There's Magic in the Air at the Wild About Houdini Blogspot

While looking for information about Orson Welles I stumbled upon the Wild About Houdini blog which I had written about in 2014. Once there I noticed that there is a convention this weekend for the Texas Association of Magicians. 

While reading the story I noted that the University of Texas has an extensive collection of Houdini artifacts and memorabilia. Yesterday they even had a virtual "live tour" of the Houdini Collection at the Harry Ransom Center there.

Houdini was born in Hungary. When he was a boy his family emigrated to Appleton, Wisconsin where he became Erik Weiss and eventually Harry Houdini. Why, then, is the Houdini Collection in Texas? Probably the same reason the Bob Dylan Center is located in Tulsa: the funding. 

Having written about magicians and magic a number of times, I thought it may worthwhile to share some of those links here for those especially intrigued by the magic arts.

STORIES ABOUT MAGIC

Escape Artist, Magician, Inventor, Honest Cheat: How Following His Passion Unlocked Terry Roses' Career 

“Pick A Card. Any Card.” Misdirection in the Magic Arts

Is The Prestige the Greatest Movie About Magic and Magicians?

The Handcuff Kings

The Greatest Magician of All?

Houdini and the Chinese Water Torture Cell

The Instant Orange Tree Trick in the Illusionist Wasn't Just a Hollywood Fiction

* * * 

Do you enjoy the world of magic? Check out the magical John Cox blog titled Wild About Houdini.

May your weekend be magical and your hearts filled with light.

Escape Artist, Magician, Inventor, Honest Cheat: How Following His Passion Unlocked Terry Roses' Career

One of the perks of being a journalist, blogger or freelance writer is getting the opportunity to interview and get to know interesting people They're all around us, actually, but since most of our day-to-day interactions tend to be superficial we never really discover the depths that we could discover if we'd make time to listen.

I met Terry Roses through my association with the late John Bushey, multi-faceted host of the KUMD radio program Highway 61 Revisited. In addition to being a teacher and Dylanophile, John was a master magician and a collector of Houdini memorabilia. His fascination with the escape artist also contributed to his becoming not only a collector of handcuffs and shackles, but of becoming an escape artist himself.

What I didn't know, until I'd known him several years, was that John's mentor in the escape and magic arts was Terry Roses.

They say do what you love, and the rest will take care of itself. That's Terry Roses' career got its start.

Like many a youth (myself included), when Roses was in high school he became fascinated with Harry Houdini. Unlike many, he pursued his passion to the same degree as his idol/hero. He learned everything he could about escaping from handcuffs, ropes and other devices, and followed up with audacious demonstrations of his developing skills.

On one occasion, while in high school, he had himself locked up along with a dynamite bomb that would go off and kill him if he failed to escape in time. (You can be sure no school would allow students to perform that trick today.)

Roses and his friend Bruce Liptak challenged the L.A. police to attempt to bind them "with enough irons that they could not escape." The police accepted the challenge, and the young men succeeded in escaping as promised.

By means of his magic and escape escapades, Terry Roses raised most of the money for his high school prom, which chose as its theme that year Lollipops and Roses, a tribute to Terry. According to Roses, he paid his way through college by breaking out of jails all over the West coast.

The audacious Harry Houdini, in straighjacket and shackles.

Like Houdini, he was much more than an escape artist. Magic, illusions and inventing new tricks opened doors for Terry Roses around the world.

Terry Roses, a Cloquet native, moved to Orange County, California when he was 15, where he lived until returning here to Duluth in 1975. Something he became fond of was entertaining high school students during all-nighters that various schools held. When his young protege John Bushey go bit by the magic arts bug, Bushey would follow this same path, entertaining young people with his own bag of tricks. Together they travelled the world performing magic and rubbing shoulders with the today's greatest living magicians.

Wherever Terry goes he's a good story.

Besides escape tricks, another facet of Houdini's career was disproving mediums and revealing frauds. In this, Terry Roses has also emulated the great master magician. Terry's contemporary application of this was to become The Honest Cheat. Roses became an expert in identifying the ways gamblers cheat, and the variety of ways they mark cards, "load" dice, etc.

It was against this background that Roses began working with many of the largest casinos to eliminate fraud and catch cheats. By means of endless experimentation and research in his "laboratory of magic" Roses developed a low cost device for identifying marked cards called the Inspecta Card Scanner. 
 
A recent visit to Roses studio gave opportunity to hear many new stories about this unassuming man whose pursuit of a passion led to a career that opened many unexpected doors.

It's been a privilege getting to know this clever, talented man.

Related Links
The Handcuff Kings
How to Detect Marked Cards

The Mandela Effect: Is There Another You in a Parallel Universe?

This weekend a friend of mine asked if I noticed that "something has changed." I didn't understand the question. He went on to state that the world has changed in some very subtle ways and that if you weren't attuned to it you might not notice. He referred to it as The Mandela Effect.

Naturally I was curious. Google has answers for everything, so I inquired because inquiring minds want to know. Here's the first link I found, with twenty examples of the phenomenon.

Reading about The Mandela Effect brought to mind our seemingly eternal fascination with things inexplicable, from the Great Pyramids to flying saucers and UFOs. When I was young I was drawn to books like Frank Edwards' Stranger Than Science, and its sequels. The universe does have some rather baffling features, so it's only natural that our curiosity attracts us to that which appears inexplicable.

Films like The Matrix provide lingo with which we're able to talk about these things. When someone suggests that there's been "a glitch in the matrix" we have a mutual understanding of the concept that doesn't require any further explanation.

Magicians and mentalists have long known about the tricks our brain plays on us, hence they are able to pull sleights of mind that manipulate memory and sometimes unsettle us. In recent years neuroscience is just now catching up to what these mesmerizing professionals have been tapping into for ages.

So where did the term "Mandela Effect" come from? Obviously it could not have preceded Nelson Mandela so it's of fairly recent vintage as an name or title of a concept. It turns out that the relatively new tag originated with a blogger named Fiona Broome. She described the phenomenon as "what happens when someone has a clear memory of something that never happened in this reality." Ms. Broome proposes that it's not our memories that are faulty here. Rather, she suggests that there are alternate realities, parallel histories, and that our minds are crossing over through tears in the veil. For some, the Mandela Effect is a curiosity, and for others it's apparently becoming a quest.

Philosophers and mystics have long grappled with the nature of reality. How much of these current currents are just mind games? According to this article in The Sun, there are even scientists exploring the possibilities of parallel universes.

If you enjoy this kind of speculation, you might enjoy my story An Unremembered History of the World, which is the centerpiece of my book of short stories titled Unremembered Histories.

Meantime, life goes on all around you. Maybe even more than you realize.

Saturday Night @ The Rex: Honoring John Bushey and His KUMD Show Highway 61 Revisited

Bob's Nobel Prize selection Thursday could not have been better timed.

Many great memories were produced Saturday night. I've been asked to share pictures for those who live too far away to have made it. From 8 p.m. till midnight The Rex chose to one-up Paul McCartney and Neil Young's Desert Trip concert by celebrating 25 years of John Bushey's Dylan-themed radio program, Highway 61 Revisited. 160 of us were there for the experience. Music by Cowboy Angel Blue, The Boom Chucks, Paul Metsa and special guests formed the backdrop against which a mayoral proclamation was delivered (by councilman Joel Sipress on behalf of Emily Larson) and a multitude of friends and fans of the show showed their appreciation for its host. The evening struck a perfect balance of entertainment, Dylan-nostalgia and public recognition for John Bushey's sacrificial commitment to this labor of love.

The actual anniversary of the show would have been more suitably celebrated the week before but Cowboy Angel Blue, a favorite of John's, was unavailable last week. Dylan's recognition by the Nobel Prize committee delivered added sweetness to this weekend's celebration.

Here's a set of snapshots that capture the flavor of the evening.

Cowboy Angel Blue (James Paavala and Bill Maxwell) 

were joined by Columbia recording artist Bill Bulinski on bass.

Councilman Joel Sipress honors John Bushey with the mayoral proclamation.

Gene LaFond and Amy Grillo were joined by Pat Eliason on harp (left)

Michael Anderson, photographer

Michael Anderson has been a faithful documentarian of Armory and Dylan Fest events for many years. His work is greatly appreciated. (You can find more of Michael's work on display here.)

The Boom Chucks -- Brad Nelson drums, Jamie Ness lead (right) -- were 

joined by Alan Sparhawk and Bill Bulinski for a portion of their set.

Alan Sparhawk's rendition of One Too Many Mornings, which has been recorded with Gaelyn Lea on the Bringing It All Back Home to Duluth Does Dylan, proved to be one of many highlights of the evening. Paul Metsa's set, which included his song about the nefarious Jack Ruby, also sent electricity to the room.

John Bushey, at home in the KUMD studio

Special thanks should be extended to many who contributed to make this event memorable but two should especially be called out: our zealous M.C. Magic Marc Percansky and Zane Bail, worked tirelessly (as well when totally exhausted) to help set the table for this night.

The evening ended with a jam session featuring the Boom Chucks and Cowboy Angel Blue together, and a few harmonica accents from yours truly. There were writers and there were dancers, friends of the show and even magicians... all of it magical.

If the measure of a man is what he's done for others, John is a truly great man.

John: Thank you for keeping the music of Dylan alive and fresh, for your dedication to giving your audiences something more, something higher, something richer and more rewarding.

Five Minutes with John Cox, Because He's Wild About Harry (Houdini, That Is)

John Cox with bust of Houdini.

After visiting with John Bushey and seeing first hand his handcuff collection as well as his vast selection of Houdini memorabilia, I decided to watch again those two very special films about magicians and magic, The Prestige and The Illusionist. I hope to write about The Illusionist sometime this coming week. My first write-up on The Prestige took place in 2008 and you will note that my interest in all things magic has been a lifelong interest.

Harry Houdini was a man small of stature in real life, but his reputation as an escape artist was and remains enormous. A few days after writing about The Handcuff Kings I wrote about his Chinese Water Torture Cell, and discovered the John Cox blog Wild About Harry.

EN: How did you become “wild” about Houdini?

John Cox: When I was around 10 or 11, I saw the classic 1953 Tony Curtis Houdini biopic on TV, and it was like a thunderclap! I became fascinated with Houdini and wanted learn exactly what in movie was true (even at that age I knew you couldn’t believe everything you saw in movies). So I went and got a book about Houdini at a local bookstore. The more I learned the more fascinated I became. Almost 40 years later I’m still on a quest to learn as much about Houdini as I can. I admit the intensity of my interest is bizarre. If there really is something to having lived a past life, maybe Houdini is somehow a cosmic key for me. I don’t know.

EN: It’s evident that magic is a lifelong passion of yours. Were you ever a performing magician yourself? Do you do magic for friends?

JC: Yes, I performed when I was a young. I put on magic shows in the backyard for the neighborhood, which always included a big escape as the grand finale. Escapes became my specialty. I even did a straitjacket escape on the Toni Tennille (of Captain & Tennille) TV show. I also did some handcuff escapes in our family swimming pool that the local news covered. But I didn’t continue past my teens. I’m not a performer at heart. The study of magic and Houdini is what I love.

From his youth he's been Wild About Houdini.

EN: Do you have a favorite trick? (that you perform)

JC: Certainly. That was my straitjacket escape. It was a real straitjacket. Of course, I was small and limber as a kid, so I could have easily just slipped out of it without a problem. But I learned how to create a performance and make it dramatic. I could really feel the audience was with me, rooting for me, afraid that I might not get out. I really sold it. It was fun to perform. I still have the jacket, but if I tried it today it would be an authentic drama!

EN: What’s the background on your Wild About Houdini blog? It was started in 2002 with one post a month. Now you do 40 a month. What have you learned from this experience?

JC: Actually, Wild About Harry started in 2010. I had another site called Houdini Lives that I only updated periodically. The posts from that old site I integrated over to WAH, and then I added some old stories from way back that I wanted archived, so that’s why you see some posts from 2002, 2003, etc.

At the Houdini home in NYC

The big evolution – and this just happened organically – is that Houdini Lives was a website and WAH is a true blog. What I mean by that is, when reporting news on Houdini Lives, it was formal. But WAH is a personal space where I can share my excitement. And that seemed to crack everything open for me. So WAH still delivers the “news”, but it also includes my own experiences with collecting and going to events and doing research or even just thinking about a certain topic. And now it’s become an even larger experience with people contributing material and participating in the research. I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how it’s become such a communal place and real hub of Houdini activity and thought. I guess I’ve learned that there are a lot of people who are as “wild” about Houdini as I am.

EN: What’s your favorite Harry Houdini story? (in as much detail as you wish)

JC: Oh, man, that’s a hard question. There are so many… I do like stories that humanize Houdini. Small little life moments. For example, not long ago I uncovered a story told by William Hilliar, a magician and escape artist, about when he first met Houdini. He was walking down a London street on a cold, foggy morning with T. Nelson Downs, another very famous magician, when they saw a man in a big overcoat approaching. It was Houdini. He had a small dog tucked under his coat and a tin can in his hand and said he had walked all over London to get a pot of good coffee for his wife. I love that kind of stuff.

EN: For people unfamiliar with Houdini’s life and career, which book or books would you recommend to new readers?

JC: The best biography, in my opinion, is Houdini!!! The Career of Ehrich Weiss by Kenneth Silverman. It’s an amazing book that really separates fact from fiction. The trouble with Houdini’s story is there are so many fictions about his life – some he created himself. And they accumulate from biography to biography. Silverman stripped it all away and rebuilt the story from scratch and I think really captured, not only the truth, but the true character of Houdini. So read that if you’re after a biography.

There are several excellent books for photos, although they are all now out of print. But you can find them second hand online. Houdini His Legend and His Magic by Doug Henning is probably the best of these. Then there’s Houdini A Pictorial Life by Milbourne Christopher, and Houdini His Life and Art by James Randi. All are terrific photo fests!

Cox with remains of original Water Torture Cell.

EN: Why was the Chinese Water Torture Cell such a compelling act?

JC: It’s really a masterpiece of presentation. I think it has a lot to do with the compelling visual nature of it. A man upside down underwater in a clear faced glass cell... It’s an absolutely terrifying, helpless situation. There’s also no doubt that that performer really is in danger. It doesn’t matter if there’s some kind of a gaff that helps him get free after the curtain is raised. For that few moments when he’s lowered and locked inside the cell, there is real danger and that creates real anxiety in the audience. Water, chains, inversion, a casket-like box… It’s everything we fear in one trick. And the apparatus itself is beautiful.

EN: Thank you, John, for your insights and for sharing so much as you have done on your blog. You're an excellent example of Joseph Campbell's admonition to "follow your bliss."

John Cox visiting the grave of Houdini. 

Is The Prestige the Greatest Movie About Magic and Magicians?

I recently stumbled across a list of the Top Ten Movies about Magic and Magicians. At the top of the list were these two: The Illusionist and The Prestige. Interestingly, both films came out in theaters at roughly the same time, emulating to some extent the rivalry between the two magicians (Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale) in The Prestige.

Teller, in his intro to Harry Houdini’s The Right Way to Do Wrong, notes that magicians in the old vaudeville era were not protected from having the tricks stolen and there were intense rivalries between them. Our modern world has copyright protections for writers and ASCAP for musicians. If someone else performs their songs, today’s songwriters get royalties.

In the book itself Houdini devotes one chapter to his encounter with an escape artist named Kleppini who claimed to have bested the great Houdini. Houdini goes into detail telling how he outwitted the fraud Kleppini and defended his reputation as the greatest. Essentially he allowed Kleppini to believe he knew the secret to a pair of French Letter Cuffs which are opened by dialing in the correct word. Kleppini was in ecstasy at the idea of proving his prowess because he knew the secret word. But as Houdini affixed the cuffs he changed the secret word, and humiliated the fellow who hours later gave up in despair. The secret word was F-R-A-U-D.

In other words, the rivalry between Robert Angier (Jackman) and Alfred Borden (Bale) mirrors the competitive nature of those showmen of old.

At the beginning of the film Angier and Borden are friends who work as assistants to a great magician. Angier’s wife is the beautiful distraction who adds spice to the performance. An accident occurs and his wife drowns onstage resulting in a deep bitterness taking root in Angier as he believes the loss of his wife was Borden’s fault. The two break apart, pursue separate careers as rival magicians.

The cast features other stars including Michael Caine an Angier’s manager, Scarlet Johansson, Rebecca Hall and a superbly fascinating casting of David Bowie as Tesla. The reproduction of that historical period is flawless and all the technical gadgetry involved in turning a man into a magician is insightful.

The story is dark, however, and the first time I saw it I was put off by it. The sweep of the story is complex and the intensity of the rivalry keeps it from being a “fun” movie to watch. Nevertheless, it is rich with an insider’s glimpse to the kinds of things that really happened back in the day.

Jim Steinmeyer begins The Last Greatest Magician, about the life of Howard Thurston, with a story of Houdini himself being called from the audience to go up on stage to see a levitating woman. Thurston trusted Houdini with an inside angle on this amazing trick knowing that his respected peer and somewhat rival would not steal or reveal it. In The Prestige, similar events occur, but the more bitter nature of the rivalry has different consequences.

There is a section of the story in which Michael Caine dissuades Angier from doing tricks using guns, warning that something can go wrong. For example, if you try to catch a bullet with your teeth using a blank instead of a bullet, an audience member can stick a button in the barrel and put it through your head. Alfred Borden likes gun tricks and says he can catch a bullet out of the air when it is fired. He would, of course, have palmed the bullet when the shooter from the audience takes aim. Unfortunately, his rival Angier does exactly this and blows off two of his fingers.

Houdini, in his book The Right Way To Do Wrong tells stories about the various feats and failures of contemporaries. One is a man who had a bulletproof jacket that he would don and invite a volunteer from the audience to shoot him in the chest. Unfortunately, a marksman from the audience decided to shoot just below the jacket, nailing him in the groin. He died shortly after from the wound. This incident and the film's rearranging the details all serve to affirm that the story is rooted in more truth than most audiences might suppose.  

Greatest film about magicians? Its only rival is probably The Illusionist, which I aim to see again soon, a film that I found more satisfying in the end. Nevertheless, this is a superb film, and worthy of seeing yet again.