250: At Home With Lupe & Norm Nielsen

After the 2015 MAGIC Live! convention, I stayed over for an extra day so as to visit with one of magic's legends: Norm Nielsen. I spoke with Lupe about coming over to their home to chat and see the poster collection. She told me that the bulk of their collection is now in Chicago preparing to be auctioned off by Potter & Potter over the next two years. But I was still welcome to come by for coffee and a visit. So I did.

Fortunately, I had visited their home and collection in 2007 when I also snapped some lovely photos which are on this blog. I also posted some pictures from this year's visit. Perhaps you can tell what a difference eight years makes.

Lupe talked about Norm's poster collection at the Order of Merlin breakfast at the combined IBM/SAM convention in St. Louis. You can Click Here to hear that interesting, historical presentation. Unfortunately, you cannot view the beautiful posters that she showed in her presentation, but the stories are interesting.

00:01:56 - Norm Nielsen and Lupe talk about their magic poster collection, how he came to start collecting and what is happening to it now. He also talks about his long career as a performer and builder and creator. He has many stories about other magic legends he has met along the way, not the least of which was his good friend, Tobias "Theo" Leendert Bamberg "Okito" (1875-1963) . During this chat in Norm's living room, his lovely wife, Lupe, fills in some details and gives us some additional background information. David Sandy and Lance Rich are also in attendance "in the studio audience" who ask some relevant questions, too.

00:59:07 - After our chat, we go out to the workshop where David shares a funny story about Faucett Ross. This is a legendary story that is Mac King's favorite story and has to be heard by this larger, podcast audience in order to preserve it for posterity.

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Check back with Potter & Potter from time to time to see when the Nielsen Poster collection will be put "on the auction block".

#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.

Download this podcast in an MP3 file by Clicking Here and then right click to save the file. You can also subscribe to the RSS feed by Clicking Here. (please note: this RSS Feed subscription system may not work with Android systems). Remember, you can download it through iTunes. See the preview page by Clicking Here.

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Magic & Martinis Thursday...with the Grinch!

149: Day 3 - East Coast Mind Jam 2014

Day Three of the East Coast Mind Jam was a little off schedule due to a travel problem for Marc Salem from England. But the day began with an interesting lecture by Joe Atmore on The Amazing Dunninger. that included some fun, old videos from Dunninger's television show It didn't hurt that Joe bought a few dozen doughnuts from Dunkin' Donuts to entice better attendance at this early hour. After lunch we were visited by Tony Spina. Eric Citron, organizer of the Mind Jam, presented a "Lifetime Achievement in Magic Award" to Tony followed by several people who gave testimonials and recollections of their time with Tony.

This flowed directly into a special edition of "Now You See It with Scott Wells", a talk show that featured magicians from the weekend: George Tait (Patrick Redford), Joe Atmore, Ted Karmilovich, Bill Gladwell and Richard Osterlind. This took us right up to the time when Marc Salem arrived. The stage was struck and Marc began his one man show. That followed with his lecture that included some explanations of tricks from his working repertoire.

I apologize for the buzzing sound in this podcast but the microphone was near speaker which had an annoying buzz that I could not take out. Time stamps for this podcast:

00:01:24 - Tony Spina, former owner of Tannen's Magic, accepts an award plus several people tell stories of their influence by Tony.

00:17:57 - "Now You See It With Scott Wells" with George Tait up first.

00:30:50 - Joe Atmore tells some great stories about working with Uri Geller

00:4:41 - Ted Karmilovich talks about performing at a casino

00:53:30 - Bill Gladwell chats about how he got his one man show in Gatlinburg, Tennessee

00:58:30 - Richard Osterlind recounts a story about David Copperfield

01:06:03 - everyone on the couch tells their story of a highlight performance from their careers.