334: A Magical Christmas Carol

Over the past year, I have attended a LOT of magic conventions. During those events, i have tried to update you with what was going on each day with daily updates from the organizers, talent, registrants, and dealers plus sometimes a little "color" background outside of the hotel.

But while I had some of my guests "cornered" for a few minutes, I asked them to do a reading of the classic story, "A Christmas Carol" by Charles Dickens. As many of you don't know, Dickens was a bit of a conjurer himself having performed during the summer of 1949 in a coastal resort off of the Isle of Wight purveying prestidigitation to those on holiday in the area. He was known as the “Rhia Rhama Rhoos - the Unparalleled Necromancer" and reportedly performed many unusual tricks including making playing cards magically burst into flames, transporting a woman’s watch from inside a wooden box and into the middle of a loaf of bread, and even cooking a steaming hot plum pudding in a gentleman’s top hat.

But prior to his venturing onto the stage to prestidigitate, he had already written many of his well-known novels including one published in 1843 which would become the iconic classic and perennial treatise on the holiday, "A Christmas Carol".

So here I present you this year's audio greeting card with great gratitude to all of my guests who participated in this project and also to all of you who regularly listen to The Magic Word Podcast. Happy Holidays!

As a little added treat for you this holiday season, here is a video I filmed and edited in 1985. Magician Scott Wells is visited by "three foreign" visitors who want to learn magic. In this video, Scott performs close-up, stand-up and stage magic for his guests. He also gives magic lessons to his guests; however, these instructions have been edited out of this public video.

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#200 - How The Grinch Stole Christmas

Last year we brought you "The Night Before Christmas" read by a handful of popular magicians. It was so well received that I asked a few more guys (and gals) to read "The Grinch Who Stole Christmas". See if you can pick out the voices of: Boris Wild, Bob Cassidy, Docc Hilford, Tim Ellis, Tim Trono, George Tait, Rocco Silano, Eric DeCamps, Mandy Farrell, Ice McDonald, Steven Bargatze, Marc Salem, Rick Merrill, Richard Osterlind and, as the Grinch, Eugene Burger.

As I attended several magic conventions over this past year, I took aside a few guys and gals to chat on the podcast. But many of the people graciously agreed to record something special just for this very special podcast. I hope you enjoy hearing their reading of this Doctor Seuss classic. This was one of the most difficult podcasts to edit and took the longest time to gather all the voices to do this one which ended up being one of the shortest ones, too.

This special podcast is my Christmas gift to you for listening for these past few years to the previous 199 podcasts. I wish all the best to you and yours for this holiday season.

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Magic & Martinis Thursday...with the Grinch!

165: Ground Zero - IBM/SAM Combined Convention 2014

The tenth combined convention of the International Brotherhood of Magicians and the Society of American Magicians will officially begin with a full day of activities on July 1st; however, there were a lot of "night before" activities that took place on Monday June 30th.

00:05:19 - Jeff Lanes and Frank Seltzer enjoy a Newcastle beer, a fine cigar and a great chat about the upcoming convention. We talk about the talent line-up and the importance of the congressional recognition of magic as a performing art.

00:21:57 - Steve Bryant talks about his Little Egypt Gazette that is an interesting monthly journal of magic. He also gives us a scoop on a new book he has coming out on November 18, 2014 called "Lucas McKenzie and the London Midnight Ghost Show" which will eventually be sold through Amazon.com

00:26:12 – Dal Sanders, President of the S.A.M., talks about his past year as President but mostly about getting magic recognized as an art in the Congressional Record.

00:31:30 – Karl Hein talks about his recent performance on the Pete Holmes television show and how he landed the job and what it did for his career.

00:33:43 – John Sturk, from FunInc.com, talks about InvisibleThreadsClothing.com that is aligned with Fun Inb. and what's going on in Chicago with a new convention at Magic Inc.

00:36:58 – John Graybeal, a Friend of The Magic Word, is a regular listener and talks about how this podcast has influenced him and how his children has gotten involved in magic and contests as a result of learning from this podcast. He also talks about the two days of junior events that have taken place prior to the “main” convention.

00:44:35 – Oscar and Melody Munoz talk about the contests that will take place this week and the prize money that is at stake.