Rand Woodbury on Magic Week in Review

Sitting in to help me with all of this is a magician who’s newest DVD is entitled “Rand Woodbury Live, Volume 1″. iTricks is proud to re-welcome back to the show Rand Woodbury. How you doing Rand?

Rand Woodbury: Hey

Justin, how’s it going?

Justin: Pretty good. Have you had a chance to listen to your first appearance here?

Rand: Yeah, I actually did, and I’m frightened of my own voice.

Justin: No, you shouldn’t be. This is going to be fantastic. We’re really psyched to have you back here.

Rand: A pleasure to be here.

Justin: All right. David Copperfield told Michael Eisner on his CNBC show Conversations this week that growing up his idols weren’t magicians. They were rather the big stage and screen icons of his day. Magic was just something that he was good at. So, were your idols magicians growing up, Rand?

Rand: Yeah, Copperfield, Henning, Siegfried and Roy, Blackstone. But I was also influenced a lot by motion pictures and especially my father. My father’s a comedian, Woody Woodbury. I can remember at the age of 12 being up just outside of Cincinnati at a club that burnt down many years ago called the Beverley Hills.

My dad got called in to do a fill-in date, and he went in on the 4th of July. Because my dad wasn’t supposed to be performing, someone else, they started selling tickets for my dad at the last second. So, in a room that held about 2500 people–I mean, this is a huge, famous nightclub.

Justin: Gigantic venue.

Rand: Right. John Davidson almost died when it burnt down years ago. I just happened to be traveling with my dad at the time, and I sat in the back of a room. He performed for about 250 to 300 people, which doesn’t look like a lot in a room that sits 2, 000.

Justin: Cavernous.

Rand: Right. My dad stayed on stage for over three hours telling jokes to just see the joy on their faces. It’s not that my dad doesn’t know when to get off, it’s just that they couldn’t get enough. My dad will sit and play songs on the piano, whether they’re humorous takes or actually just boogie-woogie tunes. When this happened, nostalgia seemed to be a lot more hip than it is today.

Justin: Just real quick, going back what movies, motion pictures you said, influenced you? Any movies in specific?

Rand: I’m a huge movie junkie. I love films. I’m like Copperfield, I like to not just do tricks, but tell stories through my performances. Some are humorous, and there’s stuff that Andrew’s actually helped me with that has to be well-written and worked out. It’s designed to evoke emotion, because I believe that’s how you reach an audience. You have to do things that are self-deprecating to bring you to a common level with the audience.

I’ve said this before on the Old Magic Radio Show. If a singer can sing a song to make an audience member cry, if he can evoke that emotion, I wanted to do that same thing with magic. And that’s what I’ve done.

Justin: Blogger Greg Bishop said this week that magic television is lackluster in general because of the involvement of non-magic professionals who think they, well, know something about magic. In your experiences, Rand, is there any truth to this?

Rand: The industry of magic being presented on TV is different to what it was when I got started. I was lucky enough to grow up waiting for those Copperfield specials, or Siegfried and Roy, or Henning specials. I got to grow up watching a different type of magic.

That’s not to say that I’m not entertained by the new forms of street magic, and I’ve seen the David Blaine stuff. But once again, because I don’t watch TV, I’ve never seen anything that Criss Angel’s done, except for one little blip off the TV.

Justin: So you’ve never watched a single episode of Mindfreak?

Rand: No. I’m sorry, it’s nothing personal.

Justin: You’re not on trial, Rand. You’re allowed to not watch Mindfreak.

Rand: I just think magic has changed a lot, and you don’t get to see the type of illusions shows–I like to see some of the world’s greatest magic specials come back on. Are those things still on?

Justin: No.

Rand: They’re all over with?

Justin: I mean, you can also see the world’s great magic specials on itricks.tv, because we have all those clips up there. But as far as new ones, no, they’re not being produced. You’re right, as far as network television specials for magic, they’re not what they used to be. Keith Berry had one last year, and it wasn’t this same kind of thing that even Blaine was, where he would have a special and it would be a big event. Penn and Teller’s last special didn’t have that kind of market.

Rand: Well, just recently I saw something. I can’t say anything about it, any of the details, but it’s a magic television show. Through friends in the entertainment business at the higher-up suit and tie, at the suit level, I was able to gain access to a pilot that was just shot for hopefully a television series that will make it onto the air. I’m not allowed to divulge any information.

Justin: This is a magic pilot?

Rand: This is a magic show and it blew me away. I didn’t know what I was going to see when I sat down to watch the pilot. Someone was just like, “Can we get your feedback on this?” From the moment it started to the moment it ended it had my full undivided attention, and I don’t watch TV.

It takes me back to the days of the bigger magic specials where the tricks were just great. They were well-thought out, it was well-planned, it was filmed well. I hope and pray that this thing makes it to network. And please don’t email here asking me to divulge the information, because of a confidentiality agreement. I’m not allowed to disclose any information.

Justin: Your lips are sealed.

Rand: But if this thing makes it onto the air, it’ll kick ass. It’s just amazing.

Justin: Your take would be, then, that there is good magic TV to be made?

Rand: Yeah, absolutely.

Justin: Not matter what, like any medium–especially in television there’s a kind of compromise that goes on, but as long as you can have a good vision, that’s going to come out OK.

Rand: Ten years ago I was this close to getting my own special. It didn’t end up happening because of the people that went ahead and laid it out. I got three quarters of a million dollars and sponsorship from Carnival, and access of the stage and the theater and the ship, and the guests, and accommodations for the film crew, and all the good things that could end up coming from it.

The whole thing fell flat. Carnival wasn’t to blame. It’s just, once you get into the suit and tie area of show business–

Justin: Anything goes.

Rand: That’s it, because you see sometimes stuff comes on TV and its absolute crap. And then other times things come on, and one out of the odd 100 or so is an absolute hit.

But I was able to see the pilot of this new magic special and it was just f-ing outstanding. Outstanding. So I hope it makes it through all the political rigmarole and makes it onto the air. To what network it has been pitched I can’t say anything about. But it really is. So people, please, keep your eyes on the horizon for what might be possibly coming down the road, because it’s wonderful. And no, I’m not starring in it. That would be boring.

Justin: [laughs] Teller is directing a version of Macbeth in Red Bank, New Jersey in early 2008. Everybody needs a side project. We obviously know that Penn Gillette has plenty of them. What is the honest side project that you have ever done, Rand? When have you ever taken time out of magic to really devote your efforts to a side project?

Rand: The new music projects that I am working on and this new series of DVDs. The first one has just come out. It’s been a blast. I like the editing process and the interviewing process. We put on this first DVD, which is “Rand Woodbury Live, Volume 1″. It’s the Celebration and it was filmed in front of a live audience aboard the Celebration.

There are snippets and there is bonus stuff. There are seven extras besides the show itself. It’s really rewarding to sit back when you’re done with it and go, “You know what, if I had gone into a store and paid for this DVD…” You know, I hate getting a DVD or you open up a movie and you watch it and you go to the extras and they show you–

Justin: Subtitles.

Rand: Parts of the script and a couple of pictures and someone’s bio. There is none of that on this new DVD that I have come out with. There are seven extras and they are all informative. If they are not informative or show you something about illusions, or magic then they are funny. There are two really piss funny things on it.

Justin: All right. Good answer. We’ll get back to the DVD later, but real quick, you said the music stuff. What kind of music have you worked on?

Rand: Well, I’ve been playing Fender Stratocasters for a long, long time. I don’t say that as any form of endorsement. I’ve just been playing electric guitar since I was 14. It’s what I do on the side. We are putting out some new royalty-free background music. I put out two before. It was what I wanted at the time, but now I want something a lot more contemporary with a lot more ahead of Jimi Hendrix-esque guitar riffs in it. If you sit me down and plug me in and cut me loose, I can hang.

Justin: All right. So where can people find your first royalty-free stuff? Or is it not available?

Rand: It’s not available.

Justin: Not available. It’s the private stock of Rand Woodbury.

Rand: Right.

Justin: But you said you are going to put the new stuff out there?

Rand: Yeah, it will be out under the Illusion Works banner like all the other products that we have put out before. When will it be done? It is a slower process, because I am producing every track myself. As of right now, I think Steve Wilford might be coming back to help me with it. Steve has worked with Bob Hope and Andy Williams and some of the greats in show business. He is just a genius when it comes to music.

Actually, I co-executive-produced the DVD with Greg Egger who is a very close friend of mine, but who also has a huge background in music. He is going to be playing a gig out in Vegas all of next year. So if I don’t end up doing it with Greg it will probably be with Steve to finish it up because those know how to–

Justin: They rock.

Rand: Dot all the i’s and cross all the t’s and get it down right.

Justin: Excellent. Well, we have a new DVD coming out from Rand Woodbury. I hold it in my very hand here. It is a yellow case, “Rand Woodbury Live, Volume 1″. It is the Celebration tour from 1991. You talked about it a little bit earlier, but why is this a must-have for Rand Woodbury fans and the magic industry at large?

Rand: In short, I think magicians, especially ones that are friendly toward one another - it’s like you show me yours and I’ll show you mine, that kind of thing.

Justin: [laughs] No, please! Say it with more conviction.

Rand: It’s like, no! Everyone thinks in my case, that I don’t want them to steal what I am doing. That has nothing to do with it. And it’s not even that I’m a perfectionist. It’s just that every time I watch video–and yeah, I have tons and tons of it–I always used it as a research tool to improve upon the product that I was putting out.

Over the years, especially after the Illusion Works books came out, I got more and more requests to put this out. It’s been rattling around in my brain for years and years and years and finally I just got off my butt, bought a new laptop, stripped it down and loaded it with the necessary software and started dumping footage. The more I played with it, the more I liked it.

After I wrote my books, a lot of the critics said, well, these ideas and these illusion ideas are great, but they are impractical, and they will never work on a stage. And I’m one of those people who think you can achieve anything you want to as long as you set your mind to it and you do not deviate from your desired goal.

You go after it, regardless of how much time it takes, regardless of how much money, how much preparation. You build it. You like it. You set it to sound. You do the choreography. You present it. And if you have done your homework well and your research well, it plays. I think there are four illusions on the DVD that the only place you can find them is in my very first book, which was Illusion Works - Illusions, Ideas and Inspiration.

I’m really happy about it. I hope the people that pick it up are going to be coming out. I believe we will be selling at through Murphy’s Magic. You can either get it through them or Murphy’s sells to a ton of magic shops across the country. So basically you’re going to be able to buy this at any magic shop around the world soon.

Justin: In the coming weeks?

Rand: Yeah. It will probably be a month before it is in shops. We just got it back from RLX Video Reproduction. They did an outstanding job. The outside covering is just dirt dumb simple.

Justin: I definitely really like it. It has a Kill Bill quality to it. I really, really dig it.

Rand: There are no glamorous photos or anything. I also took other footage of just goofing around. I had a mountain lion on our cruise ship.

Justin: [laughs]

Rand: And I have footage of me walking the cat out on deck.

Justin: Because why not!

Rand: There are just all sorts of goofy stuff on there, plus you get the whole show. It’s basically uninterrupted. For some reason, that particular footage was filmed in Canon A1. It was shot and somehow the digital–I mean, obviously, we transferred it for the digital format.

Justin: The digital video disc.

Rand: But it still holds up. The performance is what it is. So getting back to what I even started before. I just never did it because I never thought there was any video footage good enough to reproduce or put out.

Well, now it’s 10 years later, and I started looking back through this stuff just goofing around, and you find certain things. This is not a perfect performance, because I don’t think there is such a thing. And I could tell you what’s not perfect about it.

Justin: But pretty damn good?

Rand: But you can tell the audience is in for the ride, and this is what my life has been like. It just all comes across on the disc.

Justin: Fantastic. Well, you said it might be a month before you can buy it in magic stores, but it will be literally days.

Rand: Well no, I think you’ll be able to get it from Murphy’s in less, Murphy’s will have it in two weeks.

Justin: OK. Murphy’s will have it in two weeks.

Rand: Murphy’s Magic Supplies will have it probably in less than two weeks. The other thing is, and I don’t mean to interrupt, I got a question, I want to give one away.

Justin: There we go! That’s what I was getting to.

Rand: And then we also have an Illusion Works t-shirt and we also have… I reprinted my second book, “Illusion Works 2: Conjuring Concepts & Creativity”, that’ll be finally available again, and I’d like to give all three of them away, and we talked earlier about this. What do they do, they just email iTricks?

Justin: Yeah, yeah. You’re going to email show@itricks.com, the subject line is going to say: “Rand Woodbury contest”.

Rand: Or “Rand Woodbury DVD”.

Justin: Let’s say “Rand Woodbury DVD”, let’s settle on that, “Rand Woodbury DVD”. Just email show@itricks.com, and then we’ll have a drawing, and we’ll have three winners, one of which will get the DVD, one of which will get the Illusion Books book…

Rand: The Illusion Works…

Justin: The Illusion Works book, sorry.

Rand: And the other one will get an Illusion Works t-shirt.

Justin: There we go. And actually, you know, should we have you autograph the DVD?

Rand: No.

Justin: No?

Rand: No, nobody wants my autograph.

Justin: I would. I don’t know. Well, let’s say, we’ll let the winner decide.

Rand: OK, if they want it, I’ll bring over a signed one, no big deal.

Justin: [laughs]

Rand: I can’t believe I’m sitting here on a weekend. This is the first weekend I have been off, and didn’t have to fly somewhere in forever!

Justin: And we’re glad you decided to spend it with us here at iTricks.

Rand: Hey, can I mention the fact that there’s a new Bisection CD, because I–

Justin: DVD, yes.

Rand: Right. And it’s coming out, and Andrew Mayne is not going to blow his own horn, but I’m bringing it up, it’s coming out and it looks amazing.

Justin: Yeah, well, Andrew announced on his email list that there’s a new Bisection Unlimited DVD that is coming out. He will be on, I guess, either next week or the week after that to talk about it at length, but it is really, really fantastic. So just so everybody knows: Bisection Unlimited DVD from Andrew Mayne will be hitting the streets very, very soon.

One other thing that happened here at iTricks this week is we finally got our Embarrassing Stories podcast up. If you send in your embarrassing story, just make sure you listen to the podcast; if you hear your story, email us, there’s instructions on the podcast, so that we can get you your free copy of “Mania”, which we promised to everybody who made the podcast.

But real quick, Rand, do you have any embarrassing story that you’d like to share with the rest of the class?

Rand: I have a ton of embarrassing stories.

Justin: [laughs]

Rand: My whole life is one long, embarrassing story. But my favorite one, I somehow had a couple of days off, somewhere from Carnival, and someone had put together this show down at the InterContinental Hotel down in Miami, and Gene Wilder was the guest of honor. This was to raise funds and awareness about the Gilda Radner Foundation.

So here I am, Captain Moron, I head in to do this; and it’s like, I hate doing magic conventions, not because I don’t want to talk to magicians or hang out. It’s just you don’t get the lighting or the sound, and it just never seems to come off right, and you know, it’s the same thing with these one-nighters.

So I get there late, only because of other things I had to do first. It’s before the show, maybe two hours before the show, I didn’t even know Gene Wilder may or may not be there, or that he was the guest of honor, or whatever.

Justin: Yeah.

Rand: But I didn’t even really think, it didn’t sink in, I’m just going to do the gig. And I’m in the bathroom of the InterContinental Hotel right down in the heart of downtown Miami, and I’m in the bathroom with an electric Noralco shaver, shaving, because if I’m not going out on stage, I don’t shave.

Justin: OK.

Rand: I had spent seven years on a ship; I had to shave every single day. I had to wear tuxedos constantly, and that’s why I live in painter’s pants and jeans now.

Justin: [laughs]

Rand: If I’m not working, if I don’t have to get dressed up, I’m not doing it.

Justin: Yeah.

Rand: So long story short, I’m in there, I’m shaving my face, and Gene Wilder walks in.

Justin: Here we go!

Rand: And he’s kind of looking over at me, and I’m just shaving, and of course you’re sitting there going: “It’s Gene frigging Wilder!” you know?

Justin: Yeah. Only one person in this bathroom was in “Blazing Saddles” and it wasn’t Rand Woodbury.

Rand: That’s exactly right! And I’m not a guy that gets awestruck because I grew up in a household where my dad was on television for years, and we lived in California. We bought Julie Andrews’ house, it was the last house we bought in California, we used to have celebrities, so I’m just not star struck.

But it was Gene Wilder, and here it is, “Young Frankenstein”, “The Producers”, et cetera. I was like: “Hey,” and he was kind of like: “Hey.” No big deal. And then we do the show, and the girl I got to do the show, who will remain nameless because she is the wife of a good friend of mine.

Justin: [laughs] Uh-oh, uh-oh!

Rand: And she’s a lovely person, so just for a no-brainer trick, I have to teach her the subtrunk. We do the subtrunk, we do the switch, and I end up inside. Sshe opens up the trunk at the end. While in the switch, somehow, something got turned around. And when she opened the trunk, the knot was on the inside of the sack.

Justin: No!

Rand: So the person on the outside of the sack, which is the girl, couldn’t untie it. Now, I didn’t know the knot was inside with me.

Justin: Yeah.

Rand: So for the next two and a half, three minutes, an eternity, an eternity!

Justin: You’re just sitting there.

Rand: Right. And you know, you’re dressed in a suit, it’s in a convention room with a billion people, Gene Wilder sitting five feet, as close as you are to me.

Justin: Yeah [laughs].

Rand: At the front and center table. And by the time we got the sack open, I was beet-red and flushed, the audience was not entertained, and I looked up, and Gene Wilder was pissing himself laughing!

[laughter]

Rand: He was like no one else in the room. He had tears streaming down his face!

Justin: The only person laughing!

Rand: Absolutely. I mean, I looked at–

Justin: It’s just the echoing, bellowing laugh of Gene Wilder!

Rand: I looked like I should have been with two paddles from a charge cart.

Justin: [laughs]

Rand: I was exasperated. It was like, over a 100 degrees, you’re wearing your fancy sparkly jacket and a shirt, and none of this is cool clothing; by the time we got the sack open, it was just, there you go, there you have it. Just the look on Gene Wilder’s face was the only thing that saved me from just wanting to crawl off stage and die.

Justin: That is absolutely incredible. Well, I’ll tell you what, that can actually use a pretty good segue into our final story of the day.

As mentioned at the top of the program, there was an Oscar winning writer, director and actor who was not exactly thrilled with the Darren Brown live routine, and his name is Woody Allen. Darren, while doing press for his new show “Trick or Treat” told a story about how Allen was thinking about using him in of his new projects, and came to see him live. And while he’s doing his routine, he looks over and he sees Woody Allen sitting in a booth, and doesn’t smile, doesn’t laugh, doesn’t clap, leaves the show before it ends, and he never talked to Woody Allen again. Which, you know, it doesn’t say that he bombed, but it wasn’t exactly Woody Allen coming up after him, saying: “Oh wow, your show is written so well!”

Rand: I’m a huge, huge Woody Allen fan.

Justin: Yes!

Rand: I just love his humor; if you haven’t seen “Curse of the Jade Scorpion”, that’s like one of these movies that never got a lot of hype, the banter between Woody Allen and, who’s the girl in that, Helen Hunt?

Justin: Helen Hunt, yeah.

Rand: The banter between them in that movie is absolutely, just spot-on priceless. And Woody Allen is pretty finicky. He knows exactly what he’s looking for and what he wants. And one of the toughest things to ever get through your head in show business is that you can’t please all the people all the time. If it’s not what Woody Allen was actually looking for–I mean, Woody Allen’s worked with George Schindler a couple of times, and I think other magicians as well. I don’t know. It’s not to say anything bad about Darren at all.

Justin Young: Oh, absolutely not. I mean, obviously Darren’s body of work can speak for itself in terms of how talented he is, which is absolutely fantastic. But the next question I had on here was who was the most famous person you’ve performed for and then bombed for, but I think we’ve already told that story, right? Unless there’s somebody else that you’ve performed for that’s more famous. Obviously you can not possibly tell a better bombing story than the Gene Wilder story.

Rand: I’ve had, oh man.

[laughter]

Rand: I had my mountain lion get loose on a cruise ship one time and jump off the stage and leap into the audience.

Justin: A mountain lion?

Rand: Yes. Obviously this isn’t–

Justin: Condoning mountain lions being loosed on the general public.

Rand: Right. But of course I had to go after it, so I had to run to the audience while the cat ran out of the lounge and down to the library, which has nothing but glass doors. He ran into the glass doors until his butt was over his head, because he was doing about 30 miles an hour.

[laughter]

Rand: Then he turned around, he looked at me, and goes, “Well, I don’t want to go back in the showroom.” Then he looked at the stairwell.

Justin: [laughter] The cat said that?

Rand: These huge gaping stairwells, and in that instant the thought went in my head and it’s like, “Oh my God, if he get’s in the stairwells I’m never going to find him.” So, I jump between him and the stairwells before he moved an inch. And when I jumped for the stairwells, he headed back into the lounge, where there’s 900 snacks.

[laughter]

Rand: So, 900 people that are going, “What the hell’s going on?”

Justin: What is this talking animal?

Rand: The cat got loose after the show. A stainless steel shackle that’s rated for like 2400 pounds of torque somehow got popped. We don’t use stupid little quick links. We use heavy duty stainless steel hardware. This thing just popped, the cat went left, right, runs out. As the cat was leaping off the stage over like five rows of people, in midair, leaving the lounge, the cruise director Dave Armor, who was on stage at the time was like, “All right, bingo’s coming up in just a minute, and later on this evening–holy [blanked-out expletive]!”

[laughter]

Rand: As Dave said, he goes, “Ladies and gentlemen, I couldn’t be more pleased to be wearing brown trousers at this time.” He says he literally did [blanked-out expletive] himself. Because you don’t expect a mountain lion, a cougar to be running past you on a cruise ship.

So then, just to finish up the story and to let everyone know that it has a happy ending, Geo my mountain lion ran back into the showroom, went to the right side of the stage as I was gaining on him–because he was getting good traction on the marble tile that’s in the hallways–and he ran and he leaped on the far stage left, audience right corner booth.

So, a mountain lion with me in midair land in this booth. This is probably holding eight people, a circular configuration. Now, no one in the audience has moved. As the cat is flying towards the booth, it starts pissing out of fear.

[laughter]

Rand: So, now I have a flying mountain lion pissing on 16, 24 paying guests. And I land on my mountain lion, put my hand around the chain leash, and as I do this, no one in the booth is moving. I have a live 220-pound mountain lion, and no one in the booth–and so, I have to go, “Excuse me! Can you please move? This isn’t part of the show. This is not part of the show, get out of the booth.”

Justin: If this story ends with Gene Wilder in the booth, I’m going to lose it.

Rand: No, no. Then Todd Wheeler, who was running the technical aspects from the back of the room, ran down to the stage as I had Geo by his collar, pushed a transfer cage–because those are the cages you move big cats around in–out onto the stage. I walked Geo up onto the stage and put him into the transfer cage. The place went nuts, because it was like the best live action. This is reality TV before it ever existed.

Justin: [laughter] Oh my God. Thank God the woman in the first 30 rows was wearing a yellow beret.

Rand: Are ready for this? Only one person in this whole fiasco–at the end of the week we’re waiting for the comment cards to come it, and it to be disastrous–no one got hurt. One lady wrote on one comment card, “When the cat was flying through the air, it flew over my head and the tip of its tail hit my shoulder.” That was it.

[laughter]

Rand: We’re expecting this, that, but it’s what can and has happened. It’s just the nature of the beast. If I just started telling you cruise ship stories, I could–

Justin: This should be its own podcast. Rand spins some cruise ship–

Rand: Hey, guys, right in if you want to win one of these DVDs, or the Illusion World t-shirt, or the book, or whatever. Also, can I just take a second, and this obviously is not planned. There’s people in this business that have been super wonderful to me over the years, and I don’t often get a chance to do this. I don’t know if they’re listening, and if they are.

Hi to Norm. Someday you’re going to have to ask me to explain the story about getting arrested with Norm Nielsen. That’s a good story. But I’d like to send a hi out obviously to Paula Osborne, Tim White, Norm Nielsen, Jeff McBride, Goldfinger, and Dove. You guys are the best and the classiest as ever. I miss you guys all. Kevin James, miss you. Hopefully I’ll see you at a convention somewhere down the road.

My schedule, it’s great, I make lots of money, wonderful, great, but I have no time left. So, hopefully I’ll get a chance to see you guys out down the road. And, as always, it’s just a pleasure being here with you guys.

Justin: Absolutely. Rand, you are welcome back at absolutely any time. Again, email “Rand Woodbury DVD” to show@itricks.com, and if you have any other kind of question, comments, and complaints, you can send them to show@itricks.com as well. If you’d like to leave us a voice message, click on the Talk to Us icon on the right sidebar of the main iTricks page. One final thank you to Rand Woodbury for stopping by and doing this show.

Rand: It’s my pleasure. I don’t get a chance to do a lot of this kind of stuff, and thanks for having me over to talk about the DVD. I’m really psyched about it, I like it. I think it’s a good representation of what we do. Once again, it’s not a flawless performance, but I don’t think there’s such a thing.

So, I just finally got over my own little ego and pride and said, look, this is what I do and this is why Carnival’s had me around for over 20 years. Most people don’t understand, you look at me, I look like a stick. I’m an idiot, I’m a moron, I have some gRandiose ideas. How could this kid be entertaining? He looks like he should be wearing a helmet and a leash, and his parents should be dragging him through a mall, yet he’s making millions of dollars doing magic in front of inebriated guests that just want to laugh and have fun.

[music starts]

Rand: What else?

Justin: I think that’s it. Thank you very, very much for listening. I’m Justin Robert Young with itricks.com. We’ll see you next week.

Rand: Take care!