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In this way the show really does mirror real life. The ones who get all the attention are the drama queens and the rich kids, leaving everyone else out in the cold. Then when the whole thing is over, those same popular kids are forgotten a few months later when the people who previously...

Craig hasn't posted any videos of himself. Neither has Christopher, to my knowledge. Yet I don't see anyone rushing to demand from them proof that they are are in fact professional mystery entertainers and not, say, giant chinchillas who learned how to speak English and use a keyboard. I...

None of them know the kind of work that went into that, either. David was a magician when he was in grade school and made connections that allowed him to reach mastery by a comparatively young age. And he networked constantly while also receiving training in theater. And after his mother...

To put it another way that I hope clarifies things, there are two kinds of magicians. The first type has training of some kind in theater, or has studied the craft in some way. They know when to stay on script and when to go off script. They acknowledge that when they go off script, not all...

By appearing as a contestant on a reality show that no one is going to remember in 6 months? And seriously, does our magic really suck so badly that we need that pedestrian performance to make us look good? Speak for yourself.

He was referencing the fact that several of his lines are ad-libbed in the movies. But the majority of the stuff he ad-libbed never made it because it wasn't any good. That's the problem I'm approaching. I have nothing against you or what you do. I do however get a burr under my saddle that...

For the sake of exposition, I do have a theater background. Nowhere near as much training as some here, such as yourself, have had, but enough to at least know my ass from a hole in the ground. That said, I use John Rhys-Davies as an example because the Lord of the Rings trilogy is huge, and...

It's a slick move, but why do you want publish this?

Many magicians insist on improvising their performances. They don't script, they don't rehearse, nothing. And it's always the same excuses. "Rehearsed patter looks fake!" "A more spontaneous performance looks more natural!" "It's about the magic, not the writing!" And yet, I get paid to...

Drawing on six years of successes and failures, associations with people who understand business and those who don't, reading books on marketing and skill mastery, here's the first in a series of write-ups I'm planning to give all of you hopeful future pros a quick crash course in how to make it...

He's welcome to prove me wrong, you know. But I'm not optimistic given his behavior so far. He really does strike me as being just like every other wannabe that's come through here. Jason proved him wrong and he doesn't even have the decency to say, "I stand corrected." If my judgment seems...

I never mentioned you by name, so I'm not sure what the point here was supposed to be.

I'm going to be uncharacteristically brief on this one. When talking about the making of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, John Rhys-Davies, who played Gimli, said that, "By its very nature 90% of all improvisation is garbage. Sometimes it works, sometimes it just makes a mess. Sometimes it does...

Not saying he should ape Eschen's schtick. Just that watching someone be genuinely socially awkward is far, far less painful than watching a fool who thinks he's brilliant. As for reality TV, part of the problem comes from the fact that it's reality only in the most lenient sense of the word...

For a PK effect, it occurs to me that a treated surface and a psychological force makes for a pretty good effect. Ask someone to think of a geometrical shape, in other words force them to think of a triangle. You have a surface ready with the excuse that you don't want to just dump colored...

If I could have one word stricken from the English language, "swag" would be pretty high on the list of candidates. It's clear he's not very comfortable in his own skin. On the other hand, social awkwardness doesn't hold a candle to how obnoxious it is to watch forced coolness.

Not PK water by any stretch, but there are some effects out there. Kenton Knepper has an obscure text floating around in which he uses both fire and water for the purpose of diving information, changing writing, etc. Beyond that, you might want to do some research on chemistry. Obvious but...

More than that, think of it this way. A magician is known for creating cheap, throw-away effects and flourishes that have never been performed for a live audience ever, solely for the purpose of putting them up on an online store for free so that he can get points toward free merchandise, which...

That was a magician's presentation of a mental effect, not pure mentalism. And for God's sake, someone tell him to stop mumbling between lines.

This is a joke, right?