Finally moved

We're finally moved into the new house. I pretty much killed my already bad knees in the process. I went back to wearing a knee brace I hadn't had to wear for a while. Oh well.

We don't have DSL at home yet - I'm posting this from work.

Wish my knees well.

A weighty issue

Once upon a time there was an online magic group. This group was supposedly composed of Magic Utopians who were convinced they could rise above the pettiness, sameness and bitterness that infuses so much of magic.

I wish.

In a recent post to said group, one James Hamilton ("Compars"), in responding to a thread on straitjacket escapes, threw in this paragraph:

The other problem I have is so many of the people doing straight jacket escapes are middle age guys who are a tad bit overweight. Nothing more disgusting or should I say pathetic watching a fat man rolling around on a stage. In my lifetime, I have probably seen only 2-3 entertaining S/J escapes.

To which I responded:

So if one is middle aged and/or overweight one should refrain from doing escapes? Or should one just make sure you aren't in the audience?

No one else in the group seemed offended by his statement. Perhaps I'm the only ugly one in the group.

I'd be curious to hear Mr. Hamilton's cutoff age and body mass index for doing escapes. In fact, I asked these very questions, but the moderator vetoed my post. Odd that he OKed Mr. Hamilton's original post, but not mine. Apparently it's perfectly fine to be prejudiced against older fat people but not fine to question said prejudices.

I'd also like to know if other standards of attractiveness come into play, and if they just exclude one from escapes. I have scars, I'm balding, and I walk with a limp that is fairly pronounced at times. Hell, maybe I shouldn't even get on stage at all.

Given that I'm the only one who complained about Mr. Hamilton's statement (the moderator complimented him on his post) I question just how Utopian this group really is.

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

Addendum: Magic Utopia blog has removed this blog from its blogrolls. I will keep the Magic Utopia blog in mine.

A question: if the adjective in the offending post had been "black," or "gay," or "female," would the moderators have let Mr. Hamilton's post stand without comment? I think not. Why, then, was "fat" allowed to stand? I postulate that it is a shared prejudice. I wait to be proved wrong.

It's my birthday

Happy birthday to me

New blog in my blogroll

I added a new blog to my Sites of Interest: John Hill's Out Of My Hat. John is a Christian and a magician (I thinks it's fairly safe to put them in that order...) and he has a wicked sense of humor. His ideas on magic, if not on religion, seem fairly close to mine.

In keeping with my perverse sense of order, I put the link for his site right next to one for Kazim's Korner, Russell Glasser's site devoted to atheism.

May the two links always rest side by side in heavenly peace.

Done deal

Signed the papers, handed over the check, took possession of the keys.

I am now a homeowner.

Le Tourniquet

A MySpace magician wannabe posted a message in a magic group dissing the French Drop. I kinda liked my reply. So without further ado (and who needs more ado?) here is his unedited post and my unedited reply:

seems lame to me. if you just cup it behind your fingers like that people will
instantly think you just left it in ur hand, how do i go about switchin hands to
make it look like the coins totally vanished? should i use a quarter or half
dollar to practice with? vansihing is way fun.

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

Like most sleights, getting away with the French Drop is as much a matter of attitude and audience management as it is technique. It isn't just a matter of, "hold the coin in the left hand, take it with the right hand, make a magical gesture, show it gone." You have to manage the moments before, during and after the sleight.

There are several things you can do, depending on what you're going to do following the vanish. One of the things I do if I'm using it as a one-off trick (a rarity - there are stronger single tricks) is to extend the hand that supposedly contains the coin and ask the spectator to tap it. I stand fairly close to them as I ask them to do this. They are forced to look at my hand as they tap it.

In the meantime, my other hand has already naturally dropped to my side,coin in fingertip rest position, arm and shoulder relaxed. (Tension in the hand/arm that really holds the coin is a dead giveaway.) As they reach to tap my hand that supposedly holds the coin, I ditch the coin in my pocket with as little motion as possible.

I then reveal the vanish.

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

I then followed up with another post:

Oh, and the management continues...I forgot to mention that before revealing the
vanish, the hand that just ditched the coin moves away from the pocket - I make
a gesture or pick something up - depends on the choreography. If you stay near
your pocket it puts heat on the pocket.

I don't think our would-be conjurer had seen such examples of management before. He thanked me profusely and, in an email, asked for more advice.

There may yet be hope.

Happy Birthday

Today is my lovely wife's birthday, and we are soon to celebrate our 25th anniversary.
I sometimes wonder how she has spent so much time with a schmuck like me.


I'm just glad she has.

Closing time

December 14.
December 14.
December 14.
December 14.
December 14.

Inspections are done, the seller has agreed to repair everything the inspector found, we found an insurer (much cheaper than the estimate, thankyouverymuch), the lender's inspection is complete.

All that's left for us to be able to move into our new house is closing.

Any guesses on the date?

Stressed?! ME?!

We had the inspection done on the new house yesterday. There were several little things wrong, and one or two medium-sized things, but no deal-breakers, provided they get fixed.

Our new car came in today. It should be ready for pick-up this afternoon.

We're driving to see my wife's parents tomorrow (Saturday), driving back on Sunday, then driving back again on Wednesday, and driving back Thursday (Thanksgiving).

THINGS ARE FINE, THANKS. WHY DO YOU ASK?!

With two cats in the yard...

Today was supposed to be a day of relaxation. We were going to see an exhibit of Egyptian artifacts. Due to circumstances beyond our control, the dead Egyptians would have to wait.

We received an email from our realtor asking if we could come up with a list of five houses to go see this coming Sunday (today). We slogged through the list of homes he sent and, after hours of head-scratching, discussion, viewing, re-viewing, tears and recriminations we narrowed the list to five.

We met Mr. Realtor at his office where he promptly told us our top choice had been taken off the market. Promising start.

The first home we saw was fair. It was nothing special. The second was a bit better, but not by much. The third was awful - cracks in the driveway and foundation, awful paint job, bad fixtures - just a mess. We were getting discouraged.

We were down to the last house on our list. It was...nearly perfect. Newly installed heat and air, new paint job, new tiling, new carpet, large living area and master bedroom, nice, small fenced yard. Two tiny flaws: the closets aren't quite as big as I'd want, and the driveway has some cracks. I can deal.

In about 90 minutes we're going over to the realtors to sign some paperwork and hand off some earnest money. It looks like I'm going to be a middle-aged first-time homeowner. o_O

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

Due to a recent change in circumstances, I am:

• paying off my credit card debt
  
• buying my wife a new car (she currently has a 1982[!] Toyota Tercel, rust colored, but not by choice)
  
• buying a home
  

This is all very liberating and oddly stressful.

Why magic?

Face it, magic's an odd preoccupation. Our goal as magicians is to work so hard on our technique that it becomes invisible, in order to show people things that clearly can't happen. And people wonder why magicians are so odd.

The dichotomy really is crucial to what draws many (and I include myself) to magic. We tend to have odd views of the world, and are often not mainstream in other areas of our lives. Magic tends to mirror (if not correct) many of the oddities we find in our own personalities.

I got fed up with magic club politics once and was bitching to a friend about it, threatening to quit magic. He told me I couldn't do that, because I didn't choose magic, it chose me. Once I thought about that I decided he was right. Magic really does have an insidious hold on me.

Why magic? I want to remind people, myself included, that there is still wonder in the world and it's worth seeking.

I don't care...

Heard at a magic club meeting: "I don't care if I fool them, as long as I entertain them." Really? I submit that if you're not fooling them you're not doing magic. You may be juggling, or doing comedy, or doing drama, or some other performance art, but you're not doing magic. Nothing wrong with this unless you're billing yourself as a magician. If you want to be a magician you'd better care if you fool them, sparky. That's not all you need to do by any means, and in fact it's just a starting point. But if you want to be a magician it's an essential starting point. I can only imagine my mechanic saying, "I didn't fix the car, but I got it clean!"

The problem is easy to spot. In fact, it was defined in the first three words of the offending statement: "I don't care..."

Journeys

In memory of my grandmother, who died a little more than a year ago, I'm reposting this. It appeared on a previous blog of mine, posted on March 4, 2005. I've been thinking about family quite a bit lately, so I figured this deserved a re-airing.

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

I recently completed a trip. I drove over 1400 miles and traveled more than thirty years back in time.

I was born in Scottsbluff, a small town in far western Nebraska. I don't remember when I was last there, but I know I wasn't driving yet so it's been more than thirty years.

My grandmother is moving into an assisted living facility so she contacted a number of us to go through her belongings and see if we wanted anything. She already lives at the facility but she's moving from the 'independent' section to the 'assisted' section. She's 88 ("snowmen" if you play poker) and due to the vagaries of insurance it's hard to get immediate care if you need it in the independent apartments. In the assisted living section assistance is a button push away. So she sends out the call and I finagle some time off of work and off we go a la Herbert George Wells.

Teresa and I board the cats on Saturday in anticipation of getting an early start on Sunday. Oops. I was hoping to get out no earlier than 8:00, but we weren't on the road until 10:00. Mapquest said it would take us about 12 hours but, knowing how I drive, I mentally add a couple of hours to that estimate.

The weather, at least, was cooperative. We had a little drizzle in Kansas but otherwise Mother Nature was at her best. I remember building snow forts when I was a kid that would last for weeks, and seeing frequent drifts that were taller than I was, so an extended forecast of mid-50s to low-60s kind of astounded me. I later found out it astounded the locals as well.

We made it to Sidney, NE that first day, 9:00 Central time, but somewhere along the way we had meandered into Mountain time so everyone else thought it was 8:00. Sidney is only about two hours from Scottsbluff but my eyes were starting to play tricks on me so it was time to stop. (I love to drive and Teresa hates to drive, so I did all the driving all the way there and all the way back. But hey, that's nuthin'. We traveled about 4000 miles on our honeymoon and I drove all but 200 miles of it.)

I wasn't sure what to expect when we got there. We have a small apartment, already crammed full - me with my magic, Teresa with quilting, and both of us with books - so I knew we couldn't take much, and certainly nothing big. But hey, it may be my last chance to see grandma.

It's really strange watching someone go through the accumulations of their life, deciding what is important and what is expendable as they figure things will end soon. Some of the choices were obvious and others were less so. Grandma has buried a husband and two children, one of them my mother, and she saved memories from each.

I remember when my uncle died when I was very young. We lived in Omaha then. Uncle Joel's number had come up in the draft. The way I heard the story, my grandparents were upstairs and they heard a pop. Apparently it didn't sound like a gun. They went to investigate and found him on the basement floor, one of my grandfather's rifles still in his hands. We drove to the funeral, but my brothers and I didn't attend. I remember lots of strangers offering condolences, but I was really too young to understand. He was my favorite uncle. Grandma saved some clippings from the memorial service, but not much else.

My mom, her daughter, died just before Thanksgiving in 2003. (I hate November/December. I've had more friends and family die in those two months than in all the others combined. I'm certain that when I go it will be in November.) Again, there were some items from a memorial service but not much else. She decided to pitch a bunch of old photos.

She kept a number of things from her husband, who died several years ago. He painted, so she kept some of his paintings. She also kept a number of photographs. She reminisced a lot about him. I had to bite my tongue - he severely abused my mother, a cycle she perpetuated with her children. I understand how these cycles get carried on, and it's the reason I don't have any children despite Teresa and I having just celebrated our 23rd wedding anniversary.

88 years old and everything she owns now fits in half of a very small room. She seemed remarkable unsentimental in getting rid of the rest. She would speak lovingly of a copper tea set she and her husband picked up on a cruise to Acapulco, then beg us to take it off her hands. Wedding pictures (hers, her childrens', her grandchildrens') - pitched. Most of her clothes - gone. Ditto with furniture, jewelry, knick-knacks, kitchen utensils and a whole lot of other stuff you really don't realize you accumulate until you need to get rid of it.

I ended up with a microwave, a few photos (including a picture of me in my hippie days - young, hair past my shoulders, and [sigh] thin), and some new thoughts to process.

I look around as I type this and I'm surrounded by stuff. Way more stuff than I need. Certainly more stuff than our 850 square foot apartment can comfortably accommodate. And to what end? When I'm 88 (assuming I haven't expired some November prior to that), I'll just have to call someone - and I won't even have grandkids... not having children does that - and unsentimentally have them cart most of it away.

I think I'll start early. I've already quit buying new magic. I think I'll be giving some of the old stuff away. Not all of it, mind you, but right now I have way more than I need to keep me busy to the end of my days, even if I make it way past 88.

The trip also reaffirmed my love for magic. Teresa and I ate in the care center's communal dining room Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, and I performed those final two days. On Tuesday people were at first hesitant, but after they saw what I could do they warmed up. On Wednesday I hadn't planned on performing at all but several tables requested me so hey, what can you do when your public beckons? One lady kept following me around, acting as my announcer/ PR person/#1 fan.

I mentioned a Zen saying in a post several months ago - the one that says you can't step in the same river twice. I think my river just radically changed course.

...and grandma? As little as Teresa and I did, grandma just kept thanking us for how much we helped. We showed up, we met her friends, we shared memories, we made sure she was ok. I'm pretty sure these meant more to her than any of the stuff she has ever accumulated.

Slightly distracting

I got an email regarding my father-in-law regarding his leukemia. I didn't know much about leukemia, so I didn't know the seriousness of his condition, since grades and treatability can vary widely. One phrase from the email jumped out:

"Dr. Xxxxxx re-emphasized the fact that there is currently no cure for acute myelogenous leukemia (AML) and that the average life span from point of diagnosis is 6 to 12 months. It has already been over a month since diagnosis occurred."

I'm not going to be worth shit at work today.

The things magicians forget

I've seen magicians become inbred. They get caught up in their own jargon, thought processes and rationales. They forget how to relate to the real world. Some examples:
1. More phases does not necessarily make for a better routine.
2. Tuxedos
3. That thing in your hand is not a "silk". It's a handkerchief, a scarf, a scrap of fabric, a shawl for a midget... but in the real world, it's not a "silk". Especially when it's rayon.
4. I have yet to meet a spectator who thinks sleights are cool. Don't show them off to non-magicians.
5. To paraphrase Maskelyne & Devant, don't get on stage unless you have something to say. And, "I'm cooler than you because I can do this and you can't," isn't very interesting to most people. Not to mention it's not true.
6. An act where lots of cards are selected but revealed in different ways does not constitute variety.
7. Don't say, "I have an ordinary..." deck of cards, coin, whatever, unless you're parodying bad magicians.
8. Dove pans

Now, the above list is not cast in stone. Max Maven was quoted as saying, "The only rule of theater that can't be broken is - there are no rules of theater that can't be broken." Break a rule for the right reasons and you can be a genius. But break one just to break one and you're not a genius or a rebel, you're a moron.

Today's Fun Link: Visions Online.
This site sometimes educates me, sometimes makes me laugh, sometimes pisses me off, but never bores me.

A poem (not by me)

Name the poet, get a gold star for the day (whee). Guess why I might have posted this particular poem, get two gold stars (double whee):

Eye and Tooth

My whole eye was sunset red,
the old cut cornea throbbed,
I saw things darkly,
as through an unwashed goldfish globe.

I lay all day on my bed.
I chain-smoked through the night,
learning to flinch
at the flash of the matchlight.

Outside, the summer rain,
a simmer of rot and renewal,
fell in pinpricks.
Even new life is fuel.

My eyes throb.
Nothing can dislodge
the house with my first tooth
noosed in a knot to the doorknob.

Nothing can dislodge
the triangular blotch
of rot on the red roof,
a cedar hedge, or the shade of a hedge.

No ease from the eye
of the sharp-shinned hawk in the birdbook there,
with reddish-brown buffalo hair
on its shanks, one asectic talon

clasping the abstract imperial sky.
It says:
an eye for an eye,
a tooth for a tooth.

No ease for the boy at the keyhole,
his telescope,
when the women's white bodies flashed
in the bathroom. Young, my eyes began to fail.

Nothing! No oil
for the eye, nothing to pour
on those waters or flames.
I am tired. Everyone's tired of my turmoil.

Just when you thought it was safe to get back in the water

I haven't posted here in a while, and it's a shame that it takes a "life event" (don't you love those psychiatric euphemisms?) to bring me back.

My father-in-law was just diagnosed with Acute Myeloma Leukemia. That's right, boys and girls; cancer. The big C. Initially they thought he was just anemic because that's what this particular brand of nastiness does at first - it crowds everything out of your bone marrow so there is no room for red & white cell production.

He's on chemotherapy: something called hydroxia. He can look forward to hair loss, reduced energy, loss of appetite and other happy side effects.

A prediction: People who haven't contacted me in ages, even people whom I've tried to contact and gotten no response, will suddenly crawl out of the woodwork offering sympathy. Will they mean it?

Perspective

Two Zevon posts in a row, I know, but just another reason I liked the guy - he put things in perspective.

Here is a letter from the "Correspondence, Love Letters & Advice" column of the November 3, 1977, issue of ROLLING STONE:

You're to be commended for your in-depth but unsensationalist issue about Elvis Presley (RS 248). The King -- and he surely was -- is dead. It's a grief we all share.

I'm hoping that your readers are aware of the fact that another great American artist just died, too: Robert Lowell, our finest poet. Now the rest of us must go on, and mourn with dignity, consoled by their unkillable voices.

--Warren Zevon
Los Angeles, California

Time marches on

Here is one of my favorite articles about my favorite musician. It is also why I always say, "four of hearts" if anyone asks me to name a card.

Both the author of the article and the musician are now deceased (the musician died a few years ago; the author passed last week).

Play some of your favorite music in their honor.