086: MagiFest 2013 - Day Three

The final day of Version 2.0 of the Magifest was another success. The day opened with a lecture by John Archer then we had another great T.E.D. talk by outstanding magicians like Peter Pitchford, Ben Train & Chris Mayhew, Simon Aronson and Kainoa Harbottle with a little extra thrown in by co-organizer, Andi Gladwin, the day was magnificent. The afternoon lecture was by Dani DaOrtiz which was even more incredible to learn how his magic is accomplished. The evening show was hosted by Simon Lovell with the opening act by John Archer with some comedy mentalism followed by Peter Pitchford with an homage to Cardini. Justin Flom rocked the house with some outstanding, visual magic and closing the show was Justin Willman with some time-tested classics. The two Justins closed with dueling floating tables.

The podcast starts off with a nice chat with Kozmo about Reel Magic which is now available for streaming online. We talked about street performing and how Kozmo decided to quit working the streets and why he decided to return.

13:12 - After the evening show, I took my wandering mic around the lobby to get some feedback from some of the non-magicians who were in the audience and what they thought of the show.

20:40 - I then got to chat with a couple of the stars from the evening show, Justin Flom and Justin Willman. They had some great thoughts on the direction of magic and some advice for the young magicians.

32:41 - Ginny and Simon Aronson talked about their two person mind reading act, their inspiration, and some of their more difficult and unusual things people have had in their pockets and purses.

42:01 - Another one of the stars from the evening show was Peter Pitchford who talks about his interest in Cardini, branding, and making a living for a family of six as a stage magician.

53:35 - Braden Richards was the winner of the Junior Scholarship for the Sorcerer's Safari Magic Camp. We had a brief chat with him then talked with Mike Segal who is the director of the Magic Camp which will be the last week of August. For more information, see http://themagiccamp.com

59:23 - Convention organizers, Andi Gladwin and Joshua Jay finally got to relax and take a breath after the convention was over  They talked about what they did and didn't do and what they might do in the future. John Archer chimed in with a few comments (and some Jager shots) during the chat, too.

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080: Part 3 - The End of the World/Year Podcast

  Part Three of this “Ginormous” podcast features more great conversations with three more influential magicians. You can hear our chats beginning at the following times:

00:00:00 – Gabe Fajuri, President of Potter & Potter Auctions talks about what people are buying and selling for or from their magic collections and what brings the top dollars. He also gives us a sneak preview of a couple upcoming auctions for 2013 including the Cardini auction which promises to be historic. http://www.potterauctions.com/

00:14:07 Stan Allen, Editor and Publisher (and Custodian) of MAGIC Magazine, Stan Allen talks about digitizing his magazine and the multi-media content that is offered each month online and via digital devices. He also gives his look into the future of the magic magazine industry possibly joining forces??? http://www.magicmagazine.com/

00:32:54 – Kozmo chats about his ongoing, six-year-old digital magazine, Reel Magic. We talk about stealing intellectual material and how easy (and wrong) it is to rip off others’ material that they work hard to produce and then post it on the internet or distribute it among friends. Kozmo has an interesting way of how he hopes to combat this crime. He will soon offer some online content and streaming that will only be available to subscribers. http://reelmagicmagazine.com/

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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.

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