2009-10 Dennis' Deliberations

Here is a fall update from Harrisonburg, Virginia, where I am getting settled into the grove. Wow! The leaves here are turning colors and the hills are ablaze with hues of red, orange and gold. We had to turn on the heat. My house has hydronic heat which is an oil fired boiler and room radiators. I have had an education figuring out how all that works. The heating system is very efficient and low cost compared to forced air heat as you have in Florida.

I spent a couple of warm weekends visiting Civil War Battlefields. The Shenandoah Valley was the breadbasket of the Confederacy and fiercely protected by Stonewall Jackson and his Cavalry commander Turner Ashby. Ashby was shot through the heart in 1862 in battle at Harrisonburg and the historic marker is less than one hundred yards from my house. They have a high school named for him close by. The 1862 campaign was a success for the rebels but Union General Phil Sheridan finally captured the Valley in 1864 and burned much of the infrastructure. The result is that many people here still have their old Gray Uniforms in the closet ready to come out again. There are no Left turns allowed in the county and it is against the law to sell anything but Right Wings at local chicken joints. The other day I casually mentioned to one of the locals about Stonewall Jackson being shot at Chancellorsville. They responded with, “Oh my God! He’s dead???”

So, speaking of history and legacy lets move to magic!

How does ANY lifetime list of effects and routines in magic compare to what I found in the new book about Doug Henning?

From the website about the new book on Doug Henning (http://www.doughenningbook.com) I haven’t done anything in comparison to Henning.

I remember Doug well! I remember hanging out with Doug, Dick Oslund and Dennis Loomis at the 1969 Abbott’s Get Together.

The big act on the Saturday Night Show was Ralph Adams. Doug was preppy looking with short hair, buck teeth and always a turtleneck sweater. His was enamored by the work of Guy Jarrett and Andre Kole. He talked about his friend in Chicago, “Jim” who was a genius. (Jim Steinmeyer)

Doug died believing that he could actually levitate telling close friends that he could float. I think his belief had much to do with his religion of Transcendental Meditation.

Larry Thornton and I agree that the one (and only!) thing that bugged us about Doug Henning was his tendency to overstate the importance of a child-like sense of wonder; how the unbounded imagination's ability to enhance and preserve our sense of the magical was somehow superior, even to science. "Never fully grow up! "Henning seemed to be saying, "Keep and nourish that wonderful child within you at all costs!"

In Unweaving the Rainbow, Richard Dawkins addresses the perception that science and art are often taken to be at odds. He wrote this book in response to critics who felt that his two previous books, The Selfish Gene and the Blind Watchmaker, relied far too much on a naturalistic world view. Dawkins felt the need to explain that, as a scientist, he too saw the world as full of wonders and a source of great pleasure; and that his own sense of wonder and enjoyment sprang not from any inexplicable actions of a deity (or any other kind of magic), but rather, the understandable laws of nature. In standard Christian theology, at least since St. Thomas Aquinas, there is an understanding that God is behind the laws of nature.

Perhaps it might have been beneficial to Henning to have met Dawkins or maybe Christian theologian and former scientist, John Pokingham and sat down with him for a conversation on the differences between the wonders of magical deception, and the magic inherent in the true wonders of scientific discovery. The poet John Keat's well-known accusation that Isaac Newton destroyed the beauty of the rainbow by explaining it (a starting point for Unweaving the Rainbow) may have pleased Henning immensely.

Far from being a magician of the skeptical school, Doug's apparent love for fantasy (over reality) may have been the principal driving force that sent him spinning slack-jawed and air-headed down the seductive 'rabbit-hole' of transcendental meditation, with its associated gurus of Eastern mysticism and bliss and finally into the end of his career.

Larry Thornton and I got an idea: Someone should create a (convention) stage act called "The Recession Magic Act" -- and then do about ten minutes of stuff (music only) dressed in obviously tattered tails, while putting on the attitude of a magician of great dignity. You know, a Thomsoni-like persona. Effects could include the Recession Duck Bucket made from a trash pail; an immaculately over acted high-brow Zombie routine with a toilet tank float; card productions with filthy rumpled cards that look as though they'd been through a war; and ... well, it's limited only by a twisted imagination. There must be dozens of gag possibilities. You could have The Miser’s Dream done with pennies. Finally, The Great Government Bailout Bubble where the grand finale is an explosion of phony money. As the act progresses (regresses) the guy's tattered tailcoat begins to slowly disintegrate as he desperately tries to hold it together. The soles on his shoes fall off.

At the end the whole act is held together with duck tape.

Okay, it needs work. But you get the idea. If you got a few of your magician pals together to brainstorm this, I think they could come up with a COMEDY WINNER.

Now you know why I'm not a comedy magician...Those of you that have been in the ring for at least 10 years remember “The Amazing Prozac and Bubbles”, my assistant was –Carl Fowler, former Ring President -dressed in drag. I was a bearded, old, over-the-hill magician who seemed oblivious to the audience and to anything that was happening on stage. Everything went wrong but I held out my arms for applause. Think Carl Ballantine stoned. I retired “The Amazing Prozac” after that one show and the quality of all comedy magic went up a level. Maybe I am a better writer-creator than performer? Bev said it all stunk. I think that was the idea, Bev! The problem is that when you do comedy, if it stinks, it has to stink funny. I will leave that to Kohl and Company.

I will keep you posted from here in the Shenandoah Valley. Halloween is around the corner. You should be booking shows.

Dennis

I keep forgetting that this is the Bible Belt.

Some guy up here saw this photo

and thought that I was a Pentecostal Faith Healer!

You will not believe your eyes!

One of America’s foremost Magical Entertainers will delight

and amaze you with dazzling skill and delightful comedy.

Come prepared to have fun!