We’ve written high praise for Ryan Swigert in the past
but only because he deserved it. Otherwise we would have trashed him
out of jealousy. We’re like that: petty, small-minded, jealous, and
unbalanced.
Mr. Swigert, on the other paw, is more thoughtful, skilled, and
even-keeled. We could be that way too but we can’t afford the co-pay.
Mr. Swigert is from Cincinnati (Ohio), a grad of the local high
school, and the University of Cincinnati but his talent has enabled his
world-wide travels. He’s performed for Snoop Doggie Dog a/k/a Snoop
Dogg and Kristi Yamaguchi a/k/a Kristi Yamaguchi. He’s only
27-years-old so he’s still got a ton of time to travel, invent
additional magic, and inspire others.
He’s also got a great gig coming up at the beautiful Cincinnatian
Hotel right on Vine Street in the heart of the city that gave us Pete
Rose, Chili on Spaghetti, and Haines House of Cards.
He’ll perform two shows a night in his new presentation Ryan
Swigert’s Parlour Magic. You can see him perform at 7:00 or 9:00 pm
August 19th, September 2nd, 16th, 23rd and 30th.
Mr. Swigert hopes to provide an intimate performance in a true
parlour-type setting. Consequently only 30 seats will be available for
each show.
Mr. Swigert tells the Cincinnati Enquirer parlour magic is not only
fun for the performer but gets the audience involved as well. He plans
on having at least one audience member involved in each trick. He wants
to bring magic back into its more intimate past.
Tickets are only $25.00. You’ll need to book early to avoid disappointment.
And we know disappointment: sitting on the edge of a roll-away cot,
crying like a girl, blaming others for not being “special enough,”
wondering if your plasma has recharged enough to make another $25.00 at
the blood bank.
Don’t be disappointed. Be happy. See the show
by a guy we are forced to admire but only because he’s good and a
decent person.
We have few regrets in our life other than selling our
Microsoft stock in 1988 to buy what turned out to be a forged
autographed photo of Ann B. Davis and Maureen McCormick
from the 1970′s archetypical show, The Brady Bunch. We learned an
important lesson. Check the spelling of alleged autographs. There are
two E’s in Maureen and no I’s.
But as we look at the millions we could have had if we had kept the
Microsoft stock or even received an actual autographed photograph of
our two favorite female actresses in a long-running, TV sitcom in which
the youngest male child was not replaced by another actor after the
first season, we realize regret is nothing more than another tool by
which we can club our ego and self-esteem like the monkeys at the
beginning of 2001: A Space Odyssey.
To be healthy, we must think
healthy. To think healthy, we must take all negative thoughts about our
incredible screw-ups in our life, ball them up into one round ball of
self-hatred and swallow them with a brimming cup of surrender and pity
so they may mutate like a cancerous, ulcerating, blob of distress
within us.
That’s the healthy way of dealing with regret.
What does this have to do with Mindvention 2005?
Well, we have kicked and scratched ourselves for months now for
missing last year’s first-annual Mindvention held in Las Vegas. We do
mentalism and love mentalism.
In particular, we love Bob Cassidy but in
a healthy kind of way. You know, obsessively buying, watching,
memorizing, and while pretending to be him (with full costume including
tattoo on our hand) doing his entire show for startled patrons at the
mall. “Who are you?” they ask incredulously. “I’m Bob Cassidy, darn
ye!”
(Speaking of Ebay: we came across a great idea based on our superior
knowledge of the history of philosophy. If something was written prior
to 1923, the original writer no longer has a copyright in the writings.
Consequently, you can steal it and it is not even like stealing. It’s
almost noble. Almost. Well, last time we checked (this morning) Plato’s
writings were almost all done before 1923 (at least the important ones
– there is something on the internet about some “Retreat” he had in
New York during the 1970′s but we don’t care about that). So you can
just steal what he wrote and say it’s yours.
Well, you can’t do that
because we just did and claimed it was ours but you could with one of
the other “Classic” writers before 1923 like Jonathan Swift, Socrates,
Dickens, Zsa-Zsa Gabor, or Hawthorne).
Hi, I’m a normal person. I’ve decided to take up a
profession where to get ahead, I will allow folks to tie me up, bury me
under six feet of dirt, or hang me from a burning rope. It seems like
it will be more exciting than my current boring job, defusing bombs and
stuff.
Who thinks that? What drives Mark Cannon, Dean Gunnarson, or anyone
to risk their life for an audience who thinks it?s fixed anyway?
Well, we don’t know. We do know that a kind young man is about to
attempt his escape from a Plexiglas coffin in October. Mario Manzini
knows the history of this particular variant of the buried-alive
effect. We’ve never spoken to a single escape artist who desired to do
the buried-alive escape a second time. Read about Banachek’s recollection of the event. Many don’t make it. Houdini himself thought it was too dangerous.
We recall seeing the horrible footage of another young man
attempting to escape from a buried Plexiglas coffin and failing. We ask
again, therefore, why anyone would choose this type of business?
It’s been a year since Mr. Manzini risked his life performing an
aerial strait-jacket escape suspended 100 feet in the warm air over
Columbia, Missouri. Because no one would think it sufficient to hang
upside down in a straight jacket whilst dangling from a burning rope
without more, Mr. Manzini asked the local police to lock his arms with
handcuffs. Sure. That makes sense. Yikes!
The mayor, police officials, local television, and the crowds
watched as he struggled against the odds and time permitted by the
rapid burn of the rope. Mr. Manzini tells Inside Magic, “Luckily, I
escaped from the cuffs and hinge cuffs and was able to escape from the
strait-jacket and on the way down to the ground as the rope was almost
burned in two I pulled out the American Flag to show it as a symbol of
Freedom (Escape) for America.”
Our first career choice was taste tester for Saddam Hussein but it got boring.
So Mr. Manzini does the logical thing. He has decided to return with
a new escape that has already taken the life of one young artist.
Winston Churchill wrote “[t]here is no greater exhilaration than to be
shot at . . . and missed.” He did not say, however, “[t]here is no
great exhilaration than to be shot at . . . and missed, and then going
back to the same place to be shot at again.”
Mr. Manzini is working to make the casket stronger to prevent a
similar cave-in. He also hopes to, “be placed inside a strait-jacket
and chains first instead of just handcuffs. I may be adding more
restraints to make it more dangerous.”
We admire those willing to risk their lives for us. Please take care Mr. Manzini and keep us informed.
Check out Mr. Manzini’s web site for more information.
Jim Steinmeyer’s last book, Hiding the Elephant: How Magicians
Invented the Impossible and Learned to Disappear, received favorable
reviews from the New York Times. Teller of Penn & Teller wrote the
insightful review and praised it for its detail and style. We agreed.
Teller did not review Mr. Steinmeyer’s latest book, The Glorious
Deception: The Double Life of William Robinson, aka Chung Ling Soo, the
“Marvelous Chinese Conjurer.” The paper assigned former food critic
William Grimes to handle the task.
The review is twelve paragraphs long. (One paragraph is really just
a sentence). The first ten and a half paragraphs recite in elementary
school-like book review format the basic mystery of Chung Ling Soo. The
last paragraph and a half offer the criticism.
Notwithstanding the
prior paragraphs laying out a pretty interesting story, Mr. Grimes
suggests the book is too long.
He might have heeded Robinson’s own advice, given in the
magic journal Mahatma: “Make your patter short and to the point. The
public, you will find, are better pleased than if you went too long
story telling.
We’ve looked for this quote in Mahatma but haven’t found it
yet. We’re not saying it’s not there, we just haven’t found it.
Regardless, Mr. Grimes gripes the book suffers because Mr. Steinmeyer
knows too much about magic.
Mr. Steinmeyer, the author of “Hiding the Elephant: How
Magicians Invented the Impossible and Learned to Disappear,” makes his
living developing illusions for the likes of Ricky Jay and David
Copperfield.
This is both a strength and a weakness. In conjuring up,
if one may so phrase it, the early vaudeville era, he displays an
expert’s grasp of the mechanics behind the magic tricks of the day and
a keen appreciation of the technologies that allowed stage artists to
play new variations on classic illusions.
Too often, however, he
becomes immersed in technical descriptions or the careers of minor
figures and leaves his main subject waiting in the wings.
Okey Dokey.
Sure, that’s a valid reason to hate a book. In fact, we were just reading the third volume of Shelby Foote’s
outstanding text on the Civil War and we have the same complaint. Why
can’t the recently departed historian just get to the point: the South
lost and the North won?
Oh, no, we have to read about the individual battles, the soldiers
involved in the battles, the shortages, the logistical problems
associated with fighting a war without access to previously available
materials, the families affected by the fighting, the death toll, the
spread of disease, the way the guns were made, how they jammed, what
the… Continue reading We Disagree with NYT Review of Soo Book
The Chicago Sun-Times
has the convoluted story of a million-dollar lawsuit against David
Copperfield. Because we practice law on the side and we have a lot of
time on our hands thanks to a dispute over the definition of
“house-arrest,” we are able to cut through the confusion and get to the
bird’s-eye low-down.
Here’s the bottom-line to the federal lawsuit against Mr.
Copperfield by former trash-moving, movie-renting, real estate-selling,
exclusive island resort owning, John Melk.
Mr. Copperfield wanted to buy Mr. Melk’s island resort in the Bahama
Islands. Mr. Melk wanted to sell it but didn’t want to sell it to Mr.
Copperfield. Mr. Copperfield hired two other folks to buy it for him.
They bought it, Mr. Melk found out it was bought for Copperfield and
wants to rescind the deal.
Mr. Melk says he doesn’t want Copperfield to own the island because
he is afraid the magician will let it fall into disrepair. He also
claims he is concerned of rumors about the magician including one that
he is some how related to Russian-Mafia members.
Sure.
That’s the first thing we think about when we hear the
name David Copperfield. And it is just like good, close business
associates to hold one another’s equipment hostage for money. That’s
what the Russian Mob did for Mr. Copperfield during his tour of Russia.
What a clever method to hide their true friendship, stealing and
extorting money from the magician by threatening to bankrupt his tour.
Whatever.
Mr. Melk made his fortune from holdings in Waste Management Inc. and
Blockbuster Video. He has also invested in Chicago real estate. He
lives most of the year in Florida.
Mr. Melk is suing in federal court in Nevada – likely because Mr. Copperfield is domiciled in Nevada.
According to court documents filed by Melk’s lawyers,
Copperfield knew the deal would crater if his involvement were
discovered. At one point during negotiations, Copperfield wrote to rock
musician Lenny Kravitz asking for his help.
Copperfield needed approval
from the Bahamian government to put a deposit on the property, and
Kravitz, according to a court document, is a cousin of the Bahamian
prime minister. Copperfield asked Kravitz to “speak to the prime
minister.”
He also implored the rocker to keep his involvement under
wraps. “It is imperative that it remains secret until the deal is
signed,” the magician wrote.
Copperfield’s lawyer, Bruce Laxalt of Laxalt & Nomura
in Reno, Nevada., did not return a call seeking comment. In court
papers, the magician claims Melk “repeatedly asked Mr. Copperfield to
be his partner in owning Musha Cay” because he was “desperate to raise
cash.”
A lawyer on the deal “advised John Melk that there was an
anonymous partner involved.” When Melk learned Copperfield was the true
buyer, he “stated that he was happy,” according to court filings.
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