But do they really?

Twice recently I was put in an uncomfortable position: once by a co-worker and once on MySpace.

The co-worker had written some children's stories and wanted my "honest opinion." The person on MySpace had published some material in a magic magazine and also asked for an honest assessment, "no holding back, good or bad."

Some people at work had already told my co-worker that she should try to get her stuff published because it was excellent. It was obvious to me that what she wanted was another affirmation, not an honest critique. If I would have given her an honest critique it would have pissed her off. I would have loved to, though, because it also would have made her a better writer, had she been willing to listen. The books were rhyming and it was clear that things like meter had never been explained to her. She's a bright lady; a quick lesson would have done worlds of good. But she didn't want an honest opinion. She wanted to be told she was already good.

It was a similar situation with our published magician. He had gotten heaps of praise on some MySpace magic groups for stilted prose, highly derivative magic effects and a lead-off bit that was incomprehensible and would have been much clearer had he given some (any) examples. Did he want my honest opinion? I don't think so. What gives me that idea? He accepted the praise on the MySpace groups as if it were his due without question, and without asking what, to me, would be the obvious follow-up: "Wasn't there anything I could have done better?"

This seeming unwillingness to critique even in the name of improving one's craft does no one any favors. (And yes, I'm guilty too. In case 1 I told the lady what she wanted to hear. In case 2 I avoided leaving any feedback and the gentleman hasn't inquired further.) It leaves some with an undeserved sense of accomplishment and others with few avenues of improvement. I've given performances and asked, nay begged, for a crumb, for something to improve, and have only gotten what the above people got: hollow assurances that I was wonderful.

So I ask this: If you ask me for honest feedback, from this point onward please expect it, and accept it in the spirit in which it is offered. If I think I can help you improve I will try to do so. If (and only if) I think you were wonderful, that's what you'll hear. And if I ask for your opinion, please let me know what you think. If I ask, I value your opinion.

So...what is your opinion of this blog entry?

RIP Tommy Wonder

In a lecture I attended about 20 years ago I was fooled really badly several times by one of the classiest gentlemen I had ever met - Tommy Wonder (born Jos Bemelman).

He was a giant in magic. Today we lost him to an illness he kept from all but his closest friends.

He will be missed.

That's the way...

Billy Preston died yesterday. I don't have too many living musical heroes left.

I wish I believed in a better place. I wish I could picture Billy and George Harrison back together, jamming and grinning. George always loved the way Billy played, and Billy was one of the highlights of George's otherwise pretty much universally panned 1974 tour, dubbed the "Dark Hoarse" tour by some wags because George's voice was so badly strained. (He played my home state on that tour but, regrettably, I didn't get to see him.)

At least I still have the music and the memories - that exuberant keyboard playing, the grin he always had when he was making music, the way he made those around him happy.

As I always say when one of my favorite musicians dies, please play some of your favorite music in his honor.

Peace

A murder of crows

Groups of things often have unusual names. A group of crows, as the title of this post indicates, is called a "murder" (really). There are other curious collective nouns: an exaltation of larks (birds seem to get some good ones), a farrow of pigs, a mob of emus...


I haven't run across a collective noun for a group of magicians, and I'm hesitant to invent one because as yet this has been a fairly family-friendly blog.

A while ago I was invited to meet with a group of magicians (whatever that group may be called) at a restaurant where, supposedly, we could discuss magic and improve ourselves as magicians. I was hesitant given my history with groups of magicians, but this was organized by a person I trusted. Also, I hadn't been around the local magic scene much, and perhaps things had changed.

The first few meetings were...OK. I performed more than anyone, by far, at least for non-magicians. I have a theory that if you perform solely for magicians your stuff becomes too inbred and you forget what works for real people. One guy sat and basically stared at a deck of cards the whole time and wouldn't share anything. He just sat fiddling with those cards, then if I performed something he asked me to teach it to him as if it was his right to know.

I also never got honest feedback from any of those meetings. If I asked, the only thing I heard was, "yeah, that was good." Come on! If I was that good I'd be out making a living at it! Surely there was some flaw I could correct, some presentational point I could improve...But no - nothing like helpful criticism ever came from one of those meetings. And silly me, that's what I thought they were for.

The final straw that drove me from the meetings? I had performed a routine for one of our waitresses that had brought tears to her eyes. You know, elicited emotion, like good theater is supposed to do? Later I commented on that, hoping to drive a discussion on what worked in that routine so we could maybe reproduce it later. What did I get? An insult. Who insulted me? The guy who put together the meetings in the first place.

I think I know why that happened. Magicians are scared of real emotion. They want their tricks to be about finding the right card, or making the coin disappear, and making someone cry (tears of joy, by the way) is just too much for them. And the only way to defuse that situation is to make fun of it.

The waitress, however, told me that it was a seriously wonderful moment and sincerely thanked me for it.

Rhetorical question: which type of person am I more likely to want to hang around - the type who appreciates the emotions a well-done magic presentation elicits, or the person(s) who make fun of said presentation?

Peace

Oh, and of you come up with a good collective noun for a group of magicians, please leave it as a comment.

What do I think of the claim that Blaine is "the greatest magician ever. Period."?

I think it's meaningless. First, the claim is made with no criteria. Greatest in what sense? Technically? Most popular? Most well-known? Highest paid? We don't know. Our claimant never says.

What if criteria is stated, then the claim is made? Well, then I say that is the wrong criteria and I use different criteria and say my uncle Frank is the greatest magician ever, period. Am I wrong? Who can say?

So the claim that Blaine is "the greatest magician ever. Period.," has no meaning except to the person or persons who make the claim.

Oh, and the same applies to the claim that Blaine is a no-talent hack.

That's the nice thing about opinions. They're always right...For the person who thinks they're right.

It's plain that Blaine polarizes (on the main)

Magicians seem to either think David Blaine is the best thing since sliced cards (one blogger has gone so far as to call him "the best magician ever. Period.") or a no-talent hack who only has good connections.

It's not surprising that the latter believe Mr. Blaine should disappear and never grace our televisions again. Those in the former camp baffle me though, because they also seem to think that there is no room for personal taste regarding the man. If you don't like him you're just wrong - end of discussion.

Here is a little something I wrote (edited a little to make sense on this blog) that got me kicked off of a MySpace magic group. My sin? I suggested it's ok to have your own personal tastes.

*******************************************************************

One of the things I've never understood is the "we shouldn't criticize Blaine" attitude. If we find out what people don't like about him we can learn something about ourselves and perhaps improve our own magic.

It also seems unique to the world of magic. My wife is a painter. If someone says, for example, "I don't like Dali's paintings," other painters don't automatically assume that it's jealousy or some such. They understand that yes, even those within the community are entitled to their personal tastes. If it were jealousy, would they not express dislike for all popular painters (or, in our case, magicians)? Similarly with my musician friends, if one says, "I don't like The Beatles, " they for the most part understand that taste is truly an individual thing.

This aversion to the whims of personal taste seems confined to magicians. Why is it not ok to dislike him if you don't like all musical styles, or all painters, or all television programs? The person who said that it was gross the way his hands looked said nothing about what Blaine has contributed to the art. Some people just don't like looking at corpselike features.

Some people say we shouldn't criticize a magician on TV unless we've had our own magic special on TV. That also seems a little extreme. It would also imply:

• you should never return your meal in a restaurant unless you've been a chef in a restaurant
• you should never criticize an elected official unless you've held that specific elected office
• you should never diss a movie unless you've been in a movie
• you should never criticize bad police work unless you've been a cop

******************************************************************

The above opinion is the horrid post that got me banned from the MySpace group Magic Magic Magic. How dare I suggest we all have the right to our own opinions!

That's Ammar, hey

I went to a lecture by well-known (and sometimes reviled) magician/author/lecturer Michael Ammar last night. Michael and I have met before. I turned him on to Warren Zevon (not everyone would consider that a good thing). Michael, however, is now a fan, and even sang a bit of one of my favorite songs.

I gave Mr. Ammar the last CD Mr. Zevon recorded before he died. He seemed pleased. (Mr. Ammar, that is, not Mr. Zevon. I'm not sure of Mr. Zevon's feelings about the whole transaction.) Mr. Ammar gave me an evening of wonderful magic and pleasant company. Oh, and one of his instructional DVDs.

He also gave me the notion that not all magicians are twits when they are in the company of other magicians. Present company excluded.

My only regret? Hannah was unable to accompany Michael this trip.

Hey, it's just that we're friends. The fact that she's drop-dead gorgeous is completely irrelevant, and I didn't notice anyway. Neener.

Voices

Music is incredibly important to me. It's as close as I come to a religion. I use music to lift me when I'm sad, or to help me experience grief, or to connect to people, even if they're no longer here.

Up until about four years ago I'd never really experienced the death of anyone close to me, which is fairly amazing considering I'm old enough to have seen the Monkees t.v. show in it's original run. (Just wait...I really am going to connect these thoughts.) Starting in 2002 I experienced a string of deaths, starting with my best friend from high school. There has been at least one a year since then, and sometimes more. It's as if karma is paying me back for all those years of not having to deal with grief.

That first one, my friend from my high school years, hit me really hard. Scott came along at an interesting time in my life, and had I been the betting type I'd have bet we would have never hit it off. He was from a rich, close-knit family; I'm from the definition of dysfunctional, and would frequently wear borrowed clothes and go without eating. But for whatever reason we clicked immediately.

Our two favorite pastimes were pinball and driving while listening to music. We expanded each other's musical horizons; he was more the John Denver/easy pop type, and I was into rock and jazz. On our drives we would meander, listen to whatever, and solve all the world's problems as only teenagers can do. My home life was a mess. I truly believe Scott saved my life.

For a while we we were inseparable. I was with him on a double date when he first met the woman who would become his wife. I was the best man at his wedding. Then life, as it has a way of doing, intervened. We kept in sporadic touch, but never really got back together. I did go to his 30th birthday party, a huge bash every bit as embarrassing as a 30th should be. Oddly enough I never lost the feeling that he was my best friend.

Five years later he was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma. By that time he had two kids and a third on the way. He battled long and hard, getting a bone marrow transplant from his older sister.

I heard on New Years Eve, 2002 that he had died a few days earlier. I attended a memorial service that day, and the funeral New Years Day 2003. I got up and spoke at the memorial service, recounting our drives, talking, singing, and how he had pulled me through the toughest time of my life. I barely got through that speech, choking up badly at the end, then I went over and hugged his widow (a word that still pains me).

I remember very little of the service, but the few things I do remember I remember quite vividly. I remember they opened the service with a great song, and closed with another. They opened with the Byrds singing Turn! Turn! Turn! and closed the service with George Harrison's classic Here Comes The Sun.

I used music to help me get through the grief of his death. One of my favorite artists, Warren Zevon, had just released a CD called My Ride's Here. For a couple of weeks I would play two tracks off of that CD every day on the way to work - the title track, and I Have To Leave. Both are beautiful songs, and both helped me feel my grief rather than bottle it up. (In a twist of fate that would make me really pissed at my personal deity if I believed in such a critter, Warren Zevon notified us of his impending demise from cancer - mesothelioma - shortly after that.)

I haven't visited Scott at his grave for a while, life doing its intervening thing and all. But I've heard Turn! Turn! Turn! twice in the last three days, and I've been missing him. So today I paid a visit.

I didn't just want to say hi and leave, so I scrounged around, found a playing card (I'm a magician, sue me), wrote him a note, and left it in the planter with his latest spray of fresh flowers:

Hello old friend. Whenever I listen to music I hear your voice.

When is a magician not a magician

Sound like a riddle or a Zen koan, huh? But the answer is: me. I call myself magician but I haven't been performing and I haven't been practicing and I haven't been developing new material.

Today changes that. I pulled out a book by one of my influences in magic, Paul Harris, and found something that really suits my performing style. I'm going to work it up, hone it to performance readiness, then perform it enough to really polish it. In short, I'm going to become a magician again.

When I developed severe osteoarthritis I had to give up competitive table tennis. Heck, I had to give up recreational table tennis. That had been a part of my life for more than 30 years and it was strange and a little painful to have to reinvent myself and remove "table tennis player" from my definition of who I was. I don't want to remove "magician" too.

Wish me luck.

Welcome to the 21st century - please watch your step

I now have a MySpace space. It has some of the same ups and downs as the rest of the world (cyber and otherwise):

• I have run across some great music there. Three bands that invited me to be their MySpace friends - MAKAR, EyeKnife, and LiSA & KMP - ended up being incredibly good, and some others that I found just wandering - Libbie Schrader, sunshine apparatus, LEO - are equally interesting.
• Magicians on MySpace are idiots too. I was asked to give away the secret to a commercial effect (Daniel Garcia's brilliant Torn) and when I politely declined I was called names. (Could I use passive voice any more in that previous sentence?)
• I (sort of) reconnected with my table tennis past. Some MySpace table tennis players, nationally ranked, requested to be my MySpace friends. This started me reminiscing. I had actually played a couple of them in tournaments. That whole thing is kind of bittersweet since I can no longer play, even recreationally.

Anyway, stop by, leave a comment, maybe catch some interesting new music.

Sticks and stones

I just got through a bout of kidney stones and their associated removal. Not anything I'd wish on my worst enemy.

I'm still feeling a little out of sorts but I'm a whole lot better than I was when the stone was still there.

Getting older sucks

but I guess it beats the alternative

Monty Python notwithstanding...

...I hate spam. Let me say it again:
I. Hate. Spam.
So when I received an unsolicited advertisement from James George I was a little miffed.

(For the uninitiated, James George is the inventor of the ITR, mini ITR, micro ITR, ITR in pen, ITR in briefcase, ITR in ham sandwich, ITR in small mammal, ITR in rectal cavity, ITR in...Well, you get the picture. He's a veritable font of creativity - if it involves an ITR.)

I emailed him expressing my displeasure that I had received an unsolicited ad (because, remember, I. Hate. Spam.). I also noted that, because he spammed me I would not buy anything from his company or anything produced by him.

He responded thusly:

Well I didn't sign you up!

But suit yourself, we will note your name and never allow you to buy products from our site.

We are the company that invented the Invisible Thread Reel. Just so you know, many of our new inventions are exclusive to us and not available anywhere else.
Consider yourself black balled from our site.

Kind
Regards,

James George
CEO Sorcery
manufacturing

P.s. Add yourself to our Newsletter at MyITR.Com right now, and receive a FREE E-book on Invisible Thread and the ITR. This includes ten fantastic effects that are professional quality, these are routines that you will use, no pipe dreams. One of them, you make a borrowed ring float through the air and into a spectator's hand and you walk away clean.

Consider myself black balled? First of all it's one word - "blackballed", second, hardly a threat since I had already "black balled" myself from his site and his products. Thirdly, and he knows this as well as I do, nobody signed me up. He harvested my email address from some magic web site and doesn't want to 'fess up to it.

Oh, and the first email wasn't enough so he sent a "P.S.:"

Oh and

Get a Life!

Had he not added that little bon mot I would have let the whole thing go. But hey, "Get a life?" I'm betting his magic performances are as original as his insults. In any event I emailed him congratulating him on his continued good PR and explained that I would be sharing it with my magical friends. His response (and yes, he continues to respond, Lord knows why):

Like I said,
Bug off and get a life.

I am sure someone who was pissed off at you signed you up. I can see why they would do this, you are both petty and boring.

Notice that (A) He repeats the dubious claim that someone signed me up for his site, and (B) He actually understands that being signed up for his site is a punishment.

I continue my relatively polite responses (I've signed off every one with "Have a nice day"), this time only thanking him for his continued responses and urging him to continue to do so.

His response:

Yawn...ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

I tried to respond with this:

You haven't figured it out yet, so I'll spell it out, using small words so you'll understand: I have only responded to emails you send. If you don't send one, I don't respond. Hasn't happened yet, won't happen. You're the spammer here, I'm just responding. If this is boring you, then quit, spammer.

Have a nice day.

But it was rejected because

User unknown

He's blocked my address. Finally. First sensible thing he's done in this whole exchange.

Damn spammers.

Max and Minch and Protocols - oh my!

The cat's out of the bag regarding the contents of Max Maven's book The Protocols of the Elders of Magic (a title I still find a wee distasteful).

Bloggers everywhere (not here) have revealed it, and Jamy Ian Swiss spilled the beans in his review in the December issue of Genii.

I still have to wonder: Would the book have sold out - especially prior to release - if people knew what they were buying?

Well, it sounded good in theory...

Magic theory. Not an exact science. Yet get a few (serious) magicians together and they'll hash and rehash the reasons behind the success or failure of various ventures, deconstruct endless routines, and spout bon mots from their favorite authors.

So where does theory meet practice? Do I discard theory altogether? Is Henning Nelms hopelessly out of date? Does Tommy Wonder's advice only work for him?

It comes down to this: magic is applied psychology. And psychology is neither a hard science nor an exact science. It's constantly being refined as we better understand ourselves and as the dynamics of human interactions change.

So it means that magic theory, like any theory, must be tested. If we really want to get our ducks in a row we ought to change our language. Things fairly well tested are theories. Relativity. Evolution (oops, going to catch some flak for that...). Spectators tend to focus on things that move rather than things that sit still, in the absence of other stimuli.

Those things not yet satisfactorily borne out by practice are postulates, not yet theories. Red cards are better than blue (or vice versa). One should never (or always) write one's own magic script. You shouldn't do card tricks for kids.

Why worry about magic theory at all? Because it can save a lot of time - otherwise each routine, each move, each line has to be developed in vacuo, with nothing to inform as to it's value other than empirical testing. That would be fun, wouldn't it - having to do market research on every facet of a routine before it became audience-ready? Also, understanding your personal theoretical underpinnings will help you develop as a magician. You'll know your foundation and will have that foundation to build against.

It was bad, but at least nobody watched

The latest Penn & Teller special (Off the Deep End) looked, from my point of view, to be a carbon copy of everything they've been railing against for years.

And to think I used to respect them.

The good news? They tanked (no pun intended) in the ratings.

So why do I keep coming back...

...if magic and magicians suck as hard as I say they do?

Good question.

A couple of reasons, I think. The first sounds a bit like a Zen koan. I was in bitch mode one time, threatening to quit the whole magic mess, when an acquaintance hit me with these words: "You can't quit. You didn't choose magic. It chose you." I haven't heard from that acquaintance for a number of years but I have pondered those words often since he spoke them to me a couple of decades ago.

The other reason can be summed up in a song lyric that I'll get to in a minute. There are dilettantes in magic, and dumb shits, and dickheads, but some of my closest friends and some of my finest hours have been due to magic and magicians - it's just easier sometimes, when life seems to be a little rougher than you'd wish, to write about the bad stuff. Oh, that lyric?

The moon has a face

And it smiles on the lake

And causes the ripples in Time

I'm lucky to be here

With someone I like

Who maketh my spirit to shine

Those who know me will know the artist. Those who don't can use a good search engine (I recommend vivisimo). And if you think the lyric refers to you, it probably does.

Speaking of which, if you're interested in learning more about magic, you might go here.

Fringes

I want magic to be more of a mainstream art. I don't want it to be a diversion, something "for the kiddies," a placeholder between the eating of the cake and the opening of the gifts. When people speak of great artists I'd like Cardini to be discussed along with Nureyev and Shakespeare and Monet and Enrico Caruso.

Then again, I'd love for horror fiction to not be considered "genre" fiction, and for good horror writers to be discussed as good writers, not as good "in their field". And when I played table tennis I longed for the day when people considered it a real sport and not just some genteel parlor recreation. I'd recite the facts about how a table tennis match provides the same aerobic exercise as a three mile race but you'd only get bored and it wouldn't change your mind anyway.

The point of all this? I'm not sure there is one, except that maybe I'm involved in so many fringe pursuits that I don't fit in anywhere. I'm a minority of one. This isn't always something to celebrate if one is looking for connections.

Magic sucks

A secondhand story, but from two sources, both of whom I consider reliable:

The setting: The local magic club meeting
The cast: The club regulars, along with a couple of visitors
The plot: Secrets may be revealed to people who are (gasp!) not club members, sending some into a tizzy
The theme: magicians are idiots

So there were visitors at the local magic club this particular night. Not an issue, right? You'd think not, but we're not dealing with reasonable people here - we're dealing with magicians. Any intersection between magicians and common sense is purely coincidental, and if you're concerned, don't be. The union won't last long.

During one of the segments anyone who signed up was to perform, then teach, a trick. None of the tricks were earth-shattering. None were proprietary. In fact, all of the effects taught that night are available for free in books at my local library.

And the visitors...Were they just people who wandered in off the street? Were they hooligans who somehow crashed this exclusive magicians soiree? Nope, they were recent graduates of a magic camp who had been told about this 'wonderful' club by the proprietors of the camp.

I'm betting you're getting ahead of me at this point. Anyway, the time comes to teach these ever-so-valuable secrets and a hue and cry goes up: we must not allow the visitors to stay while we exhibit our superior knowledge! A debate ensues. After much haranguing and hair-pulling it is decided that perhaps, just this once, these neophytes can be allowed a peek behind the curtain.

Bah.

They had already demonstrated an interest in magic by graduating from the magic camp, and by seeking out the club. And the difference between those deemed worthy to learn these deep, dark secrets and those doomed to ignorance? Fifteen dollars. That's right. No test, no initiation, no apprenticeship. Hand me your check and we ain't got no problem.

There are those in magic who have a slavish devotion to keeping the secrets of magic, well, secret. Unfortunately they often do this blindly, never looking to see if what they are doing is causing a greater harm.

If I were among those visitors that night I would have grabbed my wallet, headed toward the door, and bid those creepy magicians a fond farewell, letting them keep their 'secrets' as I went off and learned magic.

Peace.

Carry On, Wayward Son

Ah, but can life ever return to normal? And what is "normal"? And why do I post way past my bedtime so you have to read this unintelligible drivel?

I've found it hard to settle back into any sort of rhythm lately, and to get excited about magic. I mean, who cares? Card tricks. Bleh. In the grand scheme, it's nothing. That's the thing about performance art anyway -- by it's very nature it's ephemeral. Writers can create things that last at least hundreds of years. Ditto painters and sculptors. But once a dancer or an actor or a magician is done, his or her creation is gone, less than a puff of smoke, no more impression than a shadow.

Great performance artists at least can leave memories. Magicians are still talking about Hofzinser (but, to prove my point, ask 1000 members of the general public who he was...), Lionel Barrymore's name still comes up in acting circles, jugglers still talk about Enrico Rastelli and singers still mention Jenny Lind. But who am I kiddin'? I never was a great performance artist. I'd have to work hard to scratch my way up to mediocre. I'm not even good in my circle of performance acquaintances. So why care? Why keep it up? Why get excited?

Maybe it's just the circumstances -- all that's happened recently, and the fact that I'm posting this way past my bedtime in a quiet apartment after a tough day at work. Or maybe it really doesn't matter any more and I need to find something to do with the shelves full of magic books and the decks of cards and the half dollars that nobody else but magic nerds carry. There's always eBay.

Peace.

ob-la-di ob-la-da life goes on

I haven't post much or done much magic recently, even though I have some new (and old) goodies I haven't really touched. My brother's death has affected me more than I want to admit. But life goes on for the rest of us and I don't want to get caught in a spiral of gloom and doom.

(Side note: Hi, Kigali!)

Old and new items I'll be working on and/or reviewing in the near future include Barrie Richardson's Act Two, Daniel Garcia's Torn DVD, and a couple of tricks: "Sideswiped" by Simon Aronson and Ton Onosaka's "Bicycle Built For Five."

If you have any words of wisdom to help me through these tough times either email me or leave them as comments.

Peace.