2009-08 Dennis' Deliberations

Greetings from the heart of the Shenandoah Valley. This is a magical place. The evenings are cool and the days are mild. This is not the steam bath climate of Central Florida in the summer. My new E-Mail is dphillips2009@comcast.net . Please change your address book.

Congratulations on Phil Schwartz’s excellent article in Magic Magazine on Thayer. I enjoyed reading it. It was good to see that Jon Armstrong is back in town for a lecture. Sheldon is doing a fine job of documenting the ring meetings. I wish I could be there to experience all the details. I miss you folks!

I did meet a local magician here in Harrisonburg that is teaching a magic course for children for the recreation department. He has all the David Ginn material down pat. Another local is doing one night a week restaurant magic on “kid’s night” at a local casual dining place. I am still going through the moving chores of: driver’s license, car tags, telephone set-up, internet set-up, bank account change over, health insurance COBRA- can I spare you all the agony of the problems in moving? In a week or so, I will get into the job search and magic bookings phase.

In the meantime, I did set up my TV and DVD player, even though, as I am writing, Comcast is hooking me up to the Internet. My E-Mail will be at the top means that I am again on Al Gore’s Super-Highway of information driving a “clunker” of a computer. Maybe Obama will let me fill this PC with metal shavings and epoxy and fill the hard drive with viruses and trade it in on a brand new computer. There is something bizarre about trading in your old American car in the “Cash for Clunkers” program and then buying a new foreign made car. I have an idea; can I trade in my old “Super X” levitation for a brand new Vegas Levitation? Let’s have a magic version of the automobile “Cash for Clunkers”.

On a serious note: A magic friend in Florida sent me an instructional DVD by Bob Kohler featuring Steven Spill’s “Needle Trick”. Spill, who toured comedy clubs for years, uses this as his closing act. Let me tell you that there has rarely been an instructional DVD on magic that has impressed me so much! I really think that Dave Williamson (who was at our last banquet) was influenced by this DVD. We all think of the “Swallowing the Needles” trick as a geek trick and old style magic. It is not! Dai Vernon was around when Houdini did his grand illusion show at the New York Hippodrome. Dai was not a big fan of Houdini but he did say that Houdini’s needle trick was the strongest part of his show and he raved about it.

I am sure that all of you enjoyed Dave Williamson’s needle trick even if it was in his typical over-the top comedy style. I am convinced that most magicians do not think about performing the trick because they really do not know how it really works, how to set it up, how to load the needles and how to play it. Steven Spill shows you every detail on making the load, all of the mouth work and stealing and hiding the load. His method of set-up is the most practical that I have seen. He loads the threaded needles while you are looking! The packet from which he pulls the needles has within it a soft magnetic sheet, actually a flexible refrigerator magnet to hold the needles and the load. After “swallowing” two needles he pulls out another 18 but by holding them by the lower-half of the bundle (to conceal the threading) they look loose. This is the load! He has clever lines to excuse this action.

We live in the age of “pack small, play big” and the needle trick fills the bill. Richardi did the “Razor Blades” but who uses those anymore? I am definitely thinking about what I saw. This is not a trick for kid’s shows unless you use the old disclaimer, “Now, don’t try this at home kids unless your Mommy and Daddy are away. If they are, then go for it! Really, do not do this at your home; go to someone else’s home where they have liability insurance”. If you are playing for an adult audience, have the audience assistant look into your mouth and you say, “They all went down my fallopian tube- pause for audience laughter- no, it is really my esophagus. I only said fallopian tube because it sounds sexier!”

On the job front, here in Harrisonburg, I still have applications in at the local colleges as well as Rosetta Stone. Rosetta has a large local operation here and needs a content writer. One afternoon I wanted to take a break from unpacking so I went on a trip around town to find the old TV station that I used to watch in high school in the early 60s when my family lived a few miles north of here. I found it! The actual TV and radio stations moved to new buildings and the old building is a warehouse now.

I went into the new radio station and introduced myself and explained to the receptionist what I was doing and we got into a chat about broadcasting. All of this was overheard by the general manager in an adjacent office. I left the building and as soon as I got into my car, the receptionist came running after me. I rolled down my window and she said, “The manager wanted to know if you had a resume?” In almost forty years of broadcasting work I have never had such a thing happen! Maybe it was a good sign.

Keep me posted on what I happening.

Dennis Phillips