Month: October 2025

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Telly-portation
or 5000 miles in 50 feet

I always love it when my interests overlap so imagine my joy at seeing Corridor Crew do a VFX examination of a Copperfield Illusion, to show how it was done.

Technically I should be opposed to this kind of exposure but when its a trick from 25 years ago, that was on a TV special, requiring a 2000 era las vegas budget, and will probably never be done again… it’s kind of a methodological cul-de-sac. On top of all that it is also a camera trick, so fuck him.

I don’t want to talk about the method though. I wan’t to talk about the effect.

Continue reading “Telly-portation
or 5000 miles in 50 feet”

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Ourobot
or The snake that eats its tail will starve to death

I didn’t want to be talking about this again but a couple of recent events have really driven home to me some truths about the state of things in magic.

I know roughly when AI was first used to promote a magic trick, essentially as soon as the available models were good enough to get away with it.

I know how deeply ingrained it has become, now on every magic shop storefront, in countless products, and in magicians promotional materials, often to an insane degree.

What I didn’t know was when this would start to be a problem.

Continue reading “Ourobot
or The snake that eats its tail will starve to death”

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Kayfabe Collapse
or Repent for the end is nigh

Did you hear the rapture is happening? Or already happened, I’m not sure, I haven’t been keeping up. Feels like proclamations of the end times are being spread every other weekThis one had a bit more traction because of TikTok and the faithful arrogant have been giving away their worldly possessions in the USA, all in the belief that they are going to be beamed up to heaven in the rapture any day now.

Funny stuff because every time one of these things comes around it’s related to loose interpretations of the book of revelations, casting barcodes or chip and pin as the mark of the beast, but there’s never any of the wrath of God stuff. Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies, rivers and seas boiling. Forty years of darkness, earthquakes, volcanoes, the dead rising from the grave, human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria¹.

You think you’ll never see any proper signs of the end times…

… and then one day your Dad tells you Penn and Teller just became members of The Magic Circle.

Continue reading “Kayfabe Collapse
or Repent for the end is nigh”