Add

October 13 - Knoxville to that list. I confirmed it with Tom.

Scott

John will be lecturing in the Washington DC area on Wednesday evening, November 1, 2006 for the National Capital IBM Ring 50. For details see our web page http://www.IBMRing50.org

Bob Patterson

Hey guys –

I have been receiving a lot of e-mails regarding my upcoming lectures, so here are the dates and locations that I have at this moment STARTING THIS SATURDAY. If the address is not listed, send me a PM and I will forward to you as soon as I have it. There are 24 venues listed, and a few more pending. Also, if you are in these areas and there is a free day, feel free to contact me if you are interested in a workshop. Hope to see you there!

Best,

John B. Born

Lecture Dates

Saturday, Sept 30th - Baton Rouge 7:00

1957 Woodale Court
Baton Rouge, LA 70806

Sunday – Oct. 1st - New Orleans 7:00

Address pending

Monday – Oct. 2nd Lake Charles 6:30

Mr. Gatti’s Pizza
3522 Ryan St
Lake Charles, LA 70605
337-474-2884

Tuesday October 3 – Houston 7:30

IATSE Local 51 Meeting Hall, 3030 North Freeway, Houston, Texas 77009

Wednesday, Oct. 4th - San Antonio 7:00

JCR Co's World of Magic & Fun
4957 N.W. Loop 410
San Antonio TX 78229
(210) 767-1599
http://www.jcrmagic.com

Thursday October 5 – McAllen 7:00

Address pending

Sunday October 8 – Dallas 2:00

China Moon Buffet
1680 E. Beltline Rd.
Richardson, Texas 75081
972-234-8881

Monday October 9 – Fort Worth

Address pending

Tuesday October 10 – Tulsa 7:00

4016 South Yale
Tulsa, Oklahoma 74135
Tophatmagic.com

Thursday October 12 – Memphis 7:00

Address pending

Friday October 13 – Knoxville 7:00

Howard Johnson Plaza Hotel - Knoxville
7621 Kingston Pike
I-40 & I-75
Knoxville, TN, 37919 US
Phone: 865-693-8111
Fax: 865-690-1031

Monday, October 16th - Henderson, Ky.

Address pending

Tuesday, October 17th Pittsburgh, PA

Address pending

Wednesday, October 18th Cleveland, Oh.

Scott Auditorium, Metrohealth Medical Center
2500 Metrohealth Dr. Cleveland, Oh. 44109 216-778-7800

Friday, October 20th Columbus, Oh.

Address pending

Monday, October 23rd Toledo, Oh.

Address pending

Tuesday, October 24 Detroit, Mi.

Royal Oak Senior-Commnity Center 3500 Marais Royal Oak, Mi. 48067
248-246-3900

Wednesday, October 25th Canton, Oh.

Nazir Grotto 1717 6th St. NW Canton, Oh. 44706 330-588-8323

Thursday, October 26th Youngstown, Oh.

Address pending

Friday October 27th State College, PA

John Blake's East Coast Magic
224 West High Street
Bellefonte, PA 16823
Phone (814)-355-4441

Sunday, October 29th Roanoke, Va.

Ronald McDonald House 2224 South Jefferson St. Roanoke, Va. 540-857-0770

Wednesday, November 1st Washington, DC

Holiday Inn Eisenhower- Alexandria, Va.

Thursday, November 2nd Richmond, Va.

Address pending

Friday, November 3rd Virginia Beach, Va.

Regent University Robertson Hall Room 201 757-226-4049

I see no west coast plans? A shame. I think John Born's Meant to Be is fantastic. The book contains the cleanest ACAAN solutions I've ever seen. With amazing contributions by some of magic's greatest thinkers, this book is a must have for any serious ACAAN fanatics.

Great work John and thanks for sharing.

Ran Pink

4 more I need to mention...

November 8th - Rogue's Magic (Queens, NY)

November 13th - Green Brook, NJ

November 15th - Linden, NJ

November 16th - Tannen's (NYC)

John recently lectured for SAM 16 at the Magic Barn in MA. We were lucky to have such a talented young man. It was obvious that he takes his dedication to the craft seriously. Thank you for a great lecture. Hope to see you again soon.

Wow, that's a lot of travelling. You're travelling the country in less than 2 months. Its good that you're working hard, but don't work too hard.

Awesome magic, awesome dvds, awesome books.

later

This book is a gem. Finest book of 2006 so far.

Jonathan

Hey Jonathan -

I am glad to hear you are enjoying the book.


LAST MINUTE LECTURE ANNOUNCEMENT -

This lecture is not on the previous lists. Just wanted to announce that I will be lecturing in Oklahoma City on October 11th. Feel free to PM me with any questions...

Here is the address -

City Arts Building
Oklahoma City Fairgrounds
3000 General Pershing Blvd
Oklahoma City, OK 73107

Thanks,

John B

For those of you in/near Green Brook, NJ, feel free to PM me for directions, times, etc.! (November 13th)

Just ordered the book. I was wondering if any working perfomer here performs Johns ACAAN on a reular basis.

Also, is ken krenzels version in the book the version he published earlier in close up ipact (the one with the cardcase)?

Thanks!
Simon

John has some great work that pushes Krenzel's concept into a far more useful form. You will find many fine ideas in the book.

Mike

"Meant to Be" is a difficult book to critique in that I'm not exactly sure what it's trying to be. I think John was ambitiously trying to put out more than a magic book full of ACAAN tricks. It seemed he was, at least in part, going for a very important, deep, almost spiritual writing on magic principles. From the hardback cover to the $60 price tag, to the precious, often pseudo-poetic prose, it's pretty clear he was trying to create a keepsake of sorts. So I'll review it in that context.

If you're going to be so ambitious, you must be more careful with your words. Otherwise just put out Xeroxed lecture notes. Nearly every page of the beautifully bound "Meant to Be" had typos, grammatical errors, and odd usage. These were quite distracting considering the context. At the very least he could have let an editor give this a once over. Again, normally that type of thing wouldn't bother me at all. In fact if you've seen my DVD, you know I'm a proponent of putting production aside and letting the magic speak for itself. But considering I'm paying $60 for a hardbound book, which intends to be of great importance, and find a permanent place on my bookshelf, my expectations rise considerably.

The Magic:

So what about the magic? This book is filled with variations on, what seemed to me, one approach (a stack) to ACAAN. If you don't like that approach, you're not going to love the variations. I was disappointed in that I felt "Meant to Be" would be a wildly diverse "ACAAN collection" ranging from tabled doubles to the use of Koran type decks, multiple outs, palming, predicton envelopes, psychological forces, nail writers and other imaginative techniques... No such luck. But to be fair, John points out his tight specifications early on as to what he feels classifies as a ACAAN. And most methods outside of a stack wouldn't qualify. All this said, I have no doubt the many write-ups in MTB, including Born's signature piece, slay. They're just not for me.

If you don't mind slightly preachy, self-important writing, lots of typos, a $60 price tag and want to read about creative thinkers ranging from the brilliant Allan Ackerman, Mike Powers, and yes John Born himself, expound on one basic approach to ACAAN, I can't recommend this book highly enough.

I agree with Platt. I thought I might have been alone in my disappointment with the book. Variations? It seems to be just one trick, with variations with that one trick, not the effect. The method is not my 'style', but there have been other books I've enjoyed reading, even if I don't find stuff I'll use (Pure Effect and Final Curtain come to mind). I was deeply disappointed with this one trick pony. Because of its production values, I was expecting more.

After saying that, though, I'm surprised that Born's tour doesn't include Chicago (yet).

Hey guys -

Thanks for your thoughts.

I would love to come to Chicago. Perhaps later this year. At this time, I am scheduling through Alabama and Florida to take advanatge of being in that part of the country for other business. Though others are pending, these are confirmed so far...

March 8th – Birmingham, AL
March 10th – Fort Walton Beach, FL
March 12- Lakeland, FL
March 13th - Orlando, FL
March 14- Jacksonville, FL
March 15- Tampa, FL
March 16- Ft. Myers, FL

I am also lecturing at the Magi-Fest in Columbus, OH on Friday. Hope to see you there.

All the best,

John B. Born

I kinda forgot that the author is following this thread, and rereading my entry made me come off as a bit dismissive. So let me try to clarify.

I was surprised that the book was getting such an overwhelming response at the Magic Café as the best book of 2006. I thought that I must have been missing something. I knew what I was buying, so to say that I was 'deeply disappointed' by the book is an overstatement: I was merely disappointed.

I got Tangled Web at about the same time as Meant to Be. Tangled Web offers an interesting mix of thoughts and effects and was a great read, but to compare it to Meant to Be, which I was doing in my head, is unfair. After reading the initial work in Meant to Be, the basic routine, I realized that I didn't want to finish the book. It's an exhaustive and technical working of the trick, but I guess I was looking for more of the thoughts behind the effects and approaches or something, I'm not even sure what.

I don't know if this clarifies or not, but as I implied, drop by Magic Inc. in Chicago or Midwest Magic in Franklin Park, and I'll likely be in the crowd.

I would disagree with that. For the most part, you might say that it's one >method<, but the tricks seem fairly diverse, considering that they all have the method as their basis.

I'll be honest when I say that the method is probably well beyond my capabilities, but I still enjoyed reading the book and absorbing the routines.

I purchased this book last week and haven't formulated my reaction yet... I will say that the typos bothered me too. (Btw, I do edit professionally, so if anyone wants someone to give a once over to a magic book, please PM me -- I'd be happy to help if I have the time.)

One reason I'm waiting to post my reaction is that I feel I have to try the routine out before I comment on it, and I haven't had the time to get the effect down. That said, does anyone here perform the Meant to Be routine? Without going into the details of the methodology, I was a little bothered that the book didn't offer tips for finessing the effect if the card selected is not in the first three columns. (Those who have the book will know what I mean.) I mean, it's obvious what to do, even if it's not that elegant, but I still would have hoped for a bit of discussion about it.

I had mixed feelings about this book.

I appreciated the effects and methods. However, most of them weren't right for me.

If you are thinking seriously about adding the ACAAN plot to your repetoire, however, the 60$ is not an unreasonable investment.

The typos were a bother, but at the end, it is the content that counts - not that I'm advocating sloppy works, but in this case, for my copy that I have, nothing can be done about that.

R.

Hmm, I'm really torn about buying this. I do have intrest in a acaan, how does this compare to other methods