Tag: mark panner

Guest Essay

Guest Essay: Rip-Off or Research?

Inside Magic Image of Favorite Melvin the MagicianEditor: Mark Panner is filling in for us whilst we work our day job during this busy season.  His essays are not edited or approved by Inside Magic.  In fact, we usually disagree with everything he says and does.

Some call it deliberate theft, others call it inspiration. I call it inspiration because I don’t like all of the negatives that come with the word “theft.”

But I also call it pure gold.

I am talking about using great ideas from other fields to make great hordes of cash in the magic field.

Let’s face it, magicians don’t get paid what they deserve. Some practice hours and hours to perform a trick that takes 30 seconds. If you get paid by the hour, that means all of the practice gets you some money but not much money. We won’t go into the complex math here (but we could if we had to) but say you get $15.00 an hour and you do a trick that takes 30 seconds to do. That means you are only getting a part of the $15.00; like a dollar or something. This is a magic blog not an accounting blog so you can figure it out for yourself later. Take my word for it, though: you are not getting the full $15.00 for all of the work that you put into learning the trick, buying the props or making them after watching how the trick is done thanks to YouTube.

So how do magicians make the money they deserve?

First, don’t buy tricks. As I said, you can learn just about any trick out there on YouTube. Thanks to people looking to make a name for themselves, there are plenty of videos where people expose really good trick and even show you how the props they bought work. It cost them something to buy the original trick but if they are stupid enough to show the world how to make it, that works out fine for the rest of us.

Everybody knows magic tricks cost a lot because of the secret, not the props. So, if you can learn the secret from some teenager on YouTube who is showing off how proud he is to have bought the latest miracle, you don’t need to pay a dime.

Wait Mark, isn’t that stealing?

No. Because I didn’t do the stealing. I just watched a video. The guy who did the video showing how a trick worked bought the trick (or learned it from someone who bought it) and so I am pretty far down the line from anything that even looks like stealing.

Wait Mark, isn’t that taking money from inventors of great tricks?

Again, I am not taking anything from anyone. I am just watching a video. It is a free country and I am allowed to watch videos. If someone wants to show me how to make a trick that would cost $45.00 on some over-priced magic web store, who am I to complain.

Wait Mark, won’t that keep magicians from inventing new tricks?

No and so what if they do? It will teach them to price their tricks right. Charging $45.00 for the latest miracle is too much no matter what the trick is – especially if I can make it with stuff I have around the mobile home or in my company’s supply cabinet.

Plus, most of the times once I learn the secret, I don’t want to do the trick any way so there really is no loss. I just saved $45.00 and avoided the hassle of paying and waiting for the delivery and then finding out it is a stupid method and not for me.

I have always said that magic reviews should tell you exactly how a trick is done so that you can determine for yourself whether you want to buy the trick. I bought a trick two years ago at a convention here in Michigan and the guy said it was easy to do and didn’t really require any sleights.

Well, he lied. To do the trick, you had to force a card and last time I checked, that’s a sleight. If I had known that the only way the trick would work was if I forced the card at the beginning, I could have saved $45.00 and bought something from someone more honest.

Don’t get me wrong, I can do a force. In fact, I can do maybe 15 different forces but why should I if I don’t need to? Just to look cool? The guy demonstrated the trick and the way he described it was like this: a person takes a card and the card ends up in some impossible place. Now I know why he was so vague. He was hiding the secret. If I knew the secret before I bought it, I could have saved my money and bought something useful like really cool decks of cards or food.

Wait Mark, shouldn’t we reward people who work hard to invent magic tricks?

We do. We get them press in the magic magazines and they get to travel around the world doing lectures and selling their “secrets” to magic club members. We had a lecturer at our Mystic Hollow Magic Club last month who said he had been in five states in three weeks and lectured five times before coming to Michigan. I know for a fact that the club paid him over $100.00 plus paid for his hotel room at the La Quinta by the airport and some members of the “executive committee” took him to dinner at Denny’s afterwards.

So the inventor gets to put on a show for about three hours, gets paid $100, free room, free dinner plus he gets to sell his special tricks at super-inflated prices. I watched pretty carefully and he sold about $50.00 worth of lecture notes and gimmicks. So, put that all together and he is taking in $150.00 for a three-hour show. Math is not my strong part but that is close to $50.00 an hour. Is he a brain surgeon or a lawyer? No, but he is charging those kinds of rates. So who is really “stealing” here?

He would keep touring and visiting magic clubs even if he didn’t sell anything because he is getting a free room and free food plus $100.00 a lecture. Sounds like a sweet gig if you ask me. I do table-hopping at the IHOP (I have a whole bunch of jokes about “hopping at the IHOP” – they are really funny) and have never cleared $100.00 from a weekend of work. It is hard for me to feel sorry for someone who gets to travel, stay in nice places, eats free (yes, I get free breakfast at IHOP but that is something I just do, they are not “officially” giving it to me).

I am writing a book (my fifth one this year!) about this secret to learning secrets and I will be selling it on Amazon and eBay. And before you get any ideas, don’t even think about trying to rip me off because I am going to get a copyright on it.

My dad used to say, “It’s a dog eat dog world, Mark. Make sure you’re the dog and not the other dog.”

Guest Essay, Magician Feature, Mark Panner

Mark Panner Fills In for Us

Inside Magic Image of Frustrated MagicianWe have been very busy at our daytime job.

That has kept us from the spacious office suite here on Santa Monica Boulevard where this humble magic news outlet makes its home in West Hollywood, California.

It is good to be busy but bad to be neglecting of the tens of people who read Inside Magic religiously – and by “religiously” we mean by candlelight, copious amounts of incense and chanting.

We have asked one of the least qualified but most available magic writers (so it averages out) to take over for the next few days or until readership drops below the web equivalent of anemic.

Readers of Inside Magic may remember Mr. Panner for his contributions in the past to this and other magic websites. You can read his horrible review of Inside Magic Favorite magician Bob Sheets here.

He is related to us through a complicated story of inter-marriage and bad life-choices but we offer him space here only as a matter of convenience for us, not because it is in the interest of marital bliss.

Mr. Panner has published several books on magic, all self-published and, as we understand it, still unread. He has claimed to have invented several of the greatest effects in our art including:

The Balls and Cups (his take on the classic “The Cups and Balls”), Card to Walet (intentionally misspelled in an effort to avoid litigation and scorn by the creators of “Card to Wallet”), Torn Newspaper (the review in Magic Magazine noted that it was a fine effect but lacked the ending audiences have come to expect from similar routines like “The Torn and Restored Newspaper”), and the now disregarded Paint Ball Catching Trick.

The Paint Ball Catching Trick was marketed as a safe alternative to the deadly Bullet Catch. In the litigation that followed the meager sales of the effect, we learned that while the trick did not risk being shot in the face with a real bullet, the content of the particular brand of paint balls sold with the trick contained enough lead to shave years off the life of even a casual performer and “condemned his or her progeny to a dramatically higher risk of mental disability.”

Mr. Panner decided re-market the effect with instructions discouraging the “chewing of the paintball or rolling it around in the mouth for an extended period of time.”

You can still find the original version with the now discredited instructions on eBay.

Mr. Panner complained to the magic community that he was being undersold by “cheap, Chinese imports.” The magic community apparently did not care.

Mr. Panner has performed shows for hundreds of paying customers and clients throughout the Midwest – but never for the same client twice. He says this practice is due to his “constant, driving forced (sic) to keep things fresh.” He also points out that the Better Business Bureau rating is “probably wrong because people only complaint (sic) and never say good things to the BBB.”

For the record, he denies ripping off Criss Angel’s Believe with his own, limited tour of “Bee Leave.” Also for the record, Criss Angel denies caring at all about Mr. Panner’s two hour illusion show featuring the magician dressed in a costume described by a reporter for the Urbana, Illinois daily as “cross between Criss Angel and a effeminate bumble bee.”

Mr. Panner’s contributions will begin later today (or possibly tomorrow) and, as is our practice, will be unedited. Mr. Panner describes the process as “keeping it real, raw.” We describe it as “being lazy, real lazy.”

We should be back in the office with renewed energy and new stories in the next week or so.

It is entirely likely we will be back sooner if Mr. Panner performs as predicted.

Guest Essay

Mark Panner’s Genius Magic Idea: TUBER

Inside Magic Image of the TUBER InterfaceMichigan magician and estranged relative Mark Panner continues his contribution — in a sense — to our virtual pages.

Genius is what I call it.
Unless you have been living under a rock or have had a rock hit you in the head, you know the hottest thing in the world is UBER. It is a remarkable service that allows ordinary people to summon a cab or a limo to take them places.
It used to be the only way you could get a cab or a limo was if you lifted your hand in the presence of a cab or booked a limo. Now, you can use an App (a shortened version of the original “applique” – a hold-over from the early days of the inter-net when it was all based on handicrafts from the 1970s; decoupage, tie-dye and LSD) to summon a cab or a limo without raising your hand in their direction.
Everyone is doing it and when “everyone is doing it” I know it is a goldmine waiting to happen. That’s why I am launching TUBER. Inspired by – not copied from – UBER, it lets you summon a magician to your location to perform anything from a single trick to a full-evening show.
Let’s say you are on the corner of Fifth and Main in Anytown, USA. And let’s say you want to get a good Oil and Water or Cups and Balls performance and you want it right now. You click on the TUBER app and you’ll see all the magicians able to do the trick – literally. You click their icon and they will be there in a hurry.
Uber has a couple of different levels of service. You can use Uber and get a limo or town car. You can use Uber-X and get some guy with a car and possibly a valid driver’s license and less than bald tires. There is a price difference – obviously – but you get what you pay for.
Tuber will act the exact same way. Tuber will get you a magician with real skills, dressed appropriately for his or her act. Tuber-Ex will summon a guy or gal who knows some tricks but might need to borrow props from you (like coins or cards) and will probably be dressed like a normal person.
But I am adding a third level. Under Tuber will bring a person who will tell you about a cool thing they saw on YouTube and may even share his or her guess on how the trick is done. This will be the cheapest level but just as entertaining as the top-flight magician you could hire through the top-level TUBER service because you will be seeing videos of real, talented magicians.
I have started a Kickstarter campaign to raise the first million but after that, I will be selling shares to investors and then, I hope, selling out to Google or Microsoft.
The best thing is that even if the magic angle doesn’t work, I have already gotten leads from a consortium of potato growers who like the name and would like me to do something similar to deliver potatoes to people.
I don’t know how I come up with these genius ideas. It is truly a gift. You’re welcome.

Latest Magic News, Magician Feature

Copperfield Picks Next “Great Magician”

Inside Magic Image of Paw-Paw Lawton's Instructional DVD Teaches the Magic Trick Glorpy (a/k/a Hyrum the Hilarious Hank)

David Copperfield made the tough choice of successor, sort of, as part of the NBC Today Show’s Magic Mondays.

The finalists, in order of the last letter of their first name: Kayla Drescher, Jeff Prace and Ben Jackson.

NBC’s publicists claim “hundreds of aspiring magicians sent in videos of themselves performing magic tricks in TODAY’s quest to find the next David Copperfield. Producers teamed up with Copperfield to pick the three best to perform on Monday’s show.”

Ms. Drescher is a magic bartender from Boston and performed “a magic bottle cap trick, swapping Heineken caps with Sam Adams and Bud Light tops right before their eyes.”

Mr. Prace is college student created a stir by producing “a full pack appear from just a single stick.”

Mr. Jackson tore a picture of the show’s hosts and restored same.

Mr. Copperfield chose Ms. Drescher to win the show’s Magic Mondays trophy plus a trip to witness the master magician’s acclaimed Las Vegas show currently at his home in the desert, the MGM Grand Hotel and Casino.

Mr. Copperfield correctly observed, “[t]o have more women doing magic is a great thing.  We’d like to see more of that.”

Congratulations to the finalists and to Ms. Dresher for bringing home the big win.

Mark Panner, the erstwhile Inside Magic stringer, said a NBC producer returned his entry tape with a perfunctory note.  He performed Hippity Hop Rabbits in the 43 minute video.  He was proud that the “turn-it-around” portion of the trick lasted more than a half hour and featured a student audience from Mystic Hollow Elementary School.

“I think a lot of it is political,” Mr. Panner wrote.  “They didn’t want someone on the show who could show up the big star.  They knew I could milk their studio audience with the trick like nobody’s business.  Copperfield’s tricks are all over in a few minutes – that’s why he has to do so many in his shows.  It’s like five minutes and bang, on to the next illusion.”

We do not disagree that Mr. Copperfield performs effects more quickly and of a greater variety than Mr. Panner but do note that some audiences actually prefer more tricks per show rather than less.  Mr. Panner disagrees.

“Copperfield does like six illusions in the first 24 minutes of his Vegas show.  That averages around four or five minutes an illusion.  The audience never really gets a chance to see what’s happening.  Boom, Copperfield appears on stage.  Boom, girls appear out of nowhere and then vanish.  Boom, his motorcycle appears flying over the audience.  Boom, a duck eats a scorpion while Orson Welles talks about cards or something with a license plate with graffiti.  Continue reading “Copperfield Picks Next “Great Magician”” →

Guest Essay, Magician Feature

Guest Essay: 99 Percent in Magic Unite!

Inside Magic Image of Couple Learning Magic's True SecretsMark Panner is not exactly a friend of Inside Magic but he did lend us money to pay the server bill two months ago. In return for his kindness, we said he could write an opinion piece for the web site. This is that piece. He tries to find parallels between the 99 percent movement and magic secrets. We do not agree with his logic, argument or conclusions but a deal is a deal.  We note that while we do not edit Mark's writing, we had to change the title from its original, "99 Percent in Magic Untie."

As I was watching the occupy movement do their thing, I thought about inequity and how unfair it is. One of the questions that kept crossing my mind was, how come the Vegas Headliners get the best secrets and technology and we are all stuck with the turn of the century – Last Century! –boxes and mirrors. It's not fair at all.

There is no other word for it other than inequity and unfairness (okay so maybe two words) but it expresses the vas deference between the 99% of magicians who need to use boxes screens or assistants (if you can afford them or are able to even go to where they congregate to ask if they would like to work for you). The elite one percent get to make things vanish, float, change, appear, grow or shrink without anything at all.

I have been looking into this question for a long time. It's been six months so far and I think I have some answers but they are not good ones.

When magic began, there was relative parity among all magicians. Magicians could make things vanish, float, appear, disappear, change or multiply with equal ability. They all used the same skills and tools. In the Iron Age, everyone used Irons and in the Bronze Age they did the same and no one had better tools than their neighbor. One caveman's Iron thing was the same size and shape and substance as the caveman next door and that did not change until the end of the "Ages" part of history ("Iron," "Bronze," "Dinosaur," "Bird," and "Trains") and the start of the Jet Age (around the time of the Wright Brothers).

Until the Jet Age, people entertained people in their villages and huts with essentially the same tricks either bought from a central store or made from common instructions. All magic plans used to be printed in blue ink and sold in rolls to magicians who wanted to build their own tricks from supplies they had around their cave or hut.

It took a while for this to die out. As late as the 1940s, for instance, Harry Blackstone used the same equipment as all magicians to make the standard "magic rabbit" appear or disappear. Magic rabbits were raised to be genetically identical so that all magicians could interchangeably use their props to do the rabbit tricks regardless of their location. A Boston rabbit would fit a Chicago rabbit gimmick and vice-a-versa. But there was a war on and many of the rabbits were actually made in the equivalent of factory farms where they were grown by strict military specifications to fit standard government issue magic props as used by the professionals (such as Blackstone) or the amateur at home or the magicians who entertained the troops during the battles around the world.

With the advent of the space race, the "elite" magicians began to insist on using "different" methods to accomplish the effects performed by so many. "Good enough for government work" was an expression first used to denigrate the magicians who were forced to use surplus magic tricks left over from the war effort. The elite used bigger bunnies (or with different colored ears or faces) and insisted on different methods to make tricks happen.

Continue reading “Guest Essay: 99 Percent in Magic Unite!” →

Guest Essay

Classic Bra Trick Upsets Some

Mark Panner is occasionally permitted to write on topics of interest to magicians here at Inside Magic thanks to his willingness to write for free and that his mother is Inside Magic Editor Tim Quinlan’s sister. As always, his article has not been reviewed by Inside Magic and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Inside Magic, its shareholders or employees.

Inside Magic Image of Birthday Girl Embarrassed by Hired MagicianMagician Russell Fitzgerald performed a classic of magic with aplomb and yet his name is held up for public ridicule.  That is what America has become today.

Read the full article here. Learn about how this school board member did the Twentieth Century Bra Trick on a teacher at a public and televised meeting and got in trouble for performing it perfectly.

Henry Ford once advised, “Never Complain, Never Explain.”

Of course, Henry Ford would not have performed the classic Twentieth Century Bra Trick because it had not yet been invented.  We don’t know if they even had bras back then.

But if he could have performed the trick, we know for darn sure he would not have apologized for it.

Yeah, critics might have chastised the great industrialist for humiliating a school teacher on live television. And you know what? He wouldn’t have cared one bit.

He was richer than anyone we know and didn’t need to depend on anyone liking him.

Those days are gone, gone, gone. We live in a different time and place. It is no longer fashionable or “correct” or “nice” to pretend to remove a woman’s bra in the course of performing a magic trick during the live television broadcast of an important civic event and where the magician is technically the boss of the unwilling assistant.

But to say it is no longer acceptable means there was a time in this country’s rich history where it would have acceptable and even expected.

There had to be such a time or it would not have earned the laudatory title “Classic.”  Check any magic catalog, the trick is always called The Classic Twentieth Century Bra Trick.

We long for the days when magicians could perform the classics without getting a topit full of backtalk and sass. Back then the victim and the audience actually thanked the magician for getting them attention and coverage in the news.

Underwear is always funny. It is a known fact in the world of comedy that bras, panties, underwear of any style are funny.  You don’t have to show them, you can just talk about them and people will laugh.

Emo Phillps’ great line fits nicely here:

“I got some new underwear the other day. Well, new to me.”

Combine natural funny qualities with the dynamic situation where an unaware audience member appears to loose said underwear and you have a mélange of mirth.
Continue reading “Classic Bra Trick Upsets Some” →

Magic News

Variety: Chris Tucker to Star in “The Rabbit”

Mark Panner is a contributor to Inside Magic. Actually, he sends us articles just about every day. This one looked interesting and we should edit it first but we are running out of time. So here it is with all that Mark Panner specialness readers either love or hate. To read one of his classics, check out his review of Bob Sheets here.  – Editor —

Inside Magic Image of Melinda Saxe - First Lady of MagicWe were on the back lot sipping coffee with some of our closest friends in the world who just happen to be in Hollywood and just happen to be filming at Warner Brothers Studios.

These are true, blue non-fake friends who care about us as no one else could or would care about us.

How good of friends are these? Let’s put it this way, there are very few people in this world who would donate a spleen; even for a friend. One of our friends gave us a spleen yesterday.

Granted, we didn’t need the spleen but it is the thought that counts. He even showed us the freshly stitched wound evidencing a recent removal of the organ.

In fact, we could feel that it was about body temperature even though it was thoroughly wrapped in white paper — like from the butcher but probably more sanitary and durable.

We know that for a fact because they told us just that very thing yesterday whilst sipping coffee and waiting for the set to call them for the next shot. They’re in a movie about zombies who do surgery and that way they only need to eat their victim a little bit at a time. Until they hit the vital innards, the victim can go about their daily chores.

It is a good idea but not very realistic. Once you are bit by a zombie, you become a zombie. Everyone knows that. Our friends said that the movie explains away that objection. Because the zombie doctors take out the organs they want to eat, the organs aren’t attached to the victim at the time of biting.

We’ll have to think about that.

Anyway, we were talking there on the back lot at Warner and we learned the studio intends to come out with a new flick (movie talk for “film” and likely derived from the flicker of light seen in older movie projectors) called “The Rabbit” starring Chris Tucker.

We like Chris Tucker although we have never met him or received any organs from him in any type of packaging. He talks funny and he does goofy things with his hands and fingers that makes us laugh.

Continue reading “Variety: Chris Tucker to Star in “The Rabbit”” →