Wayne Houchin lecture 2011

Our local magic club - the Calgary Magic Circle (IBM Ring 66) - had its first lecture of the season a couple of weeks back. Wayne Houchin, best known for being (a) a co-creator of magic-makers Theory 11,(b) the mind behind some pretty weird geek magic, and (c) one of Criss Angel's advisors (on the early shows at least). He knew what we wanted to see and he gave it to us.

Hell, anyone who can do the gypsy thread (torn-and-restored-cotton-thread routine) by breaking up a bit of white thread, sucking the pieces up into his mouth and restoring them into a single thread...by pulling it out of his eye socket...is bound to develop a certain following in the magic community.

What did I walk away with? His torn-and-restored card routine - "Counterfeit Hollingworth". The best I've seen yet - I've been working on three other T&R Card routines over the past year and each has failings of one sort or another; his is what I'll be using in my working repertoire...once I've got it down.

But what will I always remember? His finale - performed but not explained - probably the best, cleanest needle-swallowing routine I've ever seen. So clean, so fair, and done only three feet away from me. Forty needles swallowed, mouth inspected, sleeves rolled up, followed by ten feet of cotton thread swallowed...

and regurgitated....with all forty needles now tied at four-inch intervals along the length of the thread.

Not for the faint of heart but a true classic and so wonderfully performed. I honestly, truly have no friggin idea how he did it.

G.I Snow(don)

The boys - Augustus and Snowdon - are now about 15 months old. A couple of weeks ago we took them to their doting vet for an annual checkup - the vet was delighted to see such healthy rabbits (rather than the usual death's-doorstep-loitering ones that are usually brought to her) and complemented them both on, among other things, their delightful, soft and perfectly-formed bunny bellies.

Snowdon had a tiny ear irritation, however, and we had to return the following week for a follow-up treatment...

which sent him into shock and g.i. stasis. Yup. He stopped eating and, as many of you will know, this required round-the-clock feeding and care for four days until he began eating and pooping again. All is well now, though, and I'm pleased to report that over the past month both rabbits have become slightly...ever so slightly...more sociable with us and willing to tolerate cuddles and attention.

I've been so ridiculously busy for the past four or five months that I haven't been able to make a concerted effort to re-introduce them to each other (following a series of spats and nastiness earlier in the year) but now that the bulk of my busy period has calmed, I'll be doing that in the evenings. I hold out high hopes for the two of them becoming friends again.

Will keep you posted.

Instead of Abracadabra (Part 1/3) 2010 Oscars Live-Action Nominated Shor...

Ok - here we go. All I have to do, it seems, is learn to follow instructions.

Instead of Abracadabra

Wow - just found this via iTricks.com. Short Swedish film - very very funny. Watch all three parts!

For some reason it won't let me embed it. Probably my own incompetence.
Go to this address:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDXthIW2Qkc

Magic gone wrong - a tale of boxes, rope, razors and blood

Last week I had dinner with my dad, his wife and a few friends. One of the friends, Caroline, told me this story about her husband, Jeff.

A few years ago Jeff, a lively, funny man, was at a large corporate event featuring a couple of magicians. He was invited on stage to take part in an illusion. The magicians tightly bound his hands and feet with rope before locking him inside some sort of box or cabinet.

Once inside, the magicians continued with their patter and the audience waited for the climax to the trick. However, after a minute one of the magicians seemed to notice something that alarmed him - a trickle of blood appearing from the bottom of the cabinet door and running onto the stage.

Foregoing the rest of the trick they flung the door open to find Jeff freed from his bonds but clutching a razor-sharp box-cutter and bleeding badly from both wrists. He was whisked away to hospital where they stitched up his gashes and released him.

The magic show never finished.

Apparently while tying Jeff up these magicians had slipped a box-cutter into his shirt pocket and whispered instructions to him - when they closed him in the box he was to cut through his ropes and free himself. Jeff had done his best, and with gusto, but with unfortunate and unforeseen results.

Neither magician thought that having a man bound at the wrists, stuffed into a pitch-dark box and asked to cut himself loose with a razor (again, limited mobility and no vision at all) was a sensible way to accomplish their illusion.

It turned out they were wrong.

Jeff got taken to emerg and was stitched up but not before getting a host of scowls and reproving looks from the unsympathetic nurses on duty who assumed he was either an attention-seeking self-harmer or just suicidal but lacking either coordination or conviction.

He must have dined out on that story for years afterwards.

David Williamson cups and balls

I recently dug out an old VHS tape of David Williamson (the superb and rather oddball genius) which included his two-cups-and-balls routine.

Hey, I thought - I have a day off today. Why don't I sit in my living room during an exceptionally hot day and try learning it?

So I did.

Well, I sat and I practiced. And sweltered in the 32 degree heat. That's celcius, by the way.

I won't say I learned it, but I've made a little headway. It's astonishing how much time these things take, just to get the sequences down pat.

But at least it's a start.

Bladder cannon unveiled!

Despite planning all year for this, it was still a rush at the end. I'd been thinking of building props for this year's Parker Doodlebug Show at Calaway Park, on the outskirts of Calgary. I'd been writing routines, practicing a few new magic tricks and making all the odds and sods that would make this show better than last year's.

Anyway, Parker Doodlebug's Patented Aether Flatulator was going well right up until a couple of days before the show. The problem was trying to get a good resonant fart sound out of the thing. My air tank (not the compressor, mind you) has no limiter so the air was coming out full-force and, well, whoopee cushions are not designed to withstand the rigors of building-site compressed air.

Boom.

Or more 'pop', actually.


I glued, cut, siliconed and strapped things into place again but the bottom line is that when you want a good rude noise it's surprisingly difficult to manufacture at will.

Anyone have any ideas of a solution? Must be air-powered. I was thinking of making my own large-scale whoopee cushion but can't work out what to use for it.

So on Wednesday I took a car full of ridiculous gadgets to Calaway and unveiled it all, including the bladder cannon.



And what fun that was. The bladder cannon was even more successful than I'd hoped for. The balloon kept growing and growing far beyond what I'd anticipated, and when it blew...whew! Shards of latex at my feet. Boom. Not pop.

So it's back to the drawing board for the flatulator, but the bladder cannon is working fine.