The Genii Forum

Carlo Morpurgo

David Alexander wrote:I decided to have a bit of fun and show that nearly anything can be spelled out if you want to apply special rules.

Did you apply special rules when you read "W.E. Sanders" inside S.W. Erdnase? or is that a standard rule?

Carlo Morpurgo

This is how I would have done it for a book cover

http://tinyurl.com/cnce6y

(click on photos for a larger view)

Carlo Morpurgo

Is there a "theory" behind the pyramid? If it was just supposed to be touch of "art" then I don't understand why he chose to split the words "conjurer" and "illustration". It does not look so good, and also the third line is longer than the second. I get a bet...

Carlo Morpurgo

Look at the title page of Expert, at that inverted pyramid, down along the right side toward the bottom. You can see the name "FRED" in several different ways, down, up, etc. See if you think I'm dreaming this about the wordplay-prone Erdnase. Which version of the book should we be lookin...

Carlo Morpurgo

Well, I haven't seen the program in a while, but I recall that the "walking through a table" effect began with what I believe was Andrew Mayne's "Pocket Sawing in Half" it was a bit more than Pocket Sawing. Looks more like the original Steve Fearson Sawing in half, juding from t...

Carlo Morpurgo

Ok, I take the "human being integrity" back...but maybe not the magician's. I guess it's a question of points of view. For me resorting to cheap TV tricks goes against the magician's ethics, if you want to call it this way. Perhaps even worse is to justify one's sin by topping it or compar...

Carlo Morpurgo

Henley wrote:He used a camera edit, whoop-de-doo.

Can you define "camera edit"? then we can discuss the "whoop-de-doo"

Carlo Morpurgo

Impressive. However the one TV special when he walks through the table tells me a clear story about the integrity of the guy as a magician, and perhaps as a human being.

Carlo Morpurgo

No, there are 5x4x3x2x1 = 120 different orderings of the cards. Once the order is fixed by the first set, there's a 1/120 chance the 2nd pile will match. I think. Persi? That is correct...you don't need to be Persi for this one... If the argument above does not convince, think of 120 ways to lay do...

Carlo Morpurgo

The lefties amongst us will vouch for the fact that a fair bit of extra work is required when learning sleights and routines from Dvdees and books. EVERYTHING must be turned around as it were. One effect that works in favour of the lefties is the swami writer.....the notepad is held in the left han...

Carlo Morpurgo

I'll be the first on the list! The Bullitt theme.....absolutely cool choice for this trailer....Can't wait.

Carlo

Carlo Morpurgo

Marco Pusterla wrote: I'm away from my library now but if I remember correctly, Gardner found the link to Andrews thanks to somebody tipping him about "Erdnase" being "Andrews" in reverse,

In the Genii article it's claimed that Gardner immediately recognized the Andrews anagram.

Carlo

Carlo Morpurgo

I watched the disc with Martin Gardner's audio interview, and those with Richard Hatch. I thoroughly enojoyed them...I wanted to learn more about the mistery, and I certainly did. I am impressed by Hatch, the way he was able to give his presentation withouth editing (maybe a couple here and there). ...

Carlo Morpurgo

Second deal, same thing. In the demo he just uses a standard strike, not the method explained afterwards.

Carlo

Carlo Morpurgo

There are people who do a push-out bottom, and people who just pull it out. Different strokes. Sure, but it seems to me that Ackerman is not using Erdnase's "push out" method in his first bottom dealing demonstration. I could very well be wrong, but this is what it looks like to me. Carlo

Carlo Morpurgo

Larry Jennings kept his fingernails a bit longer than most. So do I. So do some other magicians. It's a personal choice. I understand that. But AA's nails do not seem to be well groomed, some seem longer (left hand) some seem shorter, and they do not look so good on screen. Now, to deal with Carlo'...

Carlo Morpurgo

and another thing is, if I play the videos on my pc, I notice a lot of blurred horizontal lines during motion. isn't this supposed to be in high definition? (or higher at least).

carlo

Carlo Morpurgo

Got my set too...thanks. I have not watched a lot of it, but enough say that that Ackerman should have trimmed his fingernails. It's the obvious thing to do if your hands are 98% of the time in close up.

Carlo

Carlo Morpurgo

Without knowing any of the folks mentioned here, the first person I thought of was Penn Gillette. Almost at a point that I could see him talking just like that....

Carlo

Carlo Morpurgo

You didn't have to ask your Professor friend. Smith said he drew them from life and it is entirely feasible that he did so. judging from the thread, not everyone here has same faith as you in what's been claimed by Smith or Erdnase, or anyone else for that matter (that is a good thing....) by the w...

Carlo Morpurgo

I asked a friend of mine (BA at Yale, major in Photography, M. Phil., Columbia Univ., and currently an Art History professor) whether it would have been possible to take photos of the hands holding a deck of cards like in the drawings, back in 1902. Beside the exposure time, I was not sure about clo...

Carlo Morpurgo

See page 25, footnote 2, Genii, January 2000. Richard sells back issues. Support Genii. I should not be expected to bring everyone up to speed if they're not willing to extend themselves by reading the literature on the subject. I guess this means that a discussion on what you wrote in that article...

Carlo Morpurgo

My particular favorite of these scenarios is that Erdnase had some rudimentary sketches already done, and asked Smith to either redraw, or match those drawings in style. This solves the "they didn't have time in one day" problem, But then how do we solve the "who did the rudimentary ...

Carlo Morpurgo

"He placed the board on the table, using it as a surface for demonstrating sleights which Smith sketched rapidly in pencil." and "Smith took the sketches home, inked them in, and returned them to Andrews later." If Smith, the only first-party link who's ever really been quizzed ...

Carlo Morpurgo

It seems to me that the quality of writing in "Expert at the Card Table" goes far beyond editing, or the ability of an editor to "buff" up an inferior writers material to make it read as "Expert" reads. Erdnase gives us original thinking, most of it seen for the very f...

Carlo Morpurgo

Much of this is rehashing discussions that have been gone through before in this thread and elsewhere. Sorry...as I said I did not read this thread regularly, nor have I read anything else other than the recent Genii article. In any case, it's not a bad thing to rehash discussions once in a while -...

Carlo Morpurgo

This disparity between the writing styles is what virtually requires MFA advocates to ring in an "editor" to polish his prose. Bart Whaley in TMWWE has a chapter giving the results of a computer analysis of the prose styles of Erdnase, MFA and their proposed editor, William Hilliar. The r...

Carlo Morpurgo

"Imperfect anagrams" and "potential anagrams." All words can be made into anagrams if one wishes them so, depending on how many letters are to be added or left out. True, even Alexander or Gardner or Dai Vernon all have "Erdna" inside them, so they can be made into Erd...

Carlo Morpurgo

First of all, an anagram is defined as a word or phrase formed by reordering the letters of another word or phrase, such as satin to stain. Now we have the imperfect anagram, a device without a specific definition. Is an imperfect anagram defined as a rearrangement of letters in a word with one let...

Carlo Morpurgo

FLYING FLYIN FLYING... BUT with the budjet (cost no object!!) they should have brought Johnny Gauhan in to make the gaffs invisible. The most creative live special effects ever... I taped it so we could see it again. The next country will have to change to small and tasteful. I just said the same t...

Carlo Morpurgo

Nice...I am curious, can you do a complete coin roll with a whole dollar? (that fast I mean) Or you just chose not to do it.

Carlo

Carlo Morpurgo

Stepanov wrote:
5. Who now known like best specialist on Bartolomeo Bosco?

From the little I know I think that Silvan could be the person you are looking for....

Carlo

Carlo Morpurgo

Sturgeon's law aside, there are other issues more germain to offering criticism published back when folks took the trouble to read. What, specifically, is gained in removing the surprises awaiting the reader/viewer of a novel work? Can one not simply state that one was not moved or felt shorted by ...

Carlo Morpurgo

You can always tell a poor critic: they're the ones who write a summary of the plot of the film that fills half (or more) of their so-called review. Giving a large plot summary is a crutch when you have nothing to actually say. I agree, and this is not the case for the reviewer in question. carlo

Carlo Morpurgo

SPOILER ALERT! DO NOT READ THIS REVIEW MENTIONED ABOVE. http://www.reelviews.net/movies/i/indiana... I am a big fan of Berardinelli, one of the best movie critics, in my opinion. I've never heard of Berardinelli, but whether he liked the film or not, I will never read a review by him again -- seein...

Carlo Morpurgo

I'm not interested in getting into a debate, Carlo, since I am not a film critique. But after reading his review I think I'll stick with Roger Ebert. I like Ebert as well...in fact those two guys are the only movie critics I look.... In this case they seem to disagree, and it's not the only time. W...

Carlo Morpurgo

Carlo, everything's off base in his review. He's fallen into the same trap as the other reviewers, and how anyone in his right mind could think that Temple of Doom is better than this new movie is beyond me. I think Temple of Doom is one of the worst movies Spielberg has ever made (and that takes s...

Carlo Morpurgo

I've read lots of comments by film critics in the past few days and, after having seen the film, I can say that many of the criticisms are way off base. How about this review: http://www.reelviews.net/movies/i/indiana_jones4.html Anything off base there? I have not watched the movie yet, and I will...

Carlo Morpurgo

Wow, I tip my hat to Penn for his honesty....to be honest myself though, I don't really think that slapping the pocket would have done it. The "smart" spectator could still think of a duplicate pair and that the glasses were either removed from the pocket or never put there to begin with. ...

Carlo Morpurgo

I am a bit surprised about this comment, coming from a magician. The true magician should be fascinated by his own art at a level much higher than knowing or not a secret, in my opinion. A magician and true lover of the art of magic should be ALWAYS fascinated (by things that are worth it of course)...

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