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Barbara Walters’ Specials Specialize in Boosting Barbara

Topo’s Heartbreak

You know you?ve made it when Barbara Walters interviews you. You?ve at least made it in Barbara?s eyes and that?s saying something, I guess.

She will do her best to make her guests cry, laugh and generally praise her on this week?s ?Ten Most Fascinating People of 2003.?

Who can forget when she got former Ed Sullivan Show stalwart Topo Gigio to sob as he confessed that he felt manipulated by his former partner and creative manager, Maria Perego?

Won?t we always recall the great sense of joy we felt when we watched her dine anddance with,and then drunkenlygrope, a leering Don Knotts?

Well, this week, Barbara brings her interrogation talents to break the will of Beyonc? Knowles, Jennifer Lopez/Ben Affleck and Siegfried and Roy. (There are others but you get the picture).

With great sensitivity, ABC promotes the broadcast by telling papers:

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December 12th, 2003 | Category: Magic News | Leave a comment

Magic In the News: Blotchy, Itchy and Raw

An Old News Tradition

There is an old tradition in the news business, that when there’s no news, put a picture of a “pretty girl and her dog on the cover.” We don’t need her today, though.

Sometimes the Magic news just isn’t there. I comb the wires looking for stories and if I don’t find anything, I just make it up. (See, November 12, 2003 edition of the page where the top story is, “Houdini Returns From Dead: But Cadaver-Like Appearance Scares Young Audience in Kid Show Debut” or August 3, 2003, “Uri Geller Opens Shop as Orthodontist: But Cadaver-Like Appearance Scares Young Patients”).

But today is special. Today the news is full of good stuff for people who love Magic. For instance, check out the Sarasota Herald Tribune ? where my father was a writer a few years back ? for a great article on Michael Barron and his ability to change his clothes in a quarter of a second. He tells the paper the theme of his act ? so it doesn’t appear to be just a regular strip off all your clothes and put on new clothes routine:

“It’s about a janitor, and I’m cleaning up after a birthday party and I find a birthday cake that is all mangled. I make a wish and it doesn’t happen, so I go away,” he said in a telephone interview from Chicago. “Then it explodes in a flash of light, and I become this hot-shot guy in a zoot suit with money flying everywhere. Literally, in a quarter of a second, I’m in a different costume.”

The article points out that the young Mr. Barron won the 2002 Gold Cups with the act.…
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December 12th, 2003 | Category: Magic News | Leave a comment