Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Dental Floss, Masters of Illusion, and more

Summer Tour News:
It's official as of this morning we will extend our Summer Tour with July1 having us at Festival in the Park in Willard, Ohio. Then we drive down to O'Fallon, MO for their Heritage and freedom Festival for the 3rd and 4thof July. So two more states are now in the mix. We are hoping to add another state to the end of our tour and are in talks with a group now but it is too early to cinfirm. On one more note we have picked up a booker in Texas who will be working with us for a Texas Tour perhaps as early as September.

Tooth Floss-
Once a week a great magician and I have lunch together either at my home or at a local eatery. The locals like it because we are always performing for them. My dining buddy can never resist to perform for ANYONE>>>>ANYWHERE. We have a ton of laughs together. I'm not mentioning his name because he asked me not to because of the following story. It made us laugh long and hard. Often when we lunch about town my wife will tack a honey-do onto our gallivanting. Today it was picking up apple juice at Wal-mart. My friend picked up several packets of tooth floss ("Now I have enough for the rest of the year", he said.) While int he car driving out of the parking Lot I notice he is flossing his teeth with the edge of the plastic bag the contained the 5 or 6 containers of tooth-floss. I mentioned it to him and we both had a jolly laugh. He absent-mindedly forgot all about the tooth floss. (Probably thinking about who he was going to squeaked his nose for next.) OK, JC, I didn't mention your name. You happy?


Masters of Illusions (MOI):
My Network TV has been hosting Masters of Illusions, a TV show featuring magicians of all ilks doing their thing for live audiences. (This is the same network giving us the Masked Magician.) I have been watching every week and have been keeping my mouth shut. Over the weeks, however, I have run into several laymen who have expressed to me their utter disappointment with the show. So I will now for the first time publicly put in my two cents. This show is the most ridiculous display of magic ever on television. It is badly edited, badly shot, badly produced and badly performed. The masked Magician does a better job at performing and his producers a better job of producing a professional package than MOI. It is sad. I will say that last night's closer, Rick Thomas, was awesome. Way beyond the other acts in style and production value.
Now, I need to clarify something. I know many of the acts (performers) who have performed on MOI. Most are extremely gifted performers. However, the production value, or lack there of, of MOI make their acts look cheesy in some cases, and just birthday party magician quality in other cases.
I always think it cheap to slam something without giving suggestions to make things better. First, they need to film the acts several times and use the best of those shootings, or edit the best clips from each shooting. They need to rehearse more with the camera men to better produce quality angles and cuts. They need a host of some sort. Perhaps a comedy-magician who can interact with the acts, introduce the acts and perform a bit him/herself. Get rid of junior magicians unless you create a segment identifying them as such. Think costuming. Some of the performers look like overweight business men who found a cool toy. Scrap the cheesy dancing unless a professional choreographer can come in and make it look good. Talk to Copperfield, or the producers of World's Greatest Magic or someone with experience doing these types of shows and have them advise.
The Masked guy hurst magic buy exposing secrest he didn't create. in otherwords they are not his to give-away. The MOI group hurts magic on TV by producing a low quality product. And it doesn't have to be so. The masked Guy could have ethics and morality and quit. The MOI folks (with such wonderful talent as they have but are wasting)could work harder and prduce a better product. OK, I awiat cruxifition from my peers. (I should mention one more thing....I don't blame the acts...it's publicity baby....used right any publicity is good publicity. And as I said many of the acts are awesome...they just didn't appear that way due to the production value of MOI.)

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