Appearing & Vanishing Canes
Hello Friends,
It is difficult to keep thinking of this to write to you all about. How hard will it be in the coming months or years. Ouch.
I am suffering writer's block today. And I am reaching.
I'll tell you a couple of stories about the Appearing & Vanishing Canes.
We are going back to 1985. I was 18 years old. I really wasn't much into magic back then. I still liked it but cars, girls, booze, heavy metal & billiards, were more important at the time.
Pretty much my only magic interest back then was the Appearing Cane. I didn't want it as a stage effect but as a type of weapon not to attack people with, but to be cool and shocking I guess.
One day I was in a friends car and let the cane open. The tip of the cane hit the windshield and cracked it. It was at the moment I realized it could be a dangerous prop.
I some how bent and torn the steel in the middle. The cane still worked but I was bummed.
I decided to spray paint it black. I wanted it to look like a real cane up close and not sort of black. It did, and it surprisingly still opened but not the same way and the paint job quickly got lots of scratches.
It was time to buy a new one.
The new cane was a about a foot longer than the original (or maybe it was the paint keeping it from opening all the way up) I just can't remember.
I kept this cane greased up for the fastest biggest appearance I could. It opened much longer. Almost the length of a pool cue and that is exactly what I used it for. (Or at least tried to). I remember lining up my shot, without a stick, then bam, the cue would appear in my hands. I would secretly try to extend it a bit more as I chalked up the tip. I was never really good at pool anyway so my terrible shots using the cane really didn't look so bad. If only I were smart enough to try to attach a real pool tip to the cane.
In one of my very first performances. I used the cane as an opening effect. It had so much grease on it (I didn't wipe it down) stupid me and I was so excited to be doing a show that I threw it up instead of (open, release and grasp) into the air as it appeared that it uncoiled from both ends. No one knew what it was and it did look cool but it didn't look like a cane. But rather like a Throw Streamer.
Years later, much wiser and more respectful to everything and everyone, I got a metal Vanishing Cane. One day as it "vanished" I sliced my palm opened from the base of my thumb to my wrist. We haven't had a metal vanishing cane in here since. Stick the Fantasio brand of Vanishing Canes. They look just as nice, if not nicer because they really are black. They vanish just as fast. And you don't have thin razor sharp steel flying at you at 100 feet per second.
Come to think of it, the Fantasio Appearing Canes are the way to go instead of the metal. You never need to oil them. They always stay black. I've never had one tear on me. Bend or crease a bit sure but tear no. And a bend will be smaller then in the metal ones. It won't break a windshield. And it can't put somebody's eye out. And they cost less.
Until tomorrow.
Thanks for reading.
Pete
It is difficult to keep thinking of this to write to you all about. How hard will it be in the coming months or years. Ouch.
I am suffering writer's block today. And I am reaching.
I'll tell you a couple of stories about the Appearing & Vanishing Canes.
We are going back to 1985. I was 18 years old. I really wasn't much into magic back then. I still liked it but cars, girls, booze, heavy metal & billiards, were more important at the time.
Pretty much my only magic interest back then was the Appearing Cane. I didn't want it as a stage effect but as a type of weapon not to attack people with, but to be cool and shocking I guess.
One day I was in a friends car and let the cane open. The tip of the cane hit the windshield and cracked it. It was at the moment I realized it could be a dangerous prop.
I some how bent and torn the steel in the middle. The cane still worked but I was bummed.
I decided to spray paint it black. I wanted it to look like a real cane up close and not sort of black. It did, and it surprisingly still opened but not the same way and the paint job quickly got lots of scratches.
It was time to buy a new one.
The new cane was a about a foot longer than the original (or maybe it was the paint keeping it from opening all the way up) I just can't remember.
I kept this cane greased up for the fastest biggest appearance I could. It opened much longer. Almost the length of a pool cue and that is exactly what I used it for. (Or at least tried to). I remember lining up my shot, without a stick, then bam, the cue would appear in my hands. I would secretly try to extend it a bit more as I chalked up the tip. I was never really good at pool anyway so my terrible shots using the cane really didn't look so bad. If only I were smart enough to try to attach a real pool tip to the cane.
In one of my very first performances. I used the cane as an opening effect. It had so much grease on it (I didn't wipe it down) stupid me and I was so excited to be doing a show that I threw it up instead of (open, release and grasp) into the air as it appeared that it uncoiled from both ends. No one knew what it was and it did look cool but it didn't look like a cane. But rather like a Throw Streamer.
Years later, much wiser and more respectful to everything and everyone, I got a metal Vanishing Cane. One day as it "vanished" I sliced my palm opened from the base of my thumb to my wrist. We haven't had a metal vanishing cane in here since. Stick the Fantasio brand of Vanishing Canes. They look just as nice, if not nicer because they really are black. They vanish just as fast. And you don't have thin razor sharp steel flying at you at 100 feet per second.
Come to think of it, the Fantasio Appearing Canes are the way to go instead of the metal. You never need to oil them. They always stay black. I've never had one tear on me. Bend or crease a bit sure but tear no. And a bend will be smaller then in the metal ones. It won't break a windshield. And it can't put somebody's eye out. And they cost less.
Until tomorrow.
Thanks for reading.
Pete
posted by Ronjo Magic at 2:49 PM
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