My interest in magic stems from when I was a child. Watching those now defunct magic shows like “World’s Greatest Magicians”, David Copperfield specials, Lance Burton specials and though I’m a little ashamed to admit it, I did watch “Breaking the Magician’s Code” with that loser Val Valentino who was the “Masked Magician”.
In recent years, David Blaine became quite big on the magic scene and it somewhat revived my interest. A friend of mine had given me a copy of his book and though some of his history did make the book a good read, He is essentially just another good looking guy(makes for good tv, right?) with old parlor tricks. How about Chris Angel? I’d pretty much consider him in the same class of magicians as David Blaine no matter how he tries to describe himself as. In fact, this hardcore dark magic persona that Chris Angel tries to shove down our throats in his TV shows? I don’t like it one bit. But there is one good thing to say about Chris Angel that David Blaine hasn’t done lately, which is discredit his illusions from reality. Angel has blatantly exclaimed that he does not have supernatural abilities, which is quite important because there are people and fans out there that literally believe that Angel can levitate or control objects. Angel has actively promoted the James Randi Education Foundation’s skeptic challenge. Which basically is a “one-million-dollar prize to anyone who can show, under proper observing conditions, evidence of any paranormal, supernatural, or occult power or event.”
Here’s a clip from a news station that covered some of the mayhem on a recent special Chris Angel did with Uri Geller:
Although it was a bit pompous to consider yourself the “King” of Magic. Considering that there are literally tons of magicians who are better than him. But he got his message across. Which is don’t believe everything you see or hear.
Don’t get me wrong, I think magic is great and many of the secrets should be well guarded and kept. But as someone who has seen and knows how tricks are done, there’s nothing supernatural about it. Magic is essentially a performance and its important how the audience conveys the performance not got get skewed by the paranormal.
I quote of the old school magician Doug Henning, “Magic is an illuuuuusion!”
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