Wednesday, May 06, 2009

Nothing Up My Sleeve

I've always been a fan of close magic, stuff that features sleight-of-hand rather than the big tricks -- more interesting to me to watch a guy hide something in his hand than to vanish an elephant.

I've seen a lot of really good magicians over the years. But I have, never, ever seen anything like this before. 

Rated R, so watcher beware ...

6 comments:

Bobbe Edmonds said...

The music is "A Shot in the Dark" by Henry Mancini, one of the all-time greats. It was one of the sequel tunes he created for "The Pink Panther".

Not that I'll ever be able to listen to it again without that hip thrust coming to mind.

Brad said...

If it weren't for that "smile" and having her hair pulled back so tight, she'd almost be attractive.

I sure hope she washed that little napkin between performances,

Steve Perry said...

You were watching her smile and hair, huh, Brad?

I was watching the hanky myself.

I know what Bobbe was watching, and it wasn't either of those ...

Stephen Grey said...

Wow, I'm just amazed by the scarf tricks. She's doing just an insane magic routine, even if she wasn't stripping down. It's one thing to be able to do that sort of thing live, where the deceptions are much more effective, but to be able to pull it off inscrutably on video that can be rewound etc again and again is just astonishing.

My guess-- as is true with a lot of scarf tricks like this one-- is that she has a fake finger or other prosthesis, or possibly more than one.

People like these could be amazingly competent thieves, in all sorts of different types of crime from pickpocketing to jewel theft.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who's thought about the application of close magic to martial arts and weapon fighting. If you can secrete a 2" ring dagger-- or derringer-- and produce it at will from nowhere, nobody is safe from you...

My guess is that this woman could probably hide something much larger than that.

Unknown said...

At last! we now know what happened to Jimmy Hoffa

Steve Perry said...

I recall that the magician David Copperfield was accosted by robbers on the street one evening, they didn't know who he was, and he managed to keep his wallet by using sleights.

I'm not very good at it -- but I once managed to walk a tiny handgun past a security guard armed with a metal detector. (It was an accident. I had the gun with me, quite legally, and didn't know there was going to be that kind of security at a concert I attended. I didn't want to have to go back to the car and tuck the piece away.)

Anybody can do the big apparatus tricks. Close magic with somebody standing right there is harder, and requires much more skill. I am pretty sure I know what the naked magician was doing and how, but even so, I couldn't see it, and that impresses me.