Magic

So, I’m sitting on the train over the weekend minding my own Indiana business when who should wheel there squeaky ass shopping cart onto the A-Train with me and 40 other people? Why, none other than the (not so) world famous weird-long-haired-does-magic-on-the-train-no-matter-if-you-want-to-see-it-or-not-guy!

“HOORAY,” we (never) shouted!

“HOORAY for the (uncomfortable) magic show we are about to witness!” we (opposite of) exclaimed.

And then, on with the show. And quite a show it was, actually. He pulled some girls panties out of the bottom of her jeans (they were pink, just in case you really wanted to know), turned someone’s empty water bottle into like a hundred pennies, and then there was the finale...

He reached into a hat.

And out of the hat, he pulls out a beautiful handful of air followed by a mass of confused facial expressions. Needless to say, we were quite unimpressed. Out of nowhere, mister magician then gets angry, like really angry, (like get me outta this tight ass train angry) puts the hat back on top of the shopping cart and begins bashing the hell out of it. And he is literally now hulking out on this hat, crushing it over and over again with his closed fist. Until he stops.

He pauses to catch his breath, picks the hat back up, inspects the outside of the it and, very smooth-like, reaches into it once more.

And the car goes silent...

He violently throws the hat down against the shopping cart, and to everybody’s surprise, there is now, all of sudden, a fluttering white (possibly pigeon or) dove in the air of our subway car. And the crowd goes wild... The show was simply, amazing.

At least, it should have been.

Unfortunately, I found myself totally oblivious to any type of amazement whatsoever. The entire time he was doing the trick, I was completely overcome by this one all-consuming thought, “did he really have that bird jammed up his jacket sleeve since he got on the train?” What?

Yes, that was me. I was the one standing there, after it was all over, wondering just exactly how many birds this guy smothered putting his show together. I mean come on right? He definitely had to have practiced on a few pigeons before he brought the doves out. We all know, those things don't come cheap (I didn't fact check that, but I'm pretty sure they're not the poor man's bird of choice). Now, don’t get me wrong, Mr. Freeman is not the all-cynical-all-the-time guy by any stretch of the term, but he certainly looked that way 14 minutes into his half-hour ride back home at the end of what was actually a decent show. And he didn’t feel any type of way about it either. I mean, if the man had a “eff Magic” t-shirt on, he couldn’t have been more transparent about the way he felt (that's it for the 3rd person narrative interlude, trust me, it hurts me more than it hurts you).

But then, the magician began shuffling around our crowded little rolling coke can of a subway car with his money pail out. And, as I tried (avoiding eye contact with the magician by) looking at some stupid ad on the other side of the train, I saw this little girl acting like she just had just seen a man walk on water. She was practically having a meltdown over there, going on and on about all the “cool stuff that guy just did!!!” She would not shut up. And, after begging her mother for what seemed like years, she got a dollar, walked over to the magician, dropped the bill inside and said, “that was amazing!” (Which basically smacked that snarky look di-rectly off of my face to a place I have yet to recover from). Then, the doors opened and we both watched him walk out of the train. And then he was gone.

So, as I stood there gripping that sticky new york city steel rail, I pensively rocked back and forth with my fellow public transpo patrons until I landed in BedStuy. And, I couldn’t help but wonder...

What the hell happened to magic?



I mean, I don’t know exactly when it happened for sure. But somewhere around puberty, after wrestling became fake, but a little ways before girls started going “all the way”, everything became a whole lot harder for me to enjoy without spoil, you know, because of that whole "thinking about all the dead birds in a jacket lining" thing.

What about you guys, when it comes to music, movies, magic, or whatever are you still excited by the “cool stuff” or are you steadily finding your self more and more these days thinking about all the dead birds?