Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 71403 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 357(@200wpm)___ 286(@250wpm)___ 238(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71403 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 357(@200wpm)___ 286(@250wpm)___ 238(@300wpm)
Those last two factors have eluded me. I’ve certainly put in the work. Put together a tidy little magic show with all the greatest hits—sawing a lady in half, producing a bunny rabbit from a hat, making people disappear, the works. I’m proudest of my house act, which is the best draw I have right now.
I bring out a small collapsible tent, the type a child might have in their playroom, which I set up on a turntable. I invite a volunteer from the audience—an honest-to-God volunteer, not a plant who knows what they’re doing like a lot of the so-called greats depend on. The volunteer sits inside the tent and I zip the front up, obscuring them from view completely. I revolve the turntable to show there are no holes in the back of the tent, and a light from inside shows off the volunteer’s silhouette. I ask them to make various gestures, like a peace sign, and then I ask for suggestions from the audience. The most popular request is to flip the bird. Then the light flickers out and I return the turntable so the tent is facing forward. Without warning, a large set piece falls from the rafters—several pieces of plywood arranged into a cube with an angled roof that is painted to look like a cartoon house—which crushes the tent. The audience gasps in horror, and I act as if this is a terrible mistake, that a rope must have snapped. I try to lift the “house” off the tent, but it’s too heavy. I then knock on the door of the “house,” which opens to reveal the volunteer unharmed.
The trick is in the turntable. Classic misdirection. The tent has no bottom, so when I return the turntable to its original position, a trapdoor slowly unscrews within the turntable. It’s slow enough that the volunteer doesn’t feel it, and they don’t see the tent moving away from them because of the darkness. Once they’ve descended low enough into the safe space, a door closes over them to protect them from the falling house. The next part happens so quickly that people can’t make sense of it. All they know is that the tent has been crushed by a falling house. Once the house is down, the trapdoor reopens and the volunteer, alerted by the sound, stands up and looks around. They’re always in place by the time I knock on the door, and the crowd goes wild.
Well, they would go wild if I had more than a dozen people in the audience during my shows.
That’s the thing with Vegas. Everyone wants to go see David Copperfield, Penn and Teller, Lance Burton. The greats. No one is thinking “Gee, maybe I’ll support a working-class magician tonight.”
It costs a lot of money to rent the theater once every other week, and advertising eats up the rest of my budget. Plus I still need to eat and pay my rent, so I can only afford to do my show every other Friday night. During the day I work as a blackjack dealer at the Mister Joker casino off the Strip, and I also freelance as a DJ for bar mitzvahs and weddings on the weekends to make ends meet. I spend all my free time standing on Las Vegas Boulevard with showgirls handing out fliers for my show, hoping to grab some stragglers who can’t afford tickets to one of the “good shows” after dumping their life savings into a slot machine.
The house act is pretty damned good. To date, no one has guessed how I do it, and I’ll get some word-of-mouth patrons in my audiences if I’m lucky. Problem is, I perform my show so sporadically that people who get recommendations to see me have usually left by the time my next performance rolls around. And I can’t afford to do my show any more often than I already do.
Damned if I don’t, damned if I do.
That’s what this life is beginning to feel like. And there’s no end in sight.
But I hold out hope. All it takes is one moment in the right place at the right time. The big hotels on the Strip are always looking for new shows, and I just need one of their scouts to dumpster dive into the slummy-ass theater I rent out for my show. Once they see the house act, they’ll be sold.
But that hasn’t happened yet. It’s been the better part of five years. And I don’t know how much longer I can do this.
I think the biggest audience I’ve ever had was about a year ago. I caught a huge wedding party at the right time on the night of their rehearsal dinner, and they each brought a plus-one. I had nearly forty people in the audience that night. I felt like I was the king of the world. Pretty pathetic, right? Copperfield draws in crowds of thousands every night. I got forty and it was a career highlight.