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Aldo Colombini In Need Of Your Prayers…

Aldo Colombini In Need Of Your Prayers…

image   Aldo Colombini, a complete comedy magician, has suffered a massive stroke in Florida. Aldo loves magic, and he loves those who share his love of magic. So much so that several years ago he changed his product pricing to ten dollars.. for anything. DVD’s are ten dollars, an array of wonderful tricks – ten dollars, and all his books- ten dollars. Unlike many fellow magicians who are constantly raising their prices, Aldo refuses to change his… To give away a free ebook or effect once every now and again is one thing.. To give away your life’s work for a pittance in order to benefit magicians everywhere.. well, that’s something special from a very special gentleman… His wife, Rachel Wild Colombini, wrote the following:

Dear Friends

I am writing to let you know that the love of my life, my beloved husband, best friend and partner Aldo has suffered a catastrophic stroke. Sunday afternoon paramedics rushed him to Munro Regional Hospital in Ocala. Today they performed another CAT Scan and I am saddened to say that the news is not good. Aldo is completely paralyzed on his right side. He cannot speak and the doctors say there is nothing else that can be done. Aldo loved life and does not want to be on life support. I am heartbroken by the fact that I must now take him off life-support and move him to Hospice Care. Short of a miracle, the doctors say he has less than two weeks. Please pray for him.

Aldo is a Magical Comedian and that is how he would want to be remembered. I get strength from knowing that Aldo and I have made so many loving friends throughout the world. We had a marvelous life together traveling the world performing and lecturing to thousands of people in dozens of countries. 

Please correspond with me via my Facebook page, as I am not up to taking phone calls right now. I hope you all understand.

Aldo and I love you all so very much. I will keep you all informed.

Love,

Rachel Wild Colombini

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** UPDATE –  We received word today (Wednesday) that Aldo passed. The magic world lost a true ambassador..

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Algebra-cadabra! Here’s a classic magic trick, and the mathematical secret behind it..

Algebra-cadabra! Here’s a classic magic trick, and the mathematical secret behind it..

image Here’s thanking Alex in Numberland and the Guardian for this brilliant bit of MathMagic.. I’ve performed this effect a number of times and it never fails to amaze…

   You only need a cursory familiarity with the work of magicians like Derren Brown and David Blaine to realise that at the heart of many illusions lies a piece of rock-solid mathematics.

Sometimes tricks require fooling people with probability, as Brown expertly did in The System, his classic show about predicting the results of horse races.

And sometimes it relies on genuinely surprising and clever theory.

The literature on mathematical magic overwhelmingly concerns tricks using playing cards.

Irishman Colm Mulcahy is a legendary cardsmith in the mathe-magical community, and his lovely new book Mathematical Card Magic is jammed with entertaining and thought-provoking tricks.

Here’s one that’s in the book…

Read On

Dark Art: Spectacular Illusions from the Golden Age of Magic..

Dark Art: Spectacular Illusions from the Golden Age of Magic..

Wonderful article by Hunter Oatman-Stanford for COLLECTORS WEEKLY, complete with over twenty classic magic poster photos. They alone are worth the visit..

At the height of the live-magic era, seeing was believing. On a nightly basis, heads were severed and reattached, horses levitated from the stage, and bullets were caught in mid-air. To advertise these impossible feats, magicians at the turn of the 20th century commissioned vividly illustratedposters, emblazoned with exotic-sounding names and ominously scowling faces, daring you to doubt them. More than 100 years later, these posters still provoke an insatiable desire to see these illusions firsthand.

“How do you look at a poster of somebody being decapitated and not buy a ticket to see it performed live?”

Magicians of the period typically got their start in vaudeville, sandwiched between song-and-dance routines and stand-up comedians. But if an illusionist had enough charisma, he or she might strike out on their own, headlining a show of death-defying acts and sleights of hand that left crowds dumbfounded. Fans especially loved the darker side of magic, so the most successful magicians frequently toyed with life and death, evoking the power of some otherworldly being.

Read More

This Nick Trost classic is one of my favorite effects to perform while table hopping. It’s been marketed commercially as ‘Dot’s Impossible’, and I like it better than using standard playing cards… just more visual with the large dots. This effect, as taught by SCAM SCHOOL, is easy to learn and easy to perform, and I’ve found you can repeat it a second time, if need be, without giving away Marlo’s ‘secret’…. After the first ‘reveal’, I take the ‘odd’ card (lets say it’s the odd RED card), add it back to the bottom of the stack, take the top card and show it to be the opposite color (BLUE), and after a little mumbo-jumbo I wave my hand over the packet and show that ALL the cards in the packet have now changed to RED.. This double-kicker is what really completes the effect…   

This is one of those effects that’s been around for fifty years, yet the value of the effect on your audience is still strong. I highly recommend you try it on a spectator or two and watch their amazement…

 Dot’s Impossible at Amazon

(Source: http://www.metacafe.com/)