Archive for September, 2004

Centre Michigan Magic Club Report – March, 2002

Susan Hachette

Editor: As promised, here is the first of many reports from the Centre Michigan Magic Club (“CMMC”).  As loyal readers will recall, for some reason, the CMMC is unable to have its reports published in either the Linking Ring or MUM.  We have agreed to publish the reports here as a service to our magic community.

If you are unfamiliar with the names or situations in this report, click here to read a summary of the club and the folks who call it home. 

These are the unedited (with one necessary exception) notes of the Club Secretary, Susan Hachette.  We received these minutes as well as those that will be published in subsequent editions along with her permission to publish them in Inside Magic.

March 4, 2002.  Elks Club, Vandergraph Avenue, Centre, Michigan.  

Tonight’s business meeting ran long ? too long.  President Bill “I love my own voice” Post wanted to make sure we all understood that we had to pay dues on-time.  Calvin “MagiCal” Jorgenson made an innocent joke, “You mean we can pay our dues ‘over time‘?”  It wasn’t horribly funny but it wasn’t horrible either and that is what we expect from MagiCal, jokes that aren’t that funny but are kind of funny. 

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Today’s Inside Magic News – Entropy Increases

The Magic of Recycling. Greg Allen is featured in today’s papers for his work to promote recycling as part of the Magic of Recycling program.  The program features four magicians who travel around the country presenting a message and magic.  “I liked all the magic, and he showed us why we should recycle,” said fourth-grader Imonee Qualls. “The landfills are going to fill up.”

Mr. Allen told the children that many people think a soda bottle disappears when they throw it in the trash. Not so, he says, telling the story about how the garbage man picks it up and it ends up in a landfill. Through recycling — and magic — he turns the old bottle into a sparkling new one.

The program is sponsored by local agencies as well as the John Deere Community Credit Union; Black Hawk County Solid Waste Management Commission; the cities of Waterloo, Cedar Falls and Evansdale; Cedar Heights and Hudson schools.

It sounds like a fantastic program.  If you would like to read the full article, click here.

Fourteen Year-Old Kyle Key Kicks It in Contest. The 14-year-old from Lacombe is a two-time winner at the Pacific Coast Association of Magicians (PCAM) convention with his latest win at Seattle in August. He received the award of First Place in the Junior Category of Children’s Entertainment ? he bested 30 other magicians for the title.  Last year, the incredible Master Key picked up First Place in the Juvenile Category for…
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Inside Magic’s Weekend News

The Pendragons

Speaking of the Pendragons – How Did You Celebrate Pendragon Week? The Pendragons are pushing the Houdini envelope. The Coloradoan gives the Pendragons about two takes – newspaper talk for two pages of typed double-spaced text – of praise in today’s paper.

The paper shares secrets about which we had no knowledge. For instance, did you know that this week was Pendragons Week in Denver, just in time for their two shows?
The honor was proclaimed by Denver Mayor, John Hickenlooper, in recognition of their recent inclusion in the Guinness Book of World Records. The Guinness folks say The Pendragons are the fastest performers in the history of magic to perform Houdini’s Metamorphosis.

Here is another secret. Did you know Mr. Pendragon was the stuntman who was standing in for John Belushi doing backflips down a church aisle in "The Blues Brothers (1980).

It’s true.

But it is not just speed and agility that gets a week named in your honor. "Charm is an under-rated element nowadays," Mr. Pendragon said in an interview from his California home.
"Knowing the secret doesn’t make it interesting. It’s the interpretation, all the presentation and the craft that comes in behind it.

"The audience should expect personality," Jonathan Pendragon said from his home near San Luis Obispo, Calif. "It’s not television. It’s not a movie. It’s the live performance where personality can come through. It’s also has charm, magic and poetry."

Read the full article here.    

“Vanity”

Eyes, Lies and Illusions – A Cultural Examination of Magic’s Images. A wonderful new exhibit tracing the history of optical illusion will open in London on October 7th. Tracing the tools of magicians and those who claimed supernatural powers, Marina Warner asks “are they the work of the devil, a gateway to another world or the key to our minds?”

Beginning with the concept that optical illusions are not supernatural but are mysterious, the exhibit traces how “illusions kept disrupting the boundaries between reality and fantasy.”
The art and commentary concludes that “running through the history of magic and the anxiety that…
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