Category: Magician Feature

Inside Magic Image of Harry Houdini
Escape Artistry News, Magician Feature

Houdini Searches on Google

Inside Magic Image of Harry HoudiniWe love the world’s best known magician, Houdini.

We also take great pride in our programming abilities and yet we were stumped yesterday trying to load an active graph from Google documenting the past and present searches for Houdini since 2010. We couldn’t go back further; like to 1920 and figured out that we were limited by the reality that Google did not exist in the Roaring Twenties.

So while we don’t have the live data stream for Houdini searches on InsideMagic.com yet, we can report that the term Houdini continues to be searched daily with peaks in the number of searches on special days and weeks around Halloween and the date of his death in 1926.

Why were we trying to construct this real-time search presentation?

First because we thought it was a cool tool to put on our website. We’re always looking to spice up our space.

Second, because we search for news or articles about Houdini daily. Sometimes the searches come back related to a rapper that used Houdini in his name. Sometimes it comes back with a wine bottle opener. Sometimes it comes back with the great Houdini Magic Shop from Disneyland or Las Vegas. But usually there is at least one hit for Houdini, the world-famous magician and escape artist par excellence.

It is amazing that his name, story and images still register on the Google Search metrics.

What a testament to his self-promotion, his place in modern history and his ability to entrance modern audiences even without being present (assuming you disregard claims of connections during seances).

Magicians today still make reference to Houdini in their acts; often comparing themselves to the master performer. The modern audiences have never seen Houdini (other than the Tony Curtis film, perhaps) but the reference still resonates with them.

We tried to think of other performers that have that kind of staying power. In the 1920s the American and European theaters were jammed full of performers and on a typical evening’s bill, there would be a star or top act. Yet, we are at a loss to name any of them unless they later had a career in a more permanent medium like film or radio.

Houdini is what got us heavily into magic and we assume his popularity is having the same effect on a new generation of magicians and escape artists.

What a wonderful art we have.

By the way, if we are ever in doubt about Houdini’s work or history, we refer to the source that knows all, Wild About Houdini, run by John Cox. If you are a Houdini fan, it needs to be your first stop daily for the latest findings and exploration about this incredible legend.

We will continue to work with our crack programming team to get real time search stats on InsideMagic.com but until then, we’ll just report the highlights we find through our searching or from Mr. Cox’ website.

Inside Magic Image of Dai Vernon
Magic Stories, Magician Feature

No Show and It was Great!

We have a new act and look for any opportunity to try it out. We need to get in some flights to see if it holds together and if it is something we should continue performing.

Friday night at The Magic Castle was buzzing. There were so many people — all in their finest garb — mingling on the first floor as the second dinner setting was about to commence.

For those of us who are not in the big rooms upstairs, we have an opportunity to perform in the basement, just below the main lobby.

We too are dressed to the nines and the folks who venture down from upstairs are dressed as if they just came from a Hollywood premier. Maybe some had; not sure.

We were in the big room (downstairs) known as the Cellar. It seats about 20 people but more folks can stand along the railing in the back of the room.

We had a chance to watch the great Matt Vizio (pictured above) perform first. He is amazing and normally we would avoid being so close to such a model against which to be judged but we had that hunger to get up and show our new stuff.

It is a gnawing hunger that feels like you’re going to burst if you can’t get up there. There are no nerves (at least not that we noticed) but there is excitement. We checked our props carefully, checked them again, and then fastened rubber bands around our decks in special symbolic fashion to allow their quick access without looking.

Mr. Vizio was done with his third standing ovation and we walked down to the pit of the theater to perform.

For those who have seen us perform in the past, say, 35 years, the first part was nothing new. The jokes were the same, the moves were the same, the revelation was the same and even the deck was almost the same.

Now it was time to try our new trick. The little baby bird that needs to experience life outside of the nest and, if possible, fly; nay, soar.

Now we were nervous. It is a tough trick, lots of moving parts and lots of audience management. We’re good with either but not both. Fortunately the audience was great; they required little management. The moves worked without anyone suspecting much. Our memory was intact and thanks to the great, late Bob Cassidy, we were able to memorize a deck of cards to impress our guests.

Oh boy did it feel good. The little bird was soaring. We were soaring. No anxiety, no nerves, just elation.

We wanted to repeat the experience and were scheduled to perform in the Hat and Hair room down the hallway. We checked our back-up props, made sure the rubber bands were in their proper place and strode in to the room.

No one was there. It was dinner time for those going to have dinner at 8:00 pm. They were apparently taking their reservation time seriously — as they should.

Two people entered and took seats near the back of the room. We tried to cajole them to come closer but they said they were Magician Members and just there to see the show.

We practiced our second and bottom deals. The second was working, the bottom deals looked like our left paw was cramped something terrible. The two gentlemen watching offered suggestions and we started talking.

We had stories to swap about Dai Vernon, Larry Jennings, Billy McComb, Pop Haydn and others. It was a great time. All of those gentlemen performed and taught at The Magic Castle and all but Whit / Pop Haydn have passed on.

The discussion took away our gnawing hunger to perform again. That was fortunate because no one else came into the room. We just sat and talked about moves we learned, things we’ve tried, lessons we received and people we met in this very building.

The gnawing gave way to joy. We were involuntarily smiling. Gone was the desire to find a crowd to drag into the room. We could hear laughs coming from the Cellar where Mr. Vizio was entertaining a new group.

And then there was silence. No crowds from down the hall clapping or laughing. No clip-clopping of people walking on the stone pathway between the performing rooms. Just silence.

Without awkwardness, we three parted with a handshake and went our ways. We went upstairs to see the real pros perform and we were sure our two guests did the same. Although, and this is strange, we followed behind them up the stairs, turned our head for a moment to check if our decks of cards were still in a neat row and then looked back, up the stairs, and the two were gone. We made it to the top of the stairs and looked for them, but they were not visible.

We didn’t see them again all night and we went to every show. We know they didn’t exit through the main lobby door, at least when we were there.

It didn’t matter that they vanished. The stories and friendship shared will remain.

Inside Magic Image of World Famous Magician David Copperfield
Magic Book Review, Magician Feature

Inside Magic Review: David Copperfield’s History of Magic

Inside Magic Image of David CopperfieldWe have been a fan of David Copperfield since his early days.  We anticipated his television specials with the same excitement as we did with Doug Henning.  These were two men with a demonstrable love for the artform around which we focused our life.

How great would it be to be either man.  Have trucks, busses, roadies, technical experts and assistants working with a common cause — to entertain with the most entertaining art of all, Magic.

Given our past as prologue for this review, you can probable guess where we are heading.

We ordered our book from Amazon the day Mr. Copperfield announced it would be ready months later.  Those months between our order and the book’s arrival seemed to tick slowly by.  We wanted that book, we needed that book.

It arrived and we were then filled with apprehension and anxiety.  What if the book was not all that we hoped.  What if it was a flimsy (but hardbound) review of Magic’s history starting with tricks we already knew started our art and ending as a promotional piece for Mr. Copperfield?

We decided to cast our anxiety to the wind.  This is tough to do in a small apartment located over the place where they bake dog treats here in West Hollywood.  You cannot really cast anything.  So we opened the book having received the cast anxiety’s boomerang back to us but with the smell of doggie cookies.

Well, let us tell you something.  Our doubts and anxiety were for naught.  This book is something to be read and enjoyed.  It has stories about Mr. Copperfield’s love of the magical arts and those steps along his career that made him an international sensation.  But even better — as if that would be possible — he shares stories and images of items from his very secret museum.  These are the real objects, tricks, costumes and literature collected by someone who appears as fanatical about the history of Magic as he is in performing.

We could take hours extolling the virtues of his book but that would essentially be copying the book with our less than adequate style.  We would still end the review with the gentle instruction to buy the book.  You could buy it for the images, the history, the care with which it is written, or the peek inside Mr. Copperfield’s warehouse of Magic.

Our recommendation, buy the book.  Get your own copy, share if you must but always with the firm instruction that the borrower must return the book promptly and would be better off buying it for him or herself.

A must buy!

Inside Magic Review: Five out of Five!

Inside Magic Image of David Blaine
Latest Magic News, Magician Feature, Uncategorized

Zack King and David Blaine and Social Media

Inside Magic Image of David BlaineThere’s a great article about two great magicians in today’s edition of Broadway World & TV.  David Blaine and Zack King have huge internet followings and for good reason — they are good at magic and very, very savvy.

From the post at BW&TV (we don’t know if that’s their actual acronym but if it isn’t, it should be:

Today, digital superstar and viral illusionist Zach King released a Youtube collaboration with world famous magician David Blaine. In the video, which was uploaded to Zach’s Youtube channel with over 8MM+ subscribers, Zach and David are shown on a video call showing each other some magic tricks. David advises Zach to up the ‘fear factor’ of his tricks by showing some of his infamous tricks – coughing a tarantula out of his mouth and igniting a fire on the palm of his hand. This collaboration comes on the heels of David announcing he will attempt to float over the Hudson River using only helium balloons.

You can check out his promotional video for the stunt aqui.

Can we say this?

We have fear every time David Blaine takes on one of his stunts.  Getting shot in the mouth by a 22 caliber round was scary, being locked in ice, holding one’s breath under water for 18 minutes (but felt like an hour), standing on a narrow pole for more than 24 hours and then jumping into boxes from said pole.  Coughing up spiders and frogs from one’s belly — or the opposite — going without nourishment for 40 days in full public view all scare us.

We know his plans are well considered and he is far from reckless but, golly, he sure does a lot of scary stuff.

We were okay when he would rub ash on his arm to reveal a playing card previously selected by clearly inebriated spring-breakers, or throwing a deck of cards against a window and having the selected, signed card appear on the other side of the glass.

We might be okay with him performing a Finger Chopper effect if it is the kind we grew to love during our years of performing as “The Mini Magician” for our schoolmates in reform school during the 1940s.  Even that could involve risk if you stuck your finger in the wrong hole or didn’t set it right.

Basically, what we are saying is that we are cowards.  We eschew things that could hurt us.  We don’t even like being as tall as we are.  We avoid walking down aisles in darkened movie theaters (back when such things were done) for fear we would fall into the lap of some theater patron with an embarrassing thud — as opposed to the non-embarrassing thud, we suppose.

But there is something in Mr. Blaine that causes him to push the envelope until it contorts into something that looks less like an envelope and more like a coffin.

We cringe at gymnastics of any kind being practiced by anyone — even circus performers.  Escape artists cause us to cringe without recourse.  We can’t get images out of our mind or worry about the people involved and the people watching — all could be effected by a trick gone wrong.

So, once again, Mr. Blaine will try the impossible — to Ascend over the New York skyline by holding onto a group of balloons.  The thing is the does not need to do it.  We would like and respect him regardless — and even irregardless.

Mr. Blaine we worry for you.  Please be careful.

Check out Mr. Blaine’s website and tremble here.

Latest Magic News, Magician Feature

David Blaine Practices for “Ascension”

Balloon Use Over SkiesMagician, illusionist and risk-taker extraordinaire, David Blaine was spotted in Porterville, California this morning.  He was hanging on to a group of balloons — technically called a “lift” of balloons.

We are happy to report that according to other reporters who appeared to be happy to report as well, Mr. Blaine landed safely after his soaring above the California landscape.

He plans to hold onto a lift of balloons to fly over the skies of New York City.

We think he is either fearless and/or the stunt has been well planned in advance.  We asked no one in particular whether we would ever do such a stunt.  We answered in the negative with a shudder.

Some dedicated InsideMagic readers no doubt recall our failed attempt to float over Mystic Hollow, Michigan, by holding on to birds through a special harness set-up.  We barely took off — official records kept by the arresting officers said we lifted one and a half inch from the ground but this may have been accomplished by our “hopping.”

Unlike our attempt, it is doubtful Mr. Blaine will be covered by the waste product of “excited and/or frightened birds,” to use words from the arrest record.

We wish Mr. Blaine the best of luck and we will watch with envy and fear.

Magician Feature

Magician Richard Adler is a Genius

Magician Richard AdlerGenius we tell you.  Inside Magic Favorite Richard Adler is featured in The Palm Beach Post for his great idea to keep magic flowing to audiences even during the quarantine.

We’ve known Richard since the mid-seventies and have always been impressed by his creativity and drive.  When it comes to know how, he really knows how.  Check out his web site here.

“I just want to keep bringing joy into the world and making people smile,” Mr. Adler said. “This allows me to pursue my art and connect with people.”

What is he doing?  Well, we will tell you.

Through the magic of Zoom or other tools that are like Zoom but have a different name, he brings magic to parties and get-togethers.  “It’s kind of like having a celebrity at your party,” he told the Post. “I’m not sure how long social distancing will last, but I think this helps fill a void.”

The procedure to invite The Amazing Mr. A (Mr. Adler’s stage name) and his puppets into your home or office is straightforward.  Visit zoompuppets.com, pick a character and provide some information.  Mr. A and his puppet partners will join you at the time you set.  He says the service has worked for corporate businesses and family reunions to happy hours and birthday parties.

Mr. A is also starting a zoommagician service to bring magic to similar gatherings.

It’s genius, we tell you.

We’ve seen Mr. A perform perhaps a thousand times and are always entertained.  We hope this method of reaching audiences continues and spreads his good work further than just South Florida.

Check out the full story and great photos at The Palm Beach Post here.

Latest Magic News, Magician Feature

Giant in World of Magic Passes

Inside Magic's Famous BunnyHe may not have been known in the Las Vegas cohab and he never performed for a crowd larger than family and friends, but Jim Quinlan was a giant in magic.

He passed away recently but his impact on magic was profound – to us.

Our father was kind, accompanied always with an easy smile and receptive spirit.  He made friends easily and was loyal to those friends to the end.

As a father, he was also a great teacher and inspiration to our magic career.  Our first effect we performed was acquired by him from a magic shop in our hometown of Oak Park, Illinois.  He brought us the Ball and Vase, performed it for us, amazed us, and taught us to perform it.

We brought it to our first grade class the following day and performed it perhaps ten times before our teacher took it and locked it securely in her desk drawer.

We were hooked.  We had drawn crowds of first graders with the trick and felt the special sensations that accompany performing magic.  If there is a magic bug, its sting was felt that day.

We got the trick back and spent hours on the playground after school performing the Ball and Vase for those unfortunate souls who were not in attendance at our morning show.

As we walked home, we performed it for strangers on the sidewalks, the construction workers on the main boulevard leading to our home street, and of course for our mother — it was not our first performance for her of the new trick.  She was instrumental in our beta testing of the effect the night before.

And when our father returned from work, we performed it again and told him of the day’s events.

In the days, weeks, months and years that followed, our father encouraged our pursuit of the art.  We learned that his mother had performed in vaudeville and we took pride in our theatrical lineage.

Our father would provide great insight on the performance of magic, the presentation of our magician personality, and essential rules for taking a stage and exiting gracefully.

A few years later, he purchased Stratospheres for us and launched our career (nascent still) on the real stage.

He was proud of our sleight of hand skills and would often ask us to perform for his friends and co-workers.  We were so proud and delighted that our father would ask us to perform.

As we matured in the art and in life, he was always supportive and interested in what and how we were performing.  He was big on rehearsing one’s act.  We were not.  But, we’ve learned, he was right.

Our father’s passing came quickly and with a devastating impact.  It is still difficult to think about or discuss.  We remember him as young, vibrant and out-going.  He would play basketball with us until there was insufficient light to see the ball being shot or passed.

Time passed so quickly and we knew the time would come that he would no longer be with us in a physical sense.  We miss him terribly.

Carissa Hendrix
Magician Feature

Carisa Hendrix Featured

Carissa HendrixCarisa Hendrix is more than an accomplished magician and world-record fire-eater, she is also a Persuasive Calgarians according to a great profile in today’s Calgary Herald newspaper.  But magic was not her first choice.  She was “seduced by the ‘glamor of magic.'”

Like many of us, she watched David Copperfield on television with her family.  She was able to “think outside the box” and correctly guess how the illusions were being performed.

Her intended career was to be a teacher.  But the lure of fire-eating and card magic proved strong.

“It’s never had to be a career; just what I did to survive. “

“The 32-year-old Calgary-born wizard is at the top of her game today, performing in iconic clubs – in her sexy personality Lucy Darling – setting a Guinness World Record for Eating Fire, inviting Penn and the TV show Teller and co-hosting Shezam, a popular feminist podcast on magic.”

Her abilities have been noted not only by her peers in the magic community (a tough crowd) but also magic clubs.  She  no longer needs to send audition videos.

“I wouldn’t exist if not for the other magicians who encouraged me, paid me to be their assistant when I was 16 and 17. It was money between hunger and no.”

Three years later, “I did everything – fire, acrobatics, chair dance, magic – whatever he wanted. I was making money until it was no longer scary.”

Ms. Hendrix is looking forward to a possible Canadian television tour to her North American club appearances.

“The magic has to be proven directly,” she says. “It’s just so powerful.”

Check out the full article in the Calgary Herald here.

Check out her great website here.

Latest Magic News, Magician Feature

The New Face of Magic

Ace Hotel.jpgYou know the Ace Hotel New York even if you have never been there.  Check out their website to see the iconic building with tons of history and literary connections.  If we are not mistaken (and their is a very good chance we are), our very favorite short story writer, O. Henry lived in one of the rooms of the building way back in the day.

Zach Alexander, Michael Karas and RJ The Magician will be appearing in their show The New Face of Magic tomorrow, December 14th in Liberty Hall at Ace Hotel New York.

So there is a fine mixture of the past and future awaiting  you.  Once you are seated and watching the show, it will then be the past, present and future.  We suppose that goes without saying and so . . .

The title of the show is fitting for performances by new magicians that push the art of the craft forward.

Mr. Alexander has been featured on ABC Morning News and is a member of our art’s very secret society, The International Brotherhood of Magicians.

New Face.jpgJoining Mr. Alexander will be RJ the Magician.  He truly is part of the coming generation of magicians.  His objective is not only to entertain but also “prove that magic and civic engagement can help contribute to modern society.”  He is a member of the International Association of Black Magical Artists; and was the winner of their 2018 “Rising Star” Award.

Mr. Karas is an international award-winning juggler.  He has toured the world for more than a decade with his very unique and comedic juggling routine.

If we were in New York, we’d stay at the Ace Hotel if only for the history and O. Henry’s legacy (assuming we’re correct about his residence there) but if we had a choice of nights to stay, it would be tonight and tomorrow to catch The New Face of Magic show.

If you are anywhere in the vicinity of New York city, you should check out the show and see these three amazing performers.

You can read more about the show and the performers here.

 

Magician Feature

Magician Robert Ramirez is Much More

Robert RamirezRobert Ramirez is a magician amongst many things and is featured in The Pittsburgh Current today for those talents that are not within the sphere of magic.

Proof of his multi-talented skills is evidenced by his new show Robert Ramirez: The Musical Theater Magician live through Jan. 5, 2020, at Pittsburgh’s Downtown’s Liberty Magic.

By the way, Downtown’s Liberty Magic has a great website.  We don’t normally comment on the quality of websites because we feel inadequate about the layout of InsideMagic.com — and we didn’t just mention InsideMagic.com to boost our position in Google ratings — and we didn’t just mention Google to associate Google and its Google Search Engine with InsideMagic.com.  We were just making a point why we point out great websites when we see ’em and instantly compare them with our site dedicated to providing the latest magic news for the professional performer here on InsideMagic.com.

Mr. Ramirez’s musical abilities including the ability to play the piano and tap dance; plus perform magic tricks at a level that brings unsolicited praise from fellow magicians.

He became interested in our art when he was merely 8-years-old, after his parents divorced. He then branched into playing the flute, being involved in musical theater in high school and college and even took classes at the very prestigious L.A. based Upright Citizens Brigade.  As if that wasn’t enough, he found time to promote creative writing for children in California’s elementary schools through a program called the Imagination Machine.

We would posit that this was sufficient; but no.  He went on to star in the touring company of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Tony Award-winning musical, In the Heights from 2011 to 2012.

Holy cow.  We can only do magic and really only with cards and really only with cards that we have prepared before performing and really only with one type of a deck in one color and whilst seated and without any potential bad angles and with special sticky stuff on our fingers.  Forget doing music or dancing.

Now here’s the strange part.  Once he finished the tour, he found it tough to get auditions. He hit a dry spell — like our hands and that is why we need the sticky stuff on our fingers but he was using the term “dry spell” as a metaphor not a physical sign of aging and dry fingers.

“I had realized I’m going to have to create my own work if I want to get out of this little rut,” he says. “So I started doing more magic and I started doing weddings or I started doing strolling gigs when I could.”

He served as a magic consultant on “America’s Got Talent” and appeared at the world-famous Magic Castle in Los Angeles and the Chicago Magic Lounge.  Soon his unique combination of skills brought him to the forefront.

“Now in the last two years, I got to a point where now I have to set time aside to do a theater show, do a musical, and then audition for that show,” he says.

Did we mention he also  has a comedy background and uses comedy in his performance?  We realize we shouldn’t ask readers to go back through this post to determine whether we mentioned it when we clearly could do it if our Tandy X1000 running WordStar 1.25 had an easy way to scroll back up.

“I don’t want to set that expectation because you may not get my brand of humor. Everybody loves magic, and there’s kind of not a ‘brand’ of magic. Either it’s going to feel whimsical and feel like magic or it’s not,” he says.

He is in to magic history and history in general   “Magic’s been popular for hundreds of years,” he says. “I think, when all of these historical events were happening in the world, what was happening in magic?”

Following the lead of Lin-Manuel Miranda, who wrote the show, In The Heights, to construct a show that he wanted to see, Mr. Ramirez put together an act that he would want to attend.  “Now all I do is I create magic that I want to see, something that I wish I was in the audience to laugh at.”

If you are in the Pittsburgh area, check out “Robert Ramirez: The Musical Theater Magician.” Various times. Now through Jan. 5. 811 Liberty Ave., Downtown. 412-456-6666 or www.trustarts.org

You’ll see it all in one place.  Visit Mr. Ramirez’  website here.