Why am I stuck in magician Hell?

"She seems to have an invisible touch" - Phil Collins

I am sure I have remarked about this before, but I am too lazy to go back and look. It amuses me that we spend so much time practicing moves that are meant to be totally invisible to the human eye. Mind you they are not invisible, just go under a persons radar cuz' shuffling is such a secondary action to most people. Hell some are even 4th and 5th actions. No one cares...

Hey that's good tho'. Mind you it's when you get flashy with it like a sybil cut that it starts to look odd, but that is a bit of an extreme example. Take for instance the Heinstein Shuffle. A great move recently released into the wild. (I say recently as in the last 10 years mind you.) It's a false shuffle in the air. Complete with a bridge and everything. (The move not an actual structure.) It is a great piece as it is an auditory illusion as much as it is visual. You hear those cards make the noise they should make when they are bridged. Even when done poorly, it fools people. It's called conditioning.

People don't question what they expect or are familiar with. This is why false shuffle, cuts, and controls go undetected usually. People expect to see cards shuffled and they have NO clue the intricacies that we go thru to hide the fact we are making cards move around that deck. Passes, cards steals, all of it. Invisible if done right or misdirected properly.

The worst part is, we work our butts off to perfect something that we feel so damn proud about getting down because it is so damn clever, and we can't show anyone but other magicians. I would love to tell people, "This is so cool!! Look I can pretend to shuffle a deck but not really like this!" and their response will be something like, "Thaz nice". Only we care and in some cases.. We don't. We're so proud of ourselves when we pull these moves off and get them right past someone else. Sounds like magical masturbation to me....

If it feels good, do it.

Bizzaro.