Postby performer » May 8th, 2016, 1:19 am
Here is the story. I am sure many of you know that Mahdi does sleight of hand in a very unusual manner. He does the sleight part but without the hand part. That is because he does not actually have any hands. The chap in his avatar (Matthias Buchinger) beats him though since in addition to no hands he also had no feet.
Talking about feet is a good segue into this story because it involves Paul Pacific who I dearly wish would emulate Buchinger and have his bloody feet amputated as a service to humanity. Alas his main claim to fame in the world of magic is his bare feet and his utter fascination with them. He is actually known in the psychic reading world as "the barefoot prophet".
Anyway I was sitting in a large group of magicians. Mahdi was on one side of me and Paul was on the other. The rest of the group were showing interminable card tricks to each other and the usual silly flourishes. I remember Mahdi looking a bit fed up and whispering under his breath, "magicians are weird", a sentiment with which I wholeheartedly agree.
Paul is a very talented mentalist but is actually very good at card tricks too. Alas he is useless at palming cards and he is guilty of the common fault of sticking his thumb out like a fishhook. I informed him that he was doing it all wrong whereupon he argued with me concerning the matter. I consider this to be a very silly thing to do since my word on card magic should naturally be gospel and beyond contradiction. Still, he kept at it and defended his position. I informed him that it was basic palming technique never to stick your thumb out when palming a card but he kept insisting that he was right. Finally in exasperation I pointed to Mahdi and said, "You don't see Mahdi sticking his thumb out when he palms a card, do you?"
Paul found this hilarious and still tells the story to this day.