Look At The Emperor's New Clothes!

Some good magic for a change. Jeff McBride a clear winner in my book. He truly deserves the title Master of Illusion. Just watch how energetic he enters the scene. That energy clearly moves over to the audience who is entranced by this entry.
The Jeff produces a large beautiful silk cloth from a golden fan. In a burst of confetti. I cannot tell how excited I am. I have no idea how this was done. The silk cloth surely came from nowhere. And the fact that it is a dragon cloth symbolizes the dragon within us.
That dragon fury is brought center stage with an artistic somersault. Then he walks back to the huge box behind him to pick up the cloth again. And then it happens.

Boom suddenly he transforms into the famous Pink Dragon of Flamingonia. Where the hell did the huge shoulder pieces come from? I have no clue. Then the dragon dances in a rain of confetti and rainbows. No doubt this means the love of the Pink Dragon towards mankind.

And then the transformation is complete when Jeff produces the mask from thin air. Sure it looks like he purposely went to his huge box behind him and picked something up, but this is not the case, as it would be cheating. And his transformation gets an additional kicker as he breathes fire, symbolized by the streamers.

And then the posing... critics might bash him for that, but no this art. It's an art form you dumb motherfuckers. The posing needs to be as the audience needs time to catch some breath and to come back to earth.

The snow storm in the end is a truly deserved emotional climax in the end, as you can see by the audience reaction. Especially the little girl on the right near the end of the video.

And to those who say this is shit, you are just haters and are jealous of the success of Jeff.

This is an example of a bad trick.

There is nothing you can do to make this better. This atrocity was brought to my attention in a German forum by somebody who did his version of it to music. I didn't even get the effect there.

No Way!

The Green Monster actually fixed the search engine.... no way!

What's it been? More than a year.

Fed up!

I dunno how to say it, but I think I finally lost hope. Hope in the magic community as a whole. Some get magic, most don't.

Example. I saw a magician doing a terrible presentation of 2ITH1ITP. With sponge balls. The execution of the sleights was horrible and the patter. I thought that he completely trusted in the fact that the build in structure of the basic routine will save him in the end. Turns out it wasn't the case. He actually thought his sleights were deceptive. He actually thought he fooled everyone. How do you tell a delusional person that they are in a delusion? You can't! Outside of the delusional bubble it is easy to see what is wrong. But inside you are unable to.

Like telling a Christian that his believe in an omnipotent power, that knows all about you and that takes care of you, as long as you are nice, is nothing more that the belief of a child that Santa Claus is real.

So in this case I gave up telling him, that if he would close his hand a little later it would be a better sleight. I didn't tell him that referring to the sponge balls as tomatoes is not a good way to go. Because even if he improved upon that routine he wouldn't get magic.

Over the weeks I have met several of these people. And I finally understood. Among the tons of painters out there, there is is only one who is an artist. But a huge fuck ton of those painters would claim they are artists and they would honestly believe it. You could hold an abstract painting of Piet Mondrian next to their version of cubes and lines. They wouldn't see the difference.

They paint something abstract and would call it up to part with Picasso. The fact that Picasso had a classical education as a painter and that his skills as a 14-year-old was alongside the renaissance painters does not matter to them. Their work is the same.

So we see a magician attempting a Color Changing Silk routine with the patter of Billy McComb failing in both regards.

Failing to get the routine right, and failing to see that they failed to get it right.

So I decided to do my part. I will not feed these people anymore. No more free magic from me. No Christmas presents for you. Andrew: You were right!

Wrapping Up Peter Loughran Week

What a week it was. We got to see a whole bunch of products that are flawed from the start. The reason I chose products that Peter Loughran makes and sells should be obvious. But sometimes the obvious needs to be pointed out.

There are several ways to create magic. But before every completion of a creative process there is the "hit or miss" issue. Sometimes a creative idea hits a dead end and would be perfect in a different universe. It fails. It can fail for many reasons. The effect could be difficult to understand. The method could be unreliable. The underlying principle could be not deceptive. The idea could be unoriginal and been thought of before, thereby making any claims of intellectual ownership futile. The intuitive solution has not been taken care of by "cancelling of methods". The intuitive solution is the actual solution.

The products I featured over the week are a mix of all of the above. They simply have not gone through a rigorous filtering system of a "friends and family alpha". Or at least not enough.

I don't know what it is exactly. Maybe everybody is way too nice towards Peter Loughran sugar coating any criticism, if at all.

Everyone who is working in some sort of creative industry needs feedback. Honest feedback. Because eventually we come up with a great idea. A really great idea. And it turns out, that it is shit. But the creator didn't see it as he was too in love with his little creation to see.

I have created my share of magic. But I tend to create routines for other magicians. Thereby having a specific goal. I try to take the essence of their personality and tailor it to the routine, by choosing the right prop, the right premise and the right plot.

I can imagine, that if you are creating a general product and you have to leave out character and premise and all of that, you tend to end up with a very generic product. So it is difficult to stand out.

In that regard Peter's products stand out. They have a unique bulky look with lots of aluminium framing.

But I maybe all wrong. After all my filter could be broken as well. So I'm calling you out. Everyone who has ever bought a product of Peter Loughran. Tell me about it! Tell me, if it is reliable! I suppose they are. Tell me, if it gets you the desired reactions you have hoped for! I really want to know. Use the comment section, shoot me an email or write about it on Facebook.