January Review-a-Month: Tarbell Course in Magic

One thing I failed to mention in my New Year update post, was another Christmas gift I received: The Tarbell Course in Magic, which is an eight volume set of books on, yep, you guessed it, magic. Originally developed as a correspondence course in 1927 by Dr. Harlan Tarbell, the books cover most, if not all aspects of magic performance, from techniques and tricks, to patter and presentation.

The book’s first volume opens with a History of Magic, and I found this wasn’t a History of Magic as in tricks, as I had expected, but a History of Magic as in healing, miracles and religion, this was slight disappointment, as I was looking forward to learning about those who had come before me, such as the Ancient Egyptian magician Dedi, and the father of modern conjuring, Jean Eugene Robert-Houdin, but c’est la vie.

The second chapter was better by far, explaining the scientific approach to magic, covering topics such as professionalism, and emphasising the importance of practice. This chapter was exactly what I needed, a thorough explanation on performing to the best of my ability.

The books then go on to explain tricks and techniques with coins, cards, handkerchieves, thimbles and a whole host of other objects, occasionally pausing to cover things such as routining and publicity.

All in all, the books are comprehensive and incredibly practical, with illustrations to guide you all the way, and in-depth, written explanations too, and while the book may not make you a guru on any particular aspect of magic, it gives you a thorough grounding for you to then expand your knowledge in any area you wish.

I would recommend these books to anyone who is serious about magic, and although they are expensive, they are well worth it.

Interesting digression: Seeing as how these are non-fiction books, I can’t really give incredibly extreme, close-minded opinions for you to disagree with, or talk about character development and interesting plot twists, but seeing as how this review is a first for me, I wanted to do something that deviates from “Bog-standard FPS review #3.”

Score: 8/10

New Year’s Resolutions

Just a quick post to publish my new year’s resolutions (for the blog at least) with everyone on the internet as my witness.

1. Write on this blog at least once a week
2. Make my posts shorter, and less wordy
3. Start a “Review-a-month” regular piece, where I will review a film, book, website or game (etc.) every month.

2008: Time for an update!

Like the rhyming title? You better. I took me a full three seconds.

Yup. I’m back. Did you miss me? Did you even notice I was gone? Probably not. The internet is big, this blog isn’t.

It seems the last time I posted was in November, so I decided to give my blog the kiss of life it deserved and actually pick up the keyboard and write something. So here it is.

first order of business, is that I got a comment on my Remember piece. A real one. This is a big day for me. My first ever comment. I’m over the moon. Really I am. Wow. The comment was by raincoaster and said:

“Well? He posted his.”

(Yes I know you can go see the comment for yourself, but this is a big deal for me, leave me alone.) I assume by “Well?” raincoaster means “Where’s the response?” which is a good question that needs answering. When I saw the MadV video on Youtube, the thoughts that ran through my head were “What a fantastic idea, I’m going to respond. Even though I do hate the sound of my own voice.” The response date drew nearer, and I had prepared a short speech to deliver to the Youtube masses. I had recorded and re-recorded, and the response date drew nearer still. November 5th came and I decided “I’ll upload it later,” by midday, “uploading it later” was still the intention, and by the evening, later was still when I would upload it, and by the time later had passed, I hadn’t uploaded it, and November 5th had ended. I didn’t want to be the person that everyone makes fun of for wandering in late, so I didn’t upload it on November 6th either, eventually, the video file for the response eventually got lost in the shadowy abyss of deletion, never to rear it’s ugly head again. Now that I’ve lost what little credibility I had, I can get one with the rest of the post.

Fast forward to December. BANG! It’s exam time. My mock GCSEs which I had been revising like crazy for. I’m one of the unlucky few that gets to take my exams in the Special Needs department of school, because I am entitled to extra time (which I hardly used.) There isn’t really much I can say about the exams, except they were easier than I thought they would be, and it was so cold in the exam room that a few of us were declared dead, and the room got turned into a cryogenics lab.

Then before I even had time to collect my thoughts, it was Christmas. A time of giving and receiving. Mainly receiving. I received an Xbox 360 core system, with The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Saints row, Call of Duty 3, and Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter (reviews for those later.) New Year zipped by, and the rest as they say is history, which is a good job really because this post was starting to get a little long, and I find that for some reason people don’t like reading on the internet.

Worldwide Dungeons & Dragons Game Day

Today, my younger brother and I decided to attend the Worldwide Dungeons & Dragons Game Day event at our local gaming/hobby shop. So, we awoke at the crack of dawn (7:45 AM) to get ready, hopped on a bus at 8:45 and got into town by 9:00. I, in my infinite wisdom, had phoned up the day before to confirm times and details, the person who answered the phone had no clue what we were talking about, but we decided to go anyway (Life serves the risk taker, and all that.) After walking through town, we entered the small, small, small hobby shop, and asked the man behind the counter (who was wearing elf ears and everything) about the event, he was aware of it, fortunately, but told us, to our dismay, that the event would not be taking place due to lack of space, (it was a VERY small shop, with a LOT of products.) He then said that instead he would be giving freebies to everyone who came enquiring about the day. We received five painted miniatures (three heroes, two monsters), three character sheets, three statistics cards, a map, and a published adventure.

After thanking the owner, we left and walked back across town, to my favourite haunt, the Town Library, where I wasn’t particularly looking for anything, I just enjoyed being their. We went in, sat at a table, to browse my newly received swag, which I would look at in more detail later, then onto the graphic novels section, which reminded me, I wanted a copy of the V for Vendetta graphic novel. I looked around, but to no avail. They didn’t have it. We then sauntered over to the computing section (where I first started learning C++.) Nothing that caught my interest, but my brother wanted to look for books about Woodwork, so I took him to the manufacturing section.

After leaving, we wandered aimlessly around, until we finally sat down on a bench, afterfifteen minutes of waitng, and shuffling the deck of cards I had with me, an old woman came and sat beside us. She asked if I could do magic tricks. She had no idea, I performed my signature piece, where a card jumps from one location to another. She gave the classic reaction, looking superior, as if she knew what I was up to, or did something wrong, slight smile as I correctly showed her the chosen card, shock as she realised that she thought she saw the card elsewhere.

We then got on the bus to go home, bag getting heavy, and decided to stop before riding all the way, and take a short walk to a friend’s house, and try to rope him into playing our new published adventure. Success. I ran the adventure, which was good, although I had to modify some of it, as it was written for five characters and we only had two.

This goes to show that nothing ever goes to plan.

Remember, remember the 5th of November

On YouTube, there is a user known as MadV, who joined the site on April 11 2006. He posted a series of videos showing incredible feats of illusion, including flying cards, turning pages of a book without touching them, and causing a ball to float in midair. Then on May 09 2006, he posted a final Goodbye video, and left Youtube. Six months later, he came back, with his famous One World video, which people responded to in their thousands. He then disappeared again.

Now, the legend that is MadV has returned, with a video entitled “Remember.”

The video invites the public, on November 5th, to respond with a video “about what encompasses you as a person, what inspires you, what brings you hope, and most importantly those little things that you may have forgotten.”

Here, for your convenience is the full video:

I will be participating in this celebration of the past, the present and the future. I will post my response here, as well as a transcript of what I have to say. I urge you to respond also.

Is this thing on?

*prods screen* There we go.

Ah, hi.  Hows it going? Good? Good. I’m Professor Diabolical (real name witheld to protect the guilty) and this is my blog, as you may have noticed. The more curious among you may be wondering just what this blog is about, and what the author is like.  The less curious would do well to read on anyway.

This blog will serve the main purpose of reporting my thoughts and feelings about the world in which we live, and the more interesting happenings of my life.

I am Professor Diabolical, politically, I’m an anarchist, economically, I’m left-wing, and socially,I’m slightly introverted.  I consider myself a geek, and code in C++, operate Windows and Linux (yes, I know, I’m a heathen) and love playing old games, (anything past 32-bit is way too flashy.) I do enjoy newer games, but I find older ones generally have more depth.