A magician wins Second Life’s Avatars Go Talent. Harry Anderson to hold court…for real. Fake Steve Jobs watches Mindfreak. A heavy metal magic act gets rave reviews on America’s Got Talent and looks like Riff-Raff from Rocky Horror. A letter from a listener.
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Justin Robert Young: Hello, and welcome to the Magic Week in Review, bringing you news, rumor, and culture reports from the frontlines of the magic industry. I’m Justin Robert Young, editor of iTricks.com. And in this June 17, 2007 episode of the program, you’ll hear about Eli Kerr, Harry Anderson, Fake Steve Jobs, and stay tuned later to find out which Las Vegas magic show centerpiece is getting $3 million for a summer gig that only requires 12 minutes of stage time four days a week.
Sitting in to help me with all of this is a professional magic creator whose newest illusion, Shrinker, is available now for pre-order on shockmagic.com. Oh, and he’s also the publisher of iTricks. We’re always proud to welcome Andrew Mayne back to the program. Andrew, how are you doing?
Andrew Mayne: I’m going great, Justin. Thanks for letting me sit back in here.
Justin: Yeah, I know. I’ll tell you what, even though you haven’t directed a movie with Crispin Glover…
Andrew: I know, I’m not a movie director, OK..?
Justin: Yeah. I figured maybe we’d lower the standards here at Magic Week in Review to let non movie directors…
Andrew: Well, wait, wait. Let’s put it this way: I haven’t directed a movie that hasn’t made it out of the film festival circuit. Let’s make that correct.
Justin: [laughs]
Andrew: OK, I have directed two…
Justin: You have directed two independent films, yes.
Andrew: Two very low-budget features. But I will never throw my hat in the same circle…
Justin: Can we get the odd book plug in there?
Andrew: No, but maybe one day it’ll pop up on the site. [laughs]
Justin: Maybe one day, maybe one day.
Andrew: Yeah, yeah.
Justin: I’m just saying, for giggles, if you could type in…
Andrew: Anyhow, next topic. Let’s move right on…
Justin: Yeah. [laughs] Well, our top story. We’ve written a bit about the Second Life magic community here on iTricks, and now it seems to have made its biggest imprint on the popular virtual world to date. Tuna Oddfellow, a Second Life magician, nabbed the top prize in Virtual NBC’s “Avatar’s Got Talent” contest.
Andrew: [laughs]
Justin: Now, just for people who aren’t up on the whole Second Life thing, you control a person inside this virtual world. They had a talent contest, and a virtual magician doing virtual magic tricks won.
Andrew: Yeah. Imagine a video game, only lamer. [laughs] OK?
Justin: [laughs] Well, we may have some SL’ers. And really, I’ll tell you what, he earned a million Linden Dollars…
Andrew: Imagine a bunch of freaky people in a chat room…
Justin: [laughs]
Andrew:…who get to create their own little bodies and avatars, and walk around and live out their virtual fantasy life. There you go. All right.
Justin: All right. But he did win a million Linden Dollars…
Andrew: [laughs]
Justin: Which is currency that equates to roughly $3,800. And a chance for his avatar to appear on next week’s “America’s Got Talent” installment.
Andrew: And people thought the latest Taco Bell program, their contest, was a bit of a joke…
Justin: Because that’s, what, a million pesos?
Andrew: Pesos… And by Linden Dollar standards, you might as well be Bill Gates. [laughs]
Justin: And who knows how much money he poured into it.
Andrew: Yeah.
Justin: He said, to build a magic act in Second Life…
Andrew: [laughs] Add up all the hours wasted. [laughs]
Justin: [laughs] All right. Listen, spoilsport. You want to…
Andrew: He’s breaking new frontiers. Congratulations! Congratulations.
Justin: Yeah. His real name, he actually is a real life magician, he’s called Fish the Magish. He is out of Boston, and he’s gotten some publicity out there. And hopefully, this will bring more to him. But yeah, he said, basically, the way you build a magic act…
Andrew: And listen, my guild in Warcraft is having a little party. We’ll have him come on over… [laughs]
Justin: [laughs]
Andrew: [laughs] Have him entertain.
Justin: Oh, man. Really, do you think there is anything that translates, then, real life magician skills?
Andrew: We’ve talked about the whole idea of magic in Second Life before…
Justin: Yeah, yeah.
Andrew: And you know, when you start Second Life, you’re flying! [laughs]
Justin: Yeah. But to his credit, to do the set he had to find, write scripts…
Andrew: Oh yeah, yeah.
Justin: In the same way that you’d look for magic tricks here, he had to practice them, make sure that they ran flawlessly.
Andrew: [laughs]
Justin: Yeah, I mean it does… You’re saying, really, there’s no, or there’s some parallels?
Andrew: I’m not saying anything. I’m not saying anything at all. I’m not saying anything at all. That’s a pretty impressive achievement. I just…
Justin: For $3,800.
Andrew: I’m not knocking it. The guy’s trying something different in a different medium, but it’s just the whole idea of magic–I know nothing about what he did, and as far as I know it was like, “Hey, look at this visual sort of thing.” But it’s not magic, because it’s…
Justin: Yeah.
Andrew: When you’re in a world where everybody automatically can fly… [laughs]
Justin: The funniest thing is, I think we found a picture–and I’ll put it up on iTricks–where it’s like the crowd watching the contest. And it’s a gigantic eyeball on like a Betty Boop body. [laughs]
Andrew: Right. [laughs]
Justin: A wolf man sitting next to a girl…
Andrew: Welcome to Second Life…
Justin:…who should be working at like a hemp record story in the Haight-Ashbury section…
Andrew: Anybody wondering what the future will be like with nanotechnology and biotech and all of this? Go into Second Life, see what the virtual characters look like there? That’s what real people will look like in 40 years’ time.
Justin: [laughs] All right.
Andrew: How many people were there, by the way? In the crowd.
Justin: I only saw the one picture, and there was, maybe, 16 people. But it was only a shot of those things.
Andrew: OK. See, that’s the thing, like in Second Life, they say, oh, they’ve got so many million people, but the number of people who go online every month there is REALLY much smaller. And a lot of corporations will pay money to do these big promotions there, and then they get 40 people show up.
Justin: Yeah, yeah. I mean, NBC has dumped a lot of money, or at least effort, into extending their brand, and this is part of it.
Andrew: Yeah.
Justin: They have their entire Virtual NBC site where you can go, VirtualNBC.com, and it is their portal to everything Second Life.
Andrew: It’s all about the press release, because it is really what’s really going on there. Just so few people.
Justin: Yeah.
Andrew: I mean, they’re too busy on their little islands doing their little weird chat type… [laughs]
Justin: So you’re saying any kind of prehensile[?] to that sort of metaverse would really just kind of be an exercise in futility…
Andrew: Do you like hippos? I like hippos. [laughs]
Justin: [laughs]
Andrew: [whispering] Watch out for the furries.
Justin: [laughs] And the Gorean slaves.
Andrew: Yes. Yeah. [laughs]
Justin: They’ll bite, I’ll tell you what. Keep your hands to yourselves when you’re hanging around the Gorean slaves.
Andrew: [whisper] Scary, scary…
Justin: Mark the date: August 8th, 10:30pm, on the TV Land Network. That’s when Harry Anderson and Jimmy Walker get “Back to the Grind.” Now, “Back to the Grind” is going to be a reality show where you take these old, classic sitcom actors and you put them back into the jobs that their characters performed on the shows.
Andrew: What did JJ do?
Justin: I asked that question…
Andrew: He was an artist, I remember that.
Justin: Exactly.
Andrew: Oh, OK.
Justin: He’s going to go to art school and he’s going to paint real art, and then he’s going to try and sell it in a gallery. Of course, Harry Anderson is going to be not, as one might think, the sportswriter, as he was in “Dave’s World,” about Dave Barry, the “Miami Herald” columnist.
Andrew: He’s going to be the Absent-minded professor.
Justin: No.
Andrew: OK. He’s going to be a pool shark, like he was when he played Harry the Hat in “Cheers.”
Justin: No.
Andrew: He’s going to get together with his childhood friends and fight an evil clown!
Justin: No!
Andrew: I give up.
Justin: All right. He’s going to be a judge, like he was on “Night Court.” You remember that? You ever see “Night Court?”
Andrew: No, I missed that. No, no.
Justin: It’s about a court operated at nighttime in New York City. No, it was pretty good. He’s going to do his day in a New Orleans courtroom. Which, they don’t really say whether it was pre or post-Katrina, because obviously, he’s kind of had a falling out since then and moved to Asheville, North Carolina, from his previously adopted hometown.
Andrew: Right.
Justin: But, fantastic to see Harry Anderson back on TV. Anything…
Andrew: Oh, absolutely. I am a HUGE Harry Anderson fan. I’m a HUGE Harry… Except for that memory hole here…
Justin: Yeah, yeah. Nothing? Nothing? John Larroquette was on it…
Andrew: Oh yeah! They were in a bus station. I know what you’re talking about now. Yeah, that’s excellent.
Justin: No, no, no, it was another one. They had the bailiff, and the actors kept dying of cancer and they kept having to replace them. Bull, remember Bull? Big, bald-headed white guy.
Andrew: [sighs] Drawing blanks here.
Justin: Huh.
Andrew: Anyhow. I do remember Markie Post, though. [laughs]
Justin: [laughs] Ironic. Nothing stands out, but Markie Post. [laughs]
Andrew: Oh, God, Markie Post… Anyhow. No, that’s all awesome. Big Harry Anderson fan, so that’ll be cool. Really looking forward to seeing what that’s going to be like.
Justin: Yeah, and it’s good to see him in something other than the whole New Orleans thing, where he became sort of a symbol there.
Andrew: Well, good to see just him doing something we can watch again.
Justin: Yeah, yeah. I mean, he was very much focused on the live act, because he owned a theater down there and everything…
Andrew: Yeah.
Justin: But I’ll tell you what, if this means more Harry Anderson TV, we are steadfastly behind it.
Andrew: Absolutely.
Justin: You know, one of the tech sector’s favorite guilty pleasures is the FAKE diary of Apple, Inc.’s mastermind Steve Jobs. It’s called Fake Steve Jobs.
Andrew: Yeah, fakestevejobs.blogspot.com.
Justin: Yeah, yeah. And in his latest installment, he’s revealed his qualified love for the Mindfreak himself, Criss Angel, in a smirk-worthy entry, entitled, “Confession:” “Sometimes, Larry and I get baked and watch ‘Criss Angel: Mindfreak.’” [laughs]
Andrew: [laughs]
Justin: However, he is somewhat flattered by the similarities between the two public personalities, almost to the point of copyright infringement. And I will read from the Fake Steve Jobs diary now. Quote: “My feeling is that we are in such different industries that he’s not a threat. Now, if Criss Angel decided to start selling consumer electronics and claiming they possessed magical powers and quasi-religious significance, well, then we’d have a fight on our hands.” [laughs]
Andrew: [laughs] That’s funny.
Justin: This is great. Especially for us. We follow magic.
Andrew: If you’re a somewhat cynical, but still a Mac fan, it’s a very, very funny blog, with just a lot of inside stuff. And that’s when Steve Jobs and Bill Gates got together in that historic…
Justin: Yeah, D5 conference.
Andrew: D5 Conference. That was Bill Gates’ opening line, that he was “not Fake Steve Jobs.”
Justin: Yeah. It’s very playful, yet still reverential of the cult of Steve Jobs.
Andrew: Yeah, a lot of inside stuff. You know who he’s talking about when he says Larry?
Justin: No, I don’t.
Andrew: That’s Larry Ellison, that guy who’s head of Oracle.
Justin: Oh, OK.
Andrew: OK. And he was a good friend of Steve Jobs, and was a board member and all that.
Justin: [laughs]
Andrew: That’s how inside that all that stuff is there. [laughs]
Justin: No, it’s definitely very inside baseball. But if you do follow Apple, it’s simply a must-read.
Andrew: It’s funny. Yeah, and it’s great if you want to follow or get into it, just to get all the inside stuff. It’s a mystery; nobody knows who writes it. Nobody knows who writes it.
Justin: Yeah. Except, it’s not Bill Gates.
Andrew: We’re pretty sure of that.
Justin: Yeah, we’ve knocked that one off the list.
Andrew: Yeah.
Justin: And not Criss Angel, I guess.
Andrew: No, probably not. Probably not.
Justin: Well, we got our first real taste of magic last week on the variety talent competition, “America’s Got Talent.” Eli Kerr, a heavy metal act, combined wailing riffs, flying saucers, and his sister, to get rave reviews from the judges and a pass into the next round. The folks at TV Grapevine loved him, and Media Village agreed that he was fantastic, but noted that he looked a lot like Riff Raff from “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.”
Andrew: [laughs] Awesome. Awesome.
Justin: He already has a casino act in Reno, which kind of parallels to Nathan Burton last year, where he had kind of a Las Vegas act that he just ported out. And kind of brought back the thought that, for these big illusion cabinet stuff, is that just the optimal thing for that time frame, where you’re only on for like two minutes, at max, and you’ve got to wow them..?
Andrew: Well, I don’t know. It certainly would’ve been seen. And for somebody who comes off a Vegas stage, where you’ve got to throw a ton of stuff up-front, that certainly fits the model for “America’s Got Talent,” because it’s not a place where you’re allowed to develop a big, long act. Like Derren Brown’s live show…
Justin: Yes.
Andrew: Something…
Justin: “Something Wicked This Way Comes,” yeah.
Andrew: “…Wicked This Way Comes.” OK. It’s 10 minutes before the first trick happens. It’s 10 minutes.
Justin: True. Yeah, it’s all monologue.
Andrew: But Derren is fantastic. It’s a fantastic thing to watch. It’s fantastic, but could you imagine him trying to do that on “America’s Got Talent?”
Justin: Well, yeah. And I think a large part of that is also…
Andrew: He could. Not that. He would do something else much more fast-paced, of course. But I’m saying that with his normal repertoire…
Justin: Yeah. Where Derren Brown is, in terms of the crowd he gets for his live show…
Andrew: Yeah.
Justin:…where they are just ready to just be engulfed by the phenomenon that is Derren Brown is different than having Sharon Osbourne stare her beady little eyes right into your soul.
Andrew: Right. So, you see how it affects the choice of material.
Justin: Yeah.
Andrew: So you have a case, like here, where Burton’s a very funny comedy magician, and a deck of cards and somebody from the audience, and he could probably entertain people for 20 minutes, just have them laughing.
Justin: Yeah.
Andrew: But he chose a lot of the big box tricks, because they’re face-paced. And this guy here, it’s using that sort of material.
Justin: So, best of luck to Eli Kerr, who now moves on to the Las Vegas portion of “America’s Got Talent.”
And now, we have a letter from one of our listeners. S.E. writes: “Hello. First off, let me say I’m a big fan of your show, on iPod, etc. There was one question that bothered me a bit with your DeCamps interview. Unfortunately, the question you posed to him was, ‘Do magicians take their art too seriously?’”
“Do actors, like Robert De Niro–who turned director, by the way–or Al Pacino or Jack Nicholson or Kevin Bacon, and on and on, and women like Meryl Streep and Jessica Lange and Sally Field, do you ask them if they take their profession too seriously?”
“So, do we take our work too seriously? We sure as S-word better. [laughs] If we are going to call ourselves artists of any kind. Otherwise, we can keep being portrayed as mustached villains who want to decapitate women all the time.” And that is from S.E.
Andrew: Not all of us have mustaches.
Justin: [laughs]
Andrew: [laughs]
Justin: And thank you for writing in, S.E. If anybody else wants to write in, it’s show@itricks.com. And really, I think my question to Eric, and I’ll pose it to you, is…
Andrew: A world of difference there between the quality of response you’re going to hear, between Eric and then me… [laughs]
Justin: [laughs] A magician, like any other kind of artist, can sometimes be too obsessed with the mechanics, and forget the big picture of entertaining people.
Andrew: Well, that’s the problem with generalizations when you say “magicians.” I know a variety of magicians who treat it differently across the board. I’m of the Jean Robert-Houdin School of “the magician is an actor.” Some of us don’t treat it as such and that shows in our performance, and some of us do.
By the way, a great book on the subject is “Magic and Showmanship” by Enny Nelms. Then there’s “Showmanship for Magicians” by Dariel Fitzkee. But Henning Nelms, I read that when I was young, and it really had an influential way of changing the way I thought about magic.
Justin: And that’s just separating the showmanship and your persona from onstage and offstage.
Andrew: Well, Nelms had a background in theater as an actor and, I think, directing plays. I think maybe he was a playwright. So he approached it from that point of view. If you’re a playwright or if you are looking at directing theater, and you take the role of “magician, ” how is magic executed, the persona, et cetera.
It really changes the way–it gets you out of that mechanical thinking, which people are rightfully critical of. I know magicians who are very, very serious about that and who read that stuff, and other guys who just–it’s about the gimmick.
Justin: Yeah, absolutely, and I think that’s more where I was going. I certainly didn’t mean to offend Essie or the magician community in general. Really, I think this was kind of a branch off of when DeCamps is telling the stories about back in the days when the magician and the stand-up comic and the musician all used to hang out side-by-side and were all kind of equals in the New York club scene. He insinuated that sometimes it was the magician that took things a little too seriously. Then that ostracized them from those other two kinds of communities.
Andrew: We see that even, though, within magic itself where some of the people who are really heavily into mentalism have their own boards and their own places to talk, which is fine. Some of them will have a different set of ethics, too. They don’t like to tell people that what they’re doing is fake or that it’s done through means other than paranormal means.
Some people take it to that extreme, which you’re at a different ethical place than a lot of magicians are who feel that, “No, if I’m telling anybody this is real, that’s false, that’s a lie.” And it also undermines the way in which they interpret it—the quality of it and the ability for them to realize that they’re seeing a real art and not just some sort of natural ability.
Justin: Yeah. You have a guy like Derren Brown saying, “It’s SCIENCE!” It happens through natural means!
Andrew: Yeah. We’re huge fans.
Justin: Exactly. Well, we here at iTricks would like to give a big “Thank You” to Barry and Stuart, who are–we’re going to get really meta right now. Because we are right now talking on a podcast about a MySpace bulletin that is in reference to a post on iTricks. But we, kind of impromptu style, got a lot of Barry and Stuart clips into iTricks.tv. So for iTricks.tv pick of the day, we made it Barry and Stuart day.
Andrew: Awesome.
Justin: We put up a bunch of Barry and Stuart clips and let everybody enjoy them. They saw that, they talked about it on their MySpace, and we’d like to thank them for that.
Andrew: Yeah, those guys are great. If you haven’t seen them, please go to iTricks.tv and check out the Barry and Stuart clips. The Britain’s Got Talent” clip. There’s no magic in there, but it’s hilarious. Where they judge the judges.
Justin: Absolutely. Their YouTube description says it all: “Who watches the watchmen? Who judges the judges? We do!” So go check that out; that’s on iTricks.com right now. Just search Barry and Stuart or “Britain’s Got Talent.”
Andrew: I thought Rorschach watched the watchmen.
Justin: [laughs] And, the big news for you this week: “Shrinker,” your baby, goes on pre-order—went on pre-order—a couple of days ago, is that right?
Andrew: Yeah, and it should be shipping this week.
Justin: Shipping this week!
Andrew: If you order from Shopmagic. We’re doing this in limited quantities, we only have a few on hand. We have to have parts of it specially made. Maybe there will still be some left by the time you hear this podcast, so if you want to go to Shopmagic.com. Shipping this week; it will be available in other places in July.
Justin: OK. Well, as we mentioned at the top of the program, word is starting to leak out exactly how much Pamela Anderson is getting for her 12 minutes, four nights a week gig at the Hans Clock show. It totals up to this: $3 million, free premium lodging at the Planet Hollywood hotel, and use of their private plane to fly back and forth to Los Angeles to be with her family.
Andrew: Nice.
Justin: Also, she just turned 40 this week and she looks like she does in a bathing suit, which to any of our female readership, is a fantastic achievement.
Andrew: Fantastic.
Justin: Happy Birthday to Pamela. Obviously, she’s been a lightning rod for publicity and despite some of the wishy-washy reviews, they reportedly sold out the show throughout June. Can these kind of “what a payday” stories be anything but positive for both this show and the Vegas magic scene as a whole?
Andrew: We’ve been talking about the whole recent review on iTricks and all that. Magic has gotten so much bigger now when you have someone who is getting a multi-million dollar payday to be part of a show. Magic’s big and magic’s going to stay big for a long time. We’ve entered this era, this age now, where there is always going to be an audience for something and whether the biggest show on Vegas is a magic show or not, there’s always going to be big magic shows out there, and elsewhere, too.
Justin: Yeah, and I’d like to say, these kind of stories, these kind of “hey, look at how much person is going to this person” kind of stories, usually only happen in big growth industries. You look at who is the first $20 million picture, actor. A-Rod getting paid a million dollars every time he swings the bat kind of stuff. So I think it’s a great, great sign for these kinds of stories to be coming out and be linked to magic.
Andrew: Or Pam Anderson.
Justin: Or Pam Anderson, true. True! We have yet to see–what is the last gigantic “what a payday” story for a magician. Las Vegas wise, Burton’s deal got real big play, right? That was more for the year and this…
Andrew: Well, that was like 13 years ago–
Justin: True.
Andrew: Criss Angel. How much money was going into that show? That’s the last big payday story.
Justin: Definitely. That wraps it up for us here at the Magic Week in Review. I want to thank Andrew Mayne for coming back for the show and helping me out this week.
Andrew: Thank you for having me here. Thank you for the great directions; it made it very easy for me to find this place.
Justin: Yeah. Certainly. I tell you what, I’ll Google Map wherever you are. You can always come here and sit in.
Andrew: Awesome.
Justin: If you would like to email us, it’s show@itricks.com, or you can send us a voice message by using the “talk to us” icon on the right sidebar of the main iTricks page. I’m Justin Robert Young. I’ll see you guys next week.