July 30: People I'd like to high five in the face

Ouch, Candyval. You have given me a title that encourages me to be nasty. Whatever will gentle Shteevie do with a title like this?

I guess I have to land on Planet Nasty.

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Alright, there is a group of people I'd like to high five in the face. They are unoriginal magicians. 

Here is David Copperfield performing an illusion called Cardiography. It is from his 1990 television special, The Niagara Falls Challenge.

Great routine. A magician named Martin Lewis invented it. I have one. So do lots of magicians.

And I have seen some of those magicians do that trick exactly the same way David Copperfield does. Everything. Same music. Same presentation. Same lines. Everything. They're not even trying to be original. They're trying to copy a master, note-for-note, and the end result is a young magician that comes across as a creepy little predator.

It bugs me for a number of reasons. It bugs me because my magic mentors drilled into me the importance of originality. They told me that a magic trick is a bit like a song. Martha and the Vandellas might have originated Dancing in the Streets, but that same song sounded different when Van Halen and Mick Jagger/David Bowie did it because they put their own unique stamps on it.

There are thousands of ways to sing a song and there are thousands of ways to do magic tricks too. Come up with your own presentations. If you don't, you will harm the craft and maybe even get a high five in the face from yours truly.