The Cups and Balls.

The cups and balls is considered old for a reason - it is.

Sadly 99% of magicians who try to perform it make it a dull, uninteresting, boring piece of trash although they may well own a really nice set of brass cups that cost hundreds of dollars and a nice hand turned walnut wand.

For most magi it seems that having a decent set of cups is a 'my dick is bigger than yours' contest, just go read the forums and watch the pathetic little shits bang on about how they've got a set of Paul Fox cups or a set of Porper (expensive and shit) cups. Most of those posts might as well just say "I got a tiny penis, but at least I wasted $500 on cups".

I don't care if your cups cost $5,000 - if you're fucking shit at the trick - don't do it. If the routine you do is the normal fucking about with 3 balls and then making some big shit come out at the end - guess what? Your audience already know whats going to happen - there is no surprise and that makes it fucking pointless.

Even Elmsley couldn't come up with a routine worth a shit that hadn't been done before. Vernon did OK, at least he fooled people with the explanation of a false transfer and then bamming a big ass ball under the cup, but guys... it's been done. It was good in the day Vernon did it because it hadn't been done that way by gazillions of people before him, but now it's been done, re-done, over done and done over - and it's not fucking entertaining anymore.

If you perform cups and balls and your audience applauds they are probably just being polite.

It's a good thing to learn to do, it's just not a great piece of performance magic. It will teach you all the basics of sleight of hand and misdirection and timing - but it will bore an audience to death because they seen it done before and they know the end before you get to it.

There's a tiny handful of magicians who have got close to having something that an audience really likes to watch and really gets fooled by when it comes to cups and balls. Everyone else sucks big fuzzy cock.

Here's some examples of GOOD cups and balls;

1) David Williamson - 2 cups, a few quick moves and tip a bag of lemons all over the place, pick up a spectator and helecopter spin them.

2) Johnny Thompson. But the routine is more about entertaining by doing impressions than fooling people with magic but it kinda counts.

3) David Regal - it's gaffed to hell and back, but its a great little story and he doesn't go on too long, it gets to the climax quickly and spurts the audience with globs of man splat.

There are probably some other good examples but they are few and far between. On the most part magicians settle for crochet balls and the same old routine and a few bits of fruit to finish and they make an excuse for it being fucking shitty arse wipe material by saying "yeah but it's a classic and these are expensive cups". Funny how classics are allowed to be un-entertaining, unoriginal drivel and magicians expect their audiences to tolerate it for those reasons - is it any wonder many laypeople claim to dislike magicians?


MW.