digital guerrilla

I’ve been neglectful in posting. A few weeks back Rosie and I took a trip down to Daytona Beach and I keep meaning to write up a summary, but have been too lazy. Short version: we had a marvelous relaxing time. One day while driving along we spotted the Daytona Magic shop and visited it the next day. It was everything I could imagine a magic shop being. We were shown several tricks by the Amazing Anthony (I am horrible with names, but I think that was his) and I ended up buying the Flying Cards.

The other notable event from down there happened our first full day there. While tooling around the Daytona Flea & Farmers Market, we stopped at Amy’s Custom Jewelry so Rosie could examine the loose stones. As her favorite stone is alexandrite, when she spotted a stone with some color change she had to find out what it was. It turned out to be andalusite instead and we bought two of them. More on that later.

The one other big event I should have blogged about since the trip is the 48 Hour Film Project that I shot this past weekend. It was shot all greenscreen, which was quite a challenge. Fortunately I didn’t have to work on the editing or effects at all. I heard something second hand about our team being disqualified for not completing it though the last I had heard before that we had gotten it turned in on time. When it pops up online I’ll post a link.

Oh and one more thing, yesterday was Rosie’s birthday and I asked her to be my wife. A little while after coming back from Florida, I took one of the stones we bought to my dad and had it set in a ring. Yesterday, thinking she was getting something else, I surprised her with it and, after she realized I was serious, she said yes. To answer the most common question, no, we haven’t set a date. It still feels a little unreal to say I’m engaged, but I am.

I don’t remember how my interest in magic started. Maybe David Copperfield sparked it or maybe it just began because of the Eddie’s Trick Shop across the street from where my grandmother worked (this was back when they had a store on Memorial Drive in Stone Mountain). To explain why I first went there requires a quick trip back to kindergarten.

For Halloween that year, my grandmother and great grandmother made me a clown costume. It happened to be red, white, and blue so the next summer, at the age of seven, I walked with a group of clowns from my grandparents’ church in the Stone Mountain Fourth of July parade. I enjoyed the experience so much that I decided to continue. (I ended up walking in that parade as a clown for 20 more years, but that’s a story for another day.)

So I wound up at the aforementioned Eddie’s Trick Shop to take clown lessons. Along with those I took magic lessons, learning such standards as Cup and Balls, Cut and Restored Rope, and tricks with foam rabbits. I never found a shop quite as convenient when I lived in Colorado so I never really found my way into the magic community the way so many did. I do vaguely remember a magic and joke store in some mall out there that may have been called Zeezo’s Zeno’s Magic Castle, but I can’t find anything about it so that name may be completely cooked up by my subconscious.

Whenever I came back to Georgia to visit though I’d make at least one trip to Eddie’s. I always left a little disappointed that I couldn’t afford the big stuff on the top shelves that looked just like tricks I’d seen on TV or read about in books. Instead I’d walk out with a jewel paddle, a money clip, or some other small illusion.

Eventually I discovered Houdini and escape tricks. Finally I had found something that could be big without costing a lot (especially as my father already had a set of lockpicks that he let me play with). I got to be pretty good at picking padlocks. In fact, years later when my mom lost the key to a fireproof safe she had (with the instructions for getting replacement keys inside), I created a set of lockpicks from a hanger and picked open the safe.

My interest in magic continued through elementary and junior high. In high school though filmmaking became my primary passion and magic faded into just another childhood memory. Every time I moved since then I’d rediscover my old magic tricks and briefly consider keeping them close to hand. Other items would take precedence though and that box would wind up in an attic or back of a closet.

Just over a year ago though a mention of the site theory11 popped up on some blog I read. I was intrigued and quickly discovered that magic and magicians were all over the web. Since then I’ve subscribed to Genii magazine, added several sites to my Google Reader list (primarily iTricks and The Magic Newswire), and bought a few items from theory11 and Ellusionist.

I don’t plan to become a professional or even a performing amateur, just the guy that might do a trick or two at a party. Most of what I have been trying to learn are just card tricks and other illusions that don’t require any sort of gimmicks or large props. My girlfriend, Rosie, has been wonderfully supportive of my interest despite how I freaked her out one time with Control.

I often wonder what might have been, if I’d been a bit more driven as a kid. Could I have actually become a true magician? In a certain sense though, I never did leave magic. I just created illusions with a camera instead of a deck of cards.

I’ve pointed you towards awesome writer John Rogers before. He used to do stand up comedy (after getting a degree in physics) and it turns out one of his old bits is online. Quite funny stuff.

If you missed the first season of his show Leverage, find it and watch it and then watch the next season as it comes out. It’s like the A-Team crossbred with Hustle and a dash of Burn Notice.

This past weekend saw me leave town for the first time since last year’s Small Press and Alternative Comics Expo. Though this year’s expo did just wrap up, that’s not where I was. Instead of bumming rides around the wilds of Columbus, Ohio, I spent the weekend in the company of my girlfriend, Rosie, up in Helen, Georgia.

After a pleasant drive up, we checked into the cabin we rented from Blue Ridge Cabin Rentals. We unpacked quickly and slipped into the hot tub. Once we had soaked the road off our bones, I boiled up crab legs for our dinner.

We both had trouble sleeping and were up by 8:30 the next morning. Following a lazy breakfast we headed out to Duke’s Creek. We screened for gems, coming up with quite a few garnet shards and other semiprecious stones. A delicious lunch at the Old Bavarian Inn, a few hours wandering around Helen, a trip to the Old Sautee Store, and another relaxing soak on the back porch finished out the day. Rosie made dinner this time, delicious pasta.

We dragged out the trip back by stopping off at a couple of malls. I picked up a copy of Old Man’s War by John Scalzi which I’ll likely start in on after finishing up Valis by Philip K. Dick. Then dinner at Rosie’s parents’ where we went to pick up her dog Bowie. Then, finally, home again.

To all our teabagging friends, where the f*** was your fiscal conservative outrage over the past 8 years as the president and congress you elected and re-elected took us from a surplus of $128 billion to a deficit of $1.8 trillion? And if you’re from Georgia and just voted to re-elect one of the two senators who helped drive the budget off a cliff, sit down and shut up, especially with all of this talk about “no representation”. I’m the one without congressional representation (now that I’ve moved out to John Linder’s district).

And where was your fear that your freedoms were being taken away when Bush decided, backed up by Congress, that the president could declare anyone, including you, an unlawful enemy combatant and then imprison you for life without recourse? When he decided that the Fourth Amendment and the laws enacted by Congress in support thereof can be ignored? When he decided that your First Amendment right could be curtailed and confined to special Free Speech Zones? When he decided that the military could be used as a police force in the U.S. without any regard to any restrictions in the Bill of Rights?

If Bush were still president he could have sent the military to your tea parties, declared you all unlawful enemy combatants and sent you to Gitmo for the rest of your lives. Not any more though. Bush restored posse comitatus on his way out the door and Obama has dismissed the unlawful enemy combatant designation. True Obama has continued to fight to keep the illegal wiretapping and surveillance laws. But then that doesn’t seem to be why you’re protesting.

In fact, why are you protesting? Is it because you make over $150,000 and so haven’t just gotten a tax cut? Is it because you slept through the election day last November and so missed out on your chance to vote (and don’t realize that there is another federal election next year)? Is it because you didn’t think to contact your representatives and senators and the president with an alternative plan to deal with the economic crisis?

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A mostly unrelated addendum. Cries are starting to go out about how if defense spending goes down, we will be less safe. Apparently the only way to keep us safe is to throw money at the Pentagon. Whereas every year public education is told that they don’t need more money or even the same money as the previous year, they just need to spend a smaller amount of money better. Because if public education spending goes down it certainly won’t make us less smart.