Howdy, readers! This article is going to be a bit long-winded, but stick with me, ’cause I’m going somewhere here:
I am an amateur magician. I’m a DEVOTED amateur magician, but an amateur nonetheless. That said, my list of bragging points is really very small. One item on said list, however, goes like this………A couple of years back, Richard Hatch was in nearby Tyler, Texas. He was performing a two-show bit for the large science museum in our town…..one of those, The Magic of Science-kinda things that all the lucky guys get booked to do! As is fairly common, myself and a fellow magician took him (and his accompanying friend) out for dinner at a local place. To make a very long story short, we were with him, sitting at the table when he got the phone call telling him how much his rare, First Edition copy of Expert At the Card Table had brought earlier that day at a Potter & Potter auction. (Yes, it was several thousand dollars!! ….not a major secret, as I’m sure there were about 300 people at the auction that day). I had seen that very book, listed on the cover of that very auction’s catalog only days before and had thought to myself, “Wow, that’s gonna bring a chunk ‘o change!” (and, ultimately, I was right!) OK, a neat little story, but for you? Whoop-tee-do….who cares, right?
So, now I’m heading back from left field and I’m running full-bore right at you, friend. For the past MANY DAYS, I’ve listened to tons of Podcast episodes you’ll find from Magic NewsWire. One of my favorite episodes, features…you guessed it: Richard Hatch. Now, I foolishly thought I knew a few things about magic books and magic history (notice, I put the words, ‘foolishly’ and ‘thought’ close to one another!) In that particular episode, Richard speaks at GREAT LENGTH about his personal research efforts into determining who most probably wrote that great classic of magic mentioned earlier. This man talks and talks and talks AND TALKS….and it NEVER gets boring…..not once – - nope, not one single time. The reason I say this is: that single episode and loads of other episodes you’ll find produced by Magic NewsWire belong safely tucked away in some cloud-based vault somewhere. It’s one thing to say, “Such and so Podcast is very professional.”, or “Man, that host is funny.” But it often is a bird of a different feather to say, “These shows are a CRITICAL CONTRIBUTION to the history of magic itself.”
You…….simply……..must……….hear some of these shows, and you must start doing so today! They’ve gotten a bit behind (in terms of “weekly” shows; haven’t we gotten spoiled in our expectations?). They are, however, catching up. Later this year, I’m going to do a massive Encyclopedic-listing of all their episodes (or, most of them, at least) as one huge article here. For now, just go there: http://magicnews.libsyn.com/webpage Some of the topics are heavy, but we’re talking about some very important contributions to the cannon of magic history.
You can get the episodes via iTunes.com (just search “Magic Newswire”) or just get them from the site (I like the site, format-wise it’s like it’s very own site….that’s a nice little touch).
More to come in a later article!