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| “Skinny” Frenchie O’Toole |
Magic is like any art in which you manipulate props in front of people and lie to them about what they are seeing.
Robert-Houdin was said to have observed, “magic without magic is nothing.”
This may have lost something in the translation or it may be the most vapid quote we have ever heard. We agree, though.
Magic is special precisely because it is special.
If it wasn’t Magic, it would be the mere manipulation of props in front of people but not lying. That isn’t magic; although in many counties, it is a misdemeanor.
So, we look forward to what Magic will bring us next year to keep the Magic in Magic. For as we all know, “magic without magic is mothing.”
We asked Santa to be kind to us this year and bring us a few things. We have no expectation we will get them — not because Santa’s Magic is limited. No, Santa’s Magic even without the magic is still Santa.
We fear we will be stiffed by the old guy for being “naughty.” The same goes for what we expect from Santa.
We think it was Ira Davenport who coined the now famous come-back, “Yeah, I got your wax-sealed knot right here!”
But it was our sitcom idea to combine the Davenport Brothers, the Fox Sisters, the Georgia Magnet, and Timmy and Lassie.
This idea was stolen by the big networks and only changed slightly to become the 1970′s hit game show, Match Game ’77. The part of Gene Rayburn was supposed to be played by animal stars Gentle Ben or Flipper.
The Rip Taylor and J.P. Morgan characters were our idea and carried through to the final show.
So where does that leave us? You may have heard that “magic without magic is nothing.”
Well, in our Masters Thesis in Divinity School, The Theological Implications of Miracle Whip, we chose to not address this issue. But we did hit head-on the least known of the early Spiritualist Siblings, Samantha and Frenchie O’Toole.
Unlike the Fox Sisters who used their blemished, dried and cracked toes to click and clack their way to world-wide fame, the O’Toole Sisters brought class to the world of Spirit Mediums.
It was Samantha who first discovered she and her younger sister, Frenchie, could communicate by the ultra-high-pitched gurgling of their stomachs. The gurgling could only be heard by the sisters and some dogs.
We are sure that now in the sensitive feel-good era, child-endangerment agencies would object to the intentional starving of your children to enable a fraudulent seance.
We would some how justify the ending of their career in the interest of “keeping kids healthy” or “preventing abuse.”
Those times were different though. Frenchie O’Toole could project her high-pitched stomach gurgle across 200 yards to her sister but to do so required her to fast for days.
Their stomach sounds method of two-person telepathy is still used in the industry today but requires a keen sense of…
Continue reading Looking Forward to Nothing But a Good Nothing
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