Coffee, Cards, and a Goatee.

6 days its been, but it feels like weeks. I've missed you, blog readers.

So I said I was attempting to keep this not about my day or a list of things I've done, but I think I've abandoned that plan. I now understand why people do that. I still promise to try and keep it intelligent, and entertaining. To me at least.

Well then, what's new? I'm home (again), but this time for Thanksgiving. I think Thanksgiving is right up there in the top 5 holidays ever. Its just so non-denominational (if you dont count Native Americans...sorry guys.) and festive. Most other holidays have to do with suffering. Think about it. Not Thanksgiving. It's just about Turkey and alcohol. Lovely.

Magic-wise, things have been picking up lately. I really think I want to start getting serious about this stuff. I mean, I have been serious, but I kind of want to move away from pointless card tricks and do something meaningful. If you've read Pure Effect or Absolute Magic by Derren Brown, you know exactly what I mean. Most of you haven't, and I don't feel like typing out a LONG LONG LONG post about all of the theoretical crap I was pondering on my way home. But leave it at this: I want to ease my way out of safe, meaningless tricks, and into real magic. More on this to come.

The documentary is coming along nicely. We need footage. Lots of it. But take a look at this:

http://mojay200.ipupdater.com/FEB.mov

Yeeeaaahhh, booooyyyyy! That would be me in the tie. It didnt feel like it was playing that well while I was doing it, but upon watching the video, it came out well. Oh, and sincere thanks and apologies to Todd Robbins. I stole his act blatantly and reproduced it poorly. I didn't receive any money for it (god knows) so I don't think it's illegal (im probably wrong), but I still feel bad about it. Sorry Todd. If you by some chance read my blog (that would, quite literally, blow my fucking mind), allow me to make it up to you by taking you out for some lightbulbs and windex. Inside joke people, go see him perform. You'll thank me later.

And now, for a more personal note.

To a certain girlfriend who at the current juncture has been going through some rougher times and has had an incorrigable boyfriend to deal with, I am sorry. Apparently boys get their periods too, and I've been having one that warrants a tampon the width of a redwood. I hereby, publicly (and embarassingly), vow to attempt to be more understanding and sympathetic, as I should be. Furthermore, I will attempt to discuss problems with you instead of avoiding them, and will stop pretending that I know everything. I love you.

To all males who read the above: Yeah, I meant it, and I'd say it again! And if that makes me a girly boy, so be it! To hell with all of you!

I should probably stop now. I see this post going very badly if I continue to write.

So, I haven't posted in a while. Sorry about that. But this will be a long one to make up for it. Mostly about magic things, which most of you probably don't care about, but hey, its my blog. And I'll do with it as I damn well please. You want a say, get your own damn blog.

...I'm sorry for the hostility. Moving on:

First of all, a response to the last post: Penn and Teller once again refuse to let me down. Their special, Penn And Teller: Off The Deep End was phenomenal. They really are like...how to put this...meta magicians. Not mega-magicians, like magicians who shoot fire from their eyes or something, but meta-magicians. They transcend the magician zeitgeist and play not inside the box, not outside of it, but right along the edge of it. Their work is akin to that of Hitchcock's -- commerically appealing and popular, but it also speaks, on a very deep level, to those with an understanding of the medium they are working with. Only Penn and Teller could expose method after method and only FURTHER the art by doing so. Plus, as they have often said before, whereas most magicians are "I'm here, youre there, and im going to show you what I can do and what you can't", P&T have always been about "You, the audience, and us, the performers, are equals. We'll let you into our world, and hopefully you'll let us into yours, and together we can share this thing we call magic, which is not card tricks and cheap illusions, but rather the maybes, could bes and what ifs of a life that is mostly constructed of yes and no.

...I think I've gotten a bit too theoretical on you. Allow me to move into more concrete things, by talking about this show I'm doing tomorrow...

I'm kind of pumped for this show. Its exciting. There's ads and word of mouth going around, I've got a set list and supplies...I feel like a professional magician. It's titilating for a dork like me. I'm still a little confused about what the last piece in the show will be though. I'm still leaning towards the Challenge Mind Reading, but the last 4 or 5 times ive tried it it hasn't worked. I'll probably go with it anyway, and hope that luck smiles on me tomorrow night. If it doesn't, I'll be in a bit of a jam, but hey, at least the rest of the show will have been good.

Also! On Saturday I'm doing some walk-around for a variety show being put on by the Binghamton Scholars. Supposedly BTV and the local news stations will be there, so I may potentially be on TV! Your goateed magician friend is becoming star struck already. However, the show is from 6 pm to 1 am. I'll repeat that, because it bears repeating. 6 pm to 1 am!! Damn! Thats 7 HOURS of walk around! My fingers just might fall off! But lets hope not, because I haven't learned the "Cut And Restored Dismembered Finger" trick yet. Yet.

So, thats whats new in my magical life. On a side note, if I could get personal for a moment, Heather (my girlfriend) is coming to visit on Friday for a quick overnight stay on her way home to White Plains. I'm just as excited for this as I am for all the things I've listed above. So, between the show on Thursday, Heather coming on Friday, and the Scholars program on Saturday, this might just the three best days of the year.

So I got a little sappy on ya. Magicians have feelings too. Just...sometimes those feelings are for pasteboards or half-dollars. You got a problem with that?

Thursday, Nov. 17, I will be performing a magic show in one of the lounges of Seneca Hall. It'll probably run about 45 mins., and is going to be a run for my money. Why, you may ask. You may ask, why is a seasoned performer, forged in the fires of public performance and highly steeped in the theatrics of magic performance thinking this is going to be such a difficult feat? Well....lets take an exclusive sneak peak at the set list (which may or may not change its order by the time the show goes on):

1. Voodoo - A (maybe) signed card becomes prey to the wiles of its voodoo doll, a normal, examinable index card. And that's just the beginning!

2. The Flying Ebola Brothers - A guest team of performers showcase a death defying stunt the human mind nearly can't comprehend.

3. The Homing Card - Pasteboards and pockets, and the impossibilities therein.

4. Bodyguards - Can cards protect their own? Or are the magician's hands just a bit quicker?

5. Paper Rose - "If you hold it up to your ear you can hear the sea, especially if you're really close to the sea!"

6. Coins - Currency and prestidigitation. Apparently, SAT words as well.

7. Challenge Mind Reading - Quite possibly the most stunning display of mentalism ever seen. How's THAT for conceited?

And then afterwards, I'll be teaching an effect/technique. This part really depends on whether I can get the props I need in time. I don't feel its my place to teach anything that isn't public domain, so it really limits my scope. For that reason, I'll be teaching one of two things. If I can get the supplies, I'll teach (and giveaway) a vanishing silk move, which is well documented and widely considered to be pretty standard fare. Its the kind of stuff that makes magic books that are sold at Borders. If I can't get those in time, I'll teach the french drop. This might actually work out even better, since I'll probably utilize it in the Coins section of my performance. Its the kind of move that you would think, and this includes professional magicians with whom I've had arguments about this, would never fool a laymen. However, if performed with the proper timing, speed, and performance, it is wonderful. Perhaps I'll even relate the Dai Vernon/Mark Wilson story along with it. You'll have to come to the show to hear the story. Alright, fine, I'll tell you now. God! Stop twisting my arm!

So the story goes that Mark Wilson, a highly respected and very popular magician in his time, had a son who was trying to learn magic like his dear ol' dad. Mark Wilson had many contacts in the magic world, one of whom was Dai Vernon, perhaps the most highly respected magician...ever? He's know as The Professor to every magician every where. He's kind of like the Shakespeare of the magic world. Anyway, Mark sends his son to Dai in order to learn the French drop. Dai teaches him the move so that he can perform it flawlessly, and tells him this: "Don't ever snap your fingers over your hand as though you were making the coin vanish. That is completley unnatural and should never be done. Instead, just pretend as though the coin were melting away. Snapping is too overt." Etc. etc. So the kid goes back home to his dad and has him watch his french drop. Mark Wilson stands up and exclaims, "Wonderful son! That was beautiful! But you forgot to snap!"

Theres a lot of theoretical points in that story that are worth mentioning, but I'll leave them for now. If you really want to know why thats an important story, leave a comment or something and I'll get to it next post.

So, more importantly, why is this show going to be so hard? The variety of material I'll be performing is damn demanding. From cards to coins, carny stuff to mentalism. For each one, the tempo changes, the style, the attitude, and I have to bring the audience along with me for that ride. It's no easy task. And for those of you saying "Oh please, you do the trick, and then you move on" or something along those lines...that's why you're not a magician. The finger movements and slight of hand mean nothing, especially when compared to the audience management and entertainment value. Magic is not in the props or the skill of the finger flicking, it is entirely, ENTIRELY, in the audience's perception of the performer and his/her relation to them. And lets just hope that Flying Ebola Brothers thing goes over well. I haven't done that in a long ass time. I'll try to get a picture of it up here though. Its really fun.

Try to make it if you can...it should be a good time.

Now, I'm going to try and make this short, because at the moment I feel like John Popper after running a marathon. If you don't get the reference...



That being said, there is something of dire importance. I know I let you down last time, but this time should be significantly better (or lets at least hope so, otherwise i might lose faith in entertainment).

Penn & Teller, the duo that arguably made me become a magician, have a new special on NBC, this Sunday, 11/12/05. For those of you that don't know Penn & Teller, they are quite possibly the most progressive, innovative, astounding, thought-provoking, offensive, no-holds-barred, hard-working, creative, smart, talented, etc. and etc. magicians on the planet. Now, normally, this would be an alert of moderate notice, perhaps a line at the bottom of a post or something. However, there is a twist. While they will be performing mostly classic magic effects, they will be performing them

COMPLETLEY UNDERWATER.

While wearing these Jules Verne type diving helmets, i.e. ->



Kind of throws card tricks out the window, don't it?

Plus, they will be performing the metamorphisis, which was recently exposed at the Houdini museum, and while I wont divulge the secrets for anyone who doesn't know, I will say this: Magicians, and lay people who know the secret, think for a moment about how hard that will be to perform, at the same speed, under water. Especially for the person bound and in the tank, who will have no oxygen supply. Just think about that for a moment. These guys are not only good, they're legendary.

There's a whole lot of things that really bug the shit out of me regarding that last post. So let's go through them, one paragraph at a time, and, conveniently, also in order of importance:

1. First the good things - everything in this paragraph, and the rest of the post, is completley true. That's good, I don't want to start lying on a blog to attempt to make myself seem interesting. That's just...well, lets just say thats wrong for a good number of reasons. Here's the bad thing though. I'd really like to avoid making this a "This Is What I Did Today" kind of blog, and this first paragraph borders on it. It's not there quite yet because it's mostly concerned with emotions and my relationship to you, my faithful readers, but its close. Who cares what I did today, unless there's an acutal significant series of actions that someone besides me would find meaningful or at the very least amusing? I'm not saying posts like that won't creep in now and then, but on the journey for the perfect blog, this is an important lesson.

2. This paragraph has two major problems. One, it doesn't just border on the mistake mentioned above, it embodies it. Two, it sounds vaguely homosexual and portrays me as a highly spiritual, "my aura is radiant" kind of ignoramus, which I am not.

3. Sigh. Here's the big one. George. George, George, George. Grab yourself something to drink, this one could take a little while. I just watched Carlin's new special, "Life Is Worth Losing". This was, as the title of the post may have hinted at, highly disappointing. Now, myself and Sean, a good friend and fellow Carlin-afficionado, had the following conversation about said special, which I repeat here without his permission and completley because I dont feel like writing it all again:

Me: That was....weird.
Sean: i'm disappointed
Me: me too
Me: he was more of a social commentator
Me: not even that funny
Sean: i really liked the first 5 minutes and last 10 minutes
Me: yeah
Sean: but the rest of it:
Sean: 1) too "calculatedly" outrageous...too much death and too repetitive about the suicide stuff
Sean: 2) poorly performed...he stumbled on a lot of words and was too slow....plus his voice has lost its character
Me: i couldn't have said it better
Me: The critics are going to rip him a new one
Me: and HBO will be peeved
Sean: well he did have a heart attack
Sean: and other health problems
Me: doesnt change the fact that he just wasnt funny
Me: he's a comic, and no matter what he wants to talk about, he should be making people laugh
Me: if not, change your label
Me: i dont care if he gets up and says everything he said tonight, but he should have called it George Carlin: Serious this time.
Sean: yeah
Me: and yeah, his performance sucked.
Me: plus, the audience was just sitting there in stunned silence...and a lot of the assumptions he made about things just weren't true
Sean: YEAH
Me: "Nobody cares about " Well George...they do
Me: families, people with hearts
Sean: oh you mean when he said nobody cares about the homeless?
Me: yeah, or prisoners, or people who got beheaded, or people affected by natural disasters, etc.
Sean: i think that's not really serious
Sean: and he's mostly talking about how "the powers that be" feel, like the government and shit
Me: you're probably right, but his performance should have conveyed that
Me: he should have made it a little more obvious that he was being sarcastic
Sean: yeah, like with more attention to tone of voice
Me: yeah
Sean: the audience didn't like it either haha
Me: haha nope
Me: no one laughed the whole time
Sean: i had a feeling it was gonna be bad when he started saying the thing about pussy farts
Sean: it seemed like the audience was thinking "you've said that before, douche bag"
Me: yeah, he did do a lot of repetitive stuff
Sean: my favorite thing was probably SOL and JWF: shit out of luck and jolly well fucked
Me: hahaha yeah
Me: i also like "He's down there you fanatical fuck"
Sean: yeah
Sean: i am also curious about how obese people take a shit
Me: yes!
Me: that actually made me think
Sean: i bet even Carlin knows he was bad though
Sean: he's been in the business for 50 years
Me: yeah
Me: hes gotta know when he bombs
Me: i guess though, it was taped live
Me: can't control a tail spin once its going
Sean: argh now i have the theme song of Tail Spin stuck in my head
Me: hahaha
Sean: ooo-eee-ooo

We then moved on to talk about other things, such as Bo Diddley. A clear segue from Carlin. Here's some additional comments, or notes if you will. If you go to http://avclub.com/content/node/42195 , you'll find an interview that the Onion's AV club conducted with the man himself. Its a solid interview, good insights, some background, etc. Thoroughly enjoyable. However, within it, Carlin says how he could see that some people would say he is an angrier comic nowadays, but that's not true. He calls it "righteous indignation" against a species that he feels has let him down. Hey George, I'm right behind you. Be as righteously indignified as you would like, and please let us all know about it in as funny and creative a way as you can. And I appreciate a lot of the new stuff he's done that kind of moves in a different direction than the comedy we're used to. Be a stand up comic for 50 years and you'll start breaking new ground at some point (hopefully), and I'm glad George was the man to do it. He's smart enough, funny enough, and talented enough. But here's the thing. Express it! George's performance came off as a twisted man telling of his thoughts, and occasionally trying to persuade others to feel the same way. He was pontificating. And again, that's fine, but its not what he was trying to do. Success is completley defined by what you are attempting to do. If I try to make toast, and end up with a cure for cancer, I've still failed my original plan. Serendipity may have smiled upon me and given me a great gift, but im still friggin hungry (unless the cure happens to be a super hotdog or something). If Carlin sets out to be funny, and instead presents some view on the world, or some interpretation thereof, he's failed. Especially for the paying public. George, I love you, and I still cherish most of your work. But come now. You've been at this for 50 years, you know what you're doing and what needs to be changed far better than any of us. I'll be waiting for your genius to shine through again.

That was a lot to sort through, so i give you this, which is guaranteed to brighten any day:



A giant seahorse made of cheese! Now if that doesn't make you smile, what will? Seriously!

Home for the weekend, and Mom and I took my grandmother to Orchard Beach today. Its good for her to get out, get some sun, do some people watching. Plus she ran into one of her old students, who's now 30 and owns a shop on City Island. I could get into why I feel so terrible for her, about her lonliness and quickly developing senility, but I feel thats a bit too dark for just the second post. Too much, too soon. Once we get to know each other a little better, then we'll talk about the more depressing side of things.

On the plus side, I got to perform some katas on the beach, which was pretty cool in a Karate Kid kind of way. Very relaxing. Probably very confusing for the onlookers though.

Now, in much more important news, there's a Carlin special on tonight. A new one. Carlin is somewhat of a prophet to me. Lately he's been just slightly off his game (lots of anger, not as much specificity or direction), but he's still phenomenal. I'll probably post something after with some favorite quotes and just a general review. But to any and all who see this before then (which will probably be no one), 10 pm (EST), HBO. You'll thank me later.

I've been meaning to set one of these buggers up for a while now, and here it is. No comments on how long this will last, who I'll show it to, or when I'll update it, but at least it exists, and that's a start. I also can't comment on what the format will be or what I'll focus on. That's a whole lot of not commenting. I'm also not going to start off by telling anyone vital statistics about myself, my interests or tastes, etc. I wouldn't want to bore you, the viewing public, with a cliche such as that. You'll find out in due time, I'm sure, and the wait should amount to something resembling plot/character development, if such a thing can exist without a defined story.

So I guess, without a reason to put it up, an idea of where its going, or a thought as to whether I'll ever look at it again, I guess that leaves one to wonder what I hope to get out of this, and frankly, I'm not sure of that either. Perhaps a few random people will stumble upon it, and if I'm lucky, someone will be amused. If I'm REALLY lucky, someone will be moved, but lets not set our sights too high. I think, in all honesty, that I'm just going to wait this out and see where it takes me. I know its a lot to ask out of a blog (and what a terrible word that is, it sounds like the noise a boot in the mud makes), but I always attempted to keep a journal as a kid and it never worked. Perhaps the thought of someone else reading it will motivate me more. Maybe I'll get some kind of therapeutic value out of it. And maybe, just maybe, my short ramblings and whimsical notions will strike a chord in someone else, and what is life if not a series of connections? It could be that through this catharsis, I'll come to some great discovery of inner truths that even I wasn't aware of. This could turn into an extraordinary tale of a seemingly simplistic idea that just so happened to turn into the thread that holds together an entire chapter of my life, weaving its way through questions and answers, smiles and tears.

More than likely, its just a blog. A boot in the mud.

...but its free, so why not?