070: Dan Garrett - A Look Forward Into The Past

Welcome to the 70th podcast on The Magic Word. Dan Garrett was passing through Houston during his recent lecture tour entitled, "Forward Into The Past" that was dedicated to Duke Stern and Tim Conover. Dan is a Past President of the Society of American Magicians as well as a full time professional magician, dealer, lecturer, author and generall all-around good guy.

In this podcast Dan talks about his friendship with the late Martin Gardener and the Gathering for Gardner (http://www.g4g-com.org/) and those who attend (i.e. Percy Diaconis, Mark Seddeducati, and others). Dan has a passion for science fiction and online gaming, too, which we discuss. Dan talked about mentoring new magicians and how young people might find a mentor. His interests in magic go beyond the traditional but also include the allied art of juggling. With this broad background, Dan seems perfectly suited for discussing the future of magic including digital magazines (i.e. Kozmo's "Reel Magic" and other paper magazines that have gone digital), conventions, and more.

This was one of the more interesting discussions I have posted but it was also the single most difficult. Easy from the standpoint that Dan and I have been good friends for over 25 years so the discussion (as well as the Coca Cola for Dan and the scotch for me) ran freely. But the audio crashed as it was being saved. We knew that the magic of the moment that we captured on the podcast could not be duplicated. So I spent six hours meticulously finding, saving, pasting and editing this podcast. Despite all my efforts, there are still about ten minutes out of our hour and ten minute chat that were lost. But I tried to make the edits as seemless as possible. I hope you will enjoy this talk with one of the world's leaders in magic. I hope you will also enjoy a couple of sound clips from Firesign Theater to get us into and out of this podcast.

Download a MP3 file of this podcast by Clicking Here then right click to save the file. You can also download the MP3 media file directly from the RSS feed by Clicking Here.

Dan Garrett - Forward Into The Past

Dan Garrett's new lecture, "Forward Into The Past" (with a tip of the hat to Firesign Theater) is being presented throughout the U.S. this year and into 2013. The lecture features mixes old with the new featuring some great effects that he published (READ: "hidden away in magazines") that have never been presented in his lecture before now. His lecture is more than a trick, explanation, trick, explanation, etc. It is more of a show complete with music, voice impressions, stories and fun presentations.

His effects are straightforward, direct, commercial and within the skill level of all. Equally important, his effects run the gamut of close-up to parlor to stage and include ideas for children entertainers and corporate magicians. What more could you want?

If you have seen Dan's recent lecture, then please post your comments here below. More information on Dan at: http://www.dangarrettmagic.com/

Dan sat down with me to talk about a plethora of fascinating topics. Look on this website for the podcast

T.A.O.M. Photos from Day 3

Day two was pretty much a lot of lectures so I didn't get many photos, but Day three provided some great shots. I caught Dani DaOrtiz and Christian Engbloom holding court at their booth with a horde of magicians packed around just to watch Dani work.

The professsional close-up show was a real treat and as good or better of a line-up of performers that I have ever seen at a convention: Eric Jones, Chad Long, Mark Mason, Christian Engbloom, Paul Wilson and Chris Korn.

Mark Mason and Chad Long received standing ovations. This picutre below was Chad's.

The T.A.O.M. convention was not the only convention going on in the Hilton Americas Hotel over the Labor Day weekend. The Miss Texas pageant was also happening on one of the other floors. PJ Campagna hosted one of the rooms for the Professional Close-Up Shows. She and Joy Miller gave us a funny moment during a break in the close-up action.

The late night lectures after the evening stage show started off with Michael Weber who gave us several clever ideas for both close-up and stage plus some cool mentalism tricks, too.

The "Fat Brothers", Christian Engbloom and Dani DaOrtiz gave us a late night (really, it was early morning) tag team lecture on card conjuring.