I saw Mark demo the original No Tear Newspaper in a lecture that he did a few months ago. I was on the verge of buying it at that point. The addition of the restored center clinched the deal for me.

OK, Tonylew, I just video conferenced with several high ranking Café members and we decided you'll share equally with magicinsight, the Café's "Valuable Lesson taught" award.

Looking forward to your review!

Zombie,

While I certainly appreciate your kind and undeserved praise, it will only be "smart" if it turns out to be good, which I am confident it will be. Mr. Mason said he will be returning on February 27th, so I am sure that he will have a lot of stock to sell upon his return and it is only like a week difference. But, yes, I will certainly post a thorough review.

Bestwishes,

Michael

I also will be happy to post a review after I have gotten the effect into a presentable state. This process tends to take a little longer for us old geezers. FWIW I received my first Mysto Magic set 72 years ago at age 8. I have been hooked on the mystic art ever since that time.

Tony,

I look forward to hearing your thoughts. I bet you have a lot of wonderful stories.

Best wishes,

Michael

Hi Michael,

FWIW I used to hang out with Ed Marlo, Jay Marshall, Clarke "The Senator" Crandall, and Dorny in Chicago about 50 years ago. I also did a couple of gigs in the closeup parlor of The Castle in the early 1980's where I got some favorable feedback from The Professor, himself. Unfortunately, I live in a magic Siberia today, so the only contact I tend to get with my magic brethren is right here in the Café.

Best regards,

Tony

I did the same thing...also ordered the other one, the card to sealed box...I need to remove myself from Marks mailing list, it is dangerous for my wallet!!

Tony,

Thank you for sharing some of your stories. I am sure it must be great to share your stories and experience with your children and your grandchildren Do any of them also enjoy magic.

Best wishes,
Michael

Michael,

At this point in my life I have accumulated a magic collection that is worth several thousand dollars. I have two children and four grandchildren, none of whom seem to show any interest in performing magic although they all enjoy seeing me do my thing. My last hope lies in my 8 year old twin granddaughters. However, due to health factors I may not be around long enough to start them off properly, should they get the magic bug.

Here is a tip for any of you with very young relatives. In the last show that I gave for my granddaughters' school, each of the girls performed with a double color changing silk. They did the change simultaneously, making it look like the silks had visibly changed places. Then they transformed them back to their original state. It went over very well.

Best regards,

Tony

I apologize for drifting off topic. I will do my best to have my next posting contain an evaluation of No Tear Newspaper 2.

PLEASE keep posting. We've been hanging on every word!

Your experience and stories are a welcome breath of joy for us.

I agree with Zombie

I'd much rather listen to your off topic wisdom than the on topic inane banter provided by certain members.

TOny,

Thank you for sharing. Your stories and experiences are always welcome.

Michael

SInce several of you seem to like my writing, here's another dose of it.

Several years ago I was a heavy contributor to the on-line IBM Ring 2100. However, a strong disagreement with the “prez” of the ring caused me to move on. I then proceeded to shift my scribblings to Magic New Zealand, an ezine produced by my friend, Alan Watson. If you don’t happen to be familiar with this internet publication, I recommend it highly. It now has well over 16,000 subscribers who pay nothing for receiving it weekly. It averages 15 to 20 articles per issue. The topics vary widely in nature. You can find all the details for becoming a subscriber here http://www.magicnewzealand.com/. I don’t know where Alan finds the time to keep his ezine going. He is a workaholic who averages over a show a day.

I met Alan personally when the IBM convention came to Reno, NV in 2005. He knew EVERYBODY and offered to introduce me to anyone that was there. Following our meeting I started contributing to his ezine. One of my projects was a 26 article series covering my experiences with dice stacking which I learned personally from Clarke “the Senator” Crandall in the late 1950’s. I had to stop writing for a while due to health reasons, but I did compose a couple of articles for Magic New Zealand a few months back.

One of the pieces covered my creation of a magic phrase that I think is pretty catchy. I have researched it out very carefully and I am convinced that the expression is my original creation. I will now disclose it to the Café. If you like it , please feel free to use it whenever you feel that it is appropriate. The only thing that I ask for in return is that I be given the credit as its originator.

I got the inspiration for it as I was busting my knuckles attempting to acquire a new coin move. I said to myself, “There is no doubt that I am indeed “Sleight of Handicapped.” I have bounced the expression off of several of my magic brethren who all seem to like it. I am hoping that it will become a part of my pathetically small magic legacy.

Best regards,

Tony L. Lewis

Tonylew, I hung on every word. Thanks for sharing with us!

I just received my No Tear Newspaper 2 and have been examining it for a couple of hours. IMHO commercial magic doesn’t get much better than this. The restored hole in the center is definitely the frosting on the cake. As usual Mark gives you a painstakingly thorough explanation of the trick. It starts out with an examination of all the components and how to set them up, He then takes you on a step by step explanation of the trick. He concludes with directions on how to do the reset.

Please note that I don't believe that this is an effect that can be performed right out of the box. It is so good that it deserves some lengthy practice time to get it to flow easily. OF course this is true for most really excellent magic presentations.

Now as good as the trick is, I believe that the presentation has a logical flaw, namely, why are you carrying six pieces of newspaper around with you? At the end of this review I will give you my idea of how to correct this problem. There are a couple of other criticisms that I feel should be mentioned for the sake of completeness. The first of these is that the gimmick that you receive needs a little work to make it complete. Mark carefully explains how to accomplish this, but I just can’t understand why this is left for the customer to do.

The next criticism is with the DVD. You have to manually select each of the sections when you play it. There is no option to just play it through.

Now back to my major criticism, namely , the fact that it is illogical to be carrying six torn pieces of newspaper with you. Here is my presentation which fixes this problem. The references to relatives must obviously be changed depending on the age of the presenter. Younger magicians will use “children” rather than “grandchildren.”
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When I got home last night I started to hunt for the evening newspaper. When I asked my daughter about it, she looked a little embarrassed as she told me that my young granddaughters had played games with it which ended up in its being torn into pieces. (at this point the magician may or may not choose to quote various humorous lines from the ripped pieces. As Mark says, you can either use his, create your own or use a search engine to find them.)

I then told my daughter that one of the advantages of being a magician is that you can easily solve problems like this. I remark that if I just say “Sim Sala Bim” the newspaper is then as good as new. She hesitatingly comments that it’s not quite repaired as she points out that there is still a fairly large hole in the middle of the front page. I then say, “Whoops” and proceed to utter an “Abra Cadabra” to restore the missing piece.
______________________________________
That’s all folks.

Best regards,

Tony L. Lewis

Tonylew, thanks for the wonderful review and the tip on how to make this more logical.

Gentleman,
I am extremely excited that Tony shared some of his history and magic here on the Café'. I regard Tony as a very good friend of mine who has and continues to help me with my magic and personal life, more than he can ever imagine. He is truly a wealth of information and we should be honored that he is willing to share here on the Café'

To those that probably are not aware; Tony is the creator of an effect called "Pips-A-Poppin". You can see it here:

http://www.penguinmagic.com/p/1113

If you do a basic search, you can also see a demo as well.

And as I have said to Tony many times:

Thank you Tony!

Regards,

Mike Newman

Kevin James was doing this with torn and restored newspaper back in 1988 (or before- I saw him do it in '88). Anyone know if this method is the same as Kevin's?

I have spent the last couple of days cleaning up my routine for No Tear Newspaper 2. In addition to the small corrections made throughout the performance, I came up with an ending which fits the effect much better than the original one. I hope you like it.

___________________________________________

When I got home last night I started to hunt for the evening newspaper. After I asked my daughter about it, she looked a little embarrassed as she told me that my young grandson had torn it into pieces. (At this point the magician may or may not choose to quote various humorous lines from the ripped pieces. As Mark says, you can either use his jokes, create your own or use a search engine to find other ones.)

I told my daughter that one of the advantages of being a magician is that you can easily solve problems like this. I remarked that if I just say “Sim Sala Bim” the newspaper becomes as good as new. However, I was surprised to notice that there was still a piece missing from the front page. Whereupon, my daughter discovered that the mislaid remnant was lying under a nearby chair. Sure enough the missing piece fit loosely into the hole. I finally used an "Abra Cadabra" to attach it perfectly where it belonged.
__________________________________________

That's all folks.

Best regards,

Tony L. Lewis