Sublime
An inspiration engine for ideas
Jim Steinmeyer concludes in Hiding the Elephant: How Magicians Invented the Impossible and Learned to Disappear.
Ian Frisch • Magic Is Dead: My Journey into the World's Most Secretive Society of Magicians
“A great trick, like a great song, should be an inspiration,” Jim Steinmeyer told Esquire in 2012. “It should lead you to other things that are also wonderful. That’s what happens in literature, and it happens in music, and it happens in art. But in magic, they don’t do that. They just take it. You would hope that what you do inspires, but instead
... See moreIan Frisch • Magic Is Dead: My Journey into the World's Most Secretive Society of Magicians
Although it was a great idea, John Nevil and his son Nevil were now faced with an embarrassment of riches. They had made two discoveries-the use of many fine wires that supported the person from above, and the use of a metal gooseneck that supported the person from behind.
Teller Jim Steinmeyer • Hiding the Elephant: How Magicians Invented the Impossible and Learned to Disappear
“This fetishization of not censoring yourself, of being an ‘equal-opportunity offender,’ is bizarre and bad for comedy. When did ‘not censoring yourself’ become a good thing? We censor ourselves all the time, because we are not entitled, sociopathic fucks…
Lindy West • Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman
exactly the traits for which Houdini was infamous. Most analyses of The Unmasking easily confront the arguments of dates, names, or inventions but are helpless in attempting to explain the blindness and double standards of its author.
Teller Jim Steinmeyer • Hiding the Elephant: How Magicians Invented the Impossible and Learned to Disappear
Aaron Z. Lewis • You Can Handle the Post-Truth: A Pocket Guide to the Surreal Internet
Houdini soon became magic’s most recognizable figure—and one of the most egotistical. He publicly boasted that no magician could fool him if he saw the effect three times. Many magicians tried and failed to best the king of their craft. That all changed in 1919, when a young man approached Houdini and asked to show him a card trick. He had Houdini
... See moreIan Frisch • Magic Is Dead: My Journey into the World's Most Secretive Society of Magicians
Howard Thurston became one of the great men of the American stage, a performer whose magic show became a national institution and an important franchise in the first decades of the twentieth century. He was born in Columbus, Ohio, in 1869, and as a boy he became a street tough.
Teller Jim Steinmeyer • Hiding the Elephant: How Magicians Invented the Impossible and Learned to Disappear
Historically, many of magic’s most successful illusions have become instant for-sale commodities. In 1921, the British illusionist P. T. Selbit debuted Sawing Through a Woman, the quintessential woman-in-a-box stage illusion that would instantly captivate the world and forever change stage magic. After word spread, American magician Horace Goldin c
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