Month: December 2008

Magic Book Review, Magic News, Magic of Australia, Magic of India

Roberto Giobbi’s Five Volumes of Great Stuff!

Magic Student Resting on Card College Books

We were  first exposed to Roberto Giobbi’s Card College back when we ran a small magic business.

We considered carrying the entire series for sale but even at wholesale, the investment was more than we could swing.

Since we were working on a cash-only basis, we could not afford having expensive inventory on hand.

We bought three of copies of Card College Volume One and sold every one within five days.

The quick sale and high demand actually caused us to think.

We decided to read Card College Volume One.  That mean we had to take it off the shelf and buy it.  We are cheap but apparently more curious than cheap.

We were amazed by Mr. Giobbi’s attention to detail and his innovative epistemological approach.  His method of teaching was so effective that we even learned from the book.  Our ability to learn totally new sleights ended at around 18 years of age.

(Sure, maybe you kept learning new knuckle-busting moves throughout life, but we didn’t.  Agreed, that makes us terrible and not worthy of writing a Magic News Site so sue us).

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Magic News, Magic of Australia

Melbourne’s Magic Age Featured in New Exhibit

The young, Australian museum curator Simon Gregg believes “the history of Melbourne as two parallel stories: one about the development of a modern-day metropolis and the other about the emergence of floating ladies, vanishing handkerchiefs, straitjacket escapes and a bottomless barrel of logic-defying tricks and illusions.”

Mr. Gregg is featured in a big way in Melbourne’s The Age for his new museum exhibit Hocus Pocus: Melbourne Magic, Mystery and Illusion.  The show starts next week, December 6, at the beautiful City Museum.   The focus is “the city’s so-called golden era of magic, from 1850 to 1950.”

Gold was discovered in Melbourne’s environs during the 19th Century.  And where there is gold, there are people.  And where there are people, there are audiences.  And where there is an audience, there is bound to be at least one magician.

Mr. Gregg believes Melbourne’s “emergence as a magic town came to be after the discovery of gold and the subsequent population explosion of the 1850s.”

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