Peter Gross

The internet never fails to amaze me. Ran across this cat I met 15 years ago at the Waterloo Busker Festival on the Magic Cafe. Cricket, Buster and I were there performing. Danny Lord was there. It was a great deal of fun and I shot a ton of video. I told Peter I would post this clip for him to see. Not sure how long I'll keep it up.

Nice stuff on Ebay

If I can't afford it, at least I can enjoy the pics.



This is an Okito Checker Cabinet made by Norm Nielsen. I saw an oriental female magician perform this once at a Collectors Conference. Might have been Jade or Juliana Chan.



Tripped out Thurston Poster

The day started out with such promise

I was up at 6:00AM which was a good thing because Buster overslept AGAIN. This seems to be a reoccurring thing lately. Not sure if he's setting his alarm, turning it off in his sleep, or just enjoys starting off his day with my foot in his ass. Whatever. . . . he hasn't been late or missed one day yet.

After he leaves for the bus stop, I hop in the shower thinking about what I need to take with me. Today was the day I was supposed to talk to Ron Cooper's Marketing classes at Lake Washington High School. I suffer through the tail end of rush hour traffic across the I-90 bridge on my way to Kirkland. As I am taking exit 18 at 85th on I-405. I glance down to check my directions. I look up and see that traffic has come to a sudden halt. I slam on my brakes as I plow into the back of a Nissan Pathfinder. My hood buckles as my mind races. I get out of my car quickly to see if the person I just hit is injured. She wasn't.





I call 911 and have an officer dispatched to the scene. I talk to the young lady expressing my concern as to her condition as well as my sorrow.

I get a call from Ron, the High School Marketing Instructor telling me that they haven't had power for the last hour and a half and wanted to know if we could reschedule. I said, "sure".

The Police Officer arrived and took care of the administrative duties that the situation called for.



$295.94 in towing fees later my car is parked behind my house. Gave the guy $125 in ones, my emergency c-note and a bunch of fives. Money that was going for next months rent.



Now I'm broke, I have no car and I'm still ugly. Well it could be a lot worse. The young lady was not hurt and my insurance is paid up.

If it weren't raining I would take the bus downtown and street perform. But it is raining, so I think I'll crawl back in bed and suck my thumb.

Pics Du Jour - From The Archives

The year was 1983. I had dropped out of high school and moved to New York City to sew my oats as a street performer. I lived in a transient hotel called the Ben Franklin at the corner of 77th & Broadway in the Upper West Side. My mom came and visited once and commented about my room that, "Bums wouldn't come here to die". I assured her that they did. What a time I had. If those walls could talk! Now it's an upscale hotel fetching upwards of $400 a night, A far cry from the $90 a week I was paying back then.





What the place looks like now, click here

Wednesday Night Dancing

As always, had a great time. Vinyl Avengers, off for a few weeks; but CT's band "Suicide Jack" played. Tables on the dance floor didn't matter to me. Had a few danced with Carie & Maggie in the small space available, loved it. Later in the evening the small dance floor was cleared and got to try out some of my new moves.

Tomorrow morning I will be speaking to a couple of classes of high school students studying marketing . Should be interesting. I'll share with them what I know about "Industrial Strength Magic". Looking forward to it. Not sure what I'll say, but I'm confident it will be enlightening.

Carter Beats The Devil

I just finished reading Carter Beats The Devil. I liked it a lot and figured I'd save time by posting a review I found on the web.



In a similar vein as Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavelier and Clay, Glen David Gold's debut mines the historical past for characters and events, playing the exciting but bygone world of vaudeville off early-20th century history. He goes Chabon one better though, and chooses a real-life person as his lead character, a magician called Carter the Great. Houdini, Warren G. Harding, Philo T. Farnsworth, and a young Groucho Marx are part of the book's cast of characters.


Carter Beats the Devil begins with an investigation into President Harding's mysterious death just two hours after participating in one of Carter's magic acts. The plot is intricately wound - tight, though occasionally difficult to follow for all its twists and turns. Ultimately, it is highly rewarding trick: Will Carter the Great pull off eluding capture and fooling the early-20th centuries best and brightest business moguls?


Charles Carter and his younger brother, James, stumble into magic during the 1987 blizzard of San Francisco. They manage to parse together enough tricks to put on a show for an ill-tempered house servant, who upon completion of the act makes the boys subjects of his own trickery. (I'm being obtuse here on purpose. What follows is a disturbing little passage that gets short-shrifted for meaning and consequence.) But Carter is hooked. Along his path to greatness, Carter meets his true love, fraternizes with the third-most famous man in the world (Houdini), and tussles with his nemesis, a blowhard magician called Mysterioso. And, according to one Secret Service agent, may have had a slight hand in killing the President of the United States.



However, magic sets no one free here. Carter is a terminally lonely man who, when asked why he took up magic, thinks, "How could he say he'd become a magician because he felt abandoned once in a lonely house? How he'd fought off loneliness so many time by picking up a deck of cards that now it was simply rote?" Thus, a rich, well-drawn character emerges as our hero. Carter's rival from the Secret Service, Griffin, is just as lonely, but his isolation comes from being hated and mistrusted by his coworkers and sometimes himself. In his own haphazard way, he vows to uncover his man.


Gold's fabricated bits must have been ecstasy for the novelist to write, and he makes good use of his imagination and facts here. G-man Griffin, doing background work on Carter, reads a group of fantastic news clippings that recount his prey's history and going-ons - one more inventive and original than the next. "Charles Carter has announced that near the town of Grindu, in the Carpathian Mountains, the mage from whom he learned all of his occult arts lies near death. Carter must travel 8,000 miles to his side, bringing the plans for 'The Sultan and the Sorcerer' the spectacular illusion that ends his program, so that the great master may be burned with them. 'Thus the show will never be performed again, and I positively must leave next Thursday.' "
Just as it's a pleasure to read F. Scott Fitzgerald's florid prose, it's a pleasure to read Gold's historical missives - so full of the real things (places, events, people) but so steeped in their own fabrication. Gold obviously enjoys the past and all its idiosyncrasies and language, and so successfully dotting his narrative with history, the reader feels comforted as the enthralling and nuanced tale unfolds. Unlike, say, Pat Barker's historical novels where history is re-examined to get to the core of something we missed the first time, Gold re-animates history for pleasure, for his novel is concerned with people not times.


It is the small bits that tell us how much the author loves and knows his characters, particularly his main character, Carter. Gold understands the profundity of how the mind jumps when thinking. This is most beautifully illustrated when Carter thinks about love and passion. In a short paragraph, Carter leaps from missing his brother, to missing a woman he is taken with: "Carter wondered what James was doing right now. James was terrific at poker. Perhaps he was making friends at Yale. The longer Carter thought about that, the more he wanted to find Sarah." With a deft hand and light stroke, Gold lets the reader into Carter's drive and intentions by these loose but entirely natural connections; it's a furtive glance at how the characters' minds and emotions are attached.


Like many novels relying on plots wound tight as a drum, the middle of Carter Beats the Devil sags under its own weight and complexity. The twists and sleight-of-hand become hard to keep in line, but ultimately - as with many mystery novels - it's ok to forget some nuances; you'll won't miss the whole picture. The payoff in Carter, though, is immense. The novel's climactic scene is paced methodically, so you don't miss the wonderful way his clues and characters come together. Hell, it sounds trite, but it's magical how well Gold accomplishes his misdirection, ultimately keeping the suspense heightened until to the novel's moment of conclusion.

Street Performing

I was working the market today and hopped up on my newspaper box to finish my show. I glanced down and cracked up. Someone had written me a note.

Smoke and Mirrors

Days are flying by. Lots of stuff I wanted to write about but not finding the time. After the 2 shows on Saturday at the Everett PUD, a group of us went out to get a bite to eat. Then I went to work at the Fenix Underground, and after that the South Center Session till after 3AM. Talk about a busy day of magic!

Mark Jenson brought his Mark Sherwood Cups which I fondled and drooled over. BEAUTIFUL!!! Jack Carpenter worked with me on a few ring and rope moves, which I am incorporating into a special routine for the Fenix. I am using 8" glow sticks with turn into bracelets. I learned a nice Chanin sequence as well as an Anverdi sequence. I've also been doing an old ring on chopstick routine that Sol Stone showed me years ago. Looks great with the glow stick, then I have the girl put her hand out, I affix the glowstick on her wrist and send her on her merry drunk way.

Steve Ameden and Pam took Buster and I out for dinner on Sunday night. Very nice! They took us to a quaint Italian Restaurant called Angelina's Trattoria. Good food and good friends.

Smoke and Mirrors Poster

Buster's Birthday Dinner at The Met!!

Julie hooked us up with the custom printed menu and let the staff know it was Buster's birthday. He was surprised by the extra pampering he received as a result. What fun. Thanks Julie!



We started out with some Shrimp Cocktail and Calamari



Buster made a heart out of shrimp. I think he was saying he loves shrimp (or Prawns as they are called out her in Seattle)



Overjoyed to be celebrating with my son.



The Chateaubriand was carved tableside another touch Julie suggested.



Time to EAT and eat we did. . . . like pigs!!



Here is Buster and our waiter Craig. He took very good care of us!



Premium Australian Lobster Tail



Father and Son

Video Clip Du Jour - From The Archives

This is a GREAt clip. If you've never seen Tom Mullica, you are about to be blown away! 1984 I lived in Atlanta for a year. Every weekend I could be found sitting in the second row at the "Tom Foolery", Tom Mullica's Magic Bar in Buckhead; a suburb of Atlanta. He never failed to amaze me with his expert card handling and he never let up on making the audience laugh as he had a million and one well staged gags at his disposal. I never introduced myself to him or let him know I was a magician, I just wanted to have a few drinks, watch his 90 minute show, laugh my ass off and hit the road. I regret not befriending this man and getting to know him better. He is one of my favorites.

This clip was on "Incredible Sunday" over a decade ago.


Tom Mullica Video Click Here

Happy 15th Birthday Buster!!

It was 15 years ago today that my first wife Cricket, gave birth to my son Buster. My step father Norman Matthew's M.D. was her gynecologist through the pregnancy. He performed an emergency C-Section after there was an unexpected drop in Baby's heart rate. That day will be etched into my memory for all times. The miracle of life is truly amazing! It's crazy how it all works out.



This was then.



Here we are 15 years later, "Still crazy after all these years"



This evening we will celebrate his birthday by dining at the Metropolitan Grill. I'm looking forward to it!

Smoke and Mirrors - An Inside View Part 1

Yesterday was a full day of magical activities. Buster and I arrived at the the Everett PUD auditorium at 9AM as Brian had requested. We loaded in our props and the first hour or so was spent watching the guys set the lights. The proper gels had to be inserted and the lighting programed. I was impressed with how well Brian knew what he wanted and how to get it. There were pairs of lights that were sequenced together, he wanted them programed with the ability to control them individually. Lots of effort was spent on that only to find out later that somehow all the programing had been lost. Not really sure how they resolved that. I guess they reprogrammed them, I don't know.

Rich Waters was on spot light, Jeff Dial in charge of Music and Sound. a couple of PUD guys in the booth as well, another Jeff and a guy named Dave. Not sure what they did, but everyone looked busy. I sat in the theater and read some of the final chapters of Carter Beats the Devil. At one point, Rick shined the spot light on my book and asked if that was enough light. Funny guy!!

The next hour was spent spent lighting each act and making sure that Jeff had all of the sound and music cues. After that we went through a "Cue to Cue rehearsal" This gave everyone an opportunity to see the sequence of the show for the first time. Props were brought on to the stage and the stage market with yellow tape. This was a an interesting run through, we didn't do our whole acts, just enough to make sure that lighting cues and music cues as well as sequence was understood. Kirk Charles stage managed the show and helped me feel less like a moron. For half of the run through, I didn't have a sequence sheet and felt totally in the dark. As the MC of the show, I needed to know what was next and how much time needed to be filled between acts. Somewhere along the line, I got a sheet and this helped me greatly.

Buster's help was enlisted and he became a willing stage hand. I was hoping something like this might happen as I thought the whole idea of being involved in a stage production of this sort would be great experience! I was proud of my boy.

Pics Du Jour - From The Archives

From the late seventies, to the late eighties. . . my first decade, seriously studying the art of magic. The picture above is of me and Tony Slydini. (Trivia question: What was Slydini's real name?) It was taken in 1978 when I was 12 years old. It was my very first magic lecture. And what a memorable evening it was! Don Westermeyer drove me up from Cincinnati to Indianapolis to see the lecture. Don is still an active magician and a successful investment broker in the Cincinnati Area. The picture below was a decade later. I had been across the country and around the globe and had moved back to Cincinnati after a couple years in Los Angeles. I was ready to settle down a bit and plant some roots. Guess they didn't take.



While living back in Cincinnati in the late 1980's, I rented a 4,500 sq. ft. loft. There was one room about 2000 sq. ft. that I only used for skateboarding. A large service elevator opened directly into my living room. Strange times. Here is a photo of a portion of my cup collection in the loft. I was collecting cups far before it was fashionable.



Chris Richardson took this interesting photo in CIncinnati. note: I am averting my eyes, as not to see what card he selects

Howard Thurston & Harry Houdini