Our first interviewee on the Magic Newswire "Spirit of Magic" podcast will be back with us tomorrow and will appear on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno on Thursday. Until then, enjoy Brian's demo reel :
Yes, today is "Houdini Day" in that it marks the birth of the famous american magician and escapologist on March 24th, 1874. Believe it or not, there are some free ecards out there that you can send to a friend.
We continue to celebrate making it to our 100th episode of the Magic Newswire's "Spirit of Magic" podcast with Part 2 of our chat with Master Magician Lance Burton. In this segment, Lance talks a bit more about people like Channing Pollock , Johnny Thompson and others that have impacted his career. In addition, we joke about his reaction to the Masked Magician television shows and discuss the impact that the next generation of magicians can have upon our art. Lance is one of the top performers in Las Vegas with a $27 Million dollar venue built just for him at the Monte Carlo Resort & Casino. In July of 1980, he became the first magician to win magic's most coveted "Gold Medal Award for Excellence" from the International Brotherhood of Magicians. Two years later, Lance received magic's highest accolade when he won the Grand Prix at the Federation International Society de Magic (F.I.S.M.) in Lausanne, Switzerland making him a "World Champion Magician."
LISTEN TO PART 2 OF OUR INTERVIEW WITH LANCE BURTON:
OTHER WAYS TO LISTEN:
RSS :: GET IT AT ITUNES :: MP3 DOWNLOAD
HTML 5 PLAYER :
We celebrate our 100th episode of the MagicNewswire.com 's Spirit of Magic podcast with Master Magician Lance Burton. Lance is one of the top performers in Las Vegas with a $27 Million doallr venue built just for him at the Monte Carlo Resort & Casino. In July of 1980, barely three months after his 20th birthday, he became the first person to win magic's most coveted "Gold Medal Award for Excellence" from the International Brotherhood of Magicians and received magic's highest accolade two years later when he won the Grand Prix at the Federation International Society de Magic (F.I.S.M.) in Lausanne, Switzerland making him a "World Champion Magician." This made Lance both the first American to receive this honor as well as the first American performer to do so. Johnny Carson called Lance's performance on his show the "Best 12 minutes in magic." Who was Fletcher the Flamboyant? How did he inspire Lance? Lance joins us to discuss these and many other questions related to his career and the many influences that have helped to shape his magic.
LISTEN TO MY CONVERSATION WITH LANCE BURTON:
As the Amazing Johnathan mentioned during his interview with us on Halloween, he's running a VERY private and VERY special drive in theater which he has dubbed "The Amazing Underground." AJ's unusual private hobby is reported on in an article in the Las Vegas Sun with the title, "Amazing Johnathan: Presto change-o, it’s a drive-in replica." Modeled after a drive in that he worked in as a kid, AJ told us that the idea was initially inspired by his collection of antique cars and his first dead end job. “I thought it would be a great way to display the cars,” he says. The project took on a life of its own. At first he had artists paint murals on the walls inside the warehouse. Using old photographs, they re-created the drive-in filled with cars. He parked six of his own classic cars in the room. The rest are at his home in Green Valley. It turned out so well he decided to add a projector and screen to make it functional, he says. “So I could have movie nights with my crew and friends.” Then he added a few technical gadgets that allowed him to re-create the sun setting, the moon rising, a starlit night and even thunder and lightning. The sounds of crickets are real. “We caught a couple and put them in the building; now we’ve got like a hundred of them,” he says. There are speakers, but no mounds, so the front of the cars sit on an incline for a better view of the screen. All of his cars have air shocks so the front ends can be raised and lowered at will."
JLM Pacific Epoch reports that the China based game development company Perfect World has selected Tiawanese magician Louis Liu as the spokesperson for the soon to be releases MMORPG game "Battle of the Immortals" which is currently in closed beta. Liu is well known in the Asian market for his skills as a close-up magician. At 12, he won the Youth Magic Contest in Taiwan which was judged at the time by David Copperfield. But despite his obvious talent, Lu never planned to be a professional magician. He studied Japanese in Taiwan's Soochow University, hoping to find a corporate job to support part-time performing as an amateur magician. He later won first place in the 2003 international World Magic Seminar Asia. Two years later he won the Neil Foster/Bill Baird Award for Excellence in Manipulation presented by Chavez College of Magic.
No, this is not another story of Wade Live and his travels via UPS. According to the Las Vegas Review Journal, "Las Vegas police are looking for victims of a 39-year-old part-time magician who was arrested March 10 on 25 counts of possession of child pornography. Jonathan McCallum, who on his Web site said he performed at private parties throughout the Las Vegas Valley, lives in Henderson near Sunset Park, according to police. His company is called McCallum Magic. His Web site also said he’s performed at the Lied Discovery Children’s Museum and for the city of Las Vegas."
The magic community lost Ali Bongo almost two weeks ago now, but we're still being treated to reminiscences and articles on this former President of the Magic Circle. The Economist is the most recent with a very nice obituary. "The magician’s code of secrecy was something he took most seriously, long before he became vice-president and eventually president of the Magic Circle. Nothing must be divulged in public about how a trick worked. This would spoil everything for children, his favourite audience, who would have no tricks to show their friends. The books he wrote about his art were, he said, a different matter; the reader had to make an effort to find out the information. Ever fizzing on the subject, delighting in magicians’ conventions where tips and tricks were busily exchanged in corners, he dropped occasional hints about “metal gimmicks” in the rope trick and “tin tubes” that could make a coin disappear into a metal box inside another metal box inside an immense ball of twine—but listeners were none the wiser. He stressed that wide and deep study of chemistry, electricity, lighting and mechanics was needed to create illusions. But as he talked, you couldn’t help noticing his hands: the long, thin fingers fluttering, locking, unlocking, gesticulating, as if he could flip cards and slip knots in his sleep."
Print Article