Naquada

Jack Parker passed away a year ago, on the 30th June 2007. It is no exaggeration to say that Jack was one of the best card magic creators of our time. He was an inspiration to many card magicians and showed just what it takes to develop a great magic trick. A lot is owed to Jack Parker.

His good friend Andi Gladwin, published a book on his card magic last year; 52 Memories, with contained 52 pieces of Jack’s best work, and you known when people like Richard Kaufman, David Acer, J C Wagner, and Paul Harris and David Regal sing his praise, it was a huge loss when Jack died long before his time, and we should remember his life.

To celebrate his magic, Andi Gladwin will be sharing a video of his magic every day for the next week. If you’ve never seen Jack Parker perform before this is a perfect opportunity to experience him performing some of his best creations. The video marathon will have a new video posted each night at 12am (GMT) each day this week at http://www.andigladwin.co.uk/jack-parker/

You can also get the book 52 Memories directly from Andi, which without doubt is one of the best books on cards I have read from some time.

So its been a little quiet on the blog the last month, mainly due to wedding planning commitments (invites, information sheets, websites and so on), but also due to some of the other projects I’ve been working on.

The Magic Convention Guide is now up and running well and attracting a lot of visitors, especially now that you can search for and book hotels for conventions through our partners on the site. The Home Counties Magical Society Website is also going great, with literally thousands of visits now per month!! I’ve also now joined the management team at what I think is one of the best Magic forums on the internet, The Magic Woods.

I’m very proud to have been asked me to come on board to The Magic Woods Team and help further the forum. There are some exciting things that I hope to do with conjunction with The Magic Woods Forum over the next year.

Recently The Magic Woods completed a Q&A session with Teller from Penn and Teller that ran for over a month, and other names that have frequented and openly discussed magic with the members have been Ben Hart, Simon Drake, James Randi, Jeff McBride, Jason Palter, Dynamo, Angelo Carbone, Justin Miller, Michael Paul, Jay Sankey, Whit Haydn, Eugene Burger, Cardone, Zenneth Kok, Paul Zenon, Keith Pascal, Nathan Kranzo, Banachek, Paul Daniels, Daniel Garcia, Steve Dela, Luke Jermay, and Daryl.

It’s also always been my goal to join The Magic Circle, in fact I actually joined as an associate member when I was much younger, but neglected to really pull my finger out and do my exam. The Magic Circle don’t run associate memberships anymore, so it’s all or nothing now!!

Our Society now has in it’s midsts The Regional Representative of the Magic Circle for the Home Counties, Keith Churcher who is a Member of the Inner Magic Circle with Gold Star. This of course means that if your in the ‘Home Counties’ area, which includes Bedfordshire, Berkshire, Hertfordshire, Northamptonshire and Oxfordshire, arranging your Magic Circle entry has never been easier. and you can contact him for more information.

This morning Keith kindly delivered my welcome pack, which is a bit daunting when you see it in black and white (and a splash of colour!).. It looks like our regional exams might be around September, just in time for the wedding!!

So I just need to work out, and polish my routine, practice, relax and practice a bit more!!!

Fingers crossed, and sorry to everyone over the next few months who will have magic forced on them whilst I’m practicing…

Today is our anniversary, it’s also one year to the day since I asked Michelle to be my wife. For the last 365 days I have realised how lucky I am to have her in my life, and how lucky I am she said yes. I have also loved her more with each passing moment..

It seems like only yesterday that we were out in Paris, the sun was shining, and we were drinking wine at the top of monmatre..

A while ago, I gave Michelle a book of things I’d written with her in mind.. One of pages contains this, and I think it probably makes it clear why I’m very happy that soon, she’ll be my wife..

Have I told you today..

That my mind feels quiet when it’s restin on your shoulders..

That my heart beats stronger when its next to yours..

That my breathing matches yours in the middle of the night..

..and that when we are together, it just feels so right..

We’re off to our favorite restaurant tonight.. champagne.. and the best company in the world.. each other.

It lives… Now that Paul St George has finished the Transatlantic Tunnel, he’s installed the Telectroscope down at Tower Bridge. Cowfish has been down there and actually looked though the Telectroscope and seen the sights that are.. New York…

Photos are building up in the Telectroscope pool on Flickr, and it all looks very shiny!!! Remember, you have to Believe in the Telectroscope and get yourself down to Tower Bridge in London or the Fulton Ferry Landing, Brooklyn, New York, near the Brooklyn Bridge, between today and 15th June 2008.

(photo by Cowfish)

UPDATE: there are now a whole bunch of photos and videos appearing on Flickr about the Telectroscope

As it say ons the Telectroscope Blog:

“I received a mysterious phone call at 7:00 a.m this morning from Paul St George. He sounded tired, but elated. He urged me to come down to Tower Bridge to bear witness to the completion of the tunnel. When I arrived, this is what I saw..”

Just like when the Rocket Ship Landed in London two years ago…

Something strange is going on in the capital again this weekend…

..It’s exciting, it’s strange.. it’s coming out of the ground.. and it’s Artichoke… You know what to expect…

The Teletroscope… London and New York.. 22nd - 15th May 2008

..and photos… For the non-believers

Can there really be a transatlantic tunnel from London To New York?? Well, apparently Yes!!!

Artichoke (the people that brought you the large elephant tramping through London) and Paul St George will be opening up a special exhibition from May 22nd through to 15th June 2008 in both London and New york..

Bizarrely the news about this first broke on April 1st.. Hence most thought the mad ’steam punk’ invention of the ‘Teleroscope’, a device that used large lenses to allow viewer to see long distances through a tunnel, as well as the existence of a ‘transatlantic tunnel’ was an April Fools joke..

However now there’s a chance to see for yourself as the tunnel is, apparently from the photos, now all but complete. If you should happen to be in the vicinity of City Hall in London or the Fulton Ferry Landing in New York next Tuesday or Wednesday, you may see something strange going on.

On Thursday, 22nd May, a Telectroscope will be installed at each end of the tunnel, and it will open to the public for the first time. Allowing visitors to see from London to New York by just looking into the ‘Telectroscope’.. Quite errie!!

The project is the brainchild of the British artist Paul St George, who discovered the existence of the tunnel whilst sorting through some family papers. Notebooks and plans belonging to his great-grandfather, an eccentric Victorian engineer called Alexander Stanhope St George, revealed the location of the tunnel and plans for an astounding invention called a Telectroscope.

Through the backing of communications company Tiscali UK, Artichoke plans to open the Telectroscopes to the public, 24 hours a day. The London Telectroscope is situated on the south side of the river near Tower Bridge (close to Abbots Lane and Vine Lane)

The official Telectroscope website tells you some more about the tunnel, the Telectroscope and the project.

You can also read more on the Telectroscope Blog…

..and we’ll see just what it’s like!!!

I said previously that I’d been busy, and hence the blog has got a little side tracked, so what have I been up to.. Well quite some time ago a site was set up to list Magic Conventions, talk Magic Conventions, review Magic Conventions, and cover.. well.. pretty much everything you needed to know about Magic Conventions..

The sites been a little dormant for a while, but after a long period of dust settling on the site, I’ve taken over running it, and The Magic Convention Guide is back and cranking up to running at full speed again!

I’d like to express my sincere thank yous to Table Magician Noel Qualter, Creative Design Agency - Monster Creations, and Publisher and fountain of all knowledge Andi Gladwin, for their generosity, and agreeing to let me loose with their original project.

I have some very exciting ideas for the site, and I hope that you will support it’s growth. As well as the features that were part of the site before, I’ll be offering a lot more, including more interviews from the convention celebrities, convention gossip and rumors, and even practical things like a list of hotels in the area of each of the conventions (as well as the reviews), I’ve teamed up with a number of hotel providers to allow you hopefully an easy method of finding hotels near to the convention centers, and we hope to get the inside track on whats coming up. You might even see the odd game on the site to fill those convention gaps.

This site will now be running to generate money for two organisations, we will be donating all money from the site to The Home Counties Magical Society, and The Conjuring Arts Research Center. I hope as visitors, and contributors to the site, you will help me support both of these worthy organisations. Advertisers should contact me for information on how to sponsor the site, or advertise on it.

I’m also now looking for a team that will help me with information, although anyone can submit a review of a hotel, or convention to the normal email: info@magicconventionguide.com, I’m looking for a small team to cover conventions outside the UK, again if you are interested in joining the team, please let me know on the above email.

If you know of any conventions not listed, please let me know, and I hope, together, we can make a site dedicated to magic conventions, and how to survive them.

The Magic Convention Guide can be found at : http://www.magicconventionguide.com/

I’ve been pretty tardy with updating my blog, mainly down to a number of reasons (all good) that I’ll go to in another post at some point, but last Monday, Clive, Ian, Mo and Simon invited me up to The Magic Circle in London to see Joshua Jay.

Contrary to popular belief, I am not a member of, and have never actually been up to The Magic Circle itself, so the prospect was quite exciting, and, of course the double plus was that I’d also get to see Joshua Jay lecture.

The Magic Circle itself is located not far from Euston Station, and from the outside looks very unimposing. Turning the corner into Stephenson Way, a pair of doors with the Magic Circle Logo on them hides the wonders inside. Walking in, I was greeted by The Magic Circle’s security guard, given my guest pass for the evening, and we headed up to the Devant Room to watch the examinations for that evening.

Standing at the back of the room, watching the performers getting ready, and waiting for them to start, I actually started to feel quite sick. That nervous; I shouldn’t be here kind of sick, I’m not sure why. I think it might have been some sort of sympathetic nerves for them, about to perform for those sitting in the room, ready to mark them and establish if they were the caliber to join the ranks of The Magic Circle. I think it was the stone cold thought that soon, that might be me sitting in front of the same audience, waiting to be judged.

Once the auditions were over, we headed down to the Club Room. It was nice to bump into a few people I knew; Sav, Andi Gladwin, Noel Qualter, Iain Moran, in fact there probably were more people I knew that I didn’t get a chance to talk to during the evening, as it turned out to be quite a busy night..

Almost too soon after sitting down, it was time to head up to The Magic Circles own theatre, a 162 seater custom theatre located on the top floor of the building. I’ve never been to a magic club that really boasts such great facilities as The Magic Circle, it’s not many clubs thats can seat 162 and project the lecture onto a back screen behind the performer.

Joshua’s lecture was excellent, although I’ve read most of the content of his set in various publications it was great to see Joshua himself perform them. It’s actually quite thought provoking that Joshua is so young, and so talented.

After the lecture we headed down to the the club room for some drinks (again, a club room with it’s own bar!!), to chat and savor the atmosphere. It’s quite overwhelming, but a great place to be..

..I just need to polish up my skills to get through the interview and audition…

I’m a massive fan of Cirque Du Soleil, and have been to a number of the shows that have run at the Royal Albert Hall, and Battersea, in the big top.

We had the opportunity to get tickets for Delirium at The O2 for last night, so we jumped at the chance, especially as this was the retirement of the two year run of Cirques first Arena based show.

I’d read a few things about the show before heading up to London, and understood that it was ‘different’ to Cirques normal performances.

We had drinks and food at Raan at the O2, which was really fabulous, and then we managed to head into the O2 VIP lounge. The lounge was great, with only a few people in there, no queues, it’s own bar, comfy chairs and room to breathe, we left the queues behind and enjoyed some pre-show drinks before heading up in the private lift to the 4th floor.

The O2 is a 20,000 seater arena, and the setup for the show divided the space basically in half. giving around a 10,000 seat performance. A pretty huge number for anything except a concert.

Delirium is Cirques first foray into the Arena performance space, and to be honest, it’s got it’s draw backs. The show is, if you sat in the right place, a spectacular show of music, light, projection, multi-media and performance. However from the wrong seats, you’re watching something that could become confusing, long, disjointed and a disappointment.

The stage incorporates 540 feet of projection surfaces, the equivalent of four IMAX screens, allowing massive multimedia videos to be projected onto the screens. The main stage also incorporates a massive semi transparent fly-screen that can slide across the stage to allow projections to be show in front of the performers on stage. This allows some very impressive hologram type effects to be shown on the stage. The visual experience of seeing a 120 foot high woman interacting with the performers on stage is or could be quite breathtaking. I also enjoyed the section at the beginning with the 120 odd foot tall doors that opened and closed with similar sized faces peering out into the audience.

I say, could be quite breathtaking, because I feel that Cirque really failed to make the show what it could be. Yes the show is clever, and large scale, but to be honest I think The O2 was too big for the show. In other cities, the custom stage is viewed from both sides, with the audience sat behind, and in front of the flat stage, pulling them to a more central viewpoint, and creating more of a connection with the performance. With the O2 performance, the audience (all 10,000 of them) were seating in front of the stage only. With a stage that is also quite narrow (for the audience size) it means that a lot of the angles don’t work, particularly some of the fly-screen projections that interact with the performers.

Cirque shows are normally a perfectly balanced mixture of music, singing, acrobatics and on stage performance. Delirium concentrates more on the music, containing music, and remixed music from the last 20 years of Cirque shows, many with an additional vocal section laid over the top. This is the closest you’ll probably get to a Cirque Du Soleil rock concert. However the issue is that Cirque isn’t a rock band, it’s not a super group, and it doesn’t pull off the job of trying to be one.

We were very disappointed that a lot of the performance time, two hours with no interval, contained few acrobatic or circus performers compared to other shows, for a 10,000 one performer with a red balance ball doing contact juggling is really not great. The only exceptions were the hula hoop girl, who was both visually excellent, and dynamic enough to hold your attention, and the balance acts half way through.

The rest of the show was slightly confusing, the large screens showing a mixture of multimedia and realtime feeds from stage, and almost hypnotic visual effects, meaning that at times, the biggest thing in your eye line, the 560 foot screens, became the center of attention, and not the on stage performance. I regularly was distracted by audience members getting up and walking round, and drifted from watching to listening, not sure if I was there for the music, or the visuals.

Personally I think any of the existing cirque shows could have worked well in an arena, possibly with a smaller audience, but the new style arena show wasn’t my cup of tea. Don’t get me wrong, the show visually was stunning, if you were central to the stage, but it lacked the normal Cirque feel and ambiance.

Maybe it was good that the show retired last night, for me Quidam at the Albert hall next year will be much more of the true Cirque experience for us..

Pixar Studios, creators of Toy Story, Monsters Inc, Cars, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles and Ratatoullie, also create ‘short films‘. Normally to accompany the features films (you may have seen ‘lifted’ if you went to see Ratatoullie). Pixar have now started on their latest short, a film based around a magician character and his long suffering rabbit.

The film, entitled ‘Presto’, is described as featuring a turn-of-the-century magician named Presto DiGiotagione, who’s become famous for an astounding rabbit from a hat trick. His rabbit Alec become more and more dissatisfied as he shares none of Presto’s wild success.

One day while Presto is out eating a lavish dinner, Alec is left behind, locked in a birdcage with a carrot tortuously out of reach…

via: HCMS website