The Vegas Letters

Chapter 6: Brandon and magic with a rabbit

I managed to finagle tickets to Lance Burton. The man is amazing. I studied magic for a while, so I can spot most tricks and figure out how they're done. I was once called up by a magician, Bob Fellows, and asked to check out his apparatus. I didn't say anything, because I didn't want to be an asshole, but it took me almost three seconds to spot the gaff. Gaff is magician terminology for the gimmick that allows the trick to work. I played along at the time, claimed the equipment was real, but lost all interest in the guy after that. I guess I wanted to believe in magic.

Burton, though, he was solid. I didn't spot any of the gaffs. I knew how most of it was done, but I couldn't see it, and that was enough for me to be able to just sit back and enjoy it. I got to let go, and just be mystified. That's a rare thing for me. It's the problem with learning how things are done. They just don't seem like magic anymore.

Penn and Teller do. But they're just magical. I refuse to hear any explanations to the contrary. What they do is f*****g magic.

There are three types of people who see magic shows regularly. The first, most prevalent, type is the child. The child is not always an actual kid. It's just a term for the people who go to see it as magic. They don't know how it's done, and quite frankly, they don't care. If you explained it to them, they'd be disappointed. Some of them still ask. They still pretend to want to know, but it's all pretend. They don't really want to know. It's magic. And f**k you if you say differently.

The next kind of person is the professional. For whatever reason, they know how it's done, and they're looking. They want to be fooled, but they know right where to look. They want you to do better than you had before, better than anyone ever has. These are the magicians. These are the guys who can be completely and totally fooled if you target your tricks to them. And if you do, if you manage to fool them, they'll love you for it. These are the people like me. These are the people who love Penn and Teller. (Actually, everyone loves Penn and Teller. Or, if they don't, they should.)

The third, my personal target when I was performing, is the engineer. I don't mean someone who's an engineer of magic. I mean literally an engineer. They have to know how it's done. They have to know what the gaff is. They can't accept that it's magic. It's a puzzle, and they're going to figure it out. It's all just a matter of time. These guys usually are not that creative, or at least think they're not. But when they start puzzling it out, coming up with their theories on how something is done, they can go way out there and come up with brilliantly cunning methods to do the tricks. Methods that are completely wrong.

I used to target the engineers because they entertained me with their guesses. The way I did it, by the way, was really simple. For every effect that I did, I had at least two methods, mutually exclusive of one another, to do it. So, just in case someone did guess correctly (I tended to perform at parties and meetings, doing close up magic, so people can really interact), I could show them beyond any doubt that their guess was wrong, just by doing it a different way. It kept me safe.

Burton worked for the child. But he made sure to cover the professional as well. That's why I liked him so much. He's an incredibly charismatic man, and he puts on the most wonderful persona for his magic. He's funny, he's fast, he's self-deprecating, and, most of all, he's amazing. Well worth the cost of the show.

Tomorrow, the convention starts. In the morning, all the attendees will be signing in and arriving. It was recommended that some of us professionals go down among them, just to chat. I would do that. But I'm not a morning person. That's for people who write in the morning.

I used to want to be a morning person. It just never happened. I'd go to bed nice and early, like midnight, and tell myself that I was going to wake up an hour earlier than usual, like nine o'clock, and write for an hour before going to school. I made the plans, I went to bed early, and I set my alarm clock.

Then I would lie in bed, read a book until three, and hit my snooze alarm until eleven, just like most days. I tried it a few times over the years, always to the same result. So I went back to my normal habit. Go for a walk around four or five, come home, write for a few hours, go do something, come back, and write for a bit more. Doing that, I can pump out as much as three thousand words on a bad day, eight on a good one.

The point is, there is no f*****g way I'm going to be up when sign in begins. Eight o'clock? No. Maybe for the rest of the convention. I can get up when I have a reason.

Back when I went to the magic convention, I was up by eight every day. And in bed by five. In the morning. Somehow, I didn't mind the three hours of sleep for those few days. I didn't even have to make up for it after the vacation. It was awesome. Maybe I'll do the same thing here. Maybe I'll be up in a bar until three or four in the morning every night, talking about writing. Or maybe I'll get a deck of cards and do magic.

I'm setting my alarm. The book signing officially begins at eleven. That's after all the attendees have their little kick off meeting at ten. Setup will be during that. So, I'll have to be awake around nine thirty or ten.

I can do that. I can wake up really at any time, so long as there's a definitive reason for it. I can't get up around a certain time and see if maybe somebody wants to do something, but I can wake up and be ready to go skydiving at seven o'clock on a Saturday morning after being out until three Friday night, no problem. Of course, left to myself, with no reason to get up, I might be in bed until three in the afternoon.

Anyway, I have a book to read before going to bed, my laptop is there waiting in case I get the urge to write (I very rarely do on the weekends, unless I'm close enough to the end that I can taste it), and I have a t-shirt from the last movie that I wrote waiting for me to wear in the morning.