Tag: Dana Daniels

Magic Castle News

The Magic Castle – No Crutch

Joan DuKoreThe Magic Castle should not be a crutch.

These famous words were uttered by Winston Churchill but they were about an actual crutch and his lack of need for them after a car crash whilst touring America.  But it still fits.

We love the Magic Castle and we love reporting on the latest acts that appear in the various rooms but we also fear that we may bore audiences of Inside Magic by reporting only on magic seen there.

Our solution is to talk about the food we had and then work our way into the magic on stage.

We went with a delicious Beef Wellington (speaking of Churchill) and our beloved had the manicotti.  Both meals were expertly cooked and good enough to eat – as we proved.

We performed downstairs in the amateur rooms as permitted by the Man, Matt Vizio.  He runs the joint and if he says you can perform, you’re good to go.  He let us do two shows and we are in his debt for the honor of performing for such wonderful audiences.

The beauty of performing at the Magic Castle is that people are coming to see magic.  They are not hoping for a tribute to Queen or a demonstration of weaving from indigenous folk.  Although, ironically, we do wear a Freddy Mercury leotard woven by indigenous weavers from Scotland.  We chafe and we sweat but we feel we do both sources justice.  We no longer sing because of requests from virtually everyone we have ever met. The New York Times said of our act, “It makes you long for Freddy Mercury in his prime or at any age and true indigenous weavers.” Notably, the review got our name wrong; calling us Tom Quinine, so the review has not hurt our career.

Dana Daniels and Richard Allen brought their world-famous “The No Show” to the Palace of Mystery.  We laughed so hard that we feared we would pass-out.  Seriously.  We could not stop laughing as Mr. Daniels did his escape routine that the air was not getting to our lungs, brain or heart.  We tried to think of unfunny things but it would not work.  We tried to breathe deeply, but our lungs were laughing too hard.  It was a funny situation for our body and we didn’t mind.

Audiences had a chance to see the new Luigi.  His predecessor worked with Mr. Daniels for almost three decades before passing on.  The new Luigi is just as beautiful parrot with a penchant for cheating at mentalism.

The No Show should not be missed.  Let’s assume you have something else to do for some reason, you should not do it.  You should go see The No Show instead.  Water skiing, mountain climbing, any form of fungal removal?  None are sufficient reasons to miss The No Show.  Although if the fungal removal has been delayed for, say, years, it might be a good time to see a specialist and avoid crowds.  Nay, not a single reason can justify missing this show.

Well, except for one reason.

In the Close-Up Gallery, the lovely Ms. Joan DuKore is performing the early shows (7:00 • 7:45 • 8:30 • 9:15) and puts on a great show.  If we had talent, grace and could perform, we would be Ms. DuKore.  She hails from Las Vegas and relates much of her performance to Sin City.  Her card handling is great, she works with bunnies and she performs effects that you have likely never seen before in your sheltered, protected life – but in a good way, not like you were in prison.

The bottom line: Eat the Beef Wellington, Watch The No Show and enjoy Joan DuKore.  Don’t worry about passing out due to hypoxia, it’s a myth.

Magic News

What If There Was No Magic Castle?

The Magic CastleSome famous person spoke about the dark night of the soul. We think it was a religious text about doubt – the kind of doubt that comes in the darkest hours when one realizes their whole understanding of everything could be wrong. It seems like a neat literary device but one that would make a horrible Broadway musical; unless it involved puppets or something.

But we had our dark night of the soul last night thinking about what Los Angeles would be without The Magic Castle. Our reading of some of the latest science journals (found at our pet’s orthodontist office here in West Hollywood) confirms that there can be infinite parallel universes and that the one in which we are now confined is just one. In the other universes, we were never born, we were born into royalty, and we never signed up for the Columbia Record Club at the age of 18 and were thus free from the years of forced purchases of second-rate vinyl albums to make up for our impulse buy of 20 records for one penny in 1988. The last one alone would have saved us about $55,000.00.

So, it is entirely possible that The Magic Castle could not exist. What would that mean? What else would Los Angeles or even California have to offer? What? Water – there is some on the East Coast of the U.S. and plenty in the Great Lakes Region from whence we come. Sunshine – okay, there is more of it here than in Michigan but is that enough? Jack-in-the-Box and In-and-Out Burger restaurants – big draw before our second angioplasty / stenting (if that is a verb) but we do not care about them so much any longer.

Basically, without The Magic Castle, Los Angeles is just a big city with nearby water, sunshine and incredibly tasty but unhealthy hamburgers. Others may know of things that we have missed – we heard there are mountains and non-magic cultural events and apparently some film studios have offices nearby but we haven’t really explored beyond The Magic Castle.

Without The Magic Castle, we would never get to see incredible shows like John Carney, Dana Daniels, Lindsay Benner and Jon Armstrong – and that was just in the last week.

We would never hear great interviews on topics of interest to us by Fitzgerald in his Who’s Hoo series. This week he interviewed world-famous ventriloquist team Willie Tyler & Lester and Castle Librarian Lisa Cousins.

We would never have discovered the great joy of performing in The Gallery and Hat & Hare for audiences that came to see magic.

Fortunately, in this universe and at this time, there is The Magic Castle. We cannot imagine what life or the western United States would be like without it. We tried to ease our mind and fall back to sleep but remembered we were actually driving at the time – but fortunately, we were in a traffic jam so our car wasn’t moving.