Garry Carson & Kelsey Kara — True MagicInside MagicMagic News Updated Daily for the Professional Magician

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I am like a dog in many ways. If you feed me or treat me to a great show, I’ll be loyal forever. But unlike many dogs, I know how to judge quality.

I’ll still be loyal even if you lack quality as long as you feed and entertain me but I wouldn’t think you are worthy of a write-up in the prestigious pages of Inside Magic.

I am dog but I’ve got my standards.

Kelsey Kara, the more attractive half of the dynamic illusion show she performs with her dashing husband Garry Carson, invited Trixie Bond to see the Showgirls of Magic and Ms. Bond was kind enough to invite me to crash the party.

I was more than the proverbial third-wheel, I was the total Magic Geek around two of the best in the business watching the incredible Steve Daly perform.

How cool was it to meet Ms. Kara, get a tour of her home, see all of their illusions and meet their black leopard?

I owe so much to Ms. Bond. She has introduced me to so many great people in our business and the fact that she would consider me a friend is a great honor. I’m lucky and she’s burdened – works for me.

You’ve heard the expression “he or she doesn’t know me from Adam’s house cat”? Ms. Kara didn’t know me from the stray, one-eyed, flea-bitten, three-legged, half-deaf cat that liked to follow Adam’s house cat around the Garden of Eden.

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I consider Ms. Bond a real friend and she certainly demonstrated her friendship by allowing me to meet some of those on the inner-circle of our business.

A few days later into the World Magic Seminar, Ms. Kara invited Ms. Bond to dinner at their wonderful home and, luckily enough, Ms. Bond asked if it would be alright if her geeky, magic-loving, souvenir pen-carrying, stereotypical Midwestern Rube could come along.

I think Ms. Bond was concerned about my diet.

I was surviving on the free Snickers samples they passed out during the CES convention the week before and drinking all the free Diet Cokes I could get by pretending to bet on horses at the Racebook.

I did not mind being pathetic – it comes naturally and thanks to friends like Ms. Bond, it often allows me to go places and meet people I would not otherwise meet: like emergency psychiatric clinics and young residents working the late shift at those clinics.

Ms. Kara and her brother provided a wonderful meal of Thai food; each dish was delicious and each offering could be plotted along the Spicy Spectrum. One dish was particularly painful, but it was a good kind of pain.

(I’ve just re-read that sentence and realize it doesn’t sound right – but you know what I mean. A little pain never hurt anyone.)

The amazing thing about Ms. Kara and Mr. Carson, is the passion they share for magic and for each other. Mr. Carson has been performing magic since he was eight and turned professional at the age of 14. Before he received his degree from high school, Mr. Carson began an educational school program, “Knowing the Magic Words” and toured through out the Midwest.

That kind of initiative is so inspiring. I know there must have been those who tried to discourage his dream of performing but fortunately for us, he focused on doing what he loved and loves.

Garry

This type of training had to lead to success, and he found it on the brand-new stage at the MGM Grand Hotel in Vegas. The MGM show "Wizard's Secret" was produced by Gene Patrick Productions and John Moehring – that’s right, the same John Moehring who currently does such a great job as Editor of Stan Allen’s Magic magazine.

Mr. Carson was signed for six months and held over for two and a half years. He worked to make the “Wizard’s Secret” a success in each of the twelve shows he performed each day.

Ms. Kara is not only kind enough to take in a stray magician with a hang-over from airline booze and pockets full of souvenir pens promoting this website, Inside Magic, she is much more than that. Ms. Kara has beauty queen looks and for good reason, she is a former Miss Nevada and went to Miss America in 1987.

Kelsey

As in the case of her husband, Ms. Kara had been long working towards her coronation. At the age of three, she began singing and dancing at three, turned professional at 14 and performed on national television on the New Mickey Mouse Club. She traveled around the world with “Legends in Concert” for four years before returning to Las Vegas.

The return to Vegas was fortuitous or fate. Ms. Kara and Mr. Carson met in the production of Mr. Carson’s run at the MGM Grand. From all that I experienced being around Ms. Kara, I am convinced their meeting was fate, not luck. They were meant to be a couple and together a single force.

Kelsey and Adonnis

Ms. Kara gave Ms. Bond and me a tour of their incredible home, rehearsal studio, illusion rooms and their cat cage. I trusted Ms. Kara with as much trust as someone could have for someone they just met and so I believed her when she told me their black leopard’s growl/purr combined with her willingness to walk over towards me at the edge of (but outside) the cage meant she liked me. I don’t believe I would get in the cage, though. I certainly wouldn’t lock myself into a small illusion load space with the animal either.

If you are a geek magician like me, you would, like me, be in heaven to have been in my shoes. This was the home of true magicians. There was magic in the air, Kellar posters on the walls, illusions in various stages of preparation and ATA cases neatly stacked and ready for use.

I Wanted to Ride this So Badly

Let me prove to you what a geek I am. I was completely taken in and entranced when Ms. Kara showed me the motorcycle used by my favorite female Magician, Melinda. If I could have pushed beyond the limits of the kind welcome Ms. Kara extended, I would have jumped up on the cycle and asked to have my picture taken.

I’m a geek. But even if I wasn’t, it was still too cool to see the actual motorcycle that Melinda used to ride into place, vanish and then reappear with the engine still roaring. The neat part of the story is that Ms. Kara clearly had the same excitement about the cycle. It wasn’t just another illusion or a prop. The effect meant something in its presentation and its history.

I don’t dare call Mr. Carson or Ms. Kara Magic Geeks – because they are too cool for such appellations but they’re close. They are one flashy but unnecessary false cut away from joining our ranks.

They are a team. A perfect team.

"Number One Casino Family Attraction"

Ms. Kara’s participation in the act is so much more than “a box jumper” or the “victim” of cutting or dismembering. She is a full one-half, an indivisible half, of the show and the business behind the show. Her knowledge of the business and her connections within the booking communities make her an indivisible portion of the whole.

They have filmed televisions specials in the U.S., Europe and Australia, are currently tearing up the college circuit, cruise lines and private shows. The most recently filmed a magic special “Masters of Illusions” produced by Gay Blackstone.

The love they share for each other and for Magic is evident in all that they do and how they welcome even the dogs of the business. Theirs is a life that magicians and non-magicians would envy – to be able to work with your true love as you do what you truly love to do.

We’ve put their website on the Inside Magic Links of Fame. Check it out if you’re interested in how a professional, working, magic show uses the Internet effectively.

Good luck to both Mr. Carson and Ms. Kara. We are so lucky to have them in our Art and I feel so blessed to have met at least one half of this great act.

Magic News Magic Trixie Bond Garry Carson