A couple of years ago, Steve Martin, working with the twisted folks at CountingDown.com, created this short web film called Morto the Magician. Imagine, if you will, a stage magician for whom everything goes wrong. (This not for the squeamish.) Since this has been “out there” for a couple of years, you’ve probably already seen […]

This might come as a shock to some, but I am a quite the fan of language. I believe the seeds for this were planted at a very early age. My two earliest, clearest memories are of watching the black and white television version of “Superman“ with my dad, and of my mom reading to […]

If you take the time to read some of the older entries on the blog, you’ll notice I’ve written quite a bit about Richard Osterlind’s L&L Publishing release, “Easy to Master Mental Miracles.” Until recently, I’ve written about the response by others to a set of DVDs that weren’t even released. Frankly, I’m still awfully […]

[Audio Blog: Listen to this blog entry.] Mimmicking. Cloning. Channeling. All words we occasionally use to describe the process of studying a particular performer’s technique and presentation, and proceeding to repeat it. Word for word, move for move. And in the case of Deddy Corbuzier, even eyebrow for eyebrow. (Although, sadly, it seems there are […]

You might have noticed that, on occasion, I mention the plague in magic called “knock-offs” — where one manufacturer takes another manufacturer’s item and duplicates it. I won’t spill precious digital ink going over the same territory; you can read some of my older blog entries for those sermons. Suffice it to say that I […]

[Audio Blog: Listen to this blog entry.] In his 1985 booklet, Fynys, T.A. Waters writes: I have a vivid memory of seeing Torchy Towner perform at the Magic Castle. He did, among other things, a classical levitation performed as ritual magic. There was no hoop pass (“If I were really doing it I wouldn’t have […]

[Audio Blog: Listen to this blog entry.] As anyone either raised on, or by assimilation, had to watch Sesame Street (and, with a granddaughter, I’m on yet another round of Big Bird, Count, and those other inhabitants of — as Chevy Chase pronounced it in the film, “Follow That Bird“ — “Sess-Same Street”) one of […]

This weekend, I’m kicking off a new feature here in Escamoteurettes-land: audio blog entries. The first time I played with streaming audio was back in late 1994 or so using a product called Voxware. (There were beta products prior to that, but I don’t remember the names.) It was amazing what could be done over […]

[Audio Blog: Listen to this blog entry.] If I actually had any hair on the top of my head, it would hurt right now. I realize the topic of the lack of ethics in magic and magic manufacturing is an old one. I’m certain it pre-dates the oldest issue of Sphynx. And actually, now that […]

I love quotations. Given enough time and enough effort and enough research, one can tell a story or make a point through quotations. So, let us begin with a quote: It was back in June 1935 when Theo. Annemann first unveiled the effect known as “PSEUODO-PSYCHOMETRY” in issue #9 of The Jinx. Since then the […]