Carnegie Magic At Springfield Town Center

For a second year in a row, I performed at Springfield Town Center for their big Halloween Extravaganza! Last year, I sawed two people in half. This year, the big trick was to be The Spirit Cabinet. But before we could get there, we had lots of other magic to share.

The show started with a few minutes of preshow warmups. And then a huge burst of applause once the show started (thanks to the warmups). We, (Denise and I) opened with our Houdini 3 opener, which is three quick escapes done back to back. This was devised for our Houdini show with Atlas Obscura earlier in the year, and it has played well ever since.

Next came a cute little piece of surprising magic, A Traveling Coin routine using a Coin Casket and Copenetro. You hardly ever see Copenetro these days, and I'm pretty certain I may be the only magician using a Coin Casket. This is a prop right out of the Victoria Era. A little casket that holds 4 coins. The coins vanish one at a time and appear across the stage inside of an overturned glass. Wonderful stuff.

Next we did another audience favorite, the Magic Plumes. Yes, very old school, but I think we have a fine routine for it that always registers with audiences. If you're not familiar with the, the Plumes Change Color, one at a time.

The middle section of the show is all Halloween magic, with ghosts, pumpkins, candy and such. Then we finished with The Spirit Cabinet. However, due to the overwhelming mass of very young kids, we opted for what we called "The AntMan Presentation". So rather than apparently summoning 'spirits', we let AntMan do his thing and ring the bell and tamborine and so forth. It went over GREAT!

The folks at Springfield Mall couldn't be nice and we love performing there!

The Return of the Escape Artist

I really thought by now I'd be out of the escape business. A health issue that started about 10 years ago really put a damper on it so I pretty much dropped all escapes. But the recent request by AtlasObscura.com to participate in their Houdini Escapes DC event, changed all that.

I decided to do a 30 minute escape act with chains, locks, handcuffs, ropes and more. And I jumped in full force, which was a mistake. After the first couple days of rehearsing a serious problem crept up. My wrists and arms were turning black and blue. It was my own fault. I was trying to put on cuffs that were just too tight. This then caused them to swell and I continued to put them on and then they bruised. All the vintage cuffs got dropped because they were too tight. I was really upset about this, but it was unavoidable. However....

I remembered a ploy that Houdini used on cuffs he wasn't sure about. He would have them put onto other cuffs and not on his own wrists. They were still among the mix of cuffs and looked really dramatic, but were not a problem when it came to escaping. So I used a pair of darbies in the middle of several pair of Smith and Wesson and Peerless cuffs. I finished it off with a pair of thumbscrews which can be held in place with a padlock. It made an impressive looking escape.

Houdini used his 'ghost house' to escape from. This was a small black curtained cabinet that he would

kneel into to escape from his cuffs. I used a hooped curtain from a sub-trunk routine. The cuffs came off one at a time and were thrown from the curtain enclosure. The last thing to come off were the thumbscrews which I did in the open.

OH, I almost forgot, the OPENING number! This involved several escapes back to back to back. A chain/lock escape, an escape from a pair of Hamburg 8s, and then a reverse escape. I tossed a 2 foot length of rope into a sack, reached in and came out a moment later with my hands securely tied. It got a good laugh from the audience!

The final escape in the show was the 100 foot rope tie escape which I have not done in ages. I found two people in the audience to tie me up. It took them about 3 minutes to do the tying. The escape took  about 2 minutes. The 100 foot rope tie escape is fun because it's never the same no matter how many times it's done. Everyone takes a different approach to the tying. Some people are very serious about it and do a very firm job. Others don't quite have the knack and I'll need to give them suggestions along the way, like KEEP IT TIGHT and tie it around the wrists, or don't forget this or that. The two people who tied me during the Houdini event did a pretty good job.

So is that it? Have I put the escape stuff back in the closet for good? Actually no. I decided to keep it out and put it back into my show. It's going to be a regular feature. I'll be adding several other escapes as well with the addition of something dangerous to escape from. I already have a couple dangers escapes I can add, so we'll see if I use one of those or get something different. Keep watching!!!!!