Monthly Archives: March 2017
Pop Haydn in the new Close Up Gallery
Pop Haydn performing this week in the newly refurbished Close Up Gallery at the Magic Castle in Hollywood. The seating, lights and air conditioning have all been improved.
Photos by Billy Baque.
Tantalus Tubes at Reno’s Impossibles Theatre
Pop Haydn performs the Tantalus Tubes at Impossibles Theatre in Reno this past weekend.
Pop Haydn in the Close-Up Gallery
Pop Haydn will be performing this week, starting tonight in the Close-Up Gallery of the Magic Castle in Hollywood. This is the week of the Magic Castle Awards Show, and all of the performers in every room will be award winners from past years.
Pop Haydn has been named performing “Magician of the Year” seven times. He has won twice in every performing room, and in the W. C. Fields Bar.
The Awards Show will be this Sunday evening at the Orpheum Theater.
Pop Haydn appearing in Reno
Pop Haydn will be in Reno this week!
Thursday, March 23:
Lecture for Hi-Sierra Magic Circle
6:00 pm Impossibles Theater
Friday, March 24: 7:00 pm Show at Impossibles Theater
Saturday, March 25: 7:00 pm Show at Impossibles Theater
TICKETS
Pop’s Magic releases Rising Card Video
This is thirty minute downloadable video by Pop Haydn on the use of the “Thin-Model Rising Card Deck.” This is Barry M. Gibbs refinement of the Devano Rising Cards first published in 1948. These decks are available from various manufacturers as “The Rising Card Deck.”
It is one of the most convincing and powerful versions of this classic effect, and the method is practical and not difficult to perform.
The instructions that come with this deck are always very limited and don’t reflect the thought and full use of the technical advances in this method.
Most magicians never really get the full use and power out of this wonderful item.
On this video Pop teaches his deck switch and how he presents the rise in the spectator’s hand both in walkaround and in formal close up situations.
He also explains how to tighten and refresh the deck so that it stays in like new condition.
He teaches how to handle the deck so that it can be fanned, and so that the performer can use the Multiple Swing Cut, Hindu Shuffle, and other natural looking moves with this mechanical deck.
There is a huge difference between magic taken “Off the Shelf” and how that same magic looks in the hands of an expert.
Pop Haydn will turn your performance of this classic into real amazement and astonishment for your audiences.
This is a downloadable video. This purchase does not include the Rising Card Deck.
Purchase Here
The Dead Fly, the Charlatan & the Magician – Part I
When I was six or so growing up in Tennessee, my older brother and I and a couple of other neighborhood kids were invited by a fourteen-year-old to come over to his house and see something really “neat.” This was in the mid-50’s.
The older boy had a little chemistry laboratory on the workbench in his basement and had gathered us to witness an “experiment.”
He showed us a little tube of a white powder which he said he had “created.”
He wanted to find a way to keep people young, and this was his secret formula.
He went to the window seal and picked up a dead fly. He brought it over to the workbench and laid it on the surface. He covered it gently with the crystallized powder, and we all waited.
After a minute or two, nothing happened. He took a pencil and pushed away some of the powder, and suddenly there was movement! The fly stumbled out and walked around in a dizzy circle. Then he dusted himself off and flew away!
We were all dumbfounded and shaken. I don’t think I ever talked about this experience with anyone until years later, after I found out how I had been taken.
That fourteen-year-old was a charlatan and a trickster. I was a sucker. Fell for it completely.
I thought about the experience often. It was the source of much wonder and inductive thought.
What if we could bring the dead back to life? What would that mean? What if people could live forever?
What would it mean to discover something like that?
Could a kid have done that? Could I do something like that?
It was as if I had been in a fantasy story, like a Twilight Zone episode, but the memory of the whole thing was real. I even sometimes assumed I had dreamed it.
When I became a magician, and learned the secret from an old Blackstone book for kids, I wasn’t disappointed so much as relieved and excited. The Great Blackstone said he thought it was the best magic trick in the world.
Now I had to reconsider my older neighbor and what he had been up to—he wasn’t the genius that I thought, but what he did was so wicked and delightful.
What an interesting thing to do. He created a totally fake story, put us in it, and left us with it. He didn’t have any other motivation than to create an experience for us for the fun of it. I don’t remember much ever even talking to him again after that incident.
Was this experience good or bad? Is it art?
When magic tends toward charlatanry–when it is presented seriously and without disclaimers–it seems that the dilemma is weakened. The audience may be convinced that the impossible has actually happened, and that what they know to be true about the world was wrong.
It seems unfriendly and wrong to do this to anyone, even if the intent is not to obtain other reward than fee for a performance. It doesn’t seem like it could be art, because the purpose is not truth through illusion, but to create a lie that the illusion is true.
On the other hand, perhaps we can trust the dilemma to the society at large. The challenge of approaching charlatanry in our magic is that it provokes the exposer.
The Uri Geller type of phenomena seems to demand a response from someone like Randi that tries to expose it. The dilemma arises because the fraud is challenged. The debate within the society provokes the discussion and the dialogue.
In some ways, performance magic might be a corrective. When the society falls into superstition and error, we may need a magician that will challenge that and scoff at that–a Penn and Teller type presentation that mimics, unmasks and burlesques the charlatans.
When the society becomes too materialistic and sure of itself, it may need a Uri Geller or David Blaine.
It seems to me that magic that gets close to charlatanry can be artistic, if its goal is to prod and challenge the culture and its beliefs.
~ Pop Haydn, 2017
Nancy Magill
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