the ruins of empire...

Did you watch the royal wedding? Did you? My lovely wife did. It's so nice of you all to take the time to give the British a little global attention for the only thing they have left after they kinda sorta gave up the Empire (hint to commonwealth countries, that's the new name for what's left of the Empire): elaborate pageantry, pomp, circumstance and ritual. When we lived in London, right near the tower of London, there was some sort of ceremony every other week. There is no industry, no manufacturing, the richest man in the UK is the Indian diamond merchant Bharat Shah, the beloved British Jaguar and Land Rover brands are officially 'subsidiary brands' of the Bombay-based Tata Motors Ltd. Even the premiere British brand Rolls-Royce is owned by the German Volkswagen corporation. So all that the Saxe-Coburg and Gotha family, the Germans who rule England, really have left is a bit of pomp. They let a commoner marry into the royal family. The most beautiful diamond they own is the Koh-i-Noor that the Queen of England stole from the Maharajah of Lahore. Was this because she couldn't afford to buy it or because she was too ill-mannered to ask for it politely?

Above is the Imperial Crown of India made for and used by king George V at the 1903 Delhi Durbar where the British tried once again to convince they Indians they ruled India. Below is Shri Tukojirao Sahib Holkar, the Maharaja of Indore, a noted collector of cars, horses, women, swords, and all things suited for a king. He was a Maratha king, a scion of one of the great Maratha houses that ruled the rich state of Indore. His descendant Richard Holkar stills lives there and runs an amazing hotel in their old family castle/palace on the Narmada river. Never heard of Holkar, the Marathas or the Delhi Durbars? It's not too late to learn. It's amusing for me to watch as the royalty of the world, both old and new, so let's include the Vanderbilts, Bushes and Clintons in that list, try to ignore the rise of India and China. Were those red coats stitched in the UK or in China? Were those Arabian horses bred in the UK or in Pune? Will the royal couple be driven in an Indian or a German car? Because there is no truly British car company left anymore. But the ruins of Empire are not all that bad. London is a lovely city to live in, if you can afford it.

Something for us in the US to think about as we lose our hegemonic position in the world in the next few years: once the center of global power is officially in Delhi or Beijing, will we have any ceremony in DC that will attract the world's attention like this? China will become the leading global economy in either 2016 or 2020, so let's start thinking about something cool to get the Hindi and Chinese speaking world's attention once in a while. And let's not fly planes into the Petronas towers either. We're nicer than that.

There are a lot of guys in India who work at call centers these days, but these guys have decided to live a slightly different lifestyle. That is why even in 2011, people find India so fascinating, more so that in the past when it was perceived to be only 'backward and exotic.' Now, we know that there are hundreds of thousands of young Indians who can fix our most complex tech problems in the blink of an eye, and yet, there are still guys who spend their days lying around on beds of nails outside of Hindu temples in major cities like Calcutta (Kolkata) and Varanasi (Kashi). I won't try to explain why these guys do this routine, but I will explain to you why I do it. It's quite simple really. Because these guys do it, and their ancestors have done it for several generations, people expect to see an Indian magician lie on a bed of nails. So I went to the hardware store, bought a board, drove it home illegally sticking out of my open sunroof, and will soon proceed to drive nearly 1,000 large shiny spikes (that cost 18 cents a piece, you can do the math!) through this board. Then, because it's for a stage show in the US, not for sitting near an Indian temple, I will also put locking casters on the bottom, and likely cut it in half so it will fold to enable me to transport it more easily. My mother is quite right, I can do far better tricks than the bed of nails, and I will do them in my show. In fact, I am hoping to end with a stunningly beautiful mental bit that is straight from an Indian street magician I know.  It will soon be copied by magicians all over the Western world if I let out the secret. I'm tempted to put together a quick lecture tour and sell it myself, rather than let some magic company take the idea that I paid my friend Shaddruddin Baddruddin quite fairly (my wife thinks excessively) for. It's the trick he has closed his show with for years and he likely learned it from his father, who learned it from his father... so it's really an old Indian street magic trick. For those who couldn't wait for a magic show this spring, Jeff McBride did a fine show last night here on the Yale campus. I have tried throwing cards and never managed to do some of the things he can do, so I enjoy watching him. I hope that after a few weeks' break, in which I still have to build the new bed of nails, New Haven magic fans will turn out in even larger numbers for my final public appearance in this area. I pick up the paper postcards on saturday and will start distributing them immediately.  If you don't see them in whatever cool place you hang out, let me know and I'll drop some off. Or I can send a postcard directly to your home, real paper mail, signed by me, if you like. Tomorrow is that wedding in the UK where my friend Sandy Soparkar is performing. I wish him all the best and hope he got a really high performance fee from that old German family that has been ruling Britain for a few hundred years and has no plans of retiring. I think they planned the wedding for this year just to upstage prince Albert Grimaldi of Monaco, the Amherst alum, athlete and magic/circus patron who had finally decided to get married this year and give up his playboy ways. Let's face it, Prince Albert is way cooler. His family is the longest continuously ruling family anywhere in the world, his mother was Grace Kelly, stunningly beautiful scion of a famous rowing family from Philadelphia and also a movie star (duh!), he's a patron of the world's most wonderful performing arts, he's an avid water sportsman, and an Amherst man too. I danced with a lovely woman on the cruise who is going to Prince Albert's wedding, but could not be convinced to get them to hire me as the wedding entertainment. When Albert's father Prince Rainer III married Grace Kelly in April 1956, they had hired Channing Pollock to entertain with his original dove act that has been regularly copied but never bettered. So, they have seen the best Western dove worker ever. Maybe now it's time to book an Indian-American guy who's also an Amherst alum, a water sports enthusiast, and a pretty darn good fusion magician. I would much rather work the Grimaldi wedding in Monaco than the Saxe-Coburg and Gotha wedding in London, but if Sandy (real name is Sandeep just fyi) Soparkar really breaks a leg or can't perform tomorrow, I think I can cancel my sections of history 208 and entertain the Windsors. Otherwise, I'm rooting for my fellow Marathi from Pune to wow them with his Bollywood style.

when i grow up...

A young boy once told the former Dean of American magicians Jay Marshall that he wanted to be a magician when he grew up. Jay's reply was: "You can't do both." I used to think it was a joke but now I see the truth in those simple words. Grownups wear grey suits; men wear ties and women wear some type of expensive and uncomfortable shoe to work. They all worry about health insurance, (if they are living in this 'land of the free' (what exactly is free here?)) and IRAs and Roth IRAs and stocks, if they are 'lucky' enough to own any, and their mortgage, if they are 'lucky' enough to have one and not owe more than they paid for it (but in that case, people would call them 'irresponsible' if they walk away?!)

When I was younger, I not only wanted to be a magician, but also a movie star, juggler, clown, James Bond, Bruce Lee, astronaut and fighter pilot when I "grew up." I'm turning 38 this year and I have only flown a plane once in my life for about 5 minutes when a US Marine recruiter was trying to recruit me to the marines in pre-9/11 happy times. Kalpana Chawla's tragic death in the space shuttle Columbia in 2003 convinced me that my mother was indeed correct: being an astronaut is dangerous; a smart young Indian-American can die in the space shuttle. Really. I now realize that James Bond is 'just' a fictional character and that Sean Connery was 'just' an actor who played that character, and the actor who plays this character will always be white, and can also be blond. There was only one Bruce Lee. Even Jackie Chan had to stop trying to be Bruce before finding his success as an actor, martial artist, and superstar. Juggling is too hard. One class with Michael Moschen convinced me that he deserves his MacArthur genius grant and I will never win one as a juggler. I had a small part in an episode of 'Arrest & Trial' in about 2000 which led to.... no significant acting work for years. Kal Penn got the part in 'Harold and Kumar go to White Castle' (known overseas as 'Harold and Kumar get the munchies for cultural and marketing reasons) that I once thought was destined for me. Lucky too. My mother would be offended by the film. So my remaining options for fulfilling the aspirations of my 13 year old self leave me with: magician.

The photos above are from India's most popular and successful magician who has created an amazing show now playing in Delhi. His name is... Franz Harary. India's most famous magician is a white guy, from Michigan. You know that I love non-Indians who dress up as Indians to perform magic. I love Franz. He's a wonderful illusionist, friend, and has done more to promote the art of magic in India than anyone I can think of. Not only is he performing in perhaps the world's largest magic show right now, but he was also a judge on tv show meant to find 'India's Greatest Magician.' I had wanted that part as well, and am jealous that he has worked with Jackie Schroff and lots of great Bollywood people during his years performing in India. But when I saw how he combined a bit of the brutal honesty of a Simon Cowell with a genuine encouragement to India's aspiring magicians to create real magic in their shows, I was truly amazed. I could never do that. I'm too mean. And bad magic, particularly bad Indian magic, annoys me too much to be nice about it. So maybe everyone gets what they really deserve... I will soon see if I lose money on my upcoming show and decide that I can't even really be a magician anymore or maybe it will become an annual event and will be repeated in a city near you. You actually get to shape my destiny by voting with your money. If you want me to continue publicly performing Indian magic, go to www.palshikar.com and buy a ticket to the show. If you can't come in person, let me know and I will donate your ticket to a poor local child who really needs and will appreciate it. Magic is good, but it's all about self-promoting. I am a terrible self-promoter to have promoted two other magicians on a blog ostensibly meant to promote my show. It's past 3am and I am still awake. That explains a lot. But it should help me lose a few extra pounds for the show. Hope to see you there. We open in 27 days...

life is like...

Beds of nails, shoes of nails, hook swinging, coal walking, tongue, cheek piercing, bodily mortification in general used to annoy the British so much, that they banned most of these from Hindu temples when they were trying to run India. There are of course lots of jokes about the bed of nails and it's really only funny until you're the guy who has to lie on one. Which I have to do. In less than a month. So I was out in the gym after 9:30pm last night and I will be in a yoga class at 9:30am this morning. From my point of view, the biggest problem with Indian magic is that there is no trick to it. You lie on a bed of nails or you swallow a sword or needles, or a burning hot coal (there must be a trick there but I don't know it as yet...) I once met a magician named Samjunath Lalnath Wadi whose show-stopping trick is to produce a live snake and a live scorpion from his mouth. He was teaching his son the act and I was able to get a video of the act in case his son decides on a more practical way to earn a living. It is a great act that I'm sure PETA will prevent you from ever seeing in America, but I'm not too worried about scorpion rights and my star sign is scorpio! The problem, from a performer's point of view, is that you have to put live snakes and scorpions into your mouth at some point before you magically produce them. But this is the reason that Indian magic is so amazing: people really do some strange stuff in India. Even today in that land of call centers and computer programmers and mega shopping malls, you can still find a few little wonderful bits of real magic. And to save you the time, effort, expense and trouble, I have spent most of my youth finding, watching, and learning Indian magic, and will present the results to you right here in the comfort of a lovely 1913 music hall. Aren't you lucky? It's me who will be lying on the nail bed.

happy easter

Happy Easter. It's a season of renewal and life and fertility. My easter bunny didn't look quite like this. It does remind me of the year I was the easter bunny for my family and I hopped around our backyard in a homemade bunny outfit hiding eggs for my little brother and sister. Perhaps next year, I will hire a girl to wear the outfit above and hide eggs in my backyard. I'm glad that even the catholics weren't able to take the eggs and bunnies away from what used to be the Rites of Spring in pagan Europe. I recently found out from my lovely wife that an old friend of mine will be performing at the upcoming wedding that the royal family is planning in London. More on that in a future post. They still have a few days to book me for the wedding. Otherwise, they'll probably just book Peter Mehtab and Faye Presto like they usually do. To make up for not entertaining at the royal wedding, I'm going to try extra hard to sell out all four shows at the lyric hall next month.

gratuitous skin show?

Warning: gratuitous Indian magician photo above. I have always loved this image. I had it on my wall when I lived in Chicago as a younger single magician and could just stick things on my wall with tape, or a bit of blue tack. I now have framed images on my walls, but not a single one relates to magic, as it so happens. This rainy New England afternoon, I am off to the printer to order the post cards and some posters for the show. This is the "old-fashion" kind of promo that I know how to do. I remain a skeptic when it comes to the utility of the internet for promoting a live show. If you are the type of person who looks at a lovely paper poster or picks up a postcard, I suspect you are the type of person who will also make the effort to go and see a fun fusion Indian magic show in a historic theater. I will keep this blog going until showtime and if it was the blog that motivated you to come to the show, please tell me this when we talk after the show. Otherwise, I hope you pick up a postcard from a coffeeshop or see one of my lovely full color posters somewhere and get intrigued enough to come to the show. It's going to be a lot of fun for the lucky and motivated few who do come as seating is extremely limited in the historic 1913 Lyric Hall theater in New Haven. If you live somewhere else and want to see the show, let's talk. I am sure I can take a version of the show on the road to a theater near you. I was going to post the text from the postcard, but you'll just have to look in a New Haven hangout and pick it up for yourself once it's out on paper. If you live somewhere else and really want a post card, let me know and I'll have one sent.

humility?

Why on earth would I put another magician's promo photo on my website? He's much better looking, perhaps a bit more talented (definitely a better juggler, not such a good South Asian linguist; touche?), and could potentially steal my clients. Except, he lives in Chicago and I live in New Haven and we do very different acts. The reason I am putting his photo on my blog is that he also did a magic show that was directed by the same Alexander Marshall who has generously agreed to direct my show.  I think it turned out okay. Comments from the man himself would be much appreciated here. I wished him well, and hope to have a chance to work with him someday. I just returned from watching a few comics at the Joker's Wild. The quality varied, but my friend's son Cody was quite good. The fact that I mention two other performers on my self-promoting blog perhaps proves that I am "not your everyday abracadabra man" as The Times of India said. There, finally a bit of self-promotion. Happy? Now buy some tickets to the show and let me know if the paypay is working on palshikar.com. Thanks.