Tony Corinda (Thomas William Simpson)
Born: 17 May, 1930
Died: 1 July, 2010
Died: 1 July, 2010
Theodore "theo" Anneman n
james randi (Randall James H. zwinge)
Eugene Burger
The Piddingtons (Lesley and Sydney)
"The Amazing" Joseph Dunninger
"Al Koran" (Edward Doe)
Max Maven (Philip Goldstein)
"The Amazing Kreskin" (George J. Kresge)
Richard Osterlind
banachek (Steve shaw)
Born: 30 Nov, 1960
“I was born in England, left there when I was nine. My real father had left when I was a year old. My mother abandoned me in South Africa with a brother a year old and 3 years old- again, I was nine years old. I raised them by myself till I was fifteen. Went to Australia from there to find my real father who was in Australia at a place called Woomera. We moved to the United States. That family had some issues so I ended up moving out while I was in high school. Had three jobs just so I could finish high school. One of them was a security job where I slept. And I know that sounds bad, but it was okay because you were put in this little tiny room and then every hour on the hour you had to walk around and punch these clocks. Look around make sure nobody was there, then you’d go back in the room and do nothing but watch TV, so I slept in there. And between those three jobs and going top high school, that’s how I was pretty much living my life. I had no social life at all. I was the kid in the very back of the class who had a heavy coat on in the middle of summer, scared to death the teacher was going to call on me, and if they did I would turn beet red. I remember once I bought a pint of milk and I tasted it outside the store and it was sour and I was too embarrassed to go back in and tell them it was sour. I mean that’s how socially inept I was.
And then I read a book by The Amazing Randi, it was called ‘The Truth About Uri Geller’’. Let me go back just little bit. When I was in South Africa I had heard Uri Geller on the radio. Now any adults that I did know at the time believed Geller was genuine…
I had heard that when you see Geller bend metal- and I had never seen him do it, but I head that when you see him bend it, you actually see the metal bending. Years later I actually did see Geller, and there were some cases where you could actually see the metal bending. You might see it with a key or with a nail, rarely the spoon or the fork- unless it was breaking- could you actually see it bending. It was usually covered or something and then his hand was taken away. But I had created all my bends under the impression that you saw them bending. So when you see my bends nowadays, you’ll see they’re all visible bends, they’re not just cover-it, hide-it in our hand or something like that. So from Randi’s book I started bending metal in high school, and figuring out other things as well, like I made the school bell go off early so we could all get out of school, and it was supposedly with psychic powers. I got in trouble for that- I got suspended for that. I got suspended because all the kids were stealing silverware from the cafeteria, they were bringing it to me. And I got blamed! They were stealing the silverware, I was just doing the bending."
-Banachek, from an interview with Paul Draper on Full Cirlce Magic, (0:1:10 - 0:4:28) (See full hour and a half interview here)
“I was born in England, left there when I was nine. My real father had left when I was a year old. My mother abandoned me in South Africa with a brother a year old and 3 years old- again, I was nine years old. I raised them by myself till I was fifteen. Went to Australia from there to find my real father who was in Australia at a place called Woomera. We moved to the United States. That family had some issues so I ended up moving out while I was in high school. Had three jobs just so I could finish high school. One of them was a security job where I slept. And I know that sounds bad, but it was okay because you were put in this little tiny room and then every hour on the hour you had to walk around and punch these clocks. Look around make sure nobody was there, then you’d go back in the room and do nothing but watch TV, so I slept in there. And between those three jobs and going top high school, that’s how I was pretty much living my life. I had no social life at all. I was the kid in the very back of the class who had a heavy coat on in the middle of summer, scared to death the teacher was going to call on me, and if they did I would turn beet red. I remember once I bought a pint of milk and I tasted it outside the store and it was sour and I was too embarrassed to go back in and tell them it was sour. I mean that’s how socially inept I was.
And then I read a book by The Amazing Randi, it was called ‘The Truth About Uri Geller’’. Let me go back just little bit. When I was in South Africa I had heard Uri Geller on the radio. Now any adults that I did know at the time believed Geller was genuine…
I had heard that when you see Geller bend metal- and I had never seen him do it, but I head that when you see him bend it, you actually see the metal bending. Years later I actually did see Geller, and there were some cases where you could actually see the metal bending. You might see it with a key or with a nail, rarely the spoon or the fork- unless it was breaking- could you actually see it bending. It was usually covered or something and then his hand was taken away. But I had created all my bends under the impression that you saw them bending. So when you see my bends nowadays, you’ll see they’re all visible bends, they’re not just cover-it, hide-it in our hand or something like that. So from Randi’s book I started bending metal in high school, and figuring out other things as well, like I made the school bell go off early so we could all get out of school, and it was supposedly with psychic powers. I got in trouble for that- I got suspended for that. I got suspended because all the kids were stealing silverware from the cafeteria, they were bringing it to me. And I got blamed! They were stealing the silverware, I was just doing the bending."
-Banachek, from an interview with Paul Draper on Full Cirlce Magic, (0:1:10 - 0:4:28) (See full hour and a half interview here)
Docc Hilford (Docc John Michaels Hilford)
Born: 6 June, 1959
“[Docc is] one of the leading experts on mentalism, where he often incorporates a metaphysical influence into his presentation. He has made an incredible number of magic and mentalism videos and written countless books and manuscripts for the mentalist and magician alike. Now when I first met him, he was deeply ingrained in the world of bizarre magic- and famous for pushing flies into his face, among other things. Now he was the editor of ‘The New Invocation’ and he organized and hosted ‘The Weerd Weekend’ and international convention focused on bizarre magic. Docc has studied both performance and ritual magic with a diverse group of influential teachers, including Dusty Cravens, Orville Meyer, Mike Skinner, Ormond McGill, Thessallonia DePrince (High Priest of VooDoo), and Tony Andruzzi, just to name a few. Now, before I knew him, he was a working cowboy in Utah and he lived with the tribal medicine men on the Navajo reservation. He was also stage manager for Alice cooper. And he opened for Aerosmith and Black Sabbath with his own film-noir magic show. He’s been a pickpocket, a hypnotist, a mindreader, an illusionist, and a kid’s show performer. Yep, kid’s show! In fact, he was honored a few years back at Abracadabra for his comedy kid’s show. Currently he performs high-end gigs for major celebrities, athletes, and political figures all over the world."
-Dan Harlan, an introduction to Docc Hilford's Penguin Live lecture. (see the video intro here)
"Hilford´s grandparents came from Africa to USA. King Salomon´s Highpriest was a man named ZARDOCC. So the parents named him "DOCC" with Two C´s.
He told me yesterday that he is happy, that his parents did not call him Zardocc! "
- Ted Lesley, from a personal phone correspondence with Docc. (taken from forum at themagiccafe.com. see it here)
“[Docc is] one of the leading experts on mentalism, where he often incorporates a metaphysical influence into his presentation. He has made an incredible number of magic and mentalism videos and written countless books and manuscripts for the mentalist and magician alike. Now when I first met him, he was deeply ingrained in the world of bizarre magic- and famous for pushing flies into his face, among other things. Now he was the editor of ‘The New Invocation’ and he organized and hosted ‘The Weerd Weekend’ and international convention focused on bizarre magic. Docc has studied both performance and ritual magic with a diverse group of influential teachers, including Dusty Cravens, Orville Meyer, Mike Skinner, Ormond McGill, Thessallonia DePrince (High Priest of VooDoo), and Tony Andruzzi, just to name a few. Now, before I knew him, he was a working cowboy in Utah and he lived with the tribal medicine men on the Navajo reservation. He was also stage manager for Alice cooper. And he opened for Aerosmith and Black Sabbath with his own film-noir magic show. He’s been a pickpocket, a hypnotist, a mindreader, an illusionist, and a kid’s show performer. Yep, kid’s show! In fact, he was honored a few years back at Abracadabra for his comedy kid’s show. Currently he performs high-end gigs for major celebrities, athletes, and political figures all over the world."
-Dan Harlan, an introduction to Docc Hilford's Penguin Live lecture. (see the video intro here)
"Hilford´s grandparents came from Africa to USA. King Salomon´s Highpriest was a man named ZARDOCC. So the parents named him "DOCC" with Two C´s.
He told me yesterday that he is happy, that his parents did not call him Zardocc! "
- Ted Lesley, from a personal phone correspondence with Docc. (taken from forum at themagiccafe.com. see it here)
Derren Brown
Andy Nyman
kenton knepper
bob cassidy
Ian Rowland
Andrew mayne (Andrew harter)
Luke Jermay
Marc Salem
Tony Andruzzi (Tom S. Palmer) [ A.K.A. Masklyn ye mage ]
Born: May 22, 1925
Died: Dec. 22, 1991
Among bizarre magicians, there are few quite as prolific as Tony Andruzzi. In fact, this performer was so prolific that one name could not contain his showmanship. In addition to his work under the name Tony Andruzzi, this enigmatic performer also performed and wrote under the name of Tom Palmer (his given name, which itself has a colorful history) and Masklyn Ye Mage (the name of his personae or character in the Society for Creative Anachronism). He wrote a number of other works under a variety of names, particularly Daemon Ecks, a pen name which was attached to some of his best known works on magic acts.
Tom Palmer was actually originally Timothy McGuire, born in May of 1925 to Fay and Tom McGuire. However, Timothy's father left Fay and Fay allowed Gertie and Charles Palmer to adopt the child less than a year later, where he received the name Tom Stewart Palmer. However, Fay maintained friendly relationships with the Palmers and was present in some capacity during the boy's upbringing, though the true nature of their relationship was not told to Tom until he was a teenager.
When Tom began performing magic acts in the 1960s, he held on to this name and all of its history. At the time, he focused heavily on comedy magic, working his illusions into comedy routines. When he moved to Chicago in the late 1960s, he changed directions to a field of performance called bizarre magic, where he adopted the alias of Tony Andruzzi. This alias existed both in his personal and professional life. Bizarre magic became a calling for Tony. Bizarre magic is a field of stage magic that focuses quite heavily on storytelling, word play and oration, with less emphasis placed on the performer's illusions and more on their ability to connect with the audience.
Around the mid 1970s, Andruzzi became involved with the Society for Creative Anachronism, a recreation group focused heavily on the Middle Ages. Inside the SCA, it is customary for members to create "personae" characters played by the member intended to reflect some element of the society they have focused their private studies on, be it pre-Christian Russia or the Caliphate of the Islamic Golden Age. Andruzzi created the personae of Masklyn ye Mage to perform his bizarre magic act at SCA events, oftentimes bardic events, where all members are invited to tell stories, sing, play music and oftentimes drink, a place where the bizarre magic format is quite impressive.
Died: Dec. 22, 1991
Among bizarre magicians, there are few quite as prolific as Tony Andruzzi. In fact, this performer was so prolific that one name could not contain his showmanship. In addition to his work under the name Tony Andruzzi, this enigmatic performer also performed and wrote under the name of Tom Palmer (his given name, which itself has a colorful history) and Masklyn Ye Mage (the name of his personae or character in the Society for Creative Anachronism). He wrote a number of other works under a variety of names, particularly Daemon Ecks, a pen name which was attached to some of his best known works on magic acts.
Tom Palmer was actually originally Timothy McGuire, born in May of 1925 to Fay and Tom McGuire. However, Timothy's father left Fay and Fay allowed Gertie and Charles Palmer to adopt the child less than a year later, where he received the name Tom Stewart Palmer. However, Fay maintained friendly relationships with the Palmers and was present in some capacity during the boy's upbringing, though the true nature of their relationship was not told to Tom until he was a teenager.
When Tom began performing magic acts in the 1960s, he held on to this name and all of its history. At the time, he focused heavily on comedy magic, working his illusions into comedy routines. When he moved to Chicago in the late 1960s, he changed directions to a field of performance called bizarre magic, where he adopted the alias of Tony Andruzzi. This alias existed both in his personal and professional life. Bizarre magic became a calling for Tony. Bizarre magic is a field of stage magic that focuses quite heavily on storytelling, word play and oration, with less emphasis placed on the performer's illusions and more on their ability to connect with the audience.
Around the mid 1970s, Andruzzi became involved with the Society for Creative Anachronism, a recreation group focused heavily on the Middle Ages. Inside the SCA, it is customary for members to create "personae" characters played by the member intended to reflect some element of the society they have focused their private studies on, be it pre-Christian Russia or the Caliphate of the Islamic Golden Age. Andruzzi created the personae of Masklyn ye Mage to perform his bizarre magic act at SCA events, oftentimes bardic events, where all members are invited to tell stories, sing, play music and oftentimes drink, a place where the bizarre magic format is quite impressive.
Jim Critchlow
Paul Draper
David Berglas
Chan Canasta
Jeff McBride
Menny Lindenfeld
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