The excellent Shining trailer launched a mini-wave of satiric trailer mashups, including the lame Brokeback to the Future and others. But here's a really sharp one, Toy Story 2 reimagined as a tripped out cautionary drug tale via Darren Aranofsky's extraordinary Requiem for a Dream. It's cut to mimic Aranofsky's jittery rhythms; who would have thought that Woody would work so well as a junkie burnout?
This came from the always fantastic BoingBoing, which has a number of mirrors in various formats, just in case the link above doesn't work.
Tuesday, February 28, 2006
Thursday, February 23, 2006
Instinct
Here, care of Salon.com's Video Dog, is a very funny faux commercial. This understated gem took top honors in Salon's Video iPod Giveaway. Enjoy!
Note: If you're not a subscriber to Salon, you will need to click on the ad for a free, one-day pass. No big deal; they don't collect personal info and they won't bombard you with pop-ups.
Note: If you're not a subscriber to Salon, you will need to click on the ad for a free, one-day pass. No big deal; they don't collect personal info and they won't bombard you with pop-ups.
Monday, February 20, 2006
Schadenfreude
Check out this touching new anthem about our sharpshooting Veep. Well, okay, it's actually a rather malicious -- but very funny -- reworking of Aerosmith's dark classic Janie's Got a Gun.
Sample lyric:
Dick Cheney's got a gun.
Cindy Sheehan had better run.
Better cover her liberal bum...
(snicker)
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
Magic, Magic, Everywhere
Here's a terrific article about magic in film and television from USA Today. I've posted it in full because it's worth a read:
Magic does the trick in upcoming thrillers
By Susan Wloszczyna, USA TODAY
Wed Feb 15, 7:24 AM ET
Hollywood is focused on hocus-pocus.
Maybe the sight of wizards young and old as they summon CGI wonders in the Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings fantasies has left audiences yearning for an older brand of magic.
If they are, several moviemakers have a few projects up their sleeves that may do the trick this year.
Prestidigitation performed on camera, not on a computer screen, is front and center in two thrillers set during the abracadabra heyday at the turn of the last century:
The Prestige, in production in Los Angeles and out in November, pits Hugh Jackman against Christian Bale as dueling British magicians.
"I play one of the greatest magicians of the time period," says Jackman, who also co-stars with Scarlett Johansson and David Bowie in the film directed by Christopher Nolan (Memento, Batman Begins). "It's an incredibly original story, a mind bender with twists and turns. The entire script is a magic trick."
In The Illusionist, Edward Norton is a Viennese master of marvels whose seemingly supernatural skills threaten a dogged chief inspector (Paul Giamatti) and an ambitious royal (Rufus Sewell).
"I'm no more into magic than the next guy," writer/director Neil Burger says. "But I am interested in that uncanny sense that nothing is what it seems. All the illusions are based on existing illusions from the time. We just pushed them another 10%-25% and made them more fantastical."
For more contemporary magic, Jeremy Piven (Entourage) plays Las Vegas magician Buddy "Aces" Israel, whose fraternizing with the Mob lands him in trouble in Smokin' Aces, directed and written by Joe Carnahan (Narc).
Piven, who learned a few trade secrets from his teacher, Scottish magician R. Paul Wilson, loved the rush he felt from amazing a crowd. "The turning point for me was when I got up at the Magic Castle and pulled a trick off in front of an audience. It was completely intoxicating." He was so hooked that while on the set, "I would use my cards like worry beads."
Woody Allen, a longtime lover of legerdemain, plays a second-rate vaudevillian stand-up and magician in his next film, Scoop.
"Yes, I do magic tricks and a lot of jokes," he says. "I did them onstage when I was 15 or 16. I can still do them because I practiced so rigorously when I was a teenager and it just stays with me."
Even American Idol crankster Simon Cowell is getting into the act. He just announced plans to hold a TV talent search for Vegas entertainers, especially magicians, this summer on NBC. "Personally, I hope to find the next Siegfried and Roy," he says.
Michael Weber, a smoke-and-mirrors pro who runs a magic consulting company, Deceptive Practices, with card specialist Ricky Jay, advised on both The Prestige (the term for the residue left after a trick) and The Illusionist. "We all share a collective unconscious about some uncle pulling a coin out of his ear," says Weber, who is about to help design the con games in Ocean's Thirteen. "We concentrate on that magical common experience. Our job is to have it make sense in a movie context."
Most actors he trains tend to be naturals, he says. "As the father of modern magic, Robert-Houdin, said, 'A magician is an actor playing the part of a magician.' "
Still, not every actor gets to be a magician off-screen, as Jackman learned.
"I said to the guys, 'Is there any chance you could just tell me a card trick?' " he says. "Not for the film but for parties. They said no. Their motto is, 'Arcane knowledge on a need-to-know basis.' I didn't need to know. I could have really saved money on my children's party entertainment, though."
Link
Magic does the trick in upcoming thrillers
By Susan Wloszczyna, USA TODAY
Wed Feb 15, 7:24 AM ET
Hollywood is focused on hocus-pocus.
Maybe the sight of wizards young and old as they summon CGI wonders in the Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings fantasies has left audiences yearning for an older brand of magic.
If they are, several moviemakers have a few projects up their sleeves that may do the trick this year.
Prestidigitation performed on camera, not on a computer screen, is front and center in two thrillers set during the abracadabra heyday at the turn of the last century:
The Prestige, in production in Los Angeles and out in November, pits Hugh Jackman against Christian Bale as dueling British magicians.
"I play one of the greatest magicians of the time period," says Jackman, who also co-stars with Scarlett Johansson and David Bowie in the film directed by Christopher Nolan (Memento, Batman Begins). "It's an incredibly original story, a mind bender with twists and turns. The entire script is a magic trick."
In The Illusionist, Edward Norton is a Viennese master of marvels whose seemingly supernatural skills threaten a dogged chief inspector (Paul Giamatti) and an ambitious royal (Rufus Sewell).
"I'm no more into magic than the next guy," writer/director Neil Burger says. "But I am interested in that uncanny sense that nothing is what it seems. All the illusions are based on existing illusions from the time. We just pushed them another 10%-25% and made them more fantastical."
For more contemporary magic, Jeremy Piven (Entourage) plays Las Vegas magician Buddy "Aces" Israel, whose fraternizing with the Mob lands him in trouble in Smokin' Aces, directed and written by Joe Carnahan (Narc).
Piven, who learned a few trade secrets from his teacher, Scottish magician R. Paul Wilson, loved the rush he felt from amazing a crowd. "The turning point for me was when I got up at the Magic Castle and pulled a trick off in front of an audience. It was completely intoxicating." He was so hooked that while on the set, "I would use my cards like worry beads."
Woody Allen, a longtime lover of legerdemain, plays a second-rate vaudevillian stand-up and magician in his next film, Scoop.
"Yes, I do magic tricks and a lot of jokes," he says. "I did them onstage when I was 15 or 16. I can still do them because I practiced so rigorously when I was a teenager and it just stays with me."
Even American Idol crankster Simon Cowell is getting into the act. He just announced plans to hold a TV talent search for Vegas entertainers, especially magicians, this summer on NBC. "Personally, I hope to find the next Siegfried and Roy," he says.
Michael Weber, a smoke-and-mirrors pro who runs a magic consulting company, Deceptive Practices, with card specialist Ricky Jay, advised on both The Prestige (the term for the residue left after a trick) and The Illusionist. "We all share a collective unconscious about some uncle pulling a coin out of his ear," says Weber, who is about to help design the con games in Ocean's Thirteen. "We concentrate on that magical common experience. Our job is to have it make sense in a movie context."
Most actors he trains tend to be naturals, he says. "As the father of modern magic, Robert-Houdin, said, 'A magician is an actor playing the part of a magician.' "
Still, not every actor gets to be a magician off-screen, as Jackman learned.
"I said to the guys, 'Is there any chance you could just tell me a card trick?' " he says. "Not for the film but for parties. They said no. Their motto is, 'Arcane knowledge on a need-to-know basis.' I didn't need to know. I could have really saved money on my children's party entertainment, though."
Link
Thursday, February 02, 2006
Criss Angel and Cyril - UPDATED
I posted a while back about magician Criss Angel, star of Mindfreak on A&E. The magic blogosphere remains a hotbed of virulent anti-Angel criticism, most of it quite reactionary and unsupported. I think part of the problem stems from the complete inability of most magicians to put themselves into laymen's shoes.
I just caught two more episodes of Mindfreak, one in which Angel lights himself on fire before vanishing and reappearing as one of the "fire extinguisher guys," and the other an episode where Angel, suspended on fleshhooks in his back, is helicoptered over the landscape. The latter does not qualify as magic, of course, since (I assume) he actually did the suspension exactly as shown.
Angel did a couple of pretty strong tricks during the first episode. In one, standing on the sidewalk and surrounded on all sides, he vanished from beneath a big garbage can and reappeared on a balcony above. In another, he demonstrated a voodoo doll on unsuspecting passers-by; when he jabbed the doll in the leg, for instance, the spectator felt a sharp pain in her leg. He then offered the doll to the spectator, who jabbed it into various body parts. Angel gave a gasp and started bleeding from the selected body part (leaving the spectator feeling vaguely guilty -- a nice twist).
One of the best things about Angel is the familial aspect of his projects. He's New YorkItalian Greek all the way, and two of his brothers are part of "Team Angel." So we get plenty of, "This is the most dangerous thing my bruddah has ever done"-type talk, along with a lot of "I love my bruddah and I'm worried that he could get seriously hurt." For the "Criss on Fire" episode, his mother comes to Vegas for her seventieth birthday and is rewarded by seeing her son running around on fire (a sight which seems to her genuinely, and unsurprisingly, traumatic). But all ends well, with "I love you, Ma" and hugs all around.
The "Hanging by Fleshhooks" episode was more a piece of performance art than magic, but it was a pretty stunning thing to see on television. Reviewing back to the time he had spent six hours suspended horizontally (in "Airplane" position") on fleshhooks in New York City, Angel then discusses with his team the greater difficulty and pain involved in hanging vertically from a single line of hooks. Luckily, they had a "master piercer" on hand to insert the hooks.
-----------------------
We've come a long way. I remember, about fifteen years ago, when I first read ReSearch Publications seminal book Modern Primitives and learned about (among other things) body suspensions. At that time, the notion of hanging from fleshhooks, which has its origins in a Native American ceremony, was extremely underground; Fakir Musafar, who coined the term "modern primitives," had to worry about being arrested when he performed the ceremony for the extraordinary film Dances Sacred and Profane (which is now, after twenty years, available on DVD).
How amazing to see a body suspension on TV! As part of a mainstream magic show! Although the world has changed and become more tolerant, it's also safe to say that Criss Angel has positioned himself on the cusp of that change. He doesn't come across as particularly weird or fringe at all; he's a nice, somewhat Goth, mama's boy. Who hangs from fleshhooks and sets fire to himself.
I don't know where he's going with this, but I'll definitely be watching.
-----------------------------------
Which brings me back to Cyril Takayama, the talented L.A. kid who moved to Japan and became a star. Cyril is something of a "magician's magician." He takes what are in many cases standard effects and turns them into things of beauty, often fooling knowledgeable magicians in the process. Best of all, Cyril is an enormously appealing performer -- gracious, clever without being a smartass, handsome but not macho, graceful, courteous, and very smart.
Regular readers will know that I'm a big fan of Cyril's magic. His stuff is all over the Web these days, and here are a few more stunners:
Cyril does the Signed Card through Window -- on a glass-bottomed boat!
Cyril boils a Cup-a-Noodles -- in his bare hands on the street!
Cyril performs a beautifully layered, deliriously deceptive old classic. I'm especially fond of this one, since it shows how a great performer can use timing and pacing to increase his impact tenfold. Watch how Cyril sells this effect. Beautiful.
And, just in case you haven't gotten your fix of Cyril, here are some more.
-----------------------------
Thanks to my old buddy FK for the latest round of Cyril links, which he sent me a week or so ago. I went two weeks without a post, a lifetime in the blogosphere, but I'll try to keep up a more regular schedule from now on. Stay tuned for more magic-related posts, among others.
UPDATE: I almost forgot. While I was sitting on my ass and not posting these Cyril links, Pagliacci posted a few others here, including a most-excellent -- and extremely deceptive -- mashup of the classic coin effects Matrix and Miser's Dream. Well worth checking out.
UPDATE #2: Oops! In my original post above, I inadvertantly misidentified Cyril's hometown. He is from Los Angeles and the post has been corrected.
I just caught two more episodes of Mindfreak, one in which Angel lights himself on fire before vanishing and reappearing as one of the "fire extinguisher guys," and the other an episode where Angel, suspended on fleshhooks in his back, is helicoptered over the landscape. The latter does not qualify as magic, of course, since (I assume) he actually did the suspension exactly as shown.
Angel did a couple of pretty strong tricks during the first episode. In one, standing on the sidewalk and surrounded on all sides, he vanished from beneath a big garbage can and reappeared on a balcony above. In another, he demonstrated a voodoo doll on unsuspecting passers-by; when he jabbed the doll in the leg, for instance, the spectator felt a sharp pain in her leg. He then offered the doll to the spectator, who jabbed it into various body parts. Angel gave a gasp and started bleeding from the selected body part (leaving the spectator feeling vaguely guilty -- a nice twist).
One of the best things about Angel is the familial aspect of his projects. He's New York
The "Hanging by Fleshhooks" episode was more a piece of performance art than magic, but it was a pretty stunning thing to see on television. Reviewing back to the time he had spent six hours suspended horizontally (in "Airplane" position") on fleshhooks in New York City, Angel then discusses with his team the greater difficulty and pain involved in hanging vertically from a single line of hooks. Luckily, they had a "master piercer" on hand to insert the hooks.
-----------------------
We've come a long way. I remember, about fifteen years ago, when I first read ReSearch Publications seminal book Modern Primitives and learned about (among other things) body suspensions. At that time, the notion of hanging from fleshhooks, which has its origins in a Native American ceremony, was extremely underground; Fakir Musafar, who coined the term "modern primitives," had to worry about being arrested when he performed the ceremony for the extraordinary film Dances Sacred and Profane (which is now, after twenty years, available on DVD).
How amazing to see a body suspension on TV! As part of a mainstream magic show! Although the world has changed and become more tolerant, it's also safe to say that Criss Angel has positioned himself on the cusp of that change. He doesn't come across as particularly weird or fringe at all; he's a nice, somewhat Goth, mama's boy. Who hangs from fleshhooks and sets fire to himself.
I don't know where he's going with this, but I'll definitely be watching.
-----------------------------------
Which brings me back to Cyril Takayama, the talented L.A. kid who moved to Japan and became a star. Cyril is something of a "magician's magician." He takes what are in many cases standard effects and turns them into things of beauty, often fooling knowledgeable magicians in the process. Best of all, Cyril is an enormously appealing performer -- gracious, clever without being a smartass, handsome but not macho, graceful, courteous, and very smart.
Regular readers will know that I'm a big fan of Cyril's magic. His stuff is all over the Web these days, and here are a few more stunners:
Cyril does the Signed Card through Window -- on a glass-bottomed boat!
Cyril boils a Cup-a-Noodles -- in his bare hands on the street!
Cyril performs a beautifully layered, deliriously deceptive old classic. I'm especially fond of this one, since it shows how a great performer can use timing and pacing to increase his impact tenfold. Watch how Cyril sells this effect. Beautiful.
And, just in case you haven't gotten your fix of Cyril, here are some more.
-----------------------------
Thanks to my old buddy FK for the latest round of Cyril links, which he sent me a week or so ago. I went two weeks without a post, a lifetime in the blogosphere, but I'll try to keep up a more regular schedule from now on. Stay tuned for more magic-related posts, among others.
UPDATE: I almost forgot. While I was sitting on my ass and not posting these Cyril links, Pagliacci posted a few others here, including a most-excellent -- and extremely deceptive -- mashup of the classic coin effects Matrix and Miser's Dream. Well worth checking out.
UPDATE #2: Oops! In my original post above, I inadvertantly misidentified Cyril's hometown. He is from Los Angeles and the post has been corrected.
Neill Blomkamp
Neill Blomkamp is a young South African filmmaker and visual effects specialist recently name-checked on BoingBoing. Check out his crazy Show Reel first; Webheads might have seen his Citroen "Transformers" commercial, which was all over the Web a few years ago.
But most impressive are a couple of short films he directed. TempBot is a mysterious, deep satire on the depersonalization of modern office life. This is an extraordinary piece of work, beautifully cut; the rhythms have the scattershot tension of classic Nicolas Roeg films like The Man Who Fell To Earth and Bad Timing. The soundtrack -- synth, alien, and jarringly mechanical -- is no throwaway, either.
I'm not sure what "Wonder Woman" Lynda Carter is doing in there, but she still looks great playing the lonely, middle-aged neighbor of the title, er, character.
Another superb short is the pseudo-documentary Alive in Joburg, a newsreel style report on how a race of aliens has landed in Johannesburg and the effect they are having on the local population. Alive in Joburg blends RoboTemp's cinema verite feel into a subtle commentary on race and class; this is satire buried so deep as to be almost invisible. Very impressive work.
In case the above link doesn't work, Alive in Joburg is also available here.
But most impressive are a couple of short films he directed. TempBot is a mysterious, deep satire on the depersonalization of modern office life. This is an extraordinary piece of work, beautifully cut; the rhythms have the scattershot tension of classic Nicolas Roeg films like The Man Who Fell To Earth and Bad Timing. The soundtrack -- synth, alien, and jarringly mechanical -- is no throwaway, either.
I'm not sure what "Wonder Woman" Lynda Carter is doing in there, but she still looks great playing the lonely, middle-aged neighbor of the title, er, character.
Another superb short is the pseudo-documentary Alive in Joburg, a newsreel style report on how a race of aliens has landed in Johannesburg and the effect they are having on the local population. Alive in Joburg blends RoboTemp's cinema verite feel into a subtle commentary on race and class; this is satire buried so deep as to be almost invisible. Very impressive work.
In case the above link doesn't work, Alive in Joburg is also available here.
Saturday, January 14, 2006
Copperfield Does Fearson's Laser Illusion - UPDATED
I'm not normally a fan of David Copperfield, but this performance of the now-famous Laser illusion is awesome (once you get past the lame dance intro). Leaving aside his big "TV effects" like the vanish of the Statue of Liberty and the float across the Grand Canyon, this is one of the best illusions Copperfield has ever done.
---------------------
The inventor, Steve Fearson is one of magic's great creative eccentrics. Some years ago, he set about to invent "anytime, anywhere" versions of three great standard illusions. The first of the three was a wacky levitation, Fearson's Fantastic Floatation. Next up was the sawing in half illusion (originally named Splitting Image) that became the Laser, for which Copperfield promptly purchased the worldwide rights for a rumored six figures. The final effect was the much maligned but nevertheless fabulous Goodbye Vanish, which is about the best cheap and dirty solution to a one-person impromptu vanish imaginable. My Friday Night Magic cohort and I have probably used the Metamorphosis presentation of the Goodbye Vanish about a hundred times on unsuspecting guests; it's a blast!
Fearson is also a legendary weirdo/showman, and he frequently comes out with effects alleged to have been extracted from the dark underbelly of magic, psychological black ops, hypnosis, and the psychic underground. One of these, The Station Manager Document, was accompanied by an entertaining line of bullshit (the life of the "anonymous" tipper would supposedly be in danger were his identity known) that many took seriously.
A couple of years ago, Fearson announced that he would be selling his online magic business and starting a church. The blogoshpere buzzed, but to date Fearson is still selling magic online. He's currently in the crosshairs for giving away a number of magic ebooks for free that contain effects and secrets that are not his to give away. He's also shilling a hypnotism course for an alleged master hypnotist called "Taylor Starr" (who might just be Fearson himself).
[UPDATE - 2/21/06: See the Comments to this post. "Taylor Starr" himself claims he is not Fearson and in fact doesn't even know Fearson.]
Fearson's status as a magical creator is pretty solid, but his tendency to overhype his products has made him a controversial figure in the magic community. My own take of Fearson is that I'm happy to have someone as colorful as he is to brighten the normally gray magic world!
--------------
Copperfield link via Magic Spank.
---------------------
The inventor, Steve Fearson is one of magic's great creative eccentrics. Some years ago, he set about to invent "anytime, anywhere" versions of three great standard illusions. The first of the three was a wacky levitation, Fearson's Fantastic Floatation. Next up was the sawing in half illusion (originally named Splitting Image) that became the Laser, for which Copperfield promptly purchased the worldwide rights for a rumored six figures. The final effect was the much maligned but nevertheless fabulous Goodbye Vanish, which is about the best cheap and dirty solution to a one-person impromptu vanish imaginable. My Friday Night Magic cohort and I have probably used the Metamorphosis presentation of the Goodbye Vanish about a hundred times on unsuspecting guests; it's a blast!
Fearson is also a legendary weirdo/showman, and he frequently comes out with effects alleged to have been extracted from the dark underbelly of magic, psychological black ops, hypnosis, and the psychic underground. One of these, The Station Manager Document, was accompanied by an entertaining line of bullshit (the life of the "anonymous" tipper would supposedly be in danger were his identity known) that many took seriously.
A couple of years ago, Fearson announced that he would be selling his online magic business and starting a church. The blogoshpere buzzed, but to date Fearson is still selling magic online. He's currently in the crosshairs for giving away a number of magic ebooks for free that contain effects and secrets that are not his to give away. He's also shilling a hypnotism course for an alleged master hypnotist called "Taylor Starr" (who might just be Fearson himself).
[UPDATE - 2/21/06: See the Comments to this post. "Taylor Starr" himself claims he is not Fearson and in fact doesn't even know Fearson.]
Fearson's status as a magical creator is pretty solid, but his tendency to overhype his products has made him a controversial figure in the magic community. My own take of Fearson is that I'm happy to have someone as colorful as he is to brighten the normally gray magic world!
--------------
Copperfield link via Magic Spank.
Thursday, January 12, 2006
Matrix: Omnigendered
From Rolling Stone, here's the wild story of Larry Wachowski, one half of the Wachowski brothers duo who brought us the Matrix trilogy. Seems old Larry has intriguing sexual proclivities and may or may not have undergone a sex change operation -- perhaps to bring him closer to his former-dominatrix girlfriend Ilsa Strix.
Intriguing read. The publicity surrounding such a high-profile transvestite (transsexual?) can only help shine a flashlight on these extremes of consensual sexual behavior -- and perhaps help diminish some of the prejudice faced by those with non-mainstream-hetero tastes in our society.
Plus, it sounds like a pretty good idea for a zany romantic comedy. Do you think maybe it's a little bit ahead of its time?
Intriguing read. The publicity surrounding such a high-profile transvestite (transsexual?) can only help shine a flashlight on these extremes of consensual sexual behavior -- and perhaps help diminish some of the prejudice faced by those with non-mainstream-hetero tastes in our society.
Plus, it sounds like a pretty good idea for a zany romantic comedy. Do you think maybe it's a little bit ahead of its time?
Thursday, January 05, 2006
Did Bush Wiretap Amanpour?
John Aravosis' excellent AMERICAblog is covering the developing story about whether Bush's gang wiretapped CNN's Christiane Amanpour. This all began when NBC's Andrea Mitchell specifically posed that question to James Risen, the New York Times reporter who first broke the story about domestic wiretapping. NBC has now changed the transcript to delete the question, but here's the original transcript:
Mitchell: Do you have any information about reporters being swept up in this net?
Risen: No, I don't. It's not clear to me. That's one of the questions we'll have to look into the future. Were there abuses of this program or not? I don't know the answer to that
Mitchell: You don't have any information, for instance, that a very prominent journalist, Christiane Amanpour, might have been eavesdropped upon?
Risen: No, no I hadn't heard that.
It's not clear why Mitchell would ask such a specific question, but the blogs are all over this story and it will not be allowed to die quietly. Speculation is that Amanpour's husband, former Clinton administration senior advisor Jamie Rubin, might have been the intended target. Check out Aravosis' analysis of the situation. Scary.
But -- almost as sinister a question -- why did NBC edit the question out of the transcript? Their stated reason is they removed the lines in question "so that we may further continue our inquiry," but, as Aravosis says,
Since when is NBC in the business of deleting entire paragraphs from their official transcripts? What's going on here?
Stay tuned, folks. I predict that this story will not go away. Even the mainstream news media will take an interest when the civil liberties of one (possibly more) of its own are under attack.
Mitchell: Do you have any information about reporters being swept up in this net?
Risen: No, I don't. It's not clear to me. That's one of the questions we'll have to look into the future. Were there abuses of this program or not? I don't know the answer to that
Mitchell: You don't have any information, for instance, that a very prominent journalist, Christiane Amanpour, might have been eavesdropped upon?
Risen: No, no I hadn't heard that.
It's not clear why Mitchell would ask such a specific question, but the blogs are all over this story and it will not be allowed to die quietly. Speculation is that Amanpour's husband, former Clinton administration senior advisor Jamie Rubin, might have been the intended target. Check out Aravosis' analysis of the situation. Scary.
But -- almost as sinister a question -- why did NBC edit the question out of the transcript? Their stated reason is they removed the lines in question "so that we may further continue our inquiry," but, as Aravosis says,
Since when is NBC in the business of deleting entire paragraphs from their official transcripts? What's going on here?
Stay tuned, folks. I predict that this story will not go away. Even the mainstream news media will take an interest when the civil liberties of one (possibly more) of its own are under attack.
Wednesday, January 04, 2006
Another New Hero: David Letterman!
Wow! The previously apolitical Letterman sharpened his critical sword after his 2000 quintuple bypass. That brush with death, along with the extraordinary outpouring of love and support from virtually the entire media spectrum, seemed to have lent him a new fearless streak. For instance, shortly after his post-surgery return, he had a startlingly fierce toss-off line about George W. Bush's upcoming appearing on Leno: "Oh yeah, there's a real summit of the minds."
I don't watch Letterman very often anymore, so I was pleasantly thrilled by this clip from yesterday's show, in which he opens a can o' whupass on Fox mega-creep Bill O'Reilly. Letterman really strips away O'Reilly's bullshit on such issues as the alleged "liberal war on Christmas" and the war in Iraq. He seems especially angry when O'Reilly tries to claim that bereaved mother Cindy Sheehan is controlled by far left elements. Letterman: "I'm very concerned about people like yourself who don't have nothing but endless sympathy for a woman like Cindy Sheehan. Honest to Christ."
It's lovely to see O'Reilly squirm, especially when Dave delivers the the coup de grace, after a particulary caustic exchange: "Bill, it's always a pleasure," followed by his hand extended for a shake. Translation: "Thanks for coming on the show. Now get the fuck out of my studio."
---------------------
Thanks - again -- to Salon for the link.
I don't watch Letterman very often anymore, so I was pleasantly thrilled by this clip from yesterday's show, in which he opens a can o' whupass on Fox mega-creep Bill O'Reilly. Letterman really strips away O'Reilly's bullshit on such issues as the alleged "liberal war on Christmas" and the war in Iraq. He seems especially angry when O'Reilly tries to claim that bereaved mother Cindy Sheehan is controlled by far left elements. Letterman: "I'm very concerned about people like yourself who don't have nothing but endless sympathy for a woman like Cindy Sheehan. Honest to Christ."
It's lovely to see O'Reilly squirm, especially when Dave delivers the the coup de grace, after a particulary caustic exchange: "Bill, it's always a pleasure," followed by his hand extended for a shake. Translation: "Thanks for coming on the show. Now get the fuck out of my studio."
---------------------
Thanks - again -- to Salon for the link.
Monday, January 02, 2006
New Hero: Keith Olbermann
I never watch MSNBC, so I'm only vaguely aware of Keith Olbermann as a former sportscaster and occasionaly nemesis to Fox pitbull Bill O'Reilly. What a delightful surprise, then, to see him taking down a Fox News hatemonger named John Gibson. Gibson, (who I'd not previously heard of) is the author of the heartwarming The War on Christmas: How the Liberal Plot to Ban the Sacred Christian Holiday Is Worse Than You Thought (Sentinel, October 2005). Olbermann, a former friendly collegue of Gibson's, had named him one of the "World's Worst People" for comments Gibson had made about "people who practice the wrong religion" (non-Christians).
What makes this so delicious is that Gibson, along with O'Reilly, promptly denounced the "smear" and claimed to have been taken out of context. Thanks to the Web (and specifically, the excellent Crooks and Liars site), Olbermann's fiery response, with proof, is available for everyone to see. This is an energizing seven minutes and a terrific way to ring in the new year!
------------------------------
Link via Salon.
What makes this so delicious is that Gibson, along with O'Reilly, promptly denounced the "smear" and claimed to have been taken out of context. Thanks to the Web (and specifically, the excellent Crooks and Liars site), Olbermann's fiery response, with proof, is available for everyone to see. This is an energizing seven minutes and a terrific way to ring in the new year!
------------------------------
Link via Salon.
Thursday, December 29, 2005
Jackson Bollocks
Happy Holidays, everyone!
I'm in the middle of a fun back and forth with an Anonymous commenter who apparently takes exception to the premise of my previous post, the idea that mashups are worthy of consideration as Art. I've decided to pull the discussion out of the Comments section and relay them in this new post rather than spending all my energy on stuff that many readers will likely never see. (I'm leaving all original comments in place, too.)
I'm assuming that all the Anonymous commenters are the same person. If they're not, well, they are now.
-------------------------------------------
Here's the exchange so far (although I flipped the order slightly to improve the flow). Anonymous' comments in italics:
"The best mashups match beats and rythms, blending or contrasting tone and theme, into wholly new and original works."
WHOLLY NEW AND ORIGINAL WORKS???
Surely you jest...
...and the analogy to Picasso is absurd - Picasso mastered the form. Very different from taking two paintings and digitally laying them one over the other.
And my response:
Rare indeed is the work of art which does not in some way build upon existing sources. When two or more elements are combined to create a new work which comments on and expands on the sources, the new work is an original work of art.
I used Picasso to make a point, but I acknowledge in retrospect it may not have been the best choice since he DID in fact invent Cubism. But I think you'll find if you study Picasso that he lifted many forms from African art. This is the nature of art and culture.
Perhaps Roy Lichtenstein would be a clearer example of a major artist who appropriated material from popular culture and turned it into new works of art.
In music, avant-garde composer John Cage famously had a composition in which a bunch of people turned up radios set to random stations on pre-arranged cues. Imagine if some RIAA goon had been sitting in the audience taking notes ("Let's see, 12 seconds of The Beatles Lovely Rita, twenty seconds of Miles Davis, twenty-two seconds of Sinatra's Love and Marriage..."); Cage literally would have been unable to perform the work!
At any rate, I think American Edit is a superb work of art which is fundamentally different from Green Day's American Idiot. Obviously, "Dean Gray" took advantage of excellent source material, and their mashup honors Green Day while creating an original and fantastically energetic soundscape.
Remember, too, that this was a NON-COMMERCIAL work of art; no one ever attempted to make any money on this. The idea that artists can't freely make art unless they get "permission" strikes me as deeply offensive and anathema to a society that prides itself on its free exchange of ideas.
"In music, avant-garde composer John Cage famously had a composition in which a bunch of people turned up radios set to random stations on pre-arranged cues."
And it famously wasn't very popular. Coincidence? You decide...
Where did popularity enter the picture?
Kinda then depends on your definition of "make art."
If any hack with a computer can then sling together two existing works, then where's the art?
Here, I'll play: I'll drop paint splatters on a Sex Pistols album. Boom! Jackson Bollocks! See? I've made art!
[For my less hip readers, Anonymous is suggesting a hypothetical mashup between Abstract Expressionist genius Jackson Pollack, he of the "Action" paintings, and the seminal punk album, Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols, which sports one of the most famous covers in rock history.]
Jackson Bollocks? Brilliant! Pollack was the punk artist of his day!
In fact, sometimes inspiration like that can be better than you think; "Jackson Bollocks" would be a hell of a tee shirt! Of course, Art also depends on context; the same "Jackson Bollocks" tee shirt would have a different meaning coming from, say, David Byrne than it would if you saw it for sale at The Onion store. But I hate the idea that neither you nor I could legally create the shirt, regardless of context, even if we wanted to GIVE THEM AWAY and ask those who receive them to donate to alcohol and heroin rehab programs for starving punk painters.
Regardless, it is NOT the case that "any hack" slinging together two existing works can produce American Edit, any more then my ten-year-old slinging paint at a canvas can produce a Pollack. You're entitled to your opinion, of course, but if you can't see the Art in excellent mashups like American Edit or The Grey Album (or in Jackson Pollack, for that matter), then we probably don't have much more room for discussion.
There's a huge difference between 'influenced by' and 'lifted outright.' If you don't see that then we're speaking two different languages.
The term "lifted outright" is the same as "stolen," which seems a ridiculous term for an openly acknowledged remix. After all, American Edit is very much a tribute to American Idiot, and as such it has a significanly deeper meaning if you're familiar with the original work and understand the relationship between the two -- and the social and political meaning of mashups in general.
Incidentally, if you want to see "lifts," go check out The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, a film in which half the shots (the interesting ones) are lifted straight from the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Strange, I didn't see any attribution in the credits...
-----------------------------------
[A big shout out to Anonymous for the title of this post -- which I shamelessly appropriated.]
I'm in the middle of a fun back and forth with an Anonymous commenter who apparently takes exception to the premise of my previous post, the idea that mashups are worthy of consideration as Art. I've decided to pull the discussion out of the Comments section and relay them in this new post rather than spending all my energy on stuff that many readers will likely never see. (I'm leaving all original comments in place, too.)
I'm assuming that all the Anonymous commenters are the same person. If they're not, well, they are now.
-------------------------------------------
Here's the exchange so far (although I flipped the order slightly to improve the flow). Anonymous' comments in italics:
"The best mashups match beats and rythms, blending or contrasting tone and theme, into wholly new and original works."
WHOLLY NEW AND ORIGINAL WORKS???
Surely you jest...
...and the analogy to Picasso is absurd - Picasso mastered the form. Very different from taking two paintings and digitally laying them one over the other.
And my response:
Rare indeed is the work of art which does not in some way build upon existing sources. When two or more elements are combined to create a new work which comments on and expands on the sources, the new work is an original work of art.
I used Picasso to make a point, but I acknowledge in retrospect it may not have been the best choice since he DID in fact invent Cubism. But I think you'll find if you study Picasso that he lifted many forms from African art. This is the nature of art and culture.
Perhaps Roy Lichtenstein would be a clearer example of a major artist who appropriated material from popular culture and turned it into new works of art.
In music, avant-garde composer John Cage famously had a composition in which a bunch of people turned up radios set to random stations on pre-arranged cues. Imagine if some RIAA goon had been sitting in the audience taking notes ("Let's see, 12 seconds of The Beatles Lovely Rita, twenty seconds of Miles Davis, twenty-two seconds of Sinatra's Love and Marriage..."); Cage literally would have been unable to perform the work!
At any rate, I think American Edit is a superb work of art which is fundamentally different from Green Day's American Idiot. Obviously, "Dean Gray" took advantage of excellent source material, and their mashup honors Green Day while creating an original and fantastically energetic soundscape.
Remember, too, that this was a NON-COMMERCIAL work of art; no one ever attempted to make any money on this. The idea that artists can't freely make art unless they get "permission" strikes me as deeply offensive and anathema to a society that prides itself on its free exchange of ideas.
"In music, avant-garde composer John Cage famously had a composition in which a bunch of people turned up radios set to random stations on pre-arranged cues."
And it famously wasn't very popular. Coincidence? You decide...
Where did popularity enter the picture?
Kinda then depends on your definition of "make art."
If any hack with a computer can then sling together two existing works, then where's the art?
Here, I'll play: I'll drop paint splatters on a Sex Pistols album. Boom! Jackson Bollocks! See? I've made art!
[For my less hip readers, Anonymous is suggesting a hypothetical mashup between Abstract Expressionist genius Jackson Pollack, he of the "Action" paintings, and the seminal punk album, Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols, which sports one of the most famous covers in rock history.]
Jackson Bollocks? Brilliant! Pollack was the punk artist of his day!
In fact, sometimes inspiration like that can be better than you think; "Jackson Bollocks" would be a hell of a tee shirt! Of course, Art also depends on context; the same "Jackson Bollocks" tee shirt would have a different meaning coming from, say, David Byrne than it would if you saw it for sale at The Onion store. But I hate the idea that neither you nor I could legally create the shirt, regardless of context, even if we wanted to GIVE THEM AWAY and ask those who receive them to donate to alcohol and heroin rehab programs for starving punk painters.
Regardless, it is NOT the case that "any hack" slinging together two existing works can produce American Edit, any more then my ten-year-old slinging paint at a canvas can produce a Pollack. You're entitled to your opinion, of course, but if you can't see the Art in excellent mashups like American Edit or The Grey Album (or in Jackson Pollack, for that matter), then we probably don't have much more room for discussion.
There's a huge difference between 'influenced by' and 'lifted outright.' If you don't see that then we're speaking two different languages.
The term "lifted outright" is the same as "stolen," which seems a ridiculous term for an openly acknowledged remix. After all, American Edit is very much a tribute to American Idiot, and as such it has a significanly deeper meaning if you're familiar with the original work and understand the relationship between the two -- and the social and political meaning of mashups in general.
Incidentally, if you want to see "lifts," go check out The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, a film in which half the shots (the interesting ones) are lifted straight from the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Strange, I didn't see any attribution in the credits...
-----------------------------------
[A big shout out to Anonymous for the title of this post -- which I shamelessly appropriated.]
Tuesday, December 20, 2005
Fun with Mashups
'Tis is the season of the mashup. Mashups are the combining of two or more songs into a new musical collage. The best mashups match beats and rythms, blending or contrasting tone and theme, into wholly new and original works. The concept of mashups has been around for years; one of the earliest popular examples, a 1978 novelty song known as Stairway to Gilligan's Island, inserted the lyrics to the Gilligan's Island theme song into the music of Stairway to Heaven. (Full story here).
Back in the day, such mashups had to be done acoustically; with the rise in digital media extraordinary musical collages can now be done by enthusiastic fans with computers and talent.
Unfortunately, such mashups don't sit well at all with the recording industry, which prefers to attack fans rather than encourage them. Stairway to Gilligan's Island was banned almost from the moment it first appeared (but -- thank God for the Internet! -- it's once again widely available via P2P). The most famous example occurred with last year's The Grey Album, DJ Dangermouse's excellent collage mix-up of The Beatles The White Album and JayZ's The Black Album. Despite being selected as the number one album of the year by Entertainment Weekly, The Grey Album received a "cease and desist" letter from Beatles song publisher EMI, which effectively outlawed the music. (Have no fear; it's still widely available here and via P2P, samizdat music for a revolutionary digital generation.)
EMI's heavy-handed attempt to ban the album earned them much contempt in cyberspace, and on Grey Tuesday (February 24th, 2004) hundreds of Websites carried mirrors of the complete Grey Album in protest. Far from stopping this new work of art, EMI in fact brought it worldwide exposure.
BoingBoing's Cory Doctorow summed it up nicely:
Copyright maximalists like to contrast copyright with the old system of patronage, when you could only make art if you could convince the Pope or a duke or a king that your art was worthy. Patronage really distorted creative expression, and copyright did indeed promise to decentralize authority over what kind of art was permitted.
But the EMI rep's answer to the Grey Album is patronage. "You must not make this art unless we permit it." If you work for one of a few big record companies, you can use their legal apparatus to clear the material you want to use in a mashup. Otherwise, your art is illegal and will be censored.
I think patronage is wrong -- I agree with the maximalists here. Let's end it. Let's share these mashups, make samples without permission, and continue to produce art without permission from the latter-day aristocracy of creativity.
Cut to the present. Another great mashup, this one a remix version of Green Day's phenomenally popular American Idiot called American Edit. The mashup's creators, who go by the Green Day-flipping handle "Dean Gray," release their extraordinary album and ten days later they, too, get a "cease and desist" order, this one from Warners, Green Day's label. Another "Grey Tuesday" (December 13th, 2005), roughly a quarter million downloads, more embarrassment for the recording industry, and worldwide publicity for American Edit, which is still also available all over the Net via P2P (and HIGHLY recommmended by yours truly).
Here are a couple of other mashup albums to whet your appetite:
Q-Unit: Greatest Hits combines 50 Cent and Queen. The results are fun, if less revelatory than those in American Idiot. The back cover art is a terrific visual mashup: 50 Cent reimagined as Freddy Mercury!
And, just in time for Christmas, the funky Santastic: Holiday Boots 4 Your Stockings.
Imagine if Picasso had received a "cease and desist" order from reps for the African sculptors who inspired his seminal 1907 classic Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. He might have painted Blue and Rose people for his entire career!
Back in the day, such mashups had to be done acoustically; with the rise in digital media extraordinary musical collages can now be done by enthusiastic fans with computers and talent.
Unfortunately, such mashups don't sit well at all with the recording industry, which prefers to attack fans rather than encourage them. Stairway to Gilligan's Island was banned almost from the moment it first appeared (but -- thank God for the Internet! -- it's once again widely available via P2P). The most famous example occurred with last year's The Grey Album, DJ Dangermouse's excellent collage mix-up of The Beatles The White Album and JayZ's The Black Album. Despite being selected as the number one album of the year by Entertainment Weekly, The Grey Album received a "cease and desist" letter from Beatles song publisher EMI, which effectively outlawed the music. (Have no fear; it's still widely available here and via P2P, samizdat music for a revolutionary digital generation.)
EMI's heavy-handed attempt to ban the album earned them much contempt in cyberspace, and on Grey Tuesday (February 24th, 2004) hundreds of Websites carried mirrors of the complete Grey Album in protest. Far from stopping this new work of art, EMI in fact brought it worldwide exposure.
BoingBoing's Cory Doctorow summed it up nicely:
Copyright maximalists like to contrast copyright with the old system of patronage, when you could only make art if you could convince the Pope or a duke or a king that your art was worthy. Patronage really distorted creative expression, and copyright did indeed promise to decentralize authority over what kind of art was permitted.
But the EMI rep's answer to the Grey Album is patronage. "You must not make this art unless we permit it." If you work for one of a few big record companies, you can use their legal apparatus to clear the material you want to use in a mashup. Otherwise, your art is illegal and will be censored.
I think patronage is wrong -- I agree with the maximalists here. Let's end it. Let's share these mashups, make samples without permission, and continue to produce art without permission from the latter-day aristocracy of creativity.
Cut to the present. Another great mashup, this one a remix version of Green Day's phenomenally popular American Idiot called American Edit. The mashup's creators, who go by the Green Day-flipping handle "Dean Gray," release their extraordinary album and ten days later they, too, get a "cease and desist" order, this one from Warners, Green Day's label. Another "Grey Tuesday" (December 13th, 2005), roughly a quarter million downloads, more embarrassment for the recording industry, and worldwide publicity for American Edit, which is still also available all over the Net via P2P (and HIGHLY recommmended by yours truly).
Here are a couple of other mashup albums to whet your appetite:
Q-Unit: Greatest Hits combines 50 Cent and Queen. The results are fun, if less revelatory than those in American Idiot. The back cover art is a terrific visual mashup: 50 Cent reimagined as Freddy Mercury!
And, just in time for Christmas, the funky Santastic: Holiday Boots 4 Your Stockings.
Imagine if Picasso had received a "cease and desist" order from reps for the African sculptors who inspired his seminal 1907 classic Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. He might have painted Blue and Rose people for his entire career!
The Magic Circle Jerk - Coda
I was really hoping Andy of MCJ had just disappeared forever; I think it would have been the ultimate capper to his brilliant (and mysterious) career. But in fact Andy sent out a general letter to anyone who sent him an email, a part of which is reproduced below:
Dear Reader,
Thank you for your recent kind and/or furious e-mail in regards to my site no longer existing. It's really not coming back so you can go ahead and delete it from your bookmarks or whatever.
I've gotten a lot of questions about the whole situation so I wanted to make a final statement to the fine people who used to read the site.
First, there was nothing that happened that caused me to shut down the site. It was just something that was going to happen eventually and last week was when it did, that's all. Nobody threatened me. Nobody coerced me. I didn't find religion (putting down the sponge ding-dong and picking up the sponge bible). I just kind of decided I needed to stop. The truth is, when I started the site I figured I would eventually run out of things to say and when I did the site would be over. But what happened was I kept on coming up with new ideas and while that would have been a blessing if I planned on writing a magic blog for the rest of my life, I never planned on such a thing and so it just became a distraction from other creative endeavors that actually put food on my table....
[snip]
Some people have questioned why I took down all the old posts. I didn't really put much thought into that, other than that it made more sense to me to say "poof" and have everything be gone, rather than say "poof" and have everything still be there. Those posts will be made available in some way in the future as well as about 50 unpublished posts that I have lying around here. I'm just not sure what I'm going to do with them yet.
Which brings up the question; what is next for this titan of magic? I'm not really sure, but I have a whole bunch of ideas. The first thing I'm going to do is take a few months off. Then I want to do a couple of things that are larger in scope and a lot of things that are smaller in scope than the blog was. Ultimately I just want to be involved in some different things magic-wise. The blog was a lot of fun, but what made it fun was that it was a new type of thing in magic, now it's something of an established form, so it's not as much fun for me personally.
[snip]
So, anyway, if you want in on whatever happens next send me an e-mail and let me know. It's not necessary, but you might want to provide a mailing address too because not all the news that comes out of the MCJ camp is going to be e-mailed. Even if you're not interested, feel free to get in touch any time. I'll be in the usual place.
[snip]
I hope everyone has a good holiday season if that's their thing.
Your pal,
Andy
Dear Reader,
Thank you for your recent kind and/or furious e-mail in regards to my site no longer existing. It's really not coming back so you can go ahead and delete it from your bookmarks or whatever.
I've gotten a lot of questions about the whole situation so I wanted to make a final statement to the fine people who used to read the site.
First, there was nothing that happened that caused me to shut down the site. It was just something that was going to happen eventually and last week was when it did, that's all. Nobody threatened me. Nobody coerced me. I didn't find religion (putting down the sponge ding-dong and picking up the sponge bible). I just kind of decided I needed to stop. The truth is, when I started the site I figured I would eventually run out of things to say and when I did the site would be over. But what happened was I kept on coming up with new ideas and while that would have been a blessing if I planned on writing a magic blog for the rest of my life, I never planned on such a thing and so it just became a distraction from other creative endeavors that actually put food on my table....
[snip]
Some people have questioned why I took down all the old posts. I didn't really put much thought into that, other than that it made more sense to me to say "poof" and have everything be gone, rather than say "poof" and have everything still be there. Those posts will be made available in some way in the future as well as about 50 unpublished posts that I have lying around here. I'm just not sure what I'm going to do with them yet.
Which brings up the question; what is next for this titan of magic? I'm not really sure, but I have a whole bunch of ideas. The first thing I'm going to do is take a few months off. Then I want to do a couple of things that are larger in scope and a lot of things that are smaller in scope than the blog was. Ultimately I just want to be involved in some different things magic-wise. The blog was a lot of fun, but what made it fun was that it was a new type of thing in magic, now it's something of an established form, so it's not as much fun for me personally.
[snip]
So, anyway, if you want in on whatever happens next send me an e-mail and let me know. It's not necessary, but you might want to provide a mailing address too because not all the news that comes out of the MCJ camp is going to be e-mailed. Even if you're not interested, feel free to get in touch any time. I'll be in the usual place.
[snip]
I hope everyone has a good holiday season if that's their thing.
Your pal,
Andy
Thursday, December 15, 2005
The Magic Circle Jerk
That broadly cynical bite in the opening sentence of my last post reminded me, as I was writing it, of Andy, the anonymous genius behind one of the greatest conceptual masterpieces the magic world has ever seen.
-------------------------
A couple of years ago, Andy made a fairly innocuous comment on The Magic Cafe, a popular Internet forum for magicians and wannabe magicians. Someone posted the question, "What's a good magic trick for picking up girls?" (The percentage of dorks on the Cafe is similar to the percentage of dorks in the magic community at large, which is to say about 95%.) Andy replied, "The Magic Ding Dong," a reference to a well-known smutty climax to the popular (and criminally overused) Sponge Balls trick.
Well, this silly little bit of risque humor got Andy banned from The Magic Cafe on the grounds that it was "inappropriate." No warning, no "check the rules and please refrain from making this type of post in the future." Just a flat-out ban.
I'm sure Cafe owner and operator Steve Brooks has regretted this banning ever since, because Andy's response was to start a blog, The Magic Circle Jerk, whose entire original purpose was to make fun of the Magic Cafe and it's overweight owner.
This is my forum to talk shit about magic and magicians. If you aren't into magic, you probably won't like it. If you are into magic, you probably won't like it either.
Rather quickly, The Magic Circle Jerk morphed into a more general blog about the sad state of magic and magicians. At the time, serious critical voices within the magic community were few and far between, so every post seemed like a blast of pure oxygen into a stale and stagnant community. As an added blessing, Andy proved to be an extraordinary blogger: by turns literate and raunchy, scathingly witty, ferociously astute, and casually hip.
Within a few months and with virtually no self-promotion, Andy's readership encompassed a quite healthy swath of the magic community. Andy had an amazing ability to cut right to the meat of any magic-related issue and find comic gold with his lacerating dissections. Frequent readers of this blog have probably followed more than one link to a Magic Circle Jerk post; in general, once Andy had covered a topic all the other magic blogs that sprang up in his wake had to scramble to find anything useful to add to the discussion.
I probably read the entire two+ years of MCJ posts all the way through at least three of four times; they were that astute and that funny. A small sampling of the topics either inspired by or covered by Andy:
The pros and cons of anonymous bloggers
The inanity of much of magic
The inanity of most magicians
The hypocrisy, greed, and inanity of magic marketing
The inanity of much of what passes for discussion on The Magic Cafe
The hypocrisy, greed, and, er, gluttony of Cafe founder Steve Brooks
Andy's beef with the Cafe emerged because of a double standard he noted; Cafe sponsors, especially if they were somewhat well-known in the magic community, got to say things mere mortals like Andy couldn't. As The Magic Circle Jerk became better known, Andy claimed to be getting inside information about the shady way the Cafe was run (exaggerating membership numbers in order to attract more advertisers, for instance), some of which he posted on his blog.
For a while (and perhaps still) Cafe members could get themselves banned just by mentioning The Magic Circle Jerk in a posting.
Andy always gave people a chance to respond, and some of the idiotic responses he got were jaw-droppingly funny. People threatened to sue him, threatened to beat him up, called him names...It's not a stretch to say that Andy was the Howard Stern of magic, the guy who broke open all the taboos with a combination of intellect, comedy, and scorching bad taste.
In one of his most inspired undertakings, Andy ran a contest to see who could start and maintain the most idiotic thread on The Magic Cafe. Circle Jerkers got points if their posts stayed up, which meant they couldn't be obviously fake (and with genuine threads like, "Which are better for card tricks, red-backed cards or blue-backed cards?", the challenge was harder than it seemed). I don't remember what post won, and it doesn't really matter. The point was that you really couldn't tell the fake moronic posts from the real ones.
Through all of this, Andy remained anonymous. From his posts one could determine the following:
He lives in New York.
He's probably somewhere between twenty-five and thirty-five (I'd guess around thirty).
He's very knowledgeable about magic.
He's very well educated.
From my own back and forth with Andy about psi research, I know that he has some mathematical and/or scientific training. Other than that, I know nothing. On his old Magic Rants blog (now reborn as MagiCentric), Steve Pellegrino claimed he knew where Andy worked.
As far as I know, no one else has a clue who this guy is. Rumors occasionally bounced around that he's actually a well-known magician who couldn't speak out under his own name for fear of losing his esteemed place in the magic world. But nothing ever came of any of the stories; Andy remains an enigma.
Since Andy started The Magic Circle Jerk, scores of magic blogs have sprung up. Many of them try to follow in Andy's footsteps; most of those come across as petty and nasty rather than astute. It's the difference between Jon Stewart and Michael Savage, wit and insight contrasted with infantile ranting.
A new generation of magicians has appeared on the scene in last decade, hip young magicians bred on David Blaine, Penguin Magic, and yes, The Magic Circle Jerk. For the first time in my lifetime, the public's image of a magician isn't necessarily the "fat guy in a bad tux with birds" (as Penn Jillette used to say). Young magicians are more aware of both their audiences and themselves -- and it shows in their performances.
The influence of The Magic Circle Jerk cannot be overstated, in my opinion. The Web has facilitated an open exchange of ideas impossible in previous eras, and among magic voices MCJ was in the vanguard of that shift. Many who never read it, indeed who never even heard of it, are benefitting from the dialogue wrought by MCJ. There have always been individual iconoclastic voices in every field; magic has had its Jarretts, its Annemans. But it took the distributed, networked power of the web to bring such a refreshingly caustic voice to the masses (of magicians).
-------------------------------------------------------
On Tuesday, November 29th, at 2:22 a.m., the entire Magic Circle Jerk blog, archives and all, vanished with a --POOF--. It's Andy's final turn of the screw, his closing masterpiece, the sublime crowning touch of his short and brilliant career. I hope against hope that he remains anonymous forever, the Erdnase of his day, an enigmatic figure who arrived on the scene, changed the face of magic, and vanished into myth.
The historian in me would like to see his complete archives turn up in an expensive coffee-table book for the holidays, a Protocols of The Magic Circle Jerk. Of course, without those everpresent and hilarious links, a coffee table book of MCJ would probably be a leaden affair indeed. Perhaps it can reappear somewhere on the Web, an essential document in the early Twenty-first Century salvation of magic.
This was my forum to talk shit about magic and magicians. If you weren't into magic, you probably didn't like it. If you were into magic, you probably didn't like it either.
-------------------------
A couple of years ago, Andy made a fairly innocuous comment on The Magic Cafe, a popular Internet forum for magicians and wannabe magicians. Someone posted the question, "What's a good magic trick for picking up girls?" (The percentage of dorks on the Cafe is similar to the percentage of dorks in the magic community at large, which is to say about 95%.) Andy replied, "The Magic Ding Dong," a reference to a well-known smutty climax to the popular (and criminally overused) Sponge Balls trick.
Well, this silly little bit of risque humor got Andy banned from The Magic Cafe on the grounds that it was "inappropriate." No warning, no "check the rules and please refrain from making this type of post in the future." Just a flat-out ban.
I'm sure Cafe owner and operator Steve Brooks has regretted this banning ever since, because Andy's response was to start a blog, The Magic Circle Jerk, whose entire original purpose was to make fun of the Magic Cafe and it's overweight owner.
This is my forum to talk shit about magic and magicians. If you aren't into magic, you probably won't like it. If you are into magic, you probably won't like it either.
Rather quickly, The Magic Circle Jerk morphed into a more general blog about the sad state of magic and magicians. At the time, serious critical voices within the magic community were few and far between, so every post seemed like a blast of pure oxygen into a stale and stagnant community. As an added blessing, Andy proved to be an extraordinary blogger: by turns literate and raunchy, scathingly witty, ferociously astute, and casually hip.
Within a few months and with virtually no self-promotion, Andy's readership encompassed a quite healthy swath of the magic community. Andy had an amazing ability to cut right to the meat of any magic-related issue and find comic gold with his lacerating dissections. Frequent readers of this blog have probably followed more than one link to a Magic Circle Jerk post; in general, once Andy had covered a topic all the other magic blogs that sprang up in his wake had to scramble to find anything useful to add to the discussion.
I probably read the entire two+ years of MCJ posts all the way through at least three of four times; they were that astute and that funny. A small sampling of the topics either inspired by or covered by Andy:
The pros and cons of anonymous bloggers
The inanity of much of magic
The inanity of most magicians
The hypocrisy, greed, and inanity of magic marketing
The inanity of much of what passes for discussion on The Magic Cafe
The hypocrisy, greed, and, er, gluttony of Cafe founder Steve Brooks
Andy's beef with the Cafe emerged because of a double standard he noted; Cafe sponsors, especially if they were somewhat well-known in the magic community, got to say things mere mortals like Andy couldn't. As The Magic Circle Jerk became better known, Andy claimed to be getting inside information about the shady way the Cafe was run (exaggerating membership numbers in order to attract more advertisers, for instance), some of which he posted on his blog.
For a while (and perhaps still) Cafe members could get themselves banned just by mentioning The Magic Circle Jerk in a posting.
Andy always gave people a chance to respond, and some of the idiotic responses he got were jaw-droppingly funny. People threatened to sue him, threatened to beat him up, called him names...It's not a stretch to say that Andy was the Howard Stern of magic, the guy who broke open all the taboos with a combination of intellect, comedy, and scorching bad taste.
In one of his most inspired undertakings, Andy ran a contest to see who could start and maintain the most idiotic thread on The Magic Cafe. Circle Jerkers got points if their posts stayed up, which meant they couldn't be obviously fake (and with genuine threads like, "Which are better for card tricks, red-backed cards or blue-backed cards?", the challenge was harder than it seemed). I don't remember what post won, and it doesn't really matter. The point was that you really couldn't tell the fake moronic posts from the real ones.
Through all of this, Andy remained anonymous. From his posts one could determine the following:
He lives in New York.
He's probably somewhere between twenty-five and thirty-five (I'd guess around thirty).
He's very knowledgeable about magic.
He's very well educated.
From my own back and forth with Andy about psi research, I know that he has some mathematical and/or scientific training. Other than that, I know nothing. On his old Magic Rants blog (now reborn as MagiCentric), Steve Pellegrino claimed he knew where Andy worked.
As far as I know, no one else has a clue who this guy is. Rumors occasionally bounced around that he's actually a well-known magician who couldn't speak out under his own name for fear of losing his esteemed place in the magic world. But nothing ever came of any of the stories; Andy remains an enigma.
Since Andy started The Magic Circle Jerk, scores of magic blogs have sprung up. Many of them try to follow in Andy's footsteps; most of those come across as petty and nasty rather than astute. It's the difference between Jon Stewart and Michael Savage, wit and insight contrasted with infantile ranting.
A new generation of magicians has appeared on the scene in last decade, hip young magicians bred on David Blaine, Penguin Magic, and yes, The Magic Circle Jerk. For the first time in my lifetime, the public's image of a magician isn't necessarily the "fat guy in a bad tux with birds" (as Penn Jillette used to say). Young magicians are more aware of both their audiences and themselves -- and it shows in their performances.
The influence of The Magic Circle Jerk cannot be overstated, in my opinion. The Web has facilitated an open exchange of ideas impossible in previous eras, and among magic voices MCJ was in the vanguard of that shift. Many who never read it, indeed who never even heard of it, are benefitting from the dialogue wrought by MCJ. There have always been individual iconoclastic voices in every field; magic has had its Jarretts, its Annemans. But it took the distributed, networked power of the web to bring such a refreshingly caustic voice to the masses (of magicians).
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On Tuesday, November 29th, at 2:22 a.m., the entire Magic Circle Jerk blog, archives and all, vanished with a --POOF--. It's Andy's final turn of the screw, his closing masterpiece, the sublime crowning touch of his short and brilliant career. I hope against hope that he remains anonymous forever, the Erdnase of his day, an enigmatic figure who arrived on the scene, changed the face of magic, and vanished into myth.
The historian in me would like to see his complete archives turn up in an expensive coffee-table book for the holidays, a Protocols of The Magic Circle Jerk. Of course, without those everpresent and hilarious links, a coffee table book of MCJ would probably be a leaden affair indeed. Perhaps it can reappear somewhere on the Web, an essential document in the early Twenty-first Century salvation of magic.
This was my forum to talk shit about magic and magicians. If you weren't into magic, you probably didn't like it. If you were into magic, you probably didn't like it either.
My New Venue
UPDATE: The picture is a hoax. After initially claiming it was 100% genuine, Josh sent me the same picture with different words in the sign. Oh well, I guess I can call off the lawyers.
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Yesiree, I'm sure pleased to be able to bring my profound wisdom and folksy homilies to the good folks at the Baptist church...
Actually, magic buddy Josh sent me this pic, which he snapped in Santa Cruz. I have no idea what it's about, but I'm thinking of suing them anyway.
I'll update this post if I figure out who this wannabe "PeaceLove" is, and what he's "musing" about.
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Yesiree, I'm sure pleased to be able to bring my profound wisdom and folksy homilies to the good folks at the Baptist church...
Actually, magic buddy Josh sent me this pic, which he snapped in Santa Cruz. I have no idea what it's about, but I'm thinking of suing them anyway.
I'll update this post if I figure out who this wannabe "PeaceLove" is, and what he's "musing" about.
Sunday, December 04, 2005
Stainless Steel Playing Cards
Update: I fixed the link below, so if you have an extra 195 quid the cards can be yours.
For the magician who has everything.
Link
---------------------------------
Via BoingBoing
For the magician who has everything.
Link
---------------------------------
Via BoingBoing
Monday, November 28, 2005
The Colored Bubble Story
Popular Science has a lovely article on Tim Kehoe and his 11-year quest to develop colored bubbles. It seems that the classic clear soap bubble, a perennial favorite toy for hundreds of years, has never been produced in color; trying to blow bubbles from colored soap yields clear bubbles with color running down the side and collecting at the bottom.
Kehoe succeeded in creating a beautifully colored bubble, but when it burst it stained everything in its path. Read the story to see how he overcame (with a little help) this "minor" setback to create the world's first colored soap bubbles.
Keep an eye out for these to break bigtime in the media when they come out. Zubbles probably won't be out for Christmas, but February or so these will be everywhere.
---------------------------------
Thanks, again, to BoingBoing for the link.
Hip Hop: A Love Story
Beautiful. Salon has the best love letter to Hip Hop by a Hip Hop-hating white liberal I've seen anywhere. A masterpiece.
Okay, it's also about survival and poverty and racism and classism, about the social forces that shape our lives, and about paedamorphosis, evolutionary change happening in the young and moving upwards. There's a stunning moment in which the author, Camille Perri, realizes that her Hip Hop son is far more Progressive than she is. I realized then that all that time while we were thinking that Joe was moving off on his own, he had been moving us with him.
Said essay is excerpted from "Because I Said So: 33 Mothers Write About Children, Sex, Men, Aging, Faith, Race & Themselves, edited by Camille Peri and Kate Moses. Published by HarperCollins and coming out in paperback in January 2006, by the way.
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You will need to watch a short ad in order to read the essay. Or, better yet, subscribe. Salon is consistently one of the most valuable sources for uncorrupted news anywhere, a diamond. I'm a subscriber, which means I pay my hard-earned money to read Salon every day. And I don't like spending my hard-earned money on nuthin.
Bitch.
Okay, it's also about survival and poverty and racism and classism, about the social forces that shape our lives, and about paedamorphosis, evolutionary change happening in the young and moving upwards. There's a stunning moment in which the author, Camille Perri, realizes that her Hip Hop son is far more Progressive than she is. I realized then that all that time while we were thinking that Joe was moving off on his own, he had been moving us with him.
Said essay is excerpted from "Because I Said So: 33 Mothers Write About Children, Sex, Men, Aging, Faith, Race & Themselves, edited by Camille Peri and Kate Moses. Published by HarperCollins and coming out in paperback in January 2006, by the way.
-------------------------------------
You will need to watch a short ad in order to read the essay. Or, better yet, subscribe. Salon is consistently one of the most valuable sources for uncorrupted news anywhere, a diamond. I'm a subscriber, which means I pay my hard-earned money to read Salon every day. And I don't like spending my hard-earned money on nuthin.
Bitch.
Thursday, November 17, 2005
Music from the End of the World
I haven't posted these last few days because I've been too busy working the Comments to my A Funny Thing post. The first comment took me totally by surprise, coming out of left field to accuse me of "stealing music" and thus setting a bad example for my son. Much back and forth merriment ensued, with an old friend stepping up to the plate in my defense.
An unrelated comment (unrelated to the Comment discussion, but related to the original post) led to my opining on filmmaker Wim Wenders' Until the End of the World, a flawed but intriguing film that somehow generated one of the greatest soundtrack albums in the history of film. If you haven't heard this soundtrack, I urge you to sniff out a copy. Take a look at these Amazon reviews if you don't believe me.
Go ahead, check 'em out. I'll wait until you get back.
Wow, that's a very moving set of Amazon reviews, isn't it? They really reveal the deep, deep reservoir of love and loyalty to this album. Count me among its devotees.
This haunting collection has been in heavy rotation in my life on and off since it came out. Until the End of the World doesn't quite come together as a film, in my opinion (apparently it was heavily butchered by the studio before release, and a redeeming five-hour cut may one day be released), but Wenders' tremendous gift for illuminating love and human connections in the midst of isolation and despair permeates this extraordinary album. The consistency of tone is extremely Wenders-like, despite the amazing diversity of artists contained within.
The Amazon reviews do a fine job covering specific tracks by the likes of U2, Talking Heads, Jane Siberry, Daniel Lanois, R.E.M., Elvis Costello, Lou Reed, and many others; suffice it to say that all these talented artists seem to have been magically inspired to produce at a special meta-level for this soundtrack. Wenders asked the artists (in 1991) to produce the music they thought they would be making in 1999, the year in which the film is set. The result has the feeling of a dispatch both from and for the future.
Wenders cemented his genius as a filmmaker with Wings of Desire, but it is with the Until the End of the World soundtrack that his vision finds its perfect aural complement.
An unrelated comment (unrelated to the Comment discussion, but related to the original post) led to my opining on filmmaker Wim Wenders' Until the End of the World, a flawed but intriguing film that somehow generated one of the greatest soundtrack albums in the history of film. If you haven't heard this soundtrack, I urge you to sniff out a copy. Take a look at these Amazon reviews if you don't believe me.
Go ahead, check 'em out. I'll wait until you get back.
Wow, that's a very moving set of Amazon reviews, isn't it? They really reveal the deep, deep reservoir of love and loyalty to this album. Count me among its devotees.
This haunting collection has been in heavy rotation in my life on and off since it came out. Until the End of the World doesn't quite come together as a film, in my opinion (apparently it was heavily butchered by the studio before release, and a redeeming five-hour cut may one day be released), but Wenders' tremendous gift for illuminating love and human connections in the midst of isolation and despair permeates this extraordinary album. The consistency of tone is extremely Wenders-like, despite the amazing diversity of artists contained within.
The Amazon reviews do a fine job covering specific tracks by the likes of U2, Talking Heads, Jane Siberry, Daniel Lanois, R.E.M., Elvis Costello, Lou Reed, and many others; suffice it to say that all these talented artists seem to have been magically inspired to produce at a special meta-level for this soundtrack. Wenders asked the artists (in 1991) to produce the music they thought they would be making in 1999, the year in which the film is set. The result has the feeling of a dispatch both from and for the future.
Wenders cemented his genius as a filmmaker with Wings of Desire, but it is with the Until the End of the World soundtrack that his vision finds its perfect aural complement.
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