Criss Angel Pulls A Lady Apart

Caught the video of Criss Angel pulling apart a woman on a park bench today. Sorry, I've been out of touch with his series, but when I stumbled upon this video online I just about plotzed. It looked great. Of course, it only took a minute to register that the girl who crawled away was NOT the same girl who first laid down on the bench, meaning the illusion was well orchestrated and the video was well edited.

As I searched online for more info, I found many blogs from laymen who had linked to the video and presented their method for the illusion. Some thought it was voodoo -- interesting thought -- others thought there were robotics -- and others eventually found Ricky Jay's references from The Learned Pig book about The Legless Wonder, Johnny Eck doing a similar illusion with his twin brother.

What this reminded me of more than anything else was Richiardi's Buzzsaw Illusion. The first time I saw this I was about 15 at Madison Square Garden's show in the Felt Forum. The World Festival of Magic and Occult. When the Master did this effect, I was blown away. I walked on stage and was baffled. Close up magic I understood, but stage illusions mystified me and still do.

So is Criss' presentation better or worse. Well, having never seen the Eck presentation of yesteryear, it's hard to say, but having seen Richiardi, I would say Criss' is a lesser illusion because it was not done in front of a live studio audience -- it was staged. Richiardi cut his daughter in half every night in front of a live audience of thousands of people, and when her blood splattered the back drop, everyone screamed, and everyone raced to look at her body on stage.

Good try, Criss, but no cigar. Of course, that's only my opinion.

Beware The Naked Broad Wearing A Thumbtip

I usually won't click on links friends send me because I don't have a lot of time to waste, and what one person finds funny may not float my boat. So when a friend -- who has never seen me do magic -- sent me a magic oriented link, I figured what the hell. Big mistake.

When the site opened I found myself watching a video of a woman who looked like an ugly librarian. The second she pulled out a silk, I knew I was in trouble. It completely telegraphed everything that was going to happen right up to the climax.

For those of you who have already seen this, you can skip this description: the woman pushed the silk into her fist and instead of nonchalantly showing her hands empty proceeded to do what most magicians are taught NOT to do. She quickly shook her hands back and forth -- she looked spastic like she was having a fit -- and she had this strange smile and look on her face like she was amazed or just stepped out of Reefer Madness.

I covered my face, muttered, "Oh, no" and as she quite badly pulled the silk from her jacket pocket, I could see exactly where this was going. She made it vanish again, and then took off her jacket and blouse and reproduced the silk -- with both hands mind you -- from her bra. Then she took off the bra and vanished the silk again. This time she disrobed to her G-string and reproduced the silk from there. All along after each vanish she went into these strange spastic movements showing her hands empty. It was as if life as we knew it had just changed.

Finally she removed her G-string, and standing there stark naked made the silk vanish one last time. This time she bent forward and with both hands apparently removed the silk from one of her nether regions. I could not tell which one nor by then did I care.

Folks, is this what magic has evolved to -- a stripper's tool? The audience seemed somewhat puzzled as if the magic trick truly fooled them -- that was scary by itself -- and then -- they applauded wildly.

This reminds of a time a lady magician/stripper appeared in a special adults only magic show at a Magic Symposium in Manhattan. With a morbid sense of curiosity I went along with the guys and was only mildly amused and not aroused. I don't see the purpose. It's not that it goes against my religious beliefs; it simply goes against my beliefs as a magician.

Magic mixes well with mime, martial arts, juggling and other art forms. It does not mix well with strippers. If you receive the link from a friend -- no, I will not send it to you -- my advice is NOT to watch it. Maybe if we just ignore it, it will go away by itself. I don't know who the performer was, and I really don't care. She looked like an ugly librarian. Maybe she should pursue that livelihood instead. Then again, this might result in a lot of late library books. And if you happen to come across any used thumbtips for sale on eBay, let the buyer beware. You don't know where that thing has been.

Product Review: Mirrors by Diamond Jim Tyler

Diamond Jim is a long-time subscriber. I've reviewed many of his older items in past issues. Last week he was kind enough to send me two of his latest products to review: SentiMental Postcards and his new DVD entitled Mirrors. Today we'll take a look at Mirrors.

When I first looked at the DVD case which features a silver sticker about the size of a poker-faced card on it, I had flashbacks of an old Ed Hollins effect called Flipped Out which was a Twisting the Aces type effect ending with mirror backs on all the cards. Emerson & West later marketed the effect and it was a best seller for years.

Diamond Jim's approach is fresh and creative. His DVD is filled with many interesting applications for using mirrored back cards. The routines are quite well thought out, and they are relatively easy to learn with Jim teaching the required sleights. Most of the routines involve familiar counts and moves, and the experienced card man will not be challenged.

The DVD features six effects and 20 mirror stickers (19 in an envelope inside the DVD case and an extra one attached to the face of the DVD case). I was glad that he called attention to the extra one on the case during his DVD explanations. Jim includes some useful folk lore about mirrors which you can choose to incorporate into your own routines. He also includes a short brainstorming session where he quickly demonstrates several different applications for these mirrored cards.

The stickers are nice. They appear to be mylar and are very reflective. Jim spends time showing you the best way to apply them to playing cards. Some of the routines require "broken" mirrored cards and he shows you his technique for making these cards, too.

Most of these routines have their basis in familiar routines like Wild Card and Twisting the Aces, but they all include a mirror pay-off. Jim warns you to select a single routine to add to your show rather than use several mirror routines. The applications I liked most included "Broken" where a mirrored back card visually breaks when tapped against your finger, and "Superstitious" where a selected card appears to have either the only broken mirror in the pack (unlucky) or the only whole mirror in the pack (lucky).

I can see some cross-applications with Jim's ideas and Chance Wolf's Shattered which use mirrored paddles that smash and restore. Jim, himself, shows ways to incorporate the mirrors on the back of cards with Paul Harris' Twilight effect. The ideas are limitless.

I highly recommend Diamond Jim's Mirrors DVD. You can learn more about it at http://wwwdjtyler.com.

Would you like to reach over 700 magicians world-wide for free? Send me your items and I will review them here.

A Great Giveaway for Adult Male Assistants

In my Linking Ring Parade this month, I explain my technique for creating cubes out of six playing cards. I wanted to stress that these make a great giveaway to an adult male assistant. They are more appealing than balloon animals and if you incorporate a poker sized business card into the cube then you not only have a great giveaway item that you know they will keep BUT now they have a way to contact you for future gigs! Great for table-hopping!

The Best Solution for Online Video

About a year ago, I wrote a review about Instant Video Generator, a new tool brought to market by Armand Morin and his friends, the same team that brought AudioGenerator.com to market a while back.

I enjoyed playing with it during my free trial period (21 days for only $1.00). It was extremely easy to use. All I did was login, and started recording. Then I clicked a button to produce the code that was required to add the video to my web page. Instant Video Generator took care of everything else. It saved my video and Flash encoded it on the fly within a few seconds. No rocket science here. Since that time I have experimented with a variety of new video production tools. Here’s what I found:

• Serious Magic is incredibly powerful (and expensive), and with it you can produce studio-grade videos with animation fairly easily; however, you need a honker of a PC to do it. Folks with older PCs like me will either need to upgrade their video, audio, processor, RAM, and drive space or more simply buy a new PC! I had a helluva time making this application work.
  
• Lesser tools offer less automation and it takes a greater number of steps to produce your final Flash encoded video. The quality of the video may be sub-standard, and you need to consider storage requirements when recording the video on your PC and server requirements when streaming it over your own server. Bandwidth issues may present themselves if the video is particularly long.

So I guess it is no surprise that when I made the decision to start implementing video more widely across all of my web sites that I needed a tool that was easy to use, did not require me to upgrade my PC, created high-quality video, and removed the concerns over bandwidth and video streaming. In this regard, Instant Video Generator is worth its weight in gold.

• Instant Video Generator takes care of the encoding and compression.
• It does not require anything other than a cheap webcam and microphone.
• My videos get stored on their servers not mine.
• They provide a very generous monthly bandwidth allowance.
• Adding video to your web page is cut and paste easy.
• They provide you with an on-screen teleprompter so you can look into your camera and maintain eye contact with your audience.
• They also provide a number of other tools such as templates and postcards you can use to send videos via email.

All in all, I have to rate Instant Video Generator as a very cool tool. I invite you to check it out for 21 days for only $1.00. You’d be crazy not to at least try it. My bet is you will get hooked on it.

Yea! My One-Man Parade Appears In The Sept 2006 Issue Of The Linking Ring!

This was two decades in the making. While I have had the privilege of being a regular columnist for other magic publications, getting my own 20 page parade in the IBM’s Linking Ring Magazine is the most rewarding and exciting thing that’s happened to me. I noticed a few typos and some of the explanations could have been clearer, but overall, I am very happy to be given the opportunity to share this body of work with you.

Welcome to The Magic Portal

Welcome. My name is Steven Schneiderman, and I am the webmaster of The Magic Portal and Magic Reviews web sites. I publish and distribute an electronic newsletter to over 700 magicians world-wide every two weeks. I re-publish my newsletter columns and product reviews on this blog as time allows. If you want to read the latest and greatest magic news from my point of view, then you should subscribe to the newsletter by doing so here:

http://www.m-a-g-i-c.com/lists/subscribe.htm

I have been involved with magic since I was five when my Dad taught me my first card trick. As I grew older, my Uncle Harry began teaching me sleights like the French Drop and routines with the Cups and Balls. My Uncle used to own a magic and joke shop in Manhattan, and my Dad used to work in it as a teenager making effects like the Chinese Sticks.

In the 4th grade I appeared as Houdini Jr. in P.S. 162’s variety show. I did a few tricks from a store purchased magic set, created a tree from newspaper, and ended with a mind reading card trick which failed due to an inept assistance who did not understand the meaning of a key card. As the curtains closed on me, I boldly walked forward and parted the curtains to tell a joke I heard Red Skelton tell on television the night before. I saw the look of shock and disbelief in my parents’ and teacher’s faces. This was not in the rehearsal. At age 11 I was winging it. I told the joke I had heard the night before — the joke about a bigamist going to heaven. There wasn’t a dry eye or seat in the house. As the audience of 600 stood and applauded, I got a feeling in my gut that I can’t put into words. I was hooked.

Not wanting to disgrace the name of Houdini with my blue humor, I changed it to Shandu, The Greatest Boy Magician, and performed at kids parties and school shows until I became a teenager. At that time I dropped the stage name and joined the IMPS, a teenage magic club in NYC under the wing of the SAM. I became vice president during my second year and learned a lot from the adult lecturers that visited us.

In high school I got hooked on close-up and manipulation and made friends with folks like Eric DeCamps, Meir Yedid and Jeff McBride. I did the Tannen Jubilee every year and the Larry Weeks conventions every quarter. I lived and breathed magic. I honed my close-up skills to become the second best card man in NY or at least that’s what I told Eric and he believed it for a while, I think. Meir and I would get together and hang out in fast food joints doing magic for the folks who hung out there, and we would brainstorm new effects for his books and column. This is back when Meir had all his fingers. I’ve got a great picture of Meir shaking hands with Sgt. Slaughter of WWF fame (with only 9 of Meir’s fingers showing — prophetic because Meir had his accident soon after the show)

Eventually Meir landed at Tannens full-time and he recruited me to write a column for Tannens Magic Manuscript for a few years. Around this time Eric was working the Magic Townhouse, and between both friends, I was pretty busy. I helped Eric write his first set of lecture notes and was there to lend support during the production of his first magic videotape. I also coached him on an unforgettable water escape at the Cresthaven Country Club (pix on my site). And you thought he only did close-up. Meir produced one of my card effects, Card Marx, and kept me pretty busy editing his instructions and books. We did a number of projects together. It was fun while it lasted.

I also hung out with a former circus clown, juggler, fire eater and magician, Scott Morris. He frequently kept me out all night, hanging out in clubs like CBGBs watching Jeff Crozier do magic and sing. Scott is quite the world traveller and he taught me the circus arts. Little did I know that years later these skills would come in handy entertaining my own children on rainy days.

During my college years I started writing my own effects and routines down, and when I was 25 I began publishing my own little magazine called Ruminations, Magic That Makes You Think! I had a small list of subscribers including folks like Penn & Teller, Mac King, Jay Sankey, Steve Cohen and others. I did this for two years until I could not handle it anymore. Working full-time and doing magic did not mix for me, and I dropped out of magic pretty suddenly after I wrote Rocco Silano’s first book on sleeving. Most of my stuff got packed away or given away, and as I moved, first to New Jersey and then to Oklahoma, my magic stuff stayed tucked away in boxes.

When my first child, Alex, turned two I rediscovered my magic and starting buying stuff like crazy. I could finally afford what I wanted, and I started reviewing and publishing my reviews online. I started my web sites, published a column for GENII for a year, and basically got back into magic part-time.

As I end this entry, the culmination of almost 40 years of magic ideas is getting ready to appear in the September 2006 issue of The Linking Ring in my own one-man parade. I am very proud and happy to bring to this magic fraternity.