Diamond’s Magic Blog

Justin Miller

February 27, 2008, 3:27 am

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—Marty | Comments Off
(posted in the Uncategorized category)

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Jeff McBride at Diamond’s Magic

February 27, 2008, 3:11 am

No, Jeff McBride didn’t appear at Diamond’s Magic but much of his material is available here. His performance at the Twist and Shout balloon convention in Burlington, MA, was spectacular and inspiring. Jeff has made much of his material available. Diamond’s Magic has many of his DVD’s and effects. Find a list of what is available

With a few of his DVD’s and few thousand hours of practice, plus a heap of dedication and the ability to interact with people you will be able to stage a similar show!

Seriously, the performance was awe inspiring and only strengthened my feelings about what a great thing magic truly is. Even though there was a blizzard outside, everyone left with a smile on their face and where chattering about how much fun they had.

—Marty | no comments
(posted in the Uncategorized category)

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Fielding West Lecture Saturday, January 12, 2008

January 6, 2008, 8:31 pm

Diamond’s Magic will be hosting a lecture featuring Fielding West this upcoming Saturday at 3PM. There will be a $20 fee for attending this lecture.

Fielding West is a comedic magician who also has been an actor, a writer, a technical director, a game show host, and the list goes on. The lecture should be entertaining and informative.celebs upskirt
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—Marty | Comments Off
(posted in the Convention/Lecture Information category)

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New Guy Checking In

January 6, 2008, 8:18 pm

Hello. I’m Marty Sasaki and am getting my feet wet at Diamond’s Magic and will eventually take over many of the duties that Trevor Macomber handled before, including this blog. I hope to continue what Trevor has started providing interesting and entertaining bits of information about Diamond’s Magic, magic in New England, or the world in general (you can choose where things fit).

—Marty | no comments
(posted in the Uncategorized category)

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Gone, but not forgotten. (Okay, probably forgotten too.)

October 12, 2007, 12:08 pm

 

 

Greetings humble magic mooks. ‘Tis I, your long lost narrator on this sorcerous sabbatical. I apologize for being M.I.A. (Missing In Action, that is–not Mia Farrow) lo these many weeks, but ’twas unavoidable. You see, I am no longer a resident of Mystical Massachusetts, having packed my cauldrons and chalises some time ago for a new life in Conjuring Connecticut. Though continuing to update the website, thus conveying an unceasing flow of new merchandise from my fingertips to your eyeballs, the exigencies of the move and subsequent search for a legitimate job (sorry Diamond’s) has forced me to abandon my post (and postings) here in the bewitching blogosphere.

However, I know magic isn’t the only thing you come to the DiamondsMagic.com for, so for those of you who may be curious about how the move has been going, I have taken the liberty of transcribing below a detailed synopsis of some of the more trying issues to crop up over the last month or so. I know it doesn’t have anything to do with magic, but you can admit it: You’ll read it anyway because you’ve missed me. It’s okay, I get it, for I’ve missed you too. So let’s try not to think about the pain of separation right now and instead focus on how ridiculous life can get when you’ve decided to exchange one zip code for another.

I’ve Never Been So Moved

There’s no doubt about it: Moving is a scary proposition. And I don’t just mean the kind of moving you’re forced to do in the direction of the bathroom after nine straight hours on the couch watching Sports Center and Three Stooges marathons while the Cheetos cum Kool-Aid stain on your undershirt eventually edges out cotton for the garment’s most prevalent ingredient by mass. No, I’m talking about a full-fledged corporeal and proprietary relocation, one in which you actually have to pick stuff up and then set it down someplace else—usually someplace far away that smells like aging doilies and baking soda. Even those employing the lumbar-saving services of a professional moving company will still find themselves subject to heretofore unparalleled levels of mental and glandular duress. In fact, of all the medical professionals who refused to be interviewed for this article, not one of them denied that the act of moving is, medically speaking, the third most stressful event in a person’s entire life, right behind the death of a loved one and the last few seconds of Tetris when all you need is the long vertical bar but all you keep getting is that totally useless amputated “h”-looking thing and the music keeps getting faster and faster and now you’re just shoving shapes anywhere in a futile effort to extend the session long enough to qualify for the next level but two points before that holy threshold the blocks finally hit the ceiling and the music stops and the whole screen dissolves and the GAME OVER graphic starts blinking and you feel like the biggest jerk loser in the world, not to mention that the whole ordeal has left you so flustered you’re positive you’re either on the verge of puking or a massive cardiac infarction. So to make sure this doesn’t happen to you, I’ve come up with a few helpful tips and reminders gleaned from the perspective of someone who, as the kids would say, “has straight up groovy been there.”

Tip No. 1: Know your address. This tip may seem obvious, but that’s why it’s so important you don’t take it for granted. In moving to our new apartment, my girlfriend and I signed a lease to live at 34 Black Bear Stone Road.[*] However, in attempting to transfer the electric bill into our name we were told that the address actually listed with the power company was 32 Black Bear Stone Road. While subsequently trying to change my forwarding address on the United States Postal Service website, I was informed that our address was actually 34 Black Bear Stones Road, a correction that our landlord later confirmed with his tax statement. Irksomely, Netflix and Mapquest refuse to accept any version of the street name but the original—which is to say, that with the singular stony annotation. Of course, the street itself should be easily verified by simply reading the street sign. Conveniently, however, the main entrance to our road is devoid of such an illogical feature. There is a sign at the opposite end of the street labeling it “Black Bear Stone” (”road” sold separately, apparently), but the nominal stickers look as though they have been affixed with bubblegum by a hyperactive six-year-old with early-onset parkinson’s. To put a bow on the whole pretty package, the only other relevant signage—located almost a mile away off an intersecting side street—avers the road to be “Black Bear Stones.” (Fortunately, by the time we found that sign the proper address hardly mattered, as my girlfriend and I had already resolved to become friendless, bill-shunning paupers, living in a state of blissful—if compulsory—solitude for the remainder of our days…or at least until the lease is up next summer.)

Tip No. 2: Don’t let baby animals be killed outside your front door. Just to take an example completely at random, if one day you hear what sounds very much like something attacking the nest of baby birds under the eaves outside your living room window, assume that that is what is happening and try to stop it. Accidentally treading on the squishy, fragile body of an adorable (formerly) dead (currently) creature of the sky is not the most pleasant sensation early in the morning—though it certainly wakes you up better than a cup of coffee, I will admit.

Tip No. 2A: Bury aforementioned feathered corpses as soon as possible. It turns out that waiting almost a week before getting up the intestinal fortitude to relocate dead animals from an unprotected natural environment tends to—actually, you know what? I think you can figure this one out for yourself.

Tip No. 3: Do not sign up for the former phone number of Mr. Jonathan Schlessinger. This gentleman is apparently quite popular…or at the very least boasts a multitude of outstanding debts distributed across a wide geographical region. Having said phone number is a surefire way to receive a variety of disturbing calls—both live and automated—at drastically inconvenient times from various, ahem, “factions” apparently very keen to speak with Mr. Schlessinger as soon as possible. (Side note: TELL THEM NOTHING!)

Tip No. 4: Eat lots of raw oatmeal cookie dough. I’m not entirely sure what the scientific explanation behind this one is, but I ate a lot of it as a child and now I have an apartment, so there must be some connection.

Tip No. 5: Buy furniture with money in it. Though perhaps a tad ambiguous on paper, after further examination this tip should make perfect sense, because buying furniture with money in it will all but ensure that, post-purchase, you the buyer will have more money than you would have had had the furniture had no money in it at all. (Important: when exhuming said money from said furniture, make sure any potential future mother-in-laws are not looking over your shoulder, as such creatures are usually rather excitable and have a tendency to scream quite zealously when wads of cash are yanked from the back recesses of old night stands. If a close proximity to said potential future mother-in-law is unavoidable, at least make sure it is not approaching midnight when the money is eventually discovered, as people very rarely tend to look favorably upon new neighbors when it sounds like a brutal murder is being committed in their living room.)

Tip No. 6: Couches hate humans. The following is a handy dandy guide designed to help you see if you are about to make a SMART or a STUPID decision regarding your jumbo-sized lounge furniture of choice. SMART: Buying a couch half-off at a going out of business sale. STUPID: Buying a couch half-off at a going out of business sale 80 miles from your apartment on Labor Day weekend without first checking to see if any car or van rental agencies are still open. SMART: Taking precise measurements to make sure your couch fits through the front door. STUPID: Taking precise measurements to make sure your couch fits through the front door but forgetting to take into account the angled staircase and overhead porch roof. SMART: Lowering the couch gently to the ground even when your, umm, moderately distressed girlfriend orders you to just throw it off the porch and onto her head, thus ending her misery. STUPID: Panicking about how much money you just spent on your “discount” Sensation micro fiber sofa and round trip U-HAUL rental with gas and overage miles and dragging said sofa to the other side of the apartment to try and shove it through the much smaller back door. SMART: Doing all of the previous and then having your neighbor—who also happens to be the landlord’s son—notice what’s going on and offer to help you dismantle the railing on the front porch so you can finally get your admittedly slightly-worse-for-wear-but-still-pretty-nice-overall couch into your living room and only owing him two beers and a lifetime supply of homemade cookies as compensation.

Of course, there are plenty of other minor details worth considering in the early phases of your move—the burgeoning flying squirrel population taking up residence in your walls, for example—but, if properly interpreted and applied, the above tips should guide you safely through the vast majority of this obstacle-laden morass. It may be too late for me and mine, but you and yours can rest easy knowing that a classy, experienced professional such as myself is here to guide you. Now where the heck did I put that cookie dough? Damn squirrels.

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[*]Actual address changed to protect my innocent flat panel television.

 

—Clever Trevor | no comments
(posted in the Legerde-metaphysics category)

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SAMCON 2007 - 100 Days and counting!

August 3, 2007, 10:11 pm

That’s right folks, today marks the long anticipated 100 day countdown to SAMCON 2007–”The Best Convention on the Northshore.”  (”Long anticipated by whom?” you might ask.  Hey, who’s the blogger here pal!?  Just pipe down and keep reading.)  Long story short, there are still plenty of tickets left for one and all, but prime seats for the spectacular evening stage show are going fast, so if you’re putting off registration till the last minute for some reason, ask yourself this: “Do I really wanna get stuck sitting behind another clown this year?”  (I’m talking literally here people; nothing worse than trying to watch a show throw a tangle of bright red curls and a giant spinning bow tie.)  That’s what I thought.

For tickets and information, just check out the SAM 104 website at www.sam104.com or call my good man Tucker (Tucker Goodman, that is) at 617-901-5187.  Jay Scott Berry, Boris Wild, Chris Mitchell, Joshua Jay, Kayla Drescher–you don’t really want to be miss out on all that, do you?

—Clever Trevor | no comments
(posted in the Convention/Lecture Information category)

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Dis-Ellusionist

August 2, 2007, 1:34 pm

Good news invisible thread lovers: We finally received the critically acclaimed 3-DVD “Guerrilla Loops” set starring Nate Kranzo, Daniel Garcia, and Justin Miller. Just think, they arrived a mere two months after they were first released…and only one month after we actually ordered them! The nifty coin vanish DVD “Revolution” has also come in, along with some older, but still popular, Ellusionist products, including Fraud and Indecent. Of course, you would never know this unless you came into our shop. Heck, even if you did know this, the information would be pretty much useless to you unless you lived within driving distance of our brick & mortar retail establishment. Thanks to Ellusionist’s draconian retail restrictions, we may not sell - or even advertise - exclusive Ellusionist products in any venue except our physical shop. So not only can you NOT buy Ellusionist products through our website, you can’t even order them via e-mail or over the phone.

This, frankly, is crazy. It’s one thing to try and maintain a strict monopoly on your internet sales. (I’m not saying it’s economically or commercially logical, but it certainly is “one thing.”) However, to prohibit retail vendors from even advertising your products in e-mail updates, annual catalogs, et al is fairly ridiculous. Many customers spend years cultivating a personal relationship with their dealers and simply don’t feel comfortable working with an unknown entity. This goes double for older customers, many of whom have enough trouble simply grasping and trusting basic internet concepts as it is and would never even consider attempting to navigate the flashy, avante-garde confines of something like an Ellusionist website.

Look, I’m all for protecting the bottom line, and obviously your business is your business, but Ellusionist, how about going about your business a little more logically? Letting dealers advertise and sell your products in outlets beyond their physical retail locations may not make much of a difference to your coffers on an individual basis, but get enough of them doing it and I guarantee it can only help that aforementioned and all-important bottom line. Why should you take my word for it? Well, for one thing, I’ve actually been in this business longer than you have, as have most of the dealers you are currently spurning with your proprietary business practices. More importantly though, I am a certified genius in 37 U.S. states and a mid-level diety in nine west-Indian villages, two African sultantes, and one Eastern Bloc protectorate (as well as a partridge in a pear tree).

Annoying Beyond Belief Update: Ellusionist has somehow finagled the exclusive rights to David Stone’s “Real Secrets of Close-up Magic - Vol. 2.” Super. Hurry up and get your orders in now folks! You’ve only got two months to wait!

—Clever Trevor | no comments
(posted in the Retail Revelations, Legerde-metaphysics category)

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Street Magic Brag-azine

July 23, 2007, 4:59 pm

It took one issue - its first - for Street Magic Magazine to become the number one selling magic magazine on the planet. For this, they are to be applauded. After all, how many new companies have the business acumen, cultural foresight, and sheer moxie to rise to the top of their respective field in so short a time?

However, as much as I appreciate SM’s boundary-pushing content and genre-bending agenda, I cannot for the life of me get past their sublimely annoying (and oft-repeated) displays of self-satisfaction. I realize that SM is young, and that its contributors and editors will undoubtedly improve and evolve with each passing issue, but so far there has emerged a distinct and tiresome pattern in the SM ouevre, and it can be broken down as follows: While 25% of SM’s text is admirably devoted to original content, another 25% seems to be devoted solely to talking about how original their content is. Likewise, although 25% of SM’s subject matter brims provocatively with controversial themes and topics, another 25% is spent heralding just how provocative and controversial those themes and topics are.

Listen guys: we get it. You’re new, you’re fresh, and you’re taking the magic world by storm. Women inexplicably find themselves throwing their panties around with reckless abandon while reading your table of contents, and men suddenly sprout vast quantities of coarse, curly hair on various body parts merely by squinting at the glossy panache of gritty urban attitude gracing every page of your periodical. Of course, if you’d like to be taken a little more seriously, perhaps you might consider hiring a spellchecker for some of your higher-profile ad copy. I’ll explain.

In the editorial that jump starts the most recent issue of Street Magic Magazine, James L. Clark, MBA (and Editor-in-Chief), writes the following:

When we were asked to provide Barnes & Noble with a statement of 50 words or less that would be used to market SM to the masses, we took a route that could easily be perceived by traditional magicians as being controversial, but to us it is progressive:

Street Magic delivers relevant information and practical advice about the art of magic. Learn the latest trends, how to do slight of hand, card tricks, bar scams, and cheats. Each issue is chalk full of celebrity interviews, in-your-face articles, product reviews, and irreverent humor; this isn’t your granddad’s magic magazine.

Have you seen which parts of the above citation I might take umbrage with? (Actually, I don’t care if you have or not because I’m going to tell you anyway.) First of all, the expression is chock-full of whatever - only blackboards and sidewalks can be “chalk full.” Second of all, and faaaaaaaar more egregiously for a magazine purporting to represent and supplement the magic community at large, magicians perform sleight of hand, not slight of hand. Midgets and babies are slight of hand; magicians are typically of at least average hand size, given the important role hands tend to play in the realm of legerdemain and prestidigitation. It would be one thing if these two errors were mere typos within the body of the magazine; I’m not saying it would be acceptable, but it would certainly be understandable. However, these were errors in key promotional material sent to one of the largest book retailers in the world - not exactly the smartest venue in which to play fast and loose with your dictionary.

Street Magic, you have a world of potential, and you have already achieved a great deal in light of (and in spite of) your extremely short tenure and openly contentious approach to publishing. However, and this is only the opinion of a humble genius/supermodel, I think that if you spent a little more time and effort “doing your thing,” and a little less time and effort talking about how awesomely and audaciously your thing is, in fact, done, future issues of SM might actually live up to their generously self-manufactured hype.

Addendum - 7/24/07: I just re-read the end of Mr. Clark’s editorial. Here are a few of the choicer excerpts, with my own italicizations added to aid the grammatically and dictionally impaired:

• “And then there’s my tip to Germany…”
• “I suppose I should warap this up…”
• “…youu can find him one page 55…”
• “So I’ll end out this editorial with this…”

Seriously guys, it’s called copy editing. Pay some high school kid $10/hour to read your magazine before it goes to press and save yourself a little embarassment.

—Clever Trevor | no comments
(posted in the Retail Revelations, Legerde-metaphysics category)

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Pain in the Class…ification

July 6, 2007, 12:32 pm

Go to almost any magic website and you’ll probably find that, in addition to being able to do a free text search for the name of your desired item, you can also browse through various magic categories such as “Close-up”, “Card Tricks”, “Stage Magic”, “Mentalism”, etc. But do you ever wonder how some of these props and effects get placed where they are? I’d never really thought about it before until I started trying to organize the contents of our website into browseable sections in an effort to fix the impossibly vague (and overly existential) method we’d been using before.

I have to say, it has been no easy task. Who am I to decide what the underlying essence of any given item is? I’m not James Randi for crying out loud. And yet I’m constantly asking myself inane questions that would immediately ostracize any normal person from even their closest peer group, like “Is Dunninger’s Delight really a mentalism effect, or is it a card trick with a mentalism theme? And bloody hell Kenton, is it for close-up or stage? GET OFF THE FENCE ALREADY–WE’RE AT WAR.” I imagine this is how biologists must have felt when they first began classifying the various members of the animal kingdom. Whaddaya mean whales and people should be in the same friggin’ class!? Are you blind man??? …Well of COURSE I know that we’re all recent common ancestor of monotremes. I was just testing you.

Bottom line, if you are using our subcategories to browse for so-called “thematically related” effects, books, or DVDs, keep in mind that the process of retail magic categorization ain’t exactly an exact science. Each time something new comes in, I have to make an executive–and occasionally arbitrary–decision as to whether this item has enough overwhelming characteristics of a certain nature to allow it to be labeled with one specific designation, or whether it is too multifarious to be pigeonholed into any subcategory whatsoever. Unfortunately, this probably means that not everyone is going to agree with every classification I make, but I’m okay with that. After all, when you’re as successful with the ladies as I am, a little thing like what magic trick goes where suddenly becomes a lot less significant. (And by “ladies,” of course, I mean the Queens of Diamonds, Hearts, Spades, and Clubs. Now those are some twisted sisters!)

—Clever Trevor | no comments
(posted in the Store News, Legerde-metaphysics category)

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Screw the Queen. God Save Mark Mason.

June 7, 2007, 3:57 pm

Last night was the Mark Mason lecture in Salem, MA. And it was one of the most entertaining and informative things–not magic lectures, not performances, but things–that I’ve seen in many a moon. The material from start to finish was fresh and provocative, the performance was witty and extremely high energy, and the insights were borderline sublime. It was, in every sense of the word, an experience. Mark Mason was the ultimate professional, performing every aspect of his set with such fluidity and humor that sometimes you didn’t know whether to laugh, cry, or simply gape in awe at the sheer brilliance of it all. (I myself went with a subtle combination of the three, but quickly clammed up after a few people nervously pulled out cell phones and began dialing very brief phone numbers.)

For those who don’t know, in addition to being a world-class magician, Mark is also a practicing stand-up comedian, hence the abovereferenced (and unsurpassed) hilarity of the entire lecture. The proferred gags and “bits of business” alone were worth ten times the price of admission. Of course, there was plenty of commercial magic on display as well, and while much of it was prop-oriented (Mark owns JB Magic and invents and hand-makes some of its most innovative products), it was easy to see how many of the concepts and principles involved could be applied to other routines and performance styles. Despite the eye-popping nature of these more commercial bits, however, it was the three “prop-less” effects and techniques that truly warmed the cockles of my card-lovin’ heart. “My Two Favorite Card Tricks,” Mark’s bastardized classic force/finger load, and the “Put & Take” Move–each will doubtless become a permanent part of my working repetoire, sooner rather than later I hope.

But while the lecture was flat out fantastic, it’s arguable that some of Mark’s most valuable advice was bestowed later in the night on the handful of us lucky enough to join him for a few pints of warm lager at a nearby pub. I’m not at liberty to disclose the information bandied about within those hallowed (if somewhat sodden) halls, but suffice it to say, it will make us rich beyond our wildest dreams. And if it doesn’t, at least we got some free brewskis out of the deal!  So many thanks for pickin’ up the tab Mark; we owe you one (and one and one and one…).

—Clever Trevor | no comments
(posted in the Convention/Lecture Information category)

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