magique!

So I was catching the number 9 home from work today, and I'm standing there right by the very back doors of one of those accordian buses, just listening to my discman (Wolf Parade; brilliant). And I look down the aisle--and you know how they have those four seats on each side that face one another across the aisle near the middle of the bus, as opposed to the two-seaters that face forward? Okay, I'm like ten feet away, so picture it: I was watching this guy who was sitting on one side of the aisle do some street magic with this Australian (most likely) who was in town for the Masters and drinking some Tim Hortons coffee--and it was the most amazing thing.

So these two guys, there's no way they know one another at all, and there's about two feet of completely open space between the two that is easily observable. And the magic guy's first trick is a switcheroo, in that he has the subject pick out a card from the deck that he never sees, and I watch the subject put the card in between his two own outstretched palms; it's hidden, the magician's never seen it, but it's out there, in between the subject's hands. So the magician shows the guy another card; I saw it was the nine of diamonds (the card the subject had picked was the four of clubs), and the magician waves it over the guy's outstretched palms and tells him to open his hands. Lo and behold, the two cards have switched.

And I sincerely ask--how? As a casual observer, I wasn't the target, so I wasn't going to be distracted by anything. This guy, the subject, I watched him put the four of clubs into his own hands, and then I watched as this guy waved another random card a couple inches over the subject's hands. And somehow they switched. I watched it all, and they switched, without any contact. Obviously, sleight of hand is a more powerful thing than I thought.

But sleight of hand doesn't explain the next trick I happened to watch. Same guys, and bear in mind that there's at least two feet of clear space in between them that, after the last trick, I'm watching like a hawk. So the magician, he holds out the deck and gets the Australian guy to pick a card and memorize it. Then the subject shuffles the deck himself, like, several times, without the magician ever coming in contact with the card or the deck. Then the subject hands the deck back to the magician, and the magician holds it to his own forehead, closes his eyes, and then rifles through the deck and picks out a card. "is this the card?" he asks, and it's not, the other guy says (I never saw the card he chose, so I'm taking his word). And the magician's all like, "Oh. Okay... that's embarrassing," and he rifles through the deck some more. And here comes the crazy shit: he looks through the deck and says he can't find it--and at that moment I see the subject jerk like something just touched him, even though that space between them was never breached... and he reaches into his own back pocket and, to his own pants-shitting amazement, pulls out his card.

How? I've watched David Blaine's street magic specials, and I understand that when something is on film, you can't take it at face value. But this was on a bus. In full view of spectators from various angles. And it totally happened. Honestly, I have never been more blown away in my life.

Then I went over to Darren's and ate chili and got drunk. The mundanity of it all cancelled everything else out.