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Eminem and Houdini? Quotes for Our Soul.

To quote my grandfather, ?There are few things you can change in life, take great joy in changing your socks.?

I was reading the article in the Orlando Sentinel this afternoon (see the daily news update on this page) and thinking to myself, ?Hey, why not just be a complete fake ? as opposed to a partial fake ? and make some serious lettuce??

You can read the full article about the alleged spiritual medium that gets to dress up in just khaki pants and a collar-less shirt for work and makes serious coin by clicking here.

At Inside Magic, we wear jump suits with colors indicating the type of job we have ? we learned this from the Navy (actually just the movie about the Navy, Top Gun). So, writers wear red, editors wear blue, ad sales people wear a barrel and the lingering stink of cheap honor bar bourbon.

All seriousness aside, why not take our Svengali decks and Spirit Slates and do it the way those with less ethics but higher bank balances do?

Consider the rap of our inspired philosopher Eminem (raised just 20 minutes from our studio) once rapped :

I’m tired of backstabbing ___ snakes with friendly grins

I’m tired of committing so many sins

Tired of always…

To quote my grandfather, ?There are few things you can change in life, take great joy in changing your socks.?

I was reading the article in the Orlando Sentinel this afternoon (see the daily news update on this page) and thinking to myself, ?Hey, why not just be a complete fake ? as opposed to a partial fake ? and make some serious lettuce??

You can read the full article about the alleged spiritual medium that gets to dress up in just khaki pants and a collar-less shirt for work and makes serious coin by clicking here.

At Inside Magic, we wear jump suits with colors indicating the type of job we have ? we learned this from the Navy (actually just the movie about the Navy, Top Gun). So, writers wear red, editors wear blue, ad sales people wear a barrel and the lingering stink of cheap honor bar bourbon.

All seriousness aside, why not take our Svengali decks and Spirit Slates and do it the way those with less ethics but higher bank balances do?

Consider the rap of our inspired philosopher Eminem (raised just 20 minutes from our studio) once rapped :

I’m tired of backstabbing ___ snakes with friendly grins

I’m tired of committing so many sins

Tired of always giving in when this bottle of Henny wins

Tired of never having any ends

Tired of having skinny friends hooked on crack and mini-thins

Tired of not having a deal

Tired of having to deal with the ______ without grabbing the steel

Tired of drowning in my sorrow

Tired of having to borrow a dollar for gas to start my Monte Carlo.

Okay, maybe he was a little intense. Plus, I don?t have a Monte Carlo ? I am a Ford Man and always will be. I have a brand new 40th Anniversary Sonic Blue Mustang GT Convertible ? in my dreams.

But the point that Mr. Mathers was making has some relevance? N?est pas? You and I will not be Ben or J-Lo (unless you are Ben or J-Lo) and so we will never make it big ? by ?big? I mean like Jan Carl interviewing us as we walk about Hollywood for Entertainment Tonight ?big.?

But, for about $40.00, we can buy or make the tools necessary to be rich. We could, you know. Give me a FAB Spirit Slate set (which is excellent, by the way) and a mangy piece of chalk, and I become the modern day, but male, Margery. I predict the future, channel spirits, pick lottery numbers, cure cancer and give spiritual advice.

So what keeps us so poor? Why are we still ?drowning in our sorrow?? Why don?t we have money to buy a better magnetic sign to put on the side of our Ford Windstar to advertise that we do Kids? Shows? Because of what? Because it would be wrong?

To quote another great philosopher, Dennis Hopper in Apocalypse Now, ?This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but with a whimper.” The Martin Sheen character, when asked, says ?I see no plan.? Isn?t it true, that there is no reason, no rhyme but more importantly no reason.

The modern philosopher tells us that ?wrong? or ?right? is that which we relatively define according to our needs at this moment. Wrong, right now, might not be wrong for you or wrong for me later.

I will always be a Ford Man, though.

So, why not? Why not make the $6.2 million this khaki-wearing Floridian channel boy makes to write nonsense on a piece of paper while in a trance (or drunk) or make the spirits tell us to tell our clients that they should leave their spouse or their family or their dog because they?re ?not understood??

I?m joking, of course. I wouldn?t wear a collar-less shirt if I was performing.

But still $6.2 million bucks is more than I make in six months doing Inside Magic and the occasional free shows I do. So why not?

I mean, who would it hurt? Me? I?d be rich. I can confess before I die and as Terry Seabrooke would say, ?Bob?s your uncle.?

Would it hurt the dupes that paid me to hear what I hear their dead dog tell me? If I don?t do it, someone will. In fact, because I know that I am a fake channel guy and not a real medium, I?d be helping them. I?d keep them from exposing them to the satanic influences that we?ve all been warned to avoid. I?d be doing a public service. In the same way Eminem adds to our culture, I?d be adding to the spiritual well-being of my brother man.

I was asked by a shadowy figure in a dream once ? and this is true ? if I could give you a pill to take away all doubt about the existence of God and your place in his kingdom, wouldn?t you take it??

Good question from the peanut gallery of my subconscious.

What keeps us debating the issues of whether it is right to undersell another dealer, to borrow or steal another magician?s invention or to expose something that everyone would concede is a trick? The real moral dilemma is why not use this power we have to make some serious semolians? Who cares if you pay full price for the trick by buying it from the true inventor, if you can make $6.2 million or even just $6.1 million by fibbing a little?

We magicians are dancing the ethical dance on the wrong-side of the dance floor. We should be over on the other side or at least near the middle of the high school gym floor to dance around the issue of why not get paid for the hours we spent practicing false shuffles and second deals. Right?

Of course, as we used to say in seminary, ?the contrapositive of this is not the opposite of this.? I don?t know for sure what that means, but I think it means, just because we are debating how to be good, doesn?t mean we are debating whether to be good.

Let?s dismiss the slippery slope argument for a second. Let?s forget that if we steal a pear from a merchant that we are on our inevitable path to becoming Hitler. Let?s assume that we can steal a pear from a merchant and not immediately move to world domination and genocide.

All I?m talking about is whether we should consider, as a profession, to accept and endorse and support those who chose to make money by using their well-practiced skills to fake people into believing that which they want to believe anyway.

I could give you the religious answer that would come from all of the major religions but you already know that. So we?re assuming that we don?t care what God thinks. We?re just trying to figure out why we shouldn?t agree with the prophetic and thoughtful words of Bobby Brown, ?We wanna get paid and anyone gets in our way gets slayed.?

I don?t know why you don?t do it. Why not make the $6.1 million or at least the $5.9 million you could? I can only speak for me and the magicians I know.

We?re not that kind of people.

Magicians aren?t too wimpy to pull off a con ? some have. We?re not unable to pull off a con ? some have. But as a whole, we?re too aware of how our talent affects people. We use it for ?entertainment purposes only? ? to quote a slot machine I found in a bathroom in Ypsilanti, Michigan.

We started as young people interested in magic because the trick we saw was neat or keen or super or amazing. We wanted to learn magic because we wanted to have that same affect on others. We didn?t learn magic because some psychic correctly told us what we imagined our dead kitty would tell us about our current marriage. I don?t know of many that have become involved in magic because of the Psychic Friends Hotline.

Even once we?ve learned the truth about how to perform magic, we still don?t drift towards the sirens? cry towards the rocky coast of fraud. We stick to the main channel (pun fully intended) past those isles not because they?re not attractive to us but because we ?know, deep in our heart? (to quote a spiritual from the Civil Rights Movement in the US) that we are not that kind of person. That?s not what we do.

To quote Homey the Clown, ?Homey don?t play that! You just want me to lose my dignity!?

So, how about a pat on the back? Let?s not push ourselves too hard on the issues that really just show we?re concerned about the right things. If we fight over whether someone has stolen an idea from another magician, I suggest that is a heck of a lot better than fighting over the best way to dupe some widow out of her last dime.

There was a discussion on Ring2100 last week about what to say when someone comments ?Boy, I sure wouldn?t want to play cards with you.? Some subscribers offered their funny (some really funny) lines in retort. But how nice.

We were considering the best retort. We were not considering the best way to hide our talent so we could play cards with our victims and win the gold fillings in their teeth.

I did a memorized deck routine tonight for some friends and someone made a similar comment about my apparent skill: ?You must be great at blackjack.?

Not to flatter myself, but I would never think of using the same type of marking and peek techniques to steal money. There isn?t much good I can say about me but I guess I can say that I fight my internal battles within a pretty benign field.

I felt guilty that I duped them into thinking that there was anyway I could memorize 52 cards with a five second glance.

To quote the Matrix, ?Everything that has a beginning, has an ending.? And this is it. We?re not so bad after all. And that?s not just because we could be worse. It?s because, as a group of people, we?re not so bad. We like to entertain, share and amuse.

To quote John Lovitz from Saturday Night Live, ?I just want to be loved, is that so wrong?!? Check out Luke 10:19-20.

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