Carlos and Mary Working — I Couldn’t Get Them to Look at the Camera.
We received very sad news from John Luka this evening.
Mary
Blades, devoted wife of Carlos Blades, and wonderful hostess of the
Garden City Magic Shop in Garden City, Michigan passed away in her
sleep last night.
I?ve written often about my admiration for Carlos and Mary.Their shop is the prototypical magic shop.The kind we all dream of owning one day.There was a stage in the back where they would feature the great lectures brought to Southeastern Michigan by John Luka.
Mary
was so warm and welcoming to everyone who came to the shop. She had a
smile that lit up the room and clearly cared about the people she met
at the shop and she was fond of telling me of how she and Carlos would
travel to help with Christian Missions out west.
She was an engaging woman and when she spoke with you, you felt you were the only one in the room.
She
was telling me just the other day how she was going to get one of
?those Dummy Books? to learn about the Internet and the computer so
that she could do genealogy research.She was so proud of Carlos and clearly loved him.
Bloodcurdling screams one minute, unstoppable laughs the next ­this Halloween, The Amazing Johnathan Show will feature special performances celebrating this ghostly holiday, Oct.17-22, 24-29 and 31 at Flamingo LasVegas.
During the rest of the year, Amazing Johnathan is known as themacabre, eccentric comic magician who explodes with raw humor and abrasivebut Halloween has a special meaning for him?and this year is nodifferent.
Gina Brings Us News!
During these special engagements, Amazing Johnathan will display disturbing illusions sure to scare the pants off every audience member.Before the show, clips… Continue reading Amazing Jonathan Rocks the House
In a syndicated column in newspapers across the USA on October 13th, The Houston Chronicle and the Atlanta Journal -Constitution to name but two examples, Penn Jillette wrote about how magician’s “misdirection” is used in magic acts to help fool people.
He explains how during one routine in their show he points to Teller across the stage, and at that moment he does “something sneaky” with his left hand, which the audience does not notice. He of course doesn’t tell us what the “sneaky” thing is that he does, as he would not want to reveal the secret of a trick that HE does on HIS show.
He then moves on to explain an example of how misdirection is used in other magician’s shows:
“If you hook some hard-to-see wires to an underweight teenager in a harness, and you lift her up, everyone figures there are wires. But if you then bring out a hoop and pass it around her the audience thinks, ‘Well, there can’t be any wires. Hmm, must be real magic..’
“The misdirection works by having gaps in the hoop so you can pass it over the teenager without hitting the strings…MIT professor Marvin Minsky one time wondered if the hanging woman trick was done using liquid nitrogen to cool everything down to superconductivity. Superconductivity or a gap in the hoop? OK. So I hope I’ve explained the idea of misdirection.”
OK. So I hope I’ve explained the idea of misdirection.”
Penn Gillette?s partner, Teller, has head to Omaha, Nebraska, to write a biography of one of the great, but relatively unknown magicians in our Art.
David P. Abbott passed away in 1934 and was, in his time, a famous debunker of spiritualists and mentalists.His work Fraudulent Spiritualism Unveiled is available for download from Blackmask Online. His knowledge of magic was considered so valuable that Houdini would travel to visit Mr. Abbott.
We look forward to Teller?s book.If you haven?t had a chance to read Teller?s writing, you have been missing quite a bit.His prose is outstanding and his love of magic is obvious.I have been so impressed by his essays that occasionally could be heard on NPR.
We?re looking forward to the book, the story and the long-overdue tribute to a great magician. Check out news coverage of Teller’s work here.
According
to published reports through the Associated Press and on CBS, Roy Horn
had a portion of his skull surgicallyremoved following the Bengal Tiger attack.The
news comes to the press through Dr. Lonnie Hammargren, a neurosurgeon
who did not operate on Roy but did speak with Dr. Derek Duke, the
surgeon who conducted the common procedure.
Dr. Hammargren offered the information to press outlets to correct the more dramatic stories about the surgery.There
were apparently published reports (although I couldn’t find them
through my news search) that Roy underwent a hemicraniectomy ? the
removal of half of his skull.This type of operation, as you can imagine, is radical and rarely necessary.
Dr. Duke did perform a decompressive craniectomy to relieve pressure caused by welling of Roy’s brain.This
procedure involves taking about one quarter of the skull and after the
brain swelling is abated, the skull piece is surgically returned to its
place.According to the Associate Press, Dr.
Hammargren said, “Dr. Duke did exactly the operation he should have.
Otherwise, Roy would be dead.”
The skull piece is kept either frozen or placed within the patient’s abdomen until the replacement surgery.The
stroke Roy suffered following the attack did not affect the area of the
brain that would affect his speech, thought or memory.Dr. Hammargren said he “can still think and contemplate things.”
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