Diary

Spirit ABCs

10/30/2017

“Two great tastes that taste great together!”
The 1970’s slogan for Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups could also describe Spirit ABCs, a featured illusion in the Suitcase of Wonders magic show. When working on ideas, I sometimes like combining two tricks into one little delicious routine, just like the chocolate and peanut butter of the beloved candy. In the case of Spirit ABCs, I believe the combination of the ABC Blocks and the Spirit Slates resulted in a strong and entertaining new piece of magic.

The ABC Blocks is a parlor trick whose origin I am unable to track down as of yet. Nowadays, it seems to be performed mostly at children’s shows as a kind of sucker trick. Usually the plot is along the lines of the following: Three wooden blocks are shown labeled A, B, and C. One of the blocks is put into a hat (or small box). The other two blocks are dropped onto a thin pole. The block in the hat is then put onto the pole as well and a rectangular tube covers them. After some by-play with the audience, the tube is removed to show the middle block has vanished, and is found in the hat.

The Spirit Slates is a much older trick I believe, going as far back as at least the early nineteenth century when mediums used them to convince people they were communicating with the dead.
They were most popular when chalk slates were a ubiquitous object (used in schoolhouses). Any number of routines can be developed for them, but the basic idea is that some chalk writing, supposedly scrawled by a ghost, appears on a previously shown clean slate or slates. These days, when Spirit Slates make an appearance in a magic show it is usually part of some period piece or demonstration of mediumship from a time long ago.

As I am Smallini, the world’s tiniest magician, I own two miniature versions of both tricks.
Obtained years ago at separate times, I had no idea of how I was going to use either of them in my act. In fact, they both sat unused for quite a while until I hit upon the idea of using them together in a routine. Both items are of a very high quality and look extremely pleasing on the Suitcase of Wonders stage. The mini ABC Blocks were made by Mel Babcock (who also made my mini Square Circle), and the Spirit Slates were made by Dave Powell. Mr. Babcock also makes a trick box (in lieu of a hat) to be used with ABC Blocks, but I decided not to obtain it as I somehow knew I wanted to do something different with the blocks.

Now, a description of the routine for Spirit ABCs, followed by some thoughts about the effect:

The curtain rises to reveal me, Smallini, alone in the center of the stage standing next to two wooden chalkboard slates resting in a lucite stand, a piece of chalk on the floor beneath them.
The first slate is removed from the stand and shown to be empty of any marks on both sides. Mr. Widdle picks up the chalk and scribbles a mark on one side, then wipes it clean with his finger. He lays the slate flat on the floor before me. The second slate receives the same treatment (shown empty, written on, wiped clean) before being set on top of the first.
A yellow rubber band is retrieved from behind the rear curtain and the two slates are quickly bound together with it. They are then placed back on their stand, and the chalk laid on the floor beneath them. A red opaque scarf is brought forth and draped over the stand, covering the slates and the chalk. I move to the opposite side of the stage while the ABC blocks apparatus is brought out to the center of the stage. The wooden tube is lifted and placed next to the pole containing the three blocks. So now, from stage left, there is the scarf-covered stand (with the slates and chalk underneath), myself standing next to the three stacked blocks on the pole, and the wooden tube to my right.
A spectator now joins me by the footlights. He is of my size proportions, by the way, this man with the green coat and hat, moustache and goatee. I indicate for him to please choose one of the blocks. He turns and points to a block on the pole. I ask him, silently of course, if he is sure of his choice, and he steps closer to the pole and points again to the block in the middle, the B block. I thank him (again, silently), and he departs the stage. I turn to face the blocks on the pole as Mr. Widdle’s hand picks up the wooden tube and covers the blocks with it.
Now in quick succession, three magical moments: Mr. Widdle lifts the tube to show only two blocks on the pole, A and C. The B block in the middle (chosen by the spectator) has vanished!
I move stage left and motion for Mr. Widdle to remove the red scarf from the slates, which he does with a whisk of his hand. The yellow rubber band is unbound, and the slates are separated to reveal a large letter B drawn in white chalk on the inside of bottom slate. A ghostly prediction!
While the audience is reeling from what they have just witnessed, I move to the right as Mr. Widdle brings forward the wooden tube. He sharply rapps the tube against the stage, dislodging the missing B block from the pole. Another miracle!
I, Smallini, stand atop the block as the curtain falls.
(Mr. Widdle retrieves his cigarette from a drawer and has a puff, before placing the sign advertising the next act on the apron. )
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Spirit ABC’s played so well the first few times it debuted in the Suitcase of Wonders that I moved it up in the rotation to play at the end of the first act (out of a set of three), where it has stayed ever since. The development of the routine came together fairly quickly. While playing around with the ABC blocks, I had the notion to have the selected block be a prediction, and that’s when I thought of the Spirit Slates. I then realized that the two props both suggested being in a schoolhouse, so they seemed to fit together nicely in that context.

At that point there were two magical moments - the vanish of the block and the revelation of the prediction. I knew the block had to re-appear to end the routine, but where, and how? As I mentioned earlier, the block is usually revealed using a separate box (previously shown empty), or from a hat. I didn’t want to use another prop (too many on the stage), and especially if it didn’t fit as part of that schoolhouse context. I thought of lifting the slate stand after the prediction was shown to reveal the block underneath or behind it. That just didn’t make sense to me, and it was tilting the bulk of the action stage left. What was stage right? The wooden tube.

So, what if the block was found back in the tube? That would be a nice surprise, plus the re-appearance in the tube would make the audience construct a false, and seemingly almost impossible, narrative in their minds; How did the block get out from between the other two and also stay in the tube? No such thing happened of course (the block was never in either place), but Mr. Widdle having to “rapp” the tube against the floor in order for the block to fall out gives the impression that the block was somehow stuck in the tube, a thought that conveys the slightest bit of strange logic while still managing to perplex.

The slight of hand move used to make it look like the block fell out of the tube is similar to the one used in to make it appear like the buddah re-appeared in the glass for the Water Cell Escape trick. While I move stage right, Mr. Widdle steals the block from the servante, palms it, and picks up the tube. When he raps the tube against the stage, the block simply falls out of his hand from behind the tube, effectively looking like it fell out of the tube. A nifty move, if I do say so myself.

There is a symmetry and flow to Spirit ABCs that is very pleasing to me, and to the audience, I believe. The whole piece is a little display of odd theater. That’s the kind of magic that appeals to me. It doesn’t need meaning or a personal emotional connection (although I understand why some magicians might strive for those attributes). As long as the routine is well-designed, original, and performed admirably, that is more than enough of an artistic gift for an audience. Furthermore, these little surreal episodes that are strung together as part of a magic show needn’t have a “through-line” or even a theme connecting them. After all, look at vaudeville.

If a couple of passers-by happen upon the Suitcase of Wonders in a lobby of a fine hotel or an alcove in a public garden, they might stop to see a two-minute performance of Spirit ABCs, sip their cocktails and move on. Or they might pull up a couple of chairs and take in another routine or two. Either way, they were gifted with a little treasure of an experience that took them away from the real world, if only for a few minutes. Who’s to say if the performance will leave a mark on their minds afterwards, (conscious or subconscious)? And who’s to judge whether a Smallini performance is less likely to do so because it does not contain an astounding personal revelation (like those made by today’s modern Mentalists) or an impossible location of a spectator’s signed playing card? As long as the artistic intention is sincere and the performance original, why bother fretting over how deeply one can connect with the audience? After all, there may end up being a connection without that pointed effort, one based on two humans (the performer and the spectator) sharing a strange and perhaps sublime couple of minutes in an alternate reality - one that exists in between the curtain rising and falling in the Suitcase of Wonders.

The Piano Card Trick

10/14/2017

Once again I find myself writing about a card trick in this Diary. Despite my already stated ambivalence (at best) to card tricks in general, I seem to have a soft spot for some of them as evidenced by my previous entry on the wonderful Cards Across. This time around I am fascinated by a very old (aren’t all the best card tricks old ones?) self-worker called The Piano Card Trick.

Surprisingly, I came across this trick not in its original close-up form, but with fruit replacing cards in Jim Steinmyer’s stage version, Apples and Oranges, from his book, The Conjuror’s Anthology. The basic plot of all the versions remains the same, whereby after counting out pairs of objects into even piles, a spectator is asked to place one more object onto either pile, thereby making that one the odd pile. After a wave of the magic wand, it is revealed that the pile originally thought to be odd is now even, and the other pile odd. The object has transferred from one pile to the other. In description, it doesn’t sound like much, but in performance, if done right, it seems utterly impossible.

After reading the Apples and Oranges version, I was interested in not only performing it for a group at an upcoming annual retreat in Maine, but perhaps adapting it for the Suitcase of Wonders stage. This latter idea would be a mighty challenge, for all versions of this trick require carefully constructed patter by the magician, while I am currently performing tricks in the style of the late Silent Mora (set only to music, with no talking whatsoever). Adding to the difficulty of this proposed adaptation is the requirement of active involvement from a spectator, another no-no in my act (the stage viewing area being too small to accommodate sustained volunteer interaction). I really have no idea how a trick like this would work in the Suitcase of Wonders, but I seem to keep thinking about it anyway.

When I posted a request on an online magic forum for thoughts about Apples and Oranges, two distinct and opposing opinions emerged. One was that the trick was best performed with cards as originally intended, and the other was that any other pairs of objects used were better than cards (an opinion also shared by Steinmeyer). Penn and Teller have said they are always on the lookout for card tricks they can use with other items - a valid and interesting idea. On the other hand, there is something about the original Piano Card Trick, with its use of the spectator’s fingers formed as a “piano” to hold the pairs of cards, that seems just right. And it is this version that I am currently looking at, perhaps once again in vain, to adapt to the Suitcase of Wonders stage. I don’t know how I would pull it off, but I like the image of a pair of hands (Mr. Widdle’s in this case) being used as the holders for the cards on the stage.

One slight variation that I might employ would be to use only black cards for the trick, referring to them as piano keys. I would also use a non-face card as the one flashed as the ‘odd’ card, and its suit match in the other pile. This, in case the spectator chose to look at the new odd pile, would find the suit match, and perhaps think it was the original odd card that had transferred. But of course, the trick really should end with the counting of pairs in the piles.

As long as I’m thinking about all black cards, why not make them numerical pairs as well? That wouldn’t seem out of place since in many versions of the trick (including in Scarne On Card Tricks, the book I first read about the trick), you’re supposed to be saying “a pair, a pair,” etc. as you’re placing the two cards between the spectator's fingers. Strange how I haven’t seen that idea in print yet. Of course, you would still count them face down in two piles (while saying “a pair, a pair”) while not emphasizing the identity of the odd card at the end. After the final counting, you would probably also want to mix the piles naturally, but quickly.

The Piano Card Trick is a case where I love the magic principle, but it may be too much of a stretch to apply it under the conditions I need. Perhaps I should just leave it as a trick to be performed outside of the Suitcase of Wonders. Even if that’s the case, I am still conflicted as to what version to perform, as I now have discovered a diabolical version by Hideo Kato (Japan Ingenious, by Kaufman and Cohen) where the whole trick is performed by the spectator. And then there’s the version where you use pairs of chopsticks, or the one where you use pairs socks...

Flash In The Pan

10/1/2017

I want to bring fire back into the Suitcase of Wonders show. I had it in the show as part of a routine I performed years ago, but for whatever reason that routine was retired, and so was the fire, never to return.

The routine wasn’t retired because of the fire, or more precisely, any danger caused by it. In fact, the fire was produced (and extinguished) using probably one of the sturdiest magic utility production items there is - the Dove Pan. Actually, I was using the Dove Pan’s smaller cousin - the Chick Pan. Let’s just get the names out of the way. First there was the Pigeon Pan, invented back around 1888. Still being sold now is the large Duck Pan, followed by the Dove Pan, and finally the smallest, Chick Pan. Depending on whatever fowl you may have, there is a production pan for it!

All of these pans work the same way: An empty metal pan is shown and some “ingredients” are added to it. Most often (although this wasn’t the case with the original Pidgeon Pan), some lighter fluid or flash paper is added at the end. The magician “mixes” up everything, lights a match and tosses it into the pan, where a bright flash of fire occurs. As the flames are burning, the magician brings out a metal cover to place over the pan, extinguishing the fire. The magician quickly removes the cover to reveal a live bird in the pan.

As the Dove Pan is a utility item, anything can be produced from the pan. Many magicians, including myself when I was a kid, use the Dove Pan at children’s shows to “bake” a cake. The Dove Pan was the easiest (and seemingly safest - at least to a ten year old) way to work with fire. It was sold to me at a magic shop without hesitation by the proprietor, including the books of flash paper needed to produce that impressive and satisfying flash of fire.

A word about flash paper: It was a revelation to me as a kid. You just tore off a little square of what looked and felt like tissue paper, crumpled it up into a ball and held it at your fingertips. Then you lit it on fire. Whoosh! It goes up in a quick flash of flames so fast that it doesn’t burn your skin. Well, it doesn’t if you do what you’re supposed to and toss the paper into the air (or pan) after it is lit, but still. It was hard not to just play around with flash paper. Using it felt like you were a wizard who could create fire at your fingertips. Todd, my old friend and magical partner in crime for a while when we were kids, confessed to me that flash paper turned him into a “casual pyromaniac” at the time. Howard, another magical friend, told me he brought his flash paper shooter to high school, where it was immediately confiscated, never to be returned.

The Dove Pan was a staple of my magic show when I was eleven-years-old. I didn’t have doves (couldn't afford them, was scared of them), so I produced other items - sometimes a simple baked good my mother had made, candy, spring flowers, a rubber chicken. For one show, I felt I needed to up my game, so after the big flash I lifted the cover to reveal a two foot long rubber lizard covered in green slime. A girl in the front row screamed and ran away.

Because of the secret to the Dove Pan, you are not able to put any substantial ingredients into it, lest they be displaced and spill all over when the cover (and gimmick) is placed over the pan. So it was usually just a sprinkle of glitter, a cracking of a fake egg - that sort of thing - followed by the flash paper (I can’t recall what reason I gave to needing “tissue paper” to bake a cake or produce a rubber chicken). However, sometimes I would pour milk, lots of it, into the pan. I was able to do this by using my Milk Pitcher, another classic magic utility item (Hint - the milk isn’t really poured. It just looks that way, convincingly, if I do say so myself). I thought using the two items together was a good idea of mine, but it was probably suggested to me by the magician at the magic shop.

Fast-forward many years to when Smallini is performing in the Suitcase of Wonders. By then I had acquired a cute little Chick Pan from a magic shop in Boston. I worked out a routine to music where I showed the pan empty before simply crumpling up a piece of paper (torn from a tiny recipe book) and tossing it into the pan, along with a lit match. Whoosh! (The flames still satisfy). When I removed the cover there was a bright, red scarf inside. Because of the gimmick, the quick lifting of the cover sort of lifted the scarf up as well, so that it looked kind of like it had jumped up out of the pan.

Removing the red scarf by the corner, I did some business with it inside the stage before I briefly took it out of sight, only for it to reappear in my hands again, but this time it started to move on its own. During that brief moment when my hands were out of sight, I substituted the regular scarf with a “dancing hanky” of the same size and color. The Dancing Hanky is a wonderful, simple and effective item that can be made to move and jump around by using the thumb of one hand. You have to keep it in motion (and a dark backdrop helps), but with a little practice it looks like it is alive.

I pretended to grab for the hanky as it kept jumping away from my hands (a classic move) before letting it jump behind the stage where I switched it back to the regular one, along with stealing a thumb tip. A vanish of the hanky at the end, and the routine was done.

As much as I like that old routine, I’d rather come up with something different this time around. I’m playing with the idea of producing a pan full of clear crystal rocks that I would then turn into a clear crystal figure of a lady (an item I already own from another magic trick). Perhaps I would also use a milk pitcher-type custom made test tube to "pour" the liquid into the pan along with some sand and magic dust (glitter) for a sort of laboratory-type routine. We’ll see.

Whatever routine materializes, I am looking forward to bringing back the Chick Pan, an old friend (my original Dove Pan has been long lost to the ages), where the fire burns bright as the audience’s eyes widen with surprise and amazement (and maybe a little fear - it is fire, after all).

An Evening of Magic After Hours

9/14/2017

A wonderful evening was had the other night when myself and Mrs. Smallini went out in midtown to enjoy a good meal and take in an enchanting magic show. The evening, indeed the entire child-free week, was possible courtesy of my loving mother-in-law, who graciously agreed to host our two boys in her home in Massachusetts for a week at the end of summer - what we call “Granny Week.”

Dinner was at the Parker & Quinn restaurant at The Refinery Hotel on West 39th Street. This was a revelation for my wife and I, as we were thrilled to find an eatery in midtown that had excellent food, great old-world ambiance, reasonable prices, and a lack of the tourist crush; the patrons seemed to be mostly business locals and some hotel guests. We both agreed that this restaurant would serve us well in the future when we found ourselves in the area to see a show or go shopping.

What immediately struck me about Parker & Quinn’s decor were the interesting booths. The larger ones were deeply recessed and set up high, almost at eye level. They were made even more private by having the tall wooden backs of smaller booths right against them, so that there was only a small one-person-width opening in which to enter them. They could seat probably up to nine or ten people comfortably. When eyeing the larger booth in the back corner, I thought that it would make a great place for magicians to “session” over lunch (lunchtime sessioning being a long-time tradition where magicians meet at a restaurant, and commandeer a booth or table for several hours as they trade tricks, tips and stories. Usually it is open for newcomers to drop by, if they are in the know).

As it turned out, Noah Levine, the brilliant young magician hosting the Magic After Hours show we saw that night, also talked about sessioning, but it was in the context of magicians hanging out in a back room at a magic shop. The front room of said magic shop (Tannens, on 34th street) is actually where Levine’s show is performed. From his advertising card, Magic After Hours is described thusly:

“Sneak into a magic shop late at night
Discover its secret history
Sip champagne
Witness an unbelievable show”

It does feel like one is sneaking into the magic shop because, as billed, this show occurs at 8pm, and Levine is the only soul in the dimly, yet elegantly lighted space. I could tell the rest of the fourteen-member audience seem to feel the same way, as they milled around before the show began, carefull not to touch or disturb anything. Adding to the sneaking-in feeling is the fact that Tannens is located on the sixth floor of a nondescript, unmarked (except for the number) building wedged between two giant retail stores. There is no sign on the street, no indication that the magic store is even there until you find your way to the sixth floor (careful, one of the three elevators is uncomfortably small, fitting only two people. Mrs. Smallini remarked that it was the smallest elevator she had ever been in, so that tells you something). After winding your way past two travel agencies, the door to Tannens is in the back, where you enter its secret chamber.

Noah Levine is there to greet you, and to be your host, entertainer, and really, your amazing, if slightly odd (after all, who hangs out alone in a magic shop after dark?) new friend that you’ve met for the evening. And then, after an hour so, poof! He’s gone. And you’re home wondering if the evening actually ever happened, especially given that last crafty, purely imaginative image Levine leaves you with at the end of the show.

Is performing a magic show in a magic shop kind of like playing a gig in an instrument shop? There are many ways in which this concept could have gone sideways and wrong, including performing it during the day (meh), or choosing the wrong magic shop (actually, there aren’t but a few magic shops left, but they tend to be cluttered, crowded affairs). Even slick and clean Fantasma on 33rd street doesn’t hold the same appeal for an after hours show as classic, history-filled Tannens.

But mainly, the real difference-maker is the performer. A magician who was too old might seem a little sad and pathetic as he lumbered through a boring magic history lesson peppered with some wheezy classics. Equally wrong would be some brash, young turk dressed in black who might turn it into a night-clubby sort of experience with loud music and maybe a hot assistant.

Noah Levine was the key to making this concept work. It’s no small feat to entertain fourteen people in close quarters for an hour, first standing among them and then sitting around a table together. You begin to feel like you're getting to know Noah. You're hanging out with him for the evening as he shows you some really amazing stuff at this place that maybe we’re not supposed to be in. The performance was well paced, with never a prolonged bit or monologue, while the writing and routines were clever and fun. Levine had his audience thoroughly charmed and mystified.

A mention must also be made of other well-executed theatrical elements that helped make the show a success, including the lighting (subtle and intimate), and sound, or lack thereof, a fact Levine himself points out as being a great and rare opportunity to perform some magic which needs pure silence. Come to think of it, silence, along with total darkness (easily obtained in Tannens’s front room) are the makings for an effective seance. Perhaps those also happen on there on occasion (for pure fun, of course!).

Did I mention that the magic was excellent as well? Two highlights for me were the Egg Bag routine (I never thought it could be performed so close!), and the coin and tuning fork trick by David Roth. Another cool moment was the finale of a cheap, classic plastic magic trick (Dice Bomb, many of which I used to sell to tourists when I was a magic demonstrator for a while). The finale of Dice Bomb was almost a mini version of the Derek DelGaudio letter illusion currently in his show on the other side of town. It was Mrs. Smallini who pointed out this connection. I liked the contrast of the mind-blowing revelation occurring almost as a footnote at the end of a simple (yet also deceptive) toy magic trick.

I will end this diary entry with another one of Mrs. Smallini’s astute observations - that of the uncanny resemblance of the life-sized elephant standing against the back wall in Tannens to our own tiny Bessie, who performs tirelessly in the Suitcase of Wonders’ Vanishing Elephant illusion. They indeed look quite similar, except of course, for their sizes, which differ in an unmistakable way.

A Visit to Gulliver's Gate

9/1/2017

When walking through Times Square in New York, it is easy to feel small and insignificant among the tall buildings, flashing displays, and throngs of people. Sometimes I can imagine a giant hand reaching down from the sky and plucking a selfie-taking tourist family off the street and placing them somewhere out in Staten Island.

But as I turned onto 44th street today, I discovered a place where I became the giant, gazing down upon thousands of tiny people, towns, cities, and countries. It was Gulliver’s Gate, a new gigantic mini-model tourist attraction in Times Square.

I have always enjoyed model train set-ups, most recently the amazing holiday train display that was embedded into the plant life of the New York Botanical Garden last year. But as fun as it is to watch the trains speed by on the tracks, I find myself more attracted to the little worlds built around them - the tiny displays of houses, cars, trees, and people. At Gulliver’s Gate, those worlds are the main attraction, and there are more of them there than I have ever seen in my life. This is surely the largest miniature model display in the world, as the space takes up an entire city block with 100,000 tiny people populating major modeled sections of the world, including Europe, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East, as well as extensive representations of parts of New York City and seaside New England.

Apparently the creators of this massive miniature world were inspired by the far smaller, yet still impressive Miniatur Wonderland in Hamburg, Germany that has been popular for years. This being New York, of course, the size of Gulliver’s Gate had to far surpass that, and I’m quite sure that it does.

The level of detail seems unsurpassable as well. There are not just miniature people placed all around, but they are also involved in little happy or dramatic scenes, so to speak. They are having picnics, but they are also involved in car accidents and arguments. Tiny people are living their tiny lives as we giants peer at them from above and take our pictures. There are also trains, subways, cars, boats, trams, and balloons, a good deal of them moving right along their way. The landscape is minutely and realistically detailed depicting all the seasons as the tiny people bathe, ski, pick apples, watch movies and plant farms. The activities these little people engage in, as in our own world, are endless.

A fascinating element of Gulliver’s Gate is the transparency into the workings of all the various worlds. As I walked around, there were technicians that would sometimes (Gulliver-like) pop their heads up to tinker with a broken cable or vehicle that had stopped moving. Several of these giants were working on fixing the Panama Canal locks while I was there. You could also watch the computerized control room where all the technology in the worlds is coordinated - very Westworld.

The mood got a little more dystopian with science fiction when I turned the corner and saw a giant brightly lit, egg-like chamber filled with dozens of cameras. This was where your image could be captured, and a realistic six or twelve inch 3D model of yourself made out of resin would be delivered to your home a few weeks later for a cost of a couple hundred dollars. Or for forty dollars, a scale model of yourself (.08 inches) could be placed somewhere in Gulliver’s Gate’s many worlds, forever mingling with the thousands of other tiny people. Sounds cool, but is this place really a mad scientist’s project, where people get modeled into resin, and then something accidentally tragic happens to the real people afterwards, like in an episode of Black Mirror? To be honest, Gulliver’s Gate kind of had that feeling, as if something else was going on beneath the surface. But that may be only one New Yorker’s paranoia.

Until Gulliver’s Gate, the most impressive model of Manhattan in my opinion was the Panorama of the City of New York, located at the Queens Museum. This is a giant pale colored, stage-sized model of New York that was built for the 1964 World’s Fair. I still think that it’s worth a look, as it has a different “old future” feel about it.

Lastly, a nice touch at Gulliver’s Gate was the metal key I was given when I entered. Looking like an old fashioned “Ghost Key” used in that old magic trick, I could insert the key into a lighted box at various points in order to trigger an animated scene of some sort, like a merry-go-round, or people skiing down a mountain. Alas, I could not get the the Gulliver’s Gate key to work for the Ghost Key trick (the weight on the front end is not evenly distributed), but it is still a fine souvenir.

Shattering Illusions On The Subway

8/15/2017

What a wonderfully humanistic moment I had on the subway today - a completely unexpected cliche-type movie moment. But it was a true moment for me, and also one, I hope, for the person who sat across from me.

Traveling downtown on the A train I was sitting and listening to music when a young man got on at 168th Street, sat down right across from me, and took out a pack of playing cards. I watched him as he started doing card flourishes - cuts, fans etc. He looked to be about seventeen years old, casually dressed, possibly of Latino or similar minority heritage. He was clearly practicing, and not showing off. In short, he looked to be a nice kid, one that seemed to be sincerely interested enough in cards to practice manipulating them wherever he was going.

As we were pulling into 145th Street, I suddenly remembered the book I had in my bag with me. It was Jamy Ian Swiss’ “Shattering illusions” from 2002. Swiss, of course, is one of the most renowned card and close-up magicians living today. This early book of his contains essays about magic theory and critical analysis about the art of magic. How I came to have this book in my bag, on this day, I'll recall in a moment, except to say that I'm not one to usually carry magic books with me to read on the subway - if I'm reading anything related to magic on the subway, it’s usually been a magic periodical, the printed version of which I've since unsubscribed from.

Without really thinking, I quickly took the hardcover book from out of my bag, reached over the aisle, and handed it to the young man. I did think long enough to remember the cover of the book, which features Swiss standing in front of a fence of some sort, holding a deck of playing cards in his hand. That image would convey the reason for handing the book to him without my saying a word, I believed. My intention at that point was to at least have him see the great coincidence of my carrying that book while he sat across from me practicing cards, and for him to leaf through the book until I got off at 125th Street.

After a brief, astonished look on his part, the boy cautiously turned the book over, read the back cover, and glanced at the table of contents. He looked up at me and I said to him,

“You can read it until 125th Street when I get off,” which was the next stop.

During that somewhat long stop between 145th and 125th, I watched the boy as he read the book. He started to read what appeared to be the first essay, entitled “Why Magic Sucks,” and he wouldn't take his eyes off until the train reached the next station. Rather than casually flipping through the book, as one of that age and living in this time of screens might do, he instead was reading it intently for a few minutes.

I decided then I would give the book to the boy.

When we pulled into the station, the boy reached out to hand the book back to me, and I told him he could keep it. As we walked onto the platform he said to me,

“Really, I can have it?

I asked, “Do you do magic with those cards?”

I wanted to make sure that he was a magician, and not just some Poker-obsessed kid interested in gambling moves. He excitedly told me that yes, he does magic, and that he performs card tricks and other close-up magic.

So I told him, “keep it” and we parted ways, walking different directions on the platform.

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Shattering Illusions, that seminal book on magic theory, came into my possession when I briefly worked as a magic demonstrator the at New York’s Abracadabra costume shop in 2002, when the book came out. I brought it home to read, and it seems, never returned it. The book still bears the $55 Abracadabra price tag on the inside cover. Paul, the notorious owner and founder of Abracadabra at that time, wasn't a particularly nice or fair person, so magicians who felt shafted on their weekly earnings or commissions would lift items from him from time to time. I never stole from the store, but I suppose in this one case of not remembering to return this book, I did.

Shattering Illusions has been in my barrister’s bookcase of magic books ever since.

I was interested in Swiss’ writing at the time because a friend of mine, Howard Rappaport (The Great Howdini), had taken lessons from Swiss. I was impressed at the reasoning and methodology behind some of the moves Howard said Swiss had showed him. He seemed to be a deep thinker of magic.

I hadn’t picked up the book in years until last night when I pulled it out to re-read parts of it while traveling on the subway this late summer day. I had only thought of it because last week I saw the magician Teller perform a old Johnny Thompson routine on Penn & Teller’s Fool Us TV show. I was reminded that a book about Johnny Thompson’s magic was in the works by Jamy Ian Swiss, and so I looked online to see how it was coming along (it turns out the book is finally in pre-order mode after years of being developed). That caused me to see what Swiss was up to these days (he also has a new book that I plan on checking out). In the meantime I pulled out Shattering Illusions to hold me over.

And that’s why that book was in my bag when I saw the boy with the cards. It’s his book now, and I hope it opens some avenues of thought for him. Riding the New York subway system can be such a soul-sucking drag, especially nowadays. But it can also be a place where one can have a moment of humanism, if you allow yourself. With serendipity's help, a nice connection can be made.

Cards Across Echo Lake

8/7/2017

Thus ending the first week in August means that I, Smallini, have just returned from my annual week’s vacation in the gorgeous Acadia region of Maine. My family and I once again stayed at the wonderful AMC Echo Lake Camp, where we swam, canoed, hiked and ate good food while enjoying the company of other interesting and delightful families.

At the end of the week there is always a camp talent/variety show, and I was once again persuaded to perform a little magic among the singing and ukulele playing. This year I decided to just bring a deck of cards and perform Cards Across. As I have stated before in this Diary, I am usually averse to card tricks (last year I performed rope-through-body), but before I left for camp I saw a magician perform a version of Cards Across on the new season of Penn & Teller’s Fool Us TV show, and I was reminded of how powerful and entertaining that trick can be.

I was also reminded of the time I saw David Blaine perform a great impromptu version of Cards Across at the New York Public Library. He was lecturing as part of a new series there, and he was about halfway through, when two protesters stood up and started chanting about saving the books (The library was currently in the process of some sort of controversial program to digitize their books). It became clearly apparent that these two protesters were for real and that they were not going to stop. Blaine handled it like a pro, inviting the protesters on stage for Cards Across. They seemed flummoxed by the turn of events, expecting rather to be thrown out. But Blaine calmly and respectfully performed the trick (despite some of their snarky comments), and received big applause before asking them to stay for the rest of the talk (he would speak to them about the books issue afterwards). Blaine did a wonderful job of diffusing a tense and awkward situation while entertaining a large room of people with an unplanned card trick. It was the only time I saw Cards Across performed live.

Before I left for Echo Lake, I began researching some of the methods and performances of Cards Across. There were several routines I saw by respected professional magicians that just seemed too complicated for the audience to follow. It’s tempting for a magician to add something, and then another thing, before the routine becomes over-packed, so to speak, so I made sure to perform the trick as simply and efficiently as possible.

Before an audience of about one-hundred people, I chose the two tallest adults in the room as my assistants. I made a joke about if people in the back could see them (yes, it got laughs), but my real reason for choosing them was that I believed I would receive more ‘cover’ when one of them walked in front of me to hand some cards to the other one. Such was the extent of my unsureness of my card palming abilities that at the moment when I was to execute a crucial move, I thought the misdirection provided by a tall person crossing in front of me would help. Of course, it doesn't matter at all who the spectator is, how tall, or how wide for that matter, as long as you perform the move casually and correctly,

I also had another spectator choose a card from the rest of the pack to indicate how many cards would pass from one person to the other. I used the always reliable cross-cut force to produce a two of hearts. The cross-cut force also allows you to recap what has happened so far in the trick (one person counts ten cards, then hides them. Then the other person does the same). By the time the spectator looks at their forced card and shows it to the audience, no one recalls anyone walking across the stage to hand the cards to the other person.They just remember the two of them counting their cards into my hand, then hiding them on their person. The ending of Cards Across is a great crowd-pleaser as the audience and two standing spectators slowly realize what has happened.

Cards Across is just a phenomenal trick. Two spectators have magic happen in their hands; there is great opportunity for humorous byplay as they count the cards and then hide them on their person. The staging and timing is good for a large audience, and the magic is clever enough so that upon reflection it is difficult to suss out the method.
Interestingly, more than one person came up to me afterwards asking me not about how the cards transferred from one person to the other, but about how I knew how many cards (two) would travel after they were already counted. It was the cross-cut force that really sealed it for them!

A few days later I was unexpectedly called upon to perform a trick at a small gathering (my mother-in-law's 80th birthday), so I chose to do Cards Across and it killed again. No wonder this trick has survived the test of time, with so many legendary magicians performing it. A simple concept, yet so strong when performed.

All Thumbs

7/11/2017

I have recently come into possession of a classic stage illusion - the sword box. Of course, it is a tiny one, as I am Smallini, the World’s Tiniest Magician. However, the box is not made for a head, even one as small as mine. Rather, this sword box is meant for a human thumb of regular proportions. As it happens, I have access to two of the finest thumbs I’ve ever known - those of my assistant and collaborator, Mr. PT Widdle.

Mr. Widdle’s thumb fits perfectly into this finely made box, where the audience can plainly see there is nothing else inside it. The box is then rotated one-hundred and eighty degrees, whereupon a sword is removed from a decorative stand and thrust into a hole in the side of the box. Eight more swords are plunged into the box at different angles. The thumb is clearly in danger. However, when the box is rotated again to show the interior, all the audience can see are the swords crisscrossed inside the box. The thumb has apparently vanished! The box is rotated again, the swords removed, and the thumb is seen completely unharmed.

As astonishing as this effect is, it seems to lack a certain something. For starters, only one thumb is used. Why should one thumb be mutilated and not the other? And why should I decide such a fate? The solution is that I don’t have to decide, as I will mutilate both of Mr. Widdle’s thumbs!

After the first thumb is tortured inside the sword box, the second thumb will be put inside a guillotine. This fine and imposing prop, of which I already own, will pair up very nicely with the sword box to create a balanced routine. Two thumbs - two mutilations!. As Mr. Widdle’s hands are already employed crucially and significantly in the show, this “All Thumbs” routine would make perfect sense. Perhaps it would allow the audience an opportunity to cheer on these two thumbs, as if they were tag-team wrestlers fighting for their very lives.

As any ostensible readers of this diary may recall, my guillotine is used in a Marie Antionette routine along with a “Glorpie” scarf for reanimation. While that routine continues to be reworked, my guillotine can shine again in this new piece. It is certainly one of the finest models of “finger choppers” I have come across. I think I will chop a carrot or some such vegetable with the terrifying blade first, before turning to the thumb. Then, perhaps, after the dramatic chopping of the appendage, I will introduce a scarf to collect the severed thumb (seen briefly) from the red velvet bag. In one fluid motion, the scarf will be flipped open to see that nothing is in it, and Mr. Widdle’s hand will emerge triumphantly, thumb safely attached.

The two thumbs take their bows.

A thought occurred to me that the classic Thumb Cuffs could play a role in this routine. Might the two thumbs first escape an authentic pair of steel Chicago bonds before submitting to the subsequent individual perils? Tempting, but time is an issue, as the all three effects demand a good portion of it for completion (this especially holds true for the sword box). Still, the idea of beginning the routine with a double-thumb escape is enticing.

An Evening With Crispin Glover

6/22/2017

Last night I finally caught one of Crispin Glover's live performances and film screenings at the IFC Center downtown. Glover has been touring on and off in various cities for twelve years. His ‘show’ consists of a one-hour reading and slideshow of his eight handmade books, followed by a screening of one of his two films, a Q&A session, and then a book signing.

I attended the show with my friend BJ Rubin, whom ostensible readers of this diary will recognize as being the host of the BJ Rubin TV show (on which I appeared last year), and who also accompanied me to the Derek Del Gaudio magic show a couple of months ago.

The evening began at 7 p.m. with the slideshow, and by the time the lengthy Q&A session with Glover was over, it was 11 p.m. I decided to leave before the book signing, but my friend BJ stayed and waited in line until it was his turn to get a book signed and a picture taken with Glover at 12:30 a.m.

There are several remarkable aspects to Crispin Glover's show.

The first is that the show exists at all. A filmmaker will have screenings, and an author will go on a book tour. Both are for a set period of time, and they are sponsored by the corporation that is funding them. Glover, on the other hand, has been independently touring with the same film(s) and books for twelve years! Who else does that?

Another remarkable aspect about Crispin Glover's show is that his films can only be seen at his screenings. They do not exist in a digital format (except for the trailers), and Glover made it quite clear that he would be more than willing to take legal action against anyone who attempted to reproduce his work without his consent.

The aspect of Glover's show that seems to get the most press attention are the films themselves. I will not go into the content of the films except to say that they are enough on the fringe, so to speak, for Glover to not be able to find distributors for them. He truly laments this state of affairs, although it is apparent that he has come to terms with it, as evidenced by his consistent touring to recoup his personal investment.

As I said, much attention is paid to Glover’s films (they are of a unique nature that deservedly prompt critique, reflection, and often heated discourse), but in terms of this diary, it was Glover’s slideshow performance from the evening that I, Smallini, enjoyed the most.

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Dressed in a vintage showman-style of a black coat, vest and pants, with a white stiff-collared shirt and tie, Crispin Glover mounted the dark stage with only a dim red light barely illuminating him. For the next hour he dramatically read/performed his eight books while slides of the illustrated pages accompanied him. I felt like I had stepped back in time and was witnessing a Victorian-age author on a lecture tour, only the material was delightfully, surrealistically, incomprehensible. In fact, there were no ‘tells’ in the presentation to place it in any modern contextual time frame. The slides themselves could have been projected by a magic lantern.

It made me reflect later on that these “lectures” were once so common in the days before celluloid and electronic media. In a review of what appears to be a fascinating book on the subject, “Performing Authorship in the Nineteenth-Century Transatlantic Lecture Tour” by Amanda Adams, Matthew Rubery states,

“Seeing the enviable list of victorians who crossed the Atlantic to lecture on everything from the evils of slavery to the right to privacy makes me wish the phonograph have been invented a few decades earlier. Then we could hear those speeches for ourselves.”

In magic, Houdini is famously remembered for giving lectures about spiritualism later in his career. There was even a “Lecture Bureau” called Coit-Abler that managed Houdini along with,

“...such middlebrow intellectuals as the naturalist Roy Chapman Andrews, who discovered some of the world's great fossil-fuel fields, and the critic Carl Van Doren, literary editor of The Nation.”
[Houdini: The Career of Erich Weiss, by Kennet Silverman].

Houdini, it was reported, could ramble, his lectures lasting two hours or more (Glover acknowledged during the Q&A that reviewers commented that sometimes he could “go on and on” with his answers, and indeed, it seemed like he could talk the whole night).

Along these lines I would be remiss not to mention the live magic shows of Ricky Jay, whose magic performances are peppered and interspersed with verbose and articulate stories and descriptions. Like Crispin Glover, Jay is a throwback to the lecture circuit days of old.

There is no lecture component to the suitcase of Wonders. However, Mr. Widdle did used to talk quite a bit as part of the show, although he stays quiet these days, content with his cigarette and side flask, while I entertain on stage.

I admit I feel a little bit of a kinship towards the Crispin Glover “experience,” not in the content so much as the existence and structure of his show. When I began the Suitcase of Wonders (co-incidentally twelve years ago), I imagined it as something ongoing and only to be seen live. A creative choice for me, but for Glover, as he mentioned, it also was a financial requirement, albeit one that he enjoys on an artistic merit.

The Mummy's Journey

6/4/2017

A featured effect in the second half of my act for years has been The Mummy’s Journey, as I call it. Magicians know this close-up trick as The Wandering Mummy. I do not know the origin of the effect - perhaps an ostensible reader of this diary will write to me with the answer.

In any event, when I was thinking about performing some sort of Egyptian-themed illusion, The Wandering Mummy came onto my radar. I liked the premise - a mummy figure mysteriously moves from one sarcophagus to another - and I thought it would fit in nicely with the rest of my program. When I started researching the effect, I quickly came to the conclusion that I would not need to build my own as there were several high-quality pieces already for sale commercially. I should mention here that I, Smallini, consider myself in the mold of that great Golden Age of Magic magician, Harry Kellar. He was not known for inventing magical methods, rather he bought or acquired illusions from others and made them his own as part of his unique performing style. I do sometimes craft my own apparatuses, but I will just as often acquire other’s work and make it my own, so to speak.

As it turns out, The Wandering Mummy is a favorite of micro-magic collectors, and the beautifully crafted examples sell for hundreds of dollars on the collectors’ market.

This brings me to a slight digression (of which I have addressed in a past entry of this diary, but bears repeating), which is that in almost all cases, these high-quality pieces of micro-magic, like the Wandering Mummy, are created, sold to collectors, and then sit displayed in a cabinet for years in their home, until they are sold again to another collector, etc. They are periodically taken out of their cases to be admired for their craftsmanship and cleverness, and perhaps even performed for a guest from time to time. These informal “performances” will take the form of the trick being shown on a desk or table, maybe on top of a close-up mat of some sort. The magician/collector will utilize some patter (probably included in the instructions sheet) while fumbling through a routine (also most likely taken from an instructions sheet).

I do not mean to disparage collectors of these pieces, but as a stage performer of micro-magic, I, Smallini, just see it as a sad waste for all these wonderful examples of high-quality magic to simply be “collected” as it were.
Allow me to illustrate an alternative life for The Wandering Mummy, one that is included as a feature illusion in the Suitcase of Wonders magic show. After perusing several fine examples of this trick, all of which, as I mentioned, sold for high collectors’ market prices, I settled on Alan Warner’s Mummy II. Mr. Warner’s hand-crafted pieces fetch top dollar in collectors’ circles, and this example was no exception. It is made from the finest materials (solid teak wood, polished gemstone) and the mechanisms are reliable and smooth-working. But it was not the quality of the piece alone that made me choose this model. Mr. Warner added a clever addition to the routine whereby the mummy levitates briefly before being placed into the second sarcophagus. To me, this little levitation added a nice touch to what is, honestly, a pretty pedestrian transposition effect on its own.

From what I have seen, when The Wandering Mummy is performed (with or without Mr. Warner’s levitation), the effect is just not strong enough to withstand the lack of presentational ability of a collector, or even, in the case of the otherwise excellent magician Wayne Dobson, a professional attempt on television. Much of the problem (for this trick and other pieces of “stage-quality” micro-magic) is the lack of an appropriate stage on which to perform the effect. That is where the Suitcase of Wonders comes in. Just by giving the effect a proper theater (with a proscenium, lighting, music, and I would add, most importantly, myself, Smallini, for scale), the effect can be brought to life. Indeed, that is what I believe I have done with The Mummy’s Journey in my show. There is no patter - just music, lighting, two ancient Egyptian guards standing upstage, and me directing all the action. The curtain rises at the start, and falls at the end. It is a mystifying three minutes of stage magic presented in the proper context it deserves, not a kitchen table in the home of a collector.

I have wondered from time to time why I have not seen other examples of the Suitcase of Wonders, that is, a stage theater constructed for the performances of micro-magic. Mr. Widdle maintains that there could indeed be a market, albeit a niche one, for the manufacture of this type of theater for collectors of all these fine pieces of miniature magic. Perhaps there is already a collector or two who has indeed fashioned a theater of sorts, but who has chosen not to make its existence known to the wider public via the internet. If there is, I have not yet seen it. But of course, in addition to the theater, there is I, Smallini, of whom there can only be one.

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