Magic Tricks

There were lot of good pointers, and specifics around props for spirit shows. If you have Eugene Burger’s other material on the subject, including books and video, there is not a lot new here, except nice anecdotes.

Two things frustrate me about this lecture. The first is how much of the talking was done by Larry Hass, probably more than Eugene. This is not to say that his points are not most often good, but I paid for a lecture by Eugene Burger, not Larry. Simple clarifications by Dan and Larry would be just fine.

The second thing that was frustrating, which is also true in the recent posthumous book by Eugene, is how many effects are mentioned, but cannot be explained. Yes, there are effects by other magicians that are proprietary. Yes, if need be effects like this can be mentioned without exposing the method. However, that should be done parsimoniously. And as with the book, the impression left is that the originators were not asked, as other magicians do, in order to offer explanation. You buy one item, just to need to buy a number of others.

The frustrations aside, I still enjoyed this lecture very much.