Paul Gross – Hocus Pocus Swap Meet WeekendInside MagicMagic News Updated Daily for the Professional Magician

Paul Gross of Hocus Pocus Magic The Fresno
Bee goes front and center with a preview of the Hocus Pocus’ Second Annual Swap Meet and
Get-Together scheduled for this
weekend.

If you
like Mark Wilson, and we Love Mark Wilson, this will be the event for our West
Coast friends this weekend. On the East Coast, the big doings will be in
Columbia, South Carolina for SCAM.

Paul Gross owns the Hocus Pocus
Magic Shop and is the prime mover behind the Swap Meet and Get-Together.

"This year, we have expanded to Saturday and Sunday. What I would
like is to get enough people to attend where we would then go to three days next
year. What I would eventually like to do, if the magic swap meet keeps growing,
is to turn this into a convention. We would look at moving it to a larger
facility," he told reporters.

Surely he
must be insane, however. He is not charging admission to visit the swap meet.
He has already signed on more than 40 vendors for the area.

Doesn’t
Mr. Gross realize all magic conventions must make admission into the dealers’
room contingent on the payment of some enormous registration fee?

{mosgoogle}

Why with his
kind of thinking any magician could visit the dealers’ area and buy things. He
needs to take a lesson from one famous national magic convention where the
little-known David Blaine and his friend Daryl Hannah were refused entry into
the dealers’ room because they had not registered to attend the convention.

Well, we
cannot protect everyone. If Mr. Gross is not careful, he may find himself
overwhelmed by the number of magicians willing to travel great distances to
attend this event.

Mr. Gross described "the swap meet as being like a stroll through a live
magic show." He wants the event to be "open to those who have a passion
for magic as well as those with just a passing interest."

Be careful
Mr. Gross. Statistics published The Journal of
Experimental Child Psychiatry,
supports what we have suspected: all magicians start out as non-magicians first.

See, Claudia M.
Roebers, Tim Gelhaar and Wolfgang Schneider, "’It’s magic!’ The effects of
presentation modality on children’s event memory, suggestibility, and confidence
judgments," The Journal of
Experimental Child Psychology, Volume 87, Issue 4, April 2004, Pages 320-335.

We are not
saying every person visiting the Swap Meet will become a magician.

Nonetheless, there is a causal relationship between a positive
encounter with the art of magic and one’s desire to learn said art.

The
study’s authors did not address whether it made sense to put up economic
boundaries to exclude those with an interest in magic. They looked only at the
behavior of 241 kids.

"This is all very hands-on. The vendors will
all be demonstrating their products. Even if you don’t want to buy anything,
there will be a lot to see," Mr. Gross told The Bee.

Whatever!

There is a
fee for the lectures presented by Jay Leslie, Suds, David Regal, Daryl,
Shoot Ogawa and Losander.

We fear
the small fee Mr. Gross will charge for the lectures will not be sufficient to
keep out those with a new-found love for magic thanks to his free Swap Meet
area. As a consequence, there may be more magicians and interested folks at the
lectures than one might expect if the lectures were not offered in conjunction
with such a lay-friendly event.

Mark and
the lovely Nani (Darnell) Wilson will be the Special Guests this weekend.

Did we
already mention how strongly we feel about Mark and Nani?

To
paraphrase Jerry McGuire, they complete us.

Mark and
Nani introduced so many of us to magic during the 1960’s. His Amazing Land of Allakazam was a staple of CBS and then ABC from 1960 to 1965.

The Bee
tells readers that Mr. Wilson
"is very selective about public appearances. In fact, this is the only
dealers’ affair that the Wilsons plan to attend this year."

Why is
this such a special event?

"We were there last year and had a good
time." Mr. Wilson liked was the passion shown by those who attended. In fact, the event is magic at its purest state."

Read the
full article in The Fresno
Bee here.

Be sure to
visit Mr. Gross’ Hocus Pocus web site here.

You can
listen to Mr. Wilson on Windows Media by clicking here