In a very interesting new program, the premiere library for the English-speaking world (appropriately located in England) asks ordinary people like you to help preserve the great original books in their vast collection.
Among the 40 or so offerings is Houdini's classic from 1921.
In this practical guide with illustrations, Houdini explains how to perform ties "of two distinct types, namely, those adapted to use in spiritualistic work, and those intended for the escape artist." A perfect adoption for fans of the most famous magician in the world.
The cost to adopt this book or one of the other classics of non-magic literature, is a mere £30.00 which prices out at about €36.00 or $47.50 in U.S. Dollars.
Your name will be on the certificate and in the records of the British Library.
Not to be outdone, our hometown Mystic Hollow Library has a similar adopt a book program. For $2.50, you can adopt the entire 2009 collection of TV Guide in hardback. Not quite a classic, but it does contain some very interesting information about what you could have seen during that crucial year in television.
In the United States, analog television signals were replaced by their digital equivalent and millions of homes were stripped of their ability to see Wheel of Fortune or Jeopardy. The nation was rocked and congressional efforts to supply conversion boxes to those affected by this horrific crisis fell short. You can read about the congress and the president's efforts to delay or fix the great social upheaval here.
You can call us “moronic,” “unethical,” “psycho,” or “scum-bag-esque” but we admit we love to be verbally abused — especially in writing.
But that’s not the reason we loved — absolutely and in all connotations of the word — Penn Jillette’s How to Cheat Your Friends at Poker.
The book is based on material putatively provided by an old acquaintance of Mr. Jillette, called by the nom de plume Dickie Richard. Mr. Jillette was permitted to create any pseudonym for his source and for some reason chose the name “Dickie Richard.”
Our therapist says were obsessed with these types of things but the name gave us pause.
After all, the last name Richard is rather rare in the United States. The surname is most often “Richards.” According to the U.S. Social Security Death Registry, there are a mere 13,353 folks in their database of over 77 million with the last name spelled in this manner compared with fewer than 40,000 for “Richards.”(Interestingly, there are only nine records for “Jillette”). Continue reading Penn Jillette’s How to Cheat Your Friends at Poker – Magical
Nathan Kranzo is always busy: developing new magic, reviving old, forgotten gimmicks or techniques, or just “puttin’ stuff out there” for everyone’s consideration.
In fact, the Kranzometer indicated he was due for something pretty special any day now. We remembered that we needed to set the Kranzometer forward 55 minutes for Daylight Savings Time and that gave us a precise date and time — precisely five minutes before we started this article.
So confident were we in the Kranzometer’s accuracy that we actually wrote this article before he announced his special Thanksgiving Week gift. We knew we could write the article and just leave a blank here and there. They would be filled in precisely when the Kranzometer predicted.
The fact that you are reading this article and it is without blanks inappropriately joined, run-on sentences proves value of the Swiss movement and 23 jewels in our device. Other web sites purchase their Kranzometer’s second-hand or knock-offs of the Official Kranzometer; the same as used in the Olympic Games, Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association, and Inside Magic, made only by Wittenaur.
Mr. Kranzo has a secret page and he has decided to make its address available to Inside Magic readers. We understand it will be available only through the Thanksgiving week. Some of the material shared is absolutely killer. Some of it is more adult oriented and some is a lot more adult oriented.
Mr. Kranzo writes in his introduction on the secret page:
These routines and gags were created by performing for real people in restaurants, bars, elementary schools, private parties, keggers, bonfires, comedy clubs, colleges, corporate events, theaters, trade shows, brothels, bar mitzvahs and after dinner engagements.
These routines are very customizable. I’ll give you the basic gag so you can take the idea and go any direction you’d like. In this way you will add your own personality and in doing so we will all have something unique.
Most of these effects and gags were designed for stand up performances but many can be performed close up and play just as well.
Originally written on Christmas Eve seven years ago and posted on Inside Magic. We’ve republished it by request. Definitely not one of our “light” or “funny” pieces.
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Our father, Li’l Tom Hardy, was a proud man who frequently tried to pretend we were not too poor for Christmas presents.
Usually around December 13th, he’d come stumbling back to the trailer just as we were getting ready to head to the next town and announce,
“You know, I was talking with this Jehovah Witless Guy and he convinced me there is no biblical basis for celebrating Christmas.Now, while I don’t accept everything they those old boys say, ‘specially the no-drinking or smoking stuff, but I started thinking about it and I think they might be right.
I’d hate to see our whole family damned to Hell just to get a present under some pagan tree.”
“You know, I ran into that guy that used to be a ringmaster with Stamster Brothers and he commenced to talking about how Judaism – in its strictest form – really had the whole picture together.
They were waiting for the Messiah and that’s got a lot to say for it. I disagreed with him on the whole no-drinking and dragging out their equivalent of Christmas for a week or whatever, but the idea that we should really anticipate the birth of our Lord is a good thing.
Sooo, I’m thinking we anticipate how he can come into our life without the week of candles and presents.”
Or the worst was:
“You know, I was down at the Stop, Drop and Roll (that’s Circus Talk for a booze tent or trailer – usually just off the parade grounds), and I was walking back and saw this guy with a gun. He was mumbling something about how people demand so much from him and stuff and he was pretty well-bombed. I didn’t want to get too close cuz he was drunk and had a gun but I walked up a little closer and thought he looked like a biker.
There is a maxim we follow — and we don’t mean the magazine by the same name. Although it is possible that the magazine Maxim actually has written about our maxim. Of course, we would never know. We trusted and apparently our trust was foolishly tossed to the four winds – three of which came from the person we trusted.
In fact, the more we think about that lying little creep, the more we become perturbed. She said she was selling magazine subscriptions for her troop. We’re always looking to help out any scouting activities and while we normally associate cookie sales with troop fund raising, we trusted.
And we gave her good money to go with that trust. We mean we paid for the subscriptions with “real money”; not a charge on one of our almost certainly over-the-limit credit cards or even proceeds from a cash advance or payday (HA!) loan.
Our intention was to use real funds to purchase subscriptions the great journals of our era; and help the local troop raise money for something.
Well, we learned the hard way.
We have not received a single issue from any of the top quality magazines we ordered.
Not one.
We paid over $422.12 for the subscriptions and received nothing. No cards falling out of the pages and cutting one’s lap or landing in the toilet. No poster-size images of the featured models in faraway places with a “come hither” or, in our case, “don’t bother,” or “stay there-ith” look in their eyes.
Yes, we were foolish to trust. We should have been suspicious and cautious. Did we already mention she wasn’t wearing a scout uniform?
The British Library Board is looking for someone to adopt Harry Houdini's Magical Rope Ties & Escapes.
You can call us “moronic,” “unethical,” “psycho,” or “scum-bag-esque” but we admit we love to be verbally abused — especially in writing.
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