Fooling Houdini: Magicians, Mentalists, Math Geeks, and the Hidden Powers of the Mind by Alex Stone

Author:Alex Stone [Stone, Alex]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Life Sciences, Magic, Science, Entertainment & Performing Arts, General, Personal Memoirs, Games, Body; Mind & Spirit, Biography & Autobiography, Neuroscience, Magick Studies
ISBN: 9780061766213
Google: 8HsGywAACAAJ
Amazon: 0061766216
Publisher: Harper
Published: 2012-06-18T22:00:00+00:00

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* Though some have tried. In April 2011, French footwear designer Christian Louboutin sued rival Yves Saint Laurent for issuing a red-soled shoe, claiming that red soles were his trademark. A federal court dismissed the case. “Awarding one participant in the designer shoe market a monopoly on the color red,” wrote the judge, “would impermissibly hinder competition among other participants.”

Chapter 7

It’s Annoying and I Asked You to Stop

One of my biggest fears is that someday I’ll be audited. Not because my taxes aren’t in perfect order—I’m very OCD about saving receipts and keeping track of my expenses, a habit I learned from my father—but because it would bring me face-to-face with a very difficult and decidedly lose-lose dilemma in which I’d have to choose between going to jail for tax fraud and disclosing to another adult, in naked detail, just how much money I’ve spent on magic over the years. (That, and I’d have to fess up to eating at Arby’s multiple times while traveling to magic conventions.)

“Mr. Stone,” the auditor would say, “According to our records, you spent more money last year on—no, wait, this can’t be right—you spent more on magic than on food or rent?” Then he’d ask me what a topit was, and instead of explaining to him that it’s a pouch sewn into the lining of your coat for vanishing small objects, I’d tell him it was a secret, citing the magician’s code, and spend the next several years behind bars. Okay, so maybe that’s not exactly how it would go down, but it wouldn’t be pretty.

Decks of cards were one of my biggest expenses. I was up to a pack-a-day habit. (I liked my cards crisp and new, and I found that they quickly wore out from all the abuse I put them through.) It didn’t help that I’d developed a taste for Richard Turner’s traditionally cut Mandolin cards as well as fancy Tally-Ho decks, with their glossy linoid finish and stylish fanbacks, over regular old Bicycles. I now ordered them online in bulk.

I had a filing cabinet full of magic pamphlets and racks full of magic-related magazines. My e-mail in-box was perpetually flooded with tantalizing subject lines from all the magic newsletters and websites I’d subscribed to.

If you could REALLY bend coins, THIS is what it would look like.

Stop your heartbeat in public.

Create fire with your mind.

Reveal a phone number . . . on your spectator’s SKIN.

Cut yourself IN HALF.

Vacuum cleaner + deck of cards = ULTRA clean vanish.

(And my personal favorite . . .)

Universal Nut. This is much more than a pocket puzzle!

Pretty soon I needed a separate bookcase just for my magic library, and my media console could no longer hold all my magic DVDs. I did the math once, and it was shocking. A Ducati 1198 Superbike—that’s what I could’ve bought with the money I’d spent on tricks.

Then there was the human toll. I missed family events and weddings and major social occasions. My friends, initially delighted by my obsession (free magic!), soon grew weary of it (lots of free magic).

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