-
Book Notes: Bert Allerton: Gentleman Magician
Chicago area magician and author, Chuck Romero, quietly released his latest work without much fanfare. If I hadn’t been scanning through the latest posts on the Genii forum, I may have missed it. Romano previously released books on the life and work of Paul Rosini and the artwork and design of magic illustrations. Both works… Continue reading
-
Book Notes: When The Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, And How America Cracked Up In The Early 1990’s
John Ganz’s When The Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, And How America Cracked Up In The Early 1990’s was listed on many best of nonfiction books for 2024. I would say justifiably so. Ganz has done an amazing job researching and weaving together the history of the first few years of the 1990’s. In the… Continue reading
-
Minimum Requirements
In the opening essay of Shattering Illusions, Jamy Ian Swiss states: When you fool the audience you indeed fulfill the essential mandate of your job. But you have in no way come even remotely close to completing the job-much less having done the job well.There must — simply must — be some larger end in… Continue reading
-
New Year’s Eve
The year is coming to an end. Was it a good year? Yes, all in all. Was it challenging? Yes, at times. In retrospect, all years are a bit of both. I’m sure that there’s a good chance your year was the same. No matter what you plan for 2025, I hope it’s a great… Continue reading
-
Astonishment Is Our Natural State Of Mind
In the December 1996 edition of Genii magazine, the cover featured Paul Harris. Paul has been instrumental in changing the state of close-up magic since the mid 1970’s. I wasn’t aware of him until the early 80’s after the release of Close-up Entertainer and Las Vegas Close-up. Since 1984 and the publication of Close-up Seductions,… Continue reading
-
Digital Loss: Another View
In February I wrote about some loss of content that I experienced. It was a CD from the Miracle Factory that contained a collection of Annemann writings. I believe a lot of it ended up in the Annemann book that was later released. However the contents I had was unavailable due to bit rot –… Continue reading
-
Here Today
Having nothing in particular to read last evening, I spent some time reading past issues of Genii magazine. A review in the final Kaufman issue sent me back to the feature a decade ago on Lubor Fiedler. While searching the archives, I spotted a cover story on Jared Kopf. Each thread led to another. No… Continue reading