(This is only part of Robin Leach’s excellent coverage of Magic LIVE! in Vegas.. Click the link to read the rest… Thanks Robin for the coverage..)
It’s not magic … it’s an outright miracle! Welcome to a special Red Carpet Report from the 25th anniversary of Magic Magazine and its 15-year Magic Live! convention at The Orleans.
Three years ago, Las Vegas headline entertainer The Amazing Johnathan was given two years to live. He suffered from diabetes, cardiomyopathy and damaged internal organs, and the last time I saw him at Lance Burton’s movie premiere of BILLY TOP-IT: MASTER MAGICIAN at The Palms, he was pale, weak and in a wheelchair.
On Wednesday night, I met with him and his wife, Anastasia Synn, at Magic Live!, and standing tall he told me that he’s going on the road in January for a short tour. Former Luxor President Felix Rappaport invited A.J. to perform at The Foxwoods in Connecticut.
The show is Jan. 12, with a second at a theater in Boston on Jan. 13. A.J. told me that he credits unorthodox stem cell treatment for his recovery. “I’m nowhere near back to normal, but we’re making progress,” he said.
“I performed here at the convention for the first time in three years, but I really felt tired after five minutes. I’m going to start building up my strength in the pool, and, if I’m able to, we’ll extend those two January nights into a longer run on the road.” Read more..
Flipping matching card pair after matching card pair onto the floor from a brand-new deck shuffled by a volunteer, Maxwell Fink spits, “You can’t win if you play with me.” Why? Because he’s not just a magician, he may be the devil. Lights dim to the candy pop song ‘Sh-Boom (Life Could Be a Dream).’
“Hoax,” the latest play within a magic show by Baltimore-based playwright Annelise Montone and magician Brian M. Kehoe, livens up familiar card tricks and séance gimmicks with audience participation and an occult-inspired narrative. Kehoe and Montone, who perform together as “The Encounter,” introduced the characters of Maxwell Fink and Sarah Swanson last summer in Victorian-era séance piece “Planchette,” and are planning to debut a new show featuring their characters called “Awake at Midnight” in 2017.
Kehoe is Fink, a recently reformed con man who’s on a mission to dispel common hoaxes with the help of his assistant, Sarah Swanson, played by Montone, who also wrote the show’s dialogue. The performance consists of a series of stories about con artists like “Soapy Smith,” a money-wrapped soap scammer, paired with related magic tricks requiring audience participation. The narrative helps remove “Hoax” from any comparison to shows starring a goateed guy flinging glitter at you while pulling a dove from his dragon-printed silk shirt.. Read more… (Photo: Annelise Montone and Brian M. Kehoe of Hoax.. Courtesy/Rob Vary)
Close-up magician Laura London is performing ‘Cheat’ at the Voodoo Rooms this Fringe. To get you in the mood, she introduces some famous female cheats from cheating history, before providing ten tips for cheating at cards.
I’ve been working as a professional close-up magician for the past fifteen years. But latterly I’ve been obsessed with the world of card cheats and hustlers; their stories, their lives and their methods. There’s a huge crossover between magic and card cheating. Both professions use very similar techniques, a combination of digital dexterity and outright cunning.
It’s not just magicians who are curious about cheats, it’s the public too. Movies like ‘The Sting’ and ‘Ocean’s Eleven’ portray them as quirky anti-establishment characters. Roguish knaves. The reality is far from that, but there is undoubtedly an element of the romantic, in fiction and film, when it comes to the depiction of con-men and hustlers.
On viewing these popular cultural images one question occurred to me. Where are the women? It turns out that they are as rare in the card cheating world as they are in magic, but I can tell you that they did exist and they were good too.
Two of my favourites are Poker Alice and Madame Moustache. Poker Alice, real name Alice Ivor, was a well known gambler in the American West, though she was originally from Devonshire. It is said she made as much as $250,000 while playing poker from the early 1900’s till her death in 1930. Alice was a skilled poker player but not averse to using her charm and beauty to distract her opponents at the table. She was also a good card counter, the skill of keeping track of which cards have been played.
In contrast Eleanor Dumont was a cheat through and through and notorious for crooked play. She was famous in the mid 1800s as a woman who flirted with the men to keep them at the table where she dealt. As Eleanor got older she grew a line of dark hair on her upper lip and ran a brothel, hence the nickname Madame Moustache.
In my own show in Edinburgh I tell the tale of another cheat, Geraldine Hartmann, but you’ll have to come along to hear those details. Until then here are a few of the ways that Geraldine used to hustle people out of their hard earned cash when playing cards…
1. If you’re dealing get a glimpse at the bottom card of the deck. Just knowing the position of one card gives you a huge advantage.
2. If there’s a mirror on the wall, use it to get a look at your opponents’ cards. If no mirror, then even a glass on the table or the surface of a cup of coffee can be used to reflect the face of a card as you deal it from the deck.
3. Mark the high cards. Easy to do if you have long nails. Just press them into the edge of the card.
4. Card counting. Very useful in Blackjack. Memorise the high cards that have already been dealt. It’ll help calculate the odds when you draw new cards to your hand.
5. Ringing in a Cold Deck. Gambler’s jargon for switching in a deck that has already been stacked so you will win.
6. Stealing chips from the pot. Risky but a sure way to take home the money
7. Planting cards on your opponent to let them take the blame; dirty play.
8. Control the shuffle. Yes, you really can shuffle any cards to any position ready for the deal. Takes lots of practice though.
9. Have a shill. A shill is a secret partner. Cheat so he is the winner. It takes the heat off you when you’re dealing. You split the winnings later.
10. The Drunken Mitt. Pretend to be drunk and while people are trying to cheat you, you cheat them!
Laura London performs ‘Cheat’ at Voodoo Rooms until 28 Aug.
