Orlando 2008
Orlando is a town were most everything is make-believe, an escape from reality in a family way. Murphy Arms an English Pub off International Drive, hard living, escape and illusion came together one night. Murphy Arms is a working man’s pub for British tourists, and local construction workers, nothing fancy, dark even on the sunniest of days, smoked filled and tattered. A place to bring the family, which many Brits do, an escape from the escape that is Orlando.
The Illusionist
I never once took my eyes off the ring. I had seen this trick done before and I was determined this time to see how it was accomplished.
Holding the girl’s hand the illusionist, Larry, took the ring off her finger, gently holding the ring between two of his fingers in the complex gentle way magicians do. He slowly showed the ring to the 20 or so of us gather to see this trick. I stared at the ring, never taking my eyes off of it, until, then with a wink of the eye it was gone. I lost it. I did not see where it went. I wasn’t paying attention to the crowds or the miss direction, my concentration was on the ring. Now it was gone.
“Oh shit I lost it, did anyone see what happened to it” Larry the magician said to all of us watching. This was theatre and Larry was playing his crowd like the 25 year veteran magician he is.
As he opened his hands and slowly turned them, revealing nothing. The ring had literally vanished.
I didn’t know where it went and I was the only one looking at the ring.
“My god that was my mothers ring, what did you do with it?” the victim said, a rather vivacious 20 something. Some how they are always the ones to get picked by the illusionist.
“I don’t know, I think I left it in my car, let me get my keys.”
Reaching into his back pocket he pulled out his flat pocket key packet. Not a key chain but one of those flat leather key binders with the row of key hooks on them, each holding a key and her ring.
“WTF.” is all I could say. Not really showing my command of the english language but I had watch that key the entire time. I lost it and I had no idea how it ended up on the key hook in his back pocket.
A gasp went out from the 20 or so bar patrons at the Murphy Arms English Pub, all in amazement that Larry could take a solid metal object, dematerialized it, float it in mid-air and have it reassemble and attached itself to his key ring. There was no other explanation.
A cheer went up as the girl got her ring back, Larry got a big hug from her, a benefit of his job. Along with a quick flash of some really nice tits. Giving greater credence about why vivacious young woman are usually picked by the illusionist.
“OK man I saw the ring from the moment you removed it from her finger, holding it in your hand and then it was gone. How did you do it?”
This was my fourth or twentieth visit to Arms and had seen this trick numerous times and still had not a clue as to how it went from finger to hook to tits. The tits part I got but the in between was still a mystery.
“It is easy, I’ll have a beer Scott.” Larry said.
That was all Larry said and we went on drinking our beer.
A good magician never tells.
Bar tricks are the staple of any good working mans bar, the rose napkin, rearranging stick matches to spell a word by moving two, getting woman’s tops to disappear, all the standard stuff. Larry had taken it to a whole different realm, the impossible.
Other impossible tricks were the card signature trick, where one of the patrons would sign a card put it in the deck. Then another audience member would shuffle it. Larry would grab the deck feel the cards move them around and then have one of the audience members secure the deck with rubber bands. Once he secured the deck he would then flat palmed throw the deck to the ceiling ten feet above us. The cards would all fall back, except one, the one the patron had signed.
“I worked in Vegas for 20 years doing conventions.” Larry said as we sat there between magic tricks. Larry looked it, a face that bore the years of late nights, conventions, Vegas, a smokers rasp of a voice but still sharp able to work his crowd as he always had.
“That had to be fun, lots of good times. Bet you got some looks when you told people you did tricks in Vegas.” I laughed, sometimes I kill myself.
“Not like you think. My job was to hold the customers in the booth until the reps could take over. Most of the time it was just talking to them about the illusions.”
Larry considered himself an illusionist, magicians were good but what Larry did was create an illusion, no tricks or magic. Practice, sleight of hand and miss direction. Make them see something before you do something, change the reality for just a split second so that you can accomplish the illusion.
Magician, Illusionist, Conjurers have been around since recorded history. Religion played a major role in the development of illusions. Even the Greek temples had devices connected to statuary to create the illusion of movement or breathing. Amazing the un educated people and keeping there beliefs in the gods solid.
Then in the 1800s magic began a revival, Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin opened the first theatre devoted to magic on July 3 1845 in Paris France. He is not the famous escape artist of the late 1800s Harry Houdini. Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin was consider one of the first of the modern magicians and Harry Houdini took this as his stage name. Harry Houdini was primary known as an escape artist and a debunker of mystics, concentrating on these disciplines vs magic. Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin was a watch maker who created devices to astound his audience.
Larry and I sat there, did a couple more tricks, no bras were coming off and Larry said he had to disappear. Magician talk for he was going to another party. WIth a click of his fingers he was gone. Not really, he walked out of Murphy Arms like all the rest of us mere mortals.
Still not sure how Larry pulled off his tricks, how he got that ring on his key ring so effortlessly. I sipped my beer and it was getting closer to me disappearing also for the night.
How do they do it?
How does Criss Angel “Mind Freak” take a woman in a park, lay her down on a bench and have two other woman pull her apart. Then have the lower half walk away, leaving the other half of the woman stranded on the bench. Sure people say one of the woman was born with no legs, but the real trick would be to find the woman who was born with no torso to complete the act.
