Dar Williams: When I Was A Boy
22 Friday Feb 2019
Posted Life, Music, Performance, Writing
in22 Friday Feb 2019
Posted Life, Music, Performance, Writing
in21 Thursday Feb 2019
Posted Life, Photography
inTags
20 Wednesday Feb 2019
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cartoon, comedy, fish, just water for me, Paul Noth, restaurant
19 Tuesday Feb 2019
Posted Photography
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18 Monday Feb 2019
Posted Life, Music, Performance
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gospel, jazz, Joshua FIt the Battle of Jericho, Joshua Fought the Battle of Jericho, Mahalia Jackson, music, performance, song, walls
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Monday morning, Mahalia Jackson suggests extra-legislative means to erase borders with “Joshua Fit The Battle of Jericho.”
Thanks to YouTuber Paulo LaPraga Vinhal
17 Sunday Feb 2019
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In 1969, CBS television fired the Smothers Brothers from their high-rated comedy variety show for being too outspoken against the Vietnam War. Among other things, they had on blacklisted guest Pete Seeger who sang “Waist Deep In The Big Muddy,” an anti-war song about a captain who orders his men into a bog despite the obvious senselessness of the command.
You can read more about that incident here:
and I’ll post video of Pete’s remarkable performance in the comments.
Twenty years later, however, things had changed somewhat and the Brothers were invited to do a 20th anniversary special for CBS. Click on the video above to see how they opened the show.
Thanks to YouTuber Kehlog Albran
16 Saturday Feb 2019
Tags
Aronson, card magic, cards, magic, magicians, memdeck, NDO, New Deck Order, Tamariz
Photo by Midhun Joy on Pexels.com
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There are Third World Problems, First World Problems, and then there are Conjurers’ World Problems. This is to address one of the latter.
From time to time, a magician needs a deck of cards to be arranged back in the original factory order after it’s been all shuffled up and disordered. Magicians call that original factory order New Deck Order or NDO. Surprisingly, there’s no industry standardized order. It varies according to card manufacturer and even varies from brand to brand manufactured by the same company. So, for example, Bicycle brand cards are ordered in a different arrangement from Bee brand cards, even though they are both manufactured by the United States Playing Card Company. Next time you open up a new pack of cards, check the order. You might find it interesting.
The most popular brand of cards, Bicycles, are arranged from top to bottom in the following order (take a guess first before you read on):
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Ace to King of Hearts, Ace to King of Clubs, King to Ace of Diamonds, and King to Ace of Spades.
So suppose the cards are all mixed up, and you want to get them back into the original order—not that you are trying to do it secretly, you just want to do it quickly. What do you do? Well, yes, the logical thing to do is to make four piles on a table, one for each suit, and sort out the cards that way.
But often a performer doesn’t have a table available, so sometimes an in-the-hands-sort is useful. Here’s a method i came up with a few years ago of how to sort a deck of cards quickly into Bicycle NDO when no table is available. Later, I’ll talk about how to generalize the process to make it even more useful to magicians.
1) Hold the deck face up in the left hand, facing you. Spread through the deck without changing its order and, using your right hand, as you come to each black card, upjog it about halfway. Then, with your right hand, swing out all the black cards to the face of deck.
2) Run through the deck again, upjogging all the Spades and Diamonds. Swing out this half to the face of deck.
3) Spread the bottom thirteen Spades and arrange them in order with the right hand as if arranging a bridge hand. That is, holding the deck facing you in the left hand, spread the thirteen Spades out in a fan so that you can see all the pips. Now with your right hand, fingers pointing down, palm facing you, thumb closest to your body, pick out the King of Spades from above; next scan the cards and pick out the Queen of Spades on top of that, then the Jack of Spades and so on until the Ace of Spades is on the face of that small packet. Then just cut those thirteen Spades to the top of the deck.
4) Repeat with the next three suits (remembering that for Clubs and Hearts., you will reverse that order, pulling out the Ace first, then the Two on top of that and so on up to the King). You are now in Bicycle NDO. You’ll see that after just a bit of practice you can arrange the whole deck quite quickly.
But here’s the part I’ve been saving for magicians. Getting into NDO is nice, but even more useful is to get into a memdeck arrangement like Aronson or Tamariz quickly in the hands. This can be done for any stack by generalizing the above:
To generalize for any stack:
1) Upjog all cards within the ranges of 14-26 and 40-52, and cut to the face of deck.
2) Upjog all cards within the ranges of 27-52 and cut to the face of the deck.
3) Spread thirteen cards at a time from the face and put them in ascending order, then cut them to the back of deck.
4) Repeat three more times.
The first step is the hardest to get down, but if you know your stack cold, you’ll soon get it. I find that by using this method, I can stack Aronson order in my hands as fast as on a table.
Done. Next job: Solving world hunger and the exploitation of workers by bosses.
Hint: threads, mirrors, and a good Double Lift.
15 Friday Feb 2019
Posted Life, Music, Photography, Writing
inTags
Critical Art Ensemble, death, installation, museum, photography, politics, war, Woodstock Byrdcliffe Mseum
(Click to enlarge)
Installation at the Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild by The Critical Art Ensemble
Woodstock, New York
14 Thursday Feb 2019
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Kami Maltz, with accompaniment from Josh Turner, hits those exuberant Joni Mitchell high notes, in one of my favorite Joni Mitchell songs.
More at Josh Turner Guitar
13 Wednesday Feb 2019
Posted Comedy, Life, Photography
in12 Tuesday Feb 2019
Posted Comedy
in11 Monday Feb 2019
Posted Music, Performance, Writing
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jazz, Mona's Hot Four, music, Nellie McKay, performance, song, songwriting, The Sunny Side Of The Street
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Monday morning, Nellie McKay and Friends heating things up on The Sunny Side Of The Street.
Nellie McKay – vocals; Dan Levinson – clarinet; Gordon Au – trumpet; Jim Fryer – trombone; Chris St. Hilaire – snare drum
Thanks to YouTuber Dennis Lichtman
10 Sunday Feb 2019
Posted Life, Photography
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09 Saturday Feb 2019
Posted Life, Magic, Performance
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In a jaw-dropping turn around, it’s interviewer Larry King who stuns magician Shin Lim. You can actually feel Shin Lim thinking WTF is going on here. Who is this guy?
Larry King. Greatest. Spectator. Ever.
Reports that Mr. King was replaced in this video by a head of cabbage are still under investigation.
More of Larry’s magic at Larry King
08 Friday Feb 2019
Posted Music, Performance
in***
Carson McKee joins Josh Turner on this one. I didn’t expect to like it, but Josh’s harmonies and guitar, along with Carson’s straightforward singing, made the song seem fresh.
More at Josh Turner Guitar
07 Thursday Feb 2019
Posted Comedy, Life, Performance, Theatre
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comedy, Improv Everywhere, performance, Star Wars, subway, theater, theatre
06 Wednesday Feb 2019
05 Tuesday Feb 2019
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04 Monday Feb 2019
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Josh Turner and company with an audacious country/folk music take on the Paul Simon classic from the Graceland album that is every bit as good as the original.
More Josh Turner at Josh Turner Guitar
03 Sunday Feb 2019
02 Saturday Feb 2019
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I’ve been working on a radio project about the Russian humorist and storyteller, Sholom Aleichem, and while researching his life, I came across some quotes of his that you may enjoy. Like Mark Twain, George Bernard Shaw, and Oscar Wilde, there are so many quotable writings, that the problem becomes limiting oneself to only a few. Here are some of my favorites.
* “And books — she swallows like dumplings.”
* “While I kept playing chess with him, his mind was elsewhere. I took his queen and he took my Rose.”
* Life is a dream for the wise, a game for the fool, a comedy for the rich, a tragedy for the poor.
* The rich swell up with pride, the poor from hunger.
* When you die, others who think they know you, will concoct things about you… Better pick up a pen and write it yourself, for you know yourself best.
* No matter how bad things get you got to go on living, even if it kills you.
* A bachelor is a man who comes to work each morning from a different direction.
* If somebody tells you that you have ears like a donkey, pay no attention. But if two people tell you so, buy yourself a saddle.
* This is an ugly and mean world, and only to spite it we mustn’t weep. If you want to know, this is the constant source of my good spirit, of my humor. Not to cry, out of spite, only to laugh out of spite, only to laugh.
* A wise word is not a substitute for a piece of herring.
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With thanks to the following websites:
https://www.brainyquote.com/authors/sholom_aleichem
https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/18362.Sholom_Aleichem
https://www.azquotes.com/author/210-Sholom_Aleichem
01 Friday Feb 2019
Posted Life, Photography
inTags
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An extraordinary video with corrected speed. The poster did a great job of adding ambient sound to enhance the overall effect of the video. I was surprised to see the Flatiron building and the intersection where it is located so recognizable over a hundred years later. How many locations do you recognize?
Thanks to YouTuber guy jones
31 Thursday Jan 2019
Posted Life, Photography
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30 Wednesday Jan 2019
Posted Comedy, Life, Performance, Writing
in***
In which the psychoanalytical Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie are exceedingly patients with each other.
Thanks to YouTuber ShutTFup
29 Tuesday Jan 2019