Damn you Whack! This guy goes in hiding for a year (yeah, I know, I’m in no position to talk) and comes back with a post that steps all over one I’ve got in the holding tank.

Admittedly, neither of us are being overly original in targeting what magicians pass off as bizarre and spooky magic at this time of year. Whack is reviewing a DVD – read it, you’ll enjoy it.

I always get amused as a magician lights a candle and performs the Mystic Ball and Vase with the eye of the cyclops….etc. If you are performing for people with an IQ above 55 or so, nobody is going to buy it. So, unless you are working at the Whitehouse or a congressional caucus, nobody is fooled, entertained or scared. They may be mildly amused at you, but not in the way planned.

If you really want to scare people, you might consider doing something like this:

Take care……… 
 

 

Forget Magic

I’m taking up bird watching!!

Drivel & Drool

 

From Paul Harvey – For your consideration

We have exploited the poor and called it the lottery.  

We have rewarded laziness and called it welfare. 

We have killed our unborn and called it choice. 

We have neglected to discipline our children and called it building  self esteem. 

We have abused power and called it politics. 

We have coveted our neighbor’s possessions and called it ambition. 

We have polluted the air with profanity and pornography and called it  freedom of expression. 

We have ridiculed the time-honored values of our forefathers and  called it enlightenment. 

We don’t even sing “God Bless America ” any more in schools. 

We have lost our spiritual equilibrium and reversed our values.

Hocus Pocus has a trick called Jumping Stool – I don’t think I want to see that! 

Take care……… 
 

This is certainly not a new theme with me. Just because your audience refrains from telling you that you are a bumbling Bozo and fooling no one, it doesn’t mean you’ve fooled anybody! It just means you’ve either got a polite audience or they don’t really care enough to comment.

It seems that many magicians totally misunderstand the be entertaining mantra. Be entertaining with magic that actually fools someone. Lame jokes and ridiculous story lines do nothing for the magic experience if you are not mystifying.

I’ve begun a list of moves that look like exactly what they are:

• The Striking Vanish – Looks Like – Throwing an object from hand to hand 
• Flushtration Count – Looks Like – Showing the same card over and over 
• Criss Cross Force – Looks Like – Putting the top and bottom card next to each other 
• Prediction Tricks – Looks Like – Magician will force what he wrote down
• Magician In Trouble – Looks Like – Lame actor pretending something went wrong
• The Brush Change – Looks Like – Holding 2 cards as 1 and leaving 1 when you cover the face card

There are more – many more and I’m talking about those moves that are obvious, even when well done. Of course, any move fumbled by an ill prepared magician is totally transparent.

Any other nominees?

Take care……… 
 

One of the most intelligent articles I’ve seen in a LONG time. I highly recommend it.

9/11 Is Over – New York Times.

 The Cafe is bloated with a lot of trite discussions. This is exacerbated by Scribner and crew deleting many of the interesting ones due to some hidden agenda or misguided rationales.

Anyway, one of the topics started daily (can’t anybody use the search function?) is suppose you were on a desert island….

According to your perspective, I’m either on a desert island or taking a sojourn to hell. Visiting a mother in her nineties is a tortuous duty. I’ll spare you the details. I pray that I have the money left to buy a bullet to spare my boys these excruciatingly horrible obligations – if you are an only child, you have my sympathies.

Anyway, I usually grab a couple of books when I make these trips – something to divert my attention. I’m increasingly convinced that the recent books of John Bannon (I don’t own the earlier ones) represent the best of the modern writers:

• Smoke and Mirrors
• Inpossibilia
• Dear Mr. Fantasy

If you have the books, but don’t have the DVDs, I strongly recommend you add them to your collection. Be warned, John is a $450 an hour lawyer and not a performer. The tricks, even the most difficult, are competently performed, however, and you will traverse the great divide from the printed word to performance much quicker.

One disappointment, though, either Yedid has no eye for women or somebody’s wife chose them for the video. We’ll be charitable and say uninspiring.

Take care………