bands came raging out of Norway with a similar aesthetic. Lo-fi production, tremolo picked riffs, blast beats, inhuman vocals, nightmarish and violent lyrics, obsessions with superstition and mythology, and more than a few espousing strongly anti-Christian philosophies. The wave is generally considered to have ended following the murder of Mayhem's founding member and guitarist Oystein "Euronymous" Aarseth at the hands of his former bandmate and musical contemporary Varg Vikernes.

This period was dubbed "True Norwegian Black Metal" by the hardcore fans and bands in the genre since have been trying to emulate it even down to the staunchly anti-mainstream ethos. A lot of them still object to the expansion of the genre such as in symphonic black metal (Dimmu Borgir, Emperor, Bal-Sagoth) and folk/black and Viking metal (Einherjer, Melechesh, Primordial). Personally, I quite like these sub-genres, and I see the objections from the purists to be similar in some ways to magicians who insist on continuing to perform the same material in the same ways year in and year out with little to no variation or experimentation.

The point is that purists are actually hurting that which they love. Second wave black metal style can still be good music, but rigidly adhering to a formula leads only to stultification and stagnation. Criss Angel may be a veritable grenade of a debate topic with magicians, but just go to a metal message board and start a thread talking about how much you like Dimmu Borgir. It will be a perfect storm of elitist oldbies versus acne-riddled teen angst. Despite the band's commercial success and generally doing a lot to elevate black metal beyond its stereotypes (well... musically anyway), the scene has pretty much disowned them.

I'm not saying that magicians have gone to the same extreme. But our community does have a tendency to be very slow to change. Maybe it's one of those, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it," things? Maybe people just aren't paying attention? Whatever the case, I see what's happening to black metal and find it to have some uncomfortable similarities to what's happening in magic.
 
Jan 26, 2008
419
1
Sweden
Great post Steerpike.

Anyways, this will be my last post on this forum in a long time so i dont care if someone takes what im saying the wrong way or if i get banned for using foul language or whatever.

The reason? I have found the answer to one of the questions i have been given a lot of thought for quit some time. The question has been "Why is not magic moving forward" and why is not magic getting the respect and recognition we think it deserves by the public?"


I got the answer to my question after observing several threads like this on several forums. Most magicians have their head so far upp their own asses that they wont allow them self to see clearly anymore.
 
please help

ah man someone please tell me what routines i do that are out dated, i've been living a lie all this time...please cirtique my show and tell me what i'm doing wrong that is not advancing our art in any way shape or form i need to know this so i can listen to what other magicians think rather than my paying audience...

in all honestly though please do tell me what is dated in my show i'm very curious as to what others may think is dated and holding back the artform - this intrigues me since i don't have fans blowing my hair and open shirts and peter gabriel music...i'm all ears and i will take this seriously
 

Luis Vega

Elite Member
Mar 19, 2008
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Leon, Guanajuato Mexico
luisvega.com.mx
ah man someone please tell me what routines i do that are out dated, i've been living a lie all this time...please cirtique my show and tell me what i'm doing wrong that is not advancing our art in any way shape or form i need to know this so i can listen to what other magicians think rather than my paying audience...

in all honestly though please do tell me what is dated in my show i'm very curious as to what others may think is dated and holding back the artform - this intrigues me since i don't have fans blowing my hair and open shirts and peter gabriel music...i'm all ears and i will take this seriously

I haven´t seen a show of you so I cannot criticize...however in your videos I saw a routine where you draw a dog..or something...and then transform it in a jirafe...very awesome...and I thought card revelations were the only trick that can be done with that method...

I think it depends of the style...I have seen magician that have been doing magic for like 20 years...but they keep using the same tricks always...I think your show must continue evolving and you should never stop learning...


edit: and by you I mean me and everyone...
 
Jul 13, 2009
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ah man someone please tell me what routines i do that are out dated, i've been living a lie all this time...please cirtique my show and tell me what i'm doing wrong that is not advancing our art in any way shape or form i need to know this so i can listen to what other magicians think rather than my paying audience...

in all honestly though please do tell me what is dated in my show i'm very curious as to what others may think is dated and holding back the artform - this intrigues me since i don't have fans blowing my hair and open shirts and peter gabriel music...i'm all ears and i will take this seriously

That modern art variation is out of date ^,=,^. *SUPER SARCASM!*
 
Jul 13, 2009
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Great post Steerpike.

Anyways, this will be my last post on this forum in a long time so i dont care if someone takes what im saying the wrong way or if i get banned for using foul language or whatever.

A BuBye.

The reason? I have found the answer to one of the questions i have been given a lot of thought for quit some time. The question has been "Why is not magic moving forward" and why is not magic getting the respect and recognition we think it deserves by the public?"

It isn't moving forward because you and others are to busy neck deep in forum posts. Instead of improving themselves, which I feel is really the only way to improve any art form as a whole. If you do not take the time to improve yourself how will you create something new to bring to the table of advancement that will actually you know advance the art.

I got the answer to my question after observing several threads like this on several forums. Most magicians have their head so far upp their own asses that they wont allow them self to see clearly anymore.

IRONY!
 
For the sake of argument, The Honeymooners was also very successful in its time. But if Jackie Gleason made the exact same pitch, wrote the exact same scripts, and presented it the exact same way today as he did back then... do you think it would be as successful? I'm pretty skeptical.

Actually It was recently redone. Not all that long ago. You may have heard of it the show was animated. It was called "The Flintstones".

I get what your saying, and not taking away from those great points, but just pointing that out.
 
Sep 1, 2007
3,786
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Actually It was recently redone. Not all that long ago. You may have heard of it the show was animated. It was called "The Flintstones".

I get what your saying, and not taking away from those great points, but just pointing that out.

I would not call The Flintstones recent, for one thing. It aired when The Honeymooners was still getting new episodes. And it wasn't a remake so much as a transparent rip-off.

My point was that if The Honeymooners had never existed and Jackie Gleason tried to pitch the show in 2010, it probably wouldn't work.

You may also recall that Cedric the Entertainer a few years back attempted a movie adaptation of The Honeymooners with an all-black cast and updated setting. It bombed horribly.
 
bad on purpose on letterman???

Yes I'm very curious as to who said this as well - the only thing I saw that was BAD on those letterman appearances was BAD camera angles that were out of the hands of the performers. Had that not happened they would have broke off a tip of their magic wands in your eye pussies from ****ing you up so hard. Trust me I've seen most of that stuff live and it is great.
 
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