2008-05 Dennis' Deliberations

I had a good time at the banquet and a full article for The Linking Ring will be on these pages very soon. Craig is digging up the photos and I am pounding the keys.

I did go to the Ring banquet by myself as I usually do. Perhaps an explanation is due. I will soon be coming up on my 36th wedding anniversary. Yes, to the same woman, continuously and happily. I know all the old lines about marriage that night club comedians use.

My wife has been supportive and encouraging about my magical adventures. Cindy will assist me on most gigs for lay audiences if I need help. But, she prefers to be left out of any social magic activities with magicians. She detests magic talk and card tricks and is bored silly with coin matrices and almost all walk-around stuff. Other than Vince Carmen, Bev Bergeron , Dan Stapleton and the late Harry Blackstone Jr. she has never expressed to be about being thrilled by the performance any stage magician. She was, for the most part, bored in the Las Vegas magic scene and only made positive comments about Rich Thomas’ Illusion Show and that is probably because he handled his audience volunteers well and incorporated ballroom dancing into his production numbers. Cindy and I are ballroom dance instructors.

How could a rational person, an educated woman, an artsy woman, a former elementary school teacher, be so disinterested in being around performing magicians? Recently, I think she enjoyed the visit from James and Joe and family as well as Richard Hewitt as long as the magic did not replace the social aspects. She also enjoyed being at Craig Fennessy’s Christmas party.

For a start, at the beginning of our marriage, almost all of the professionals and wanna-be professionals that socialized with us were either ego trippers, liars, blowhards, con-men or out-of-control drunks. Most of the time, they were all of the above. She considered the majority of them to be a bad influence on our three kids. What do you call a magician without a girlfriend? “Homeless”.

I do know that she always considered magic (show business- broadcasting) to be a kind of “mistress” to me that she had to compete with. She always thought that I was wasting my time and talents messing with show business. “Dennis, you could a tenured college professor, an engineer or a school administrator if you weren’t afraid of being 'tied up' with a regular job so you couldn’t make a show or short tour".

Maybe it was the Bra-trick done on her 30 years ago that created a permanent phobia of attending magic banquets. She was a 32A and the Bra was a 38DDD. As I recall it also had THREE cups! Some magical moron thought that it would be funny.

She reminds me that in another show she was called up by another loud-mouth to help with the Disecto Wrist Chopper and one of the lines he used with the carrot was “Here is a long skinny one. (Held like a phallic device) Do you like long skinny ones? Ha ha”.
Thank God most magicians do not do that stuff to women anymore, but that was the 70s.

So now when I ask her to accompany me to a magic show, she says, “You want me to go?” Then she assumes the stage inflections of a magician. In a sing-song stage voice she says, ‘Gimme a hand, no the clean one’- ‘Stand right here, on the trap door’- ‘what is your name? And your phone number while you are at it, honey?’ – She concludes with, “and you want ME to go to your magic show?”

I keep telling her that things are better now at magic banquets. Wish me luck as I try for next year with her.

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Automatic E-Mail replies are a fact of life. Computers can have a robot send an automatic reply to the sender. You send an E-Mail hoping to get a fast reply and you find out it will take a while. With the help of Magician Larry Thornton in Calgary, Canada, Here are some good replies for your robot E-Mail program to send to people.

1. I will be unable to attend to my emails until I return from my touring magic show gig. Please be patient, and I will make your message vanish magically in the order it was received.

2. I am currently out of the magic shop at a job interview and will reply to you if I fail to get employed by Criss Angel, please be prepared for my foul mood.

3. You are receiving this automatic notification because I am out of the magic shop. If you're a kid with another inane question, chances are you wouldn’t have received anything at all from UPS.

4. Sorry to have missed you, but I’m at the doctor’s having my brain and heart removed so I can be promoted to the head of a talent agency.

5. Thank you for your message, which has been added to a queuing system. You are currently in 352nd place, and can expect to receive a reply by the time we get our wholesale magic order from Timbuktu.

6. I'm sorry I can't answer your email, as I’ve run away to join David Blaine on a flagpole in Alaska.

7. I will be out of the magic shop for the next two weeks for medical reasons. When I return, please refer to me as ‘Pamela' instead of Hans Klok.


Dennis Phillips