The fact that you think that self working = lame tells me that you are a rank noob.
It's a bit of a contadictory statement to say that I'm a begninner because i would rather to real sleight of hand over self working easy crap. but its whatever man grab your stipper deck and go buy a book on "math based card tricks" and have fun.
back to intelligent posts...
QUOTE=JPIllusions;156863]ok i respect your opinion, and i get what you mean, magic coloring books are slightly gay. But the difficulty of svengali doesnt matter. And yes spongeballs are dorky. Alot of people think magic is dorky in general. But w/e. Quick question, whats the dif between flourishing and xcm[/QUOTE]
As far as the svengali goes, i dont like it becuase its self working, i dont have respect for self working tricks. I would rather do a more difficult trick with sleights. The ONLY thing that i would justify using a gimmicked deck for is the Invisible Deck, and thats because it is SO useful and epic you cant ignore it. lol. I agree with the Dorky statement. One of the reasons i dont do that style of magic (sponge balls) is because of that steriotype. I think thats mostly because of the people that do magic. A lot of the older guys tend to be really corny when they perform, i think its because a lot of people that get into magic tend to be anti-social, and since magic is something that can be done by yourself and can be used to interact with other people you couldnt normally talk with. A big problem is that people spend a lot of time practicing and no time performing and wind up following in the foot steps of the corny magicians they have seen in the past instead of developing their own style that they feel would apeal to an audience. (these of course are generalizations and i dont mean to say that all old school magicians are this way, but many are. I hope no one takes offense to this as again im talking generally.)
So already you are fighting an uphill battle as soon as you say you do magic or that your going to be doing magic. I would rather show something cool like some flourishes and card tricks than saying "hey check out thes dorkey props i have here, now hold out your hand".
The distinction i make between XCM and flourishing, is a highly debated subject. The X in xcm stands for "Xtreme" which is just dumb. Extreme is spelled with an X and there is nothing "Xtreme" about cards... XCM is just De'vo's attempt to monopolize flourshing. It applies specifily to his DVDs and he is the only one allowed to use it on his DVDs which means if you look for "XCM" you will only find his products. Flourishing is a much more general term and the traditional term used for it. Just my opinion, but i call it flourishing.
This is all just my opinon, i didnt mean to get all political about it, hope no one gets mad,
take care,
Victor Cruz
