The Rake Magazine

How it is that I...how is it...or, rather, why it is that I...that I seem to keep...or, really, that I do keep, that I keep ending up...that every single night I look at the clock, I look at the clock and it's two o'clock in the morning, it's three o'clock in the morning and I...I keep ending up at three o’clock in the morning, I keep ending up sitting here with...I don't know, I keep ending up sitting here with all this shit, surrounded by all this shit? Night after night I'm sitting here, I'm sitting here night after night on the floor with my back against these racks of records, surrounded by these shelves full of shit, shelves full of plastic, anthropomorphized potatoes and carrots and hamburgers, all of them with hats on their heads and pipes in their mouths and their arms paralyzed in an embracing gesture that I often find disturbing.

I'm sitting here with my legs crossed and my back up against all this shit...I'm sitting here in this ridiculous and uncomfortable position, night after night, delivering incoherent monologues to the beleaguered animal that shares my home...and what the fuck is this I'm listening to? Honest to God, explain to me if you can why I am sitting here like this, trying to read about the Donner party and poor Lewis Keseberg, who was driven by madness and the most desperate of circumstances to eat a woman named Mrs. Murphy. "The flesh of starved beings contains little nutriment," the cannibal Keseberg assures me. "It is like feeding straw to horses. I cannot describe the unutterable repugnance with which I tasted the first mouthful of flesh. There is an instinct in our nature that revolts at the thought of touching, much less eating, a corpse....It has been told that I boasted of my shame --said that I enjoyed this horrid food, and that I remarked that human flesh was more palatable than California beef. This is a falsehood. It is a horrible, revolting falsehood. This food was never otherwise than loathsome, insipid, and disgusting." Explain to me why I would continue to read as this poor man was asked by his interrogator, Did you boil the flesh? And as he responded, "Yes! But to go into the details --to relate the minutiae-- is too agonizing! I cannot do it! Imagination can supply these. The necessary mutilation of the bodies of those who had been my friends rendered the ghastliness of my situation more frightful."

I mean, seriously, holy shit, every fucking night....What is this? Why am I sitting here listening to...George Crumb? Is that what the hell this is? Or Morton Feldman? And at some point --this for certain-- listening to Lou Reed, the idiot prince of rock and roll, listening to that jackass Lou Reed, listening to this lunatic Lou Reed reduce Edgar Allan Poe to the most wrenching and painful sort of comedy. Are there even one thousand other misguided people on the planet who have paid to be thusly abused? Please assure me there are not, even as it gives me considerable anguish to know that there almost certainly are. But what in God's name is wrong with me that I would pay good money for a CD on which Lou Reed makes a muddled mockery of "The Raven"?

Look, honest to God, this is the fucking truth: No man should ever find himself sitting hunched on the floor with a pen paralyzed in his fingers listening to Lou Reed’s “The Raven” at two o’clock in the morning. No man should ever eat red licorice and corn chips for dinner --not at three a.m. Not ever. No man should ever sit at four a.m. raking the soiled carpet with his fingers and building bewildering piles of lint and scruff and dog dander and pubic hair and chips of indeterminate origin. No man should ever put these piles in an ashtray and burn them. No man should ever write such words as those that preceded the words 'No man should ever write such words....' No man should ever spend so many hours sitting in one dank apartment that the liquor of his own stench has become intoxicating and the crawling of the hours has reduced him to a savage who cannot remember his last truly conscious thought. No man should ever sit studying a diagram of the arteries of the brain as if it were a satellite photo of a country that no longer exists. No man should ever look up from his hunched stupor at five a.m. and find himself gazing into the clearly terrified face of an elderly paperboy framed in the window of his front door.

I opened my electronic correspondence this morning to discover that, scattered among the many missives from such devoted readers as Floyd Whopping Cock, there were a number of notes from acquaintances calling my attention to the fact that in the pages of the Southwest Journal local media rascal David Brauer was weighing in on the future of my employer, Rake Media Worldwide.

Make no mistake, Mr. Brauer deserves great respect as an endangered species, one of those veteran, hard-living, ursine warriors of The Fifth Estate. The man is, in fact, a veritable pillar down at the local branch closet of that storied institution. He has held a dizzying number of positions in our local journalism community --not unlike (in the interests of full disclosure) yours truly. He has worn many hats, and has often wielded his pen like a sword of righteousness. That said, it would be tempting to opine that Mr. Brauer has grown too big for his britches, were his britches not so undeniably commodious.

What I'm trying to say, I guess, is that when a fellow of Mr. Brauer's stature has something to say, folks all over the Twin Cities and even out into the dark rural outposts where people still give a horse's patoot about the Big Ideas and ideals on which this great nation was founded...well, dammit, folks can't help but sit up and listen. They damn well should, at any rate.

I have to confess that Mr. Brauer is one of these increasingly rare characters that can make a man sick with rumination. The miserable wretch toiling in obscurity would pay dearly for a critique from a writer with Mr. Brauer's bona fides. And when Mr. Brauer deigns to offer his critique for free, his audience would be wise to pay careful attention, even when what the man is offering is transparently equivocal disdain, much of which he has offered before.

In Mr. Brauer's piece in this week's Journal he jabs his rapier squarely at the heart of The Rake, and as a proud and devoted employee I feel compelled to engage the old warrior --at, I fully realize, my considerable peril.

It is apparently Mr. Brauer's opinion that The Rake has a bit too much attitude and not nearly enough relevance for his refined taste. To which I can only counter: Show me the attitude, you wonky prick. And at the very least please be so kind as to tell me what 'relevance' means in such a degraded and increasingly irrelevant marketplace of ideas.

I'll insist to my dying day --which is likely any day now-- that I am fiercely proud of much of the work we have done and continue to do at The Rake, and I will argue with my last breath that that work has been and continues to be relevant to a fault. For instance: our popular "Hum's Hot-Button Hot Tub" feature brought together some of the keenest political minds and social critics in the Twin Cities (and, yes, they were in a hot tub provided by Watson's Pool and Spa, and, yes, they were sipping wine courtesy of a fine Lyndale Avenue purveyor of spirits) to hash over such important and timely issues (or so we perhaps foolishly believed) as teen pregnancy, crime and punishment, the scourge of methamphetamine, and the 35 Most Romantic Weekend Getaways. I like to think people --readers and participants alike-- learned something and were entertained.

Or tell me if you would, Mr. Brauer, what exactly wasn't relevant about our three-part "Hunger Sucks" series, written by a fasting liberal Lutheran minister, a series we promoted by having the entire staff march the half mile down Washington Avenue to Cafe Brenda, where we simply stood with our faces pressed to the windows for fifteen minutes in mute solidarity with those who cannot afford to dine in the Warehouse District, or even to dine at all.

I could give you examples all day. We've written about orphans, for crying out loud --hell, probably dozens of times. We've written about foreign countries and the people who live in them. We (ok, I) have written about clowns, but I honestly believe it was a respectful piece, and entirely deficient in attitude. We've even published fiction, which I will insist on considering a brave gesture even if journalists like Mr. Brauer choose to regard such work as irrelevant.

And, sure, we've had our fun. I'm not going to apologize for the fact that we're a fun bunch. Every once in awhile it's nice to do a little something to turn those frowns upside down.

We haven't, of course, always succeeded at squaring the product with what we'd like it to be, and like everybody else in a struggling business we've had to contend with all manner of the usual challenges, disappointments, and occasional (sometimes frequent) bland compromises. But when push has come to shove --as it so often has-- we've always at least tried to tackle subjects that we find interesting, provocative, and worth caring about.

So the issue, Mr. Brauer, is not whether or not The Rake is for sale; the issue is what, precisely, is for sale, and not what that thing costs, but what it's worth in a sense larger than the crass realities of economics. And I can assure you that what is for sale in this instance --if, in fact, anything is for sale-- is a proud magazine staffed by hard-working people who care passionately, are broadly curious about the world we all live in, and strive mightily every month to capture some of that passion and that curiosity in a relevant context. I love the people I work with, and I know that what is for sale --if, in fact, anything is for sale-- is a constellation of hopes and dreams. Individual dreams and communal dreams. Good dreams, decent dreams, dreams of at least one more tomorrow brighter than today. A dream that a group of increasingly beleaguered people can create something meaningful and entertaining and worth more than any price tag can ever reflect.

Such dreams can be tough things. They are tough things, and they can make a man bitter. You all know that. David Brauer obviously knows that.

I hope that you will understand me. I hope that my intentions are clear. And I bid you good day. I bid you good night.

Some mysterious combination of failing light, and the smell of an unrecognized plant bring back to some men the sense of childhood, and of future hope; and to others the sense of something which has been lost and nearly forgotten.

--Graham Greene, The Honorary Counsul

What we cannot think, we cannot think; we cannot therefore say what we cannot think.

--Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

When not engaged in warfare they spend a certain amount of time at hunting, but much more in idleness, thinking of nothing else but sleeping and eating. For the boldest and most warlike men have no regular employment; the care of house, home, and fields being left to the women, old men, and weaklings of the the family. In thus dawdling away their time they show a strange inconsistency --at one and the same time loving indolence and hating peace.

--Tacitus, Germania

The place was perpetually murky, either sticky-hot and prone to tantrums, or inhospitably cold and overcast. Clouds would roll in and set up shop for months at a time, casting a disorienting pall over the days, a permanent crepuscle that made it easy to lose track of time.

In the warm months, between spasms of rain, the little town would bake and be congested with dust kicked up by the slow, ceaseless procession of late-model European and American cars, bicycles, and carts dragged through the dust by old women and children on their way to the crowded markets.

The town was surrounded by thick woods that rolled steadily upward toward the mountains that were overgrown with lush, almost tropical greenery. These mountains were said to be populated by ancient tribes of warring giants and trolls.

For almost a century the population of giants was alleged to have been in alarming decline, a decline that was attributed to environmental factors and a mysterious crisis of infertility. For generations the giants had subsisted on wild hogs and the young and elderly trolls they were able to steal from their rival tribe.

Over the years, however, the trolls had become masters of stealth, cunning, and deception, and had adapted to the once frequent incursions of the giants by moving underground, where they had excavated a complex network of tunnels and subterranean villages. They also became quite expert in creating traps for the giants. These traps were huge bunkers that the trolls would cover with brush and bait with a howling child or pig. One giant, thus captured, could feed one hundred trolls for a month.

Eventually, the combination of these various factors led to the wholesale eradication of the giants, and the trolls had the complete run of the place. They moved above ground, started to read the Bible, and built unsightly compounds comprised of little but poorly-made mansions, town homes, and strip malls.The trolls, it was said, were indiscriminate breeders, and they rapidly accumulated great wealth and power.They were known to comport themselves with a strange combination of indolence, aggression, and arrogance. The natives of the village grew to regard them with fear and loathing, until one day a band of brazen local youths, armed with nothing but stones, mounted a series of attacks that razed entire neighborhoods, killed hundreds of trolls, and drove the remainder of the crass little bastards back underground.

This month marks the third anniversary of Yo Ivanhoe, and considering the similarly wasted years I spent shoveling words in a similar hole (Open All Night) at City Pages, I'm not much in the mood to celebrate five years of futility.

When I first started doing this nonsense I was nothing but a clueless conscript to an online enterprise that meant absolutely nothing to me. Blogging? Seriously, what the fuck?

I still don't understand it, but I'll be damned if I haven't blogged. And I've discovered that in five years a guy can shovel a serious shitload of words in a mighty big hole that just seems to get deeper and darker all the time.

Originally I decided to just approach this monkey business as an illogical extension of my usual pointless routines; every night for the last fifteen years I have sat down at the bottom of the day --usually in the wee hours-- and written at least 300 words in a series of uniform, lined black books that now fill an entire small bookcase next to my desk. Most of those words are utter nonsense, and a small fraction of that nonsense has found its way here.

I never wanted the black books to resemble a diary, but I did want to be able to look back at those words and find enough recognizable clues --however small-- that I would be able to remember the exact day and circumstances that I wrote them. Little things like snippets of conversation I might have overheard or engaged in that day, a quote from something I'd read, or details from someplace I'd stumbled into while traveling would work their way into each entry, usually as little more than launching points for something entirely else, but from these fragments --and this never ceases to astonish me-- I can now piece together days and weeks and months of my life, often with such clarity that the black books really have come to function as diaries of a sort.

At some point I decided that this project (and at some point I did start to think of it as a project --I haven't missed a single night since I violated that first page all those years ago) was a personal version of The Thousand and One Nights, with me playing the roles of both Scheherazade and King Dunyazad. I really believed those words and stories and stretches of impenetrable automatic writing were keeping me alive. Night after night they provided a bridge to another day, and somewhat to my surprise the days and nights did keep coming, and the words kept coming right along with them.

This part of that project has eaten up a lot of my time and energy, and there have been times when I've tried to wean myself, but I always seem to creep back. I'm not sure why, to be honest with you (and to be honest with you, I've seldom been honest with you, just as I've steadfastly refused to believe in your existence).

I guess, though, that there's some sort of challenge to it. In the earliest days, and for a long time, actually, I would just move the words from the black books directly into cyberspace. As time went on, though, I started spending a bit more time fiddling with them, and trying to become a better writer. On many occasions over the last couple years by the time I finished fiddling and hit 'post,' the words that appeared here barely resembled the words I had originally written in one of the black books. I don't know that they were truly improved, but the effort, and the time spent looking at them and thinking about them and moving them around felt like some sort of progress.

It still, though, doesn't feel like real writing to me, and for the most part it still feels like a waste of time. But if I've learned one thing about myself over the last five years, it is that I am a Titan of wasted time --mine, and yours.

This is my life, more or less. This is who I am. This is what I do, and all I know how to do. I read books, look at photographs, listen to music, talk to my dog, ramble with my dog, literally stop breathing whenever I try to sleep, and get the hell out of town every chance I get.

I am trying to write a story about a bullfrog who falls in love with a cow, and a man who has his cat turned into a woman, and a goat who smokes a pipe, wears spectacles, and speaks the plain, hard truth. Old, old stories, every last one of them, yet still, I think, worth telling.

I worry, though, that I'm not long for this world. But who doesn't?

I'll leave you with some selections from the Yo Ivanhoe Commonplace Book, another in-progress and almost certainly never-to-be completed project of Open All Night, Inc.:

A Very Troubled Human Being

What if an individual is perceiving a daydream and a series of external sensory inputs at precisely the same time, and has lost the capacity to distinguish one from the other? What happens to his perceptual world? Clearly he will be peopling his universe of awareness with elements that are altogether private, presences generated within which for him will be a genuine part of the real world; these are what he sees, or hears, or is otherwise sensing. And should he then be unable to differentiate these from his everyday perceptions, then indeed he may move into a haunted, nightmarish world, and be a very troubled human being.

--Joseph D. Noshpitz, "Reality Testing: A Neuropsychological Fantasy," in Comprehensive Psychology

 

Mr T: A Flower Unfolding

No more small-time stuff for Mr. T. No more bit parts, no more local talent jive....I call the shots. I am in a position to pick and choose. More movies, more TV commercials, talk shows, speaking engagements, banquets, receptions in my honor, autograph sessions, the red carpet treatment everywhere I go.

In the words of my pastor, Henry Hardy, Mr. T, you are a shining star. The heavens are warmed by your presence. You are a flower unfolding its petals. The universe is alive with your fragrance. You are a voice caressing the dawn. The silent spaces are filled with your joyous hope. This is your day! Live it in love because you are an expression of the life of God.

--Mr. T, Mr. T: The Man With The Gold. An Autobiography. St. Martin's Press, 1984

Talk Radio Explained

I've been poking through this great book, African All Stars: The Pop Music of a Continent (Chris Stapleton and Chris May) for several days, and last night I stumbled across the Yoruba word for radio, As'oromagb'esi, which is literally translated "One who speaks without expecting a reply."

Also, here's a terrific quote from Ko Nimo, a Ghanaian musician: "The old people are my friends. I think of them as libraries on fire. They are passing away....as a musician you must be versed in the history of your people."

The Bush Bible

...And you shall conquer every fortified city, and every choice city, and you shall fell every good tree, and stop up all springs of water, and ruin every good piece of land....

--Second Kings, 3.19

Elvis In Prophecy

For Memphis shall become a waste, a ruin, without inhabitant.

--Jeremiah, 46.19

The Gospel According to Red Sovine

...For the spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels.

--Ezekiel 1.20

Of the Frying Pan As An Instrument of Torture

Mention is made of the frying pan in the Second Book of the Maccabees (Ch. VII) and in very many collections of the Acts of the Blessed Martyrs, as of St. Eleutherius the Bishop, Saints Fausta and Justina, virgins and martyrs.

The frying pan --if we may trust the the natural meaning of the word and the afore-named histories of the Blessed Martyrs-- was a wide open dish or plate, which (as the Acts of the Martyrs bear witness) was filled with oil, pitch, resin, or sulphur, and then set over a fire; and when it began to boil and bubble, then were Christians of either sex thrown into it, such as had persisted steadfastly and boldly in the profession of Christ's faith, to the end they might be roasted and fried like fishes cast into boiling oil.

--Rev. Antonio Gallonio, Tortures and Torments of the Christian Martyrs

 

Madame Curie Dreams of Radium

Whenever Pierre and Marie, alone in their poor place, left their apparatus for a moment and quietly let their tongues run on, their talk about their beloved radium passed from the transcendent to the childish.

I wonder what it will be like, what it will look like, Marie said one day with the feverish curiosity of a child who has been promised a toy. Pierre, what form do you imagine it will take?

I don't know, the physicist answered gently.

To which Marie replied, I should like it to have a very beautiful color....

--Eve Curie, from Madame Curie

Amish Recruitment Drive: Serious Replies Only

Wanted: Able-bodied men and women to join ongoing, harshly-restrictive experiment in rural living. Requirements: severe dress code, piety, hard work, frugality, and facial hair for the gentlemen (with the understanding, of course, that one can't get blood from a stone). Bee-keeping skills a plus. Absolutely no modern monkey business.

--Classified advertisement, Grit. January 5, 1988

Socrates: The Man Could Hold His Liquor

And we are told that Socrates, though indifferent to wine, could, on occasion, drink more than anybody else, without ever becoming intoxicated.

--Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy

Adventures in Etymology

How about this definition (from Cooper's Thesaurus Linguae Romanae and Britannicae) for 'fanatic,' by way of the Latin fanaticus: 'Ravished by a propheticall sprite'? And how can you not like a word like absquatulate, and wonder not just at its meaning but also it's origins? (To make off, away, skedaddle --one marvel to define another, and, as for origin, the experts throw up their arms). The etymology of abstruse couldn't be more perfect: from the Latin abstrudere, to push away. And here is the lovely South African name for an antelope: klipspringer (cliff springer). Finally, I give you the Greek origins for testicles, translated literally as 'bystanders.'

Curiosities of Science

...in the year 1639, a woman was delivered of two eggs at Sundby, one of which was sent to Olaus Worm the famous naturalist, with 'attestation signed by Ericus Westergard, Rotalph Rakestad and Thor Venes, coadjutors of the pastor in the parish of Niaess.'

They certified, that upon 'the 20th of May in that year, by the command of the Lord President in Remerige, the lord Paulus Tranius pastor in Niaess, we went to receive an account of the monstrous birth in Sundby by Anna, the daughter of Amundus and wife of Gudbrandas Erlandsonius. Upon the 7th day of April she began to grow ill and her neighbors came to her assistance. She brought forth an egg like that of a hen which was broken by the women present. They found that in it the yolk and white answered directly to the common egg. Upon the 18th of April, about noon, she was delivered of another egg, which in figure was nothing different than the former. The mother reported this to us and the woman with her confirmed the truth of it.'

Dr. Olaus Worn, the ornament of the University, preserved the egg in his study to be seen of as many as please.

This story is reminiscent of the case of Mary Tofts, 'the rabbit-breeding woman,' who deceived some of the leading physicians in the time of George II by her assertion that she had given birth to a number of living rabbits.

--C.J.S. Thompson, The Mystery and Lore of Monsters. 1930

The Perils of Home Schooling

We are a community theater whose players are comprised of home-schooled Southwest area children between the ages of five and eighteen, devoted to enriching the lives of our children and our neighborhoods through challenging and creative explorations of stories, ideas, and identities --in short, the very best of the theater arts. Our first offering of the 2003 season will be a performance of Harold Pinter's The Homecoming, with 11-year-old Tim Rickard in the role of Max, the aging patriarch of a dysfunctional London family.

--From The Southwest Harbor Gazette, June 14, 2003

Auto-Eroticism: A Brief Reader

Consider the serious psychic struggle that the onanists undergo before they yield to the temptation of going through the act. They surround themselves with a thousand oaths, they try to protect themselves with prayers and resolutions, etc. They are strongly determined not to fall again! If they must yield --this one time-- let it be the last! And yet, in spite of all self-conjurations and in spite of all their resolutions, the instinctive craving persists within them and --there is a 'next time,' they yield once more; they slip back, again and again, in spite of everything. The spiritual katzenjammer of defeat naturally brings on a severe depression.

A young man, 23 years of age, showing all the typical signs of a severe neurosis confesses that for the past two years he has given up the habit of masturbation. Since that time he suffers from anxiety attacks and sleeplessness. Freud, as is well known, has pointed out that masturbators become victims of anxiety neurosis when they give up the habit. They become unable to live without masturbating. Any physician is able to verify this pertinent revelation. We find the most severe neuroses among those who give up the long-standing habit.

*****

[The female patient] was firmly convinced that indulgence in the habit had made her ill. She resolved to masturbate no longer and kept to her resolution for about three weeks.... Then she was amazed to find herself masturbating during a state of half-consciousness. Great was her horror, and she now feared going to sleep; she tied a bandage around her pelvic region, and woke up from sleep with a feeling of dread. Nevertheless her craving was supreme and she felt herself giving in. She could not bear the thought of confessing to her husband. He held so lofty a view of woman's purity that he would have scorned her and possibly would have left her. But she loved him passionately and could not live without him. In her dilemma she decided she must die, took a large dose of veronal, and wrote her husband a parting letter, which I reproduce below as a touching document illustrating the depths of human suffering....

My Beloved Otto,

When you read this letter I won't be among the living any more. I pay with death for my wrong. I cannot keep on under the burden of a terrible habit, while you held me to be a pure woman. So, therefore, know: since childhood I have practiced masturbation. The habit began during childhood and I have kept it up after marriage. Finding myself too weak to give up the habit, unaided, finding that the consequences of this terrible habit already begun to show themselves, and as I do not want to burden you with a sick wife, I part voluntarily and give up this life, though with heavy heart. Indeed, how shall I look you in the face, how shall I look my children in the face, when I find myself so badly dishonored and disgraced.

No! I cannot stand this any longer. For the love you have so richly bestowed on me, I thank you. I wish you the company of a woman worthy of your confidence and love. Do find a woman worthy of you. Kiss our dear children for me. It is hardest to part from you.

Forgive me. I cannot help it.

My last sighs go out to you.

Yours,

_______

An examination of this case reveals two important facts: first, that ideas of suicide bear a certain relationship to masturbation....

Suicide represents merely the extreme consequence of abstinence. It is possible to construct a scale, approximately as follows: anxiety neurosis, hypochondria, moodiness, depression, melancholia, suicide. From the day masturbation is given up life ceases to be worth while....These cases demonstrate to our satisfaction that many persons are unable to live without masturbating and that they would rather renounce living altogether than try to get along without their customary gratification.

Attempt at suicide through the abuse of masturbation is by no means rare; it is a particularly frequent occurrence in jails. This form of self-annihilation I have called 'chronic suicide.'

--From Wilhelm Stekl's Auto-Eroticism. 1950

Elmer Gylleck was a Chicago architect who did a bumbling comedy-magic act built around a character he called Dr. Clutterhouse. Dr. Clutterhouse would come on stage clutching a briefcase and carrying an umbrella. The briefcase was possessed, full of odd spirits; ghosts would fly from it, and gunshots would ring out whenever Clutterhouse opened the thing. When the briefcase wasn't bedeviling him, the Doctor would be having table problems (he invented a wonderful collapsing table prop) or any of a number of other slapstick scenarios that were reliable crowd pleasers. Gylleck had a nice, clean act, with solid magic chops and plenty of laughs. Very influential. I've seen I don't know how many third-rate Clutterhouse knock-offs over the years.

In the '60s there was a shift, and the theatrically baroque Clutterhouse sort of thing pretty much disappeared. There were all of a sudden these balloon workers all over town. A guy named Jim Davis was working Old Town, making thousands of balloon animals a week and drawing crowds and making lots of money. This fella was actually pretty good. He'd make giraffes, elephants, all sorts of interesting stuff. He actually wrote a useful little book on the subject --One Balloon Zoo, I think it was called. And there was another guy, Jack Dennerlein, an ad-man who also did good balloon work --tremendous birds-- and he did a book, New Twists For Balloon Workers. Don Allen was one more Chicago magician who cashed in on the whole balloon thing. He'd gotten his start, I seem to remember, as a bartender who did magic tricks for the customers, which is something I don't believe you see much anymore. Which is really a shame, because little pocket and card tricks are things that can help a bartender pick up a few extra tips, not to mention the occasional private party or corporate gig on the side. Anyway, I think Don Allen did a book on balloon tricks as well, Don Allen's Balloon Work...or, no, it was Don Allen's Rubber Circus. That's right. That's exactly what it was.

For a long time I was kicking around the idea of doing a little book of my own, something more like a history of balloon work, maybe even a historical overview of balloons in general, but to be honest with you it just seemed like too much fucking work. Steve Martin, of course, had some wild early success with balloon work. Everybody knows Steve Martin, but guys like Jim Davis and Jack Dennerlein are pretty much forgotten.

When I graduated from college I used to hang out at magic shops, great old places like Magic, Inc. in Chicago, or Eagle Magic in Minneapolis. I was never really much of a magician myself; I didn't really have the discipline to get much beyond the hobbyist stage. But I always loved the whole culture of magic, and for a number of years I saw as many magicians as I could, and for a time I got steady, small-paying work writing patter lines for a number of magicians around the Midwest. I also did a short-lived newsletter that ran profiles of regional magicians, history pieces, a patter column, and a lot of advertisements for mail order gags and pocket tricks. We had quite an impressive roster of subscribers and the thing made money on a shoestring, but it just got to be too much work for me, and I'll be the first guy to admit that work has never been my strong suit.

When it comes to magic buffs I'm kind of an oddball in that I'm happy as a fucking clam if I have no idea how a guy did what he just did, if you see what I'm saying. I don't want to know. I still like to be fooled. That's the appeal of it for me. I want to be one of the slack-jawed yokels in the crowd, shaking my head in dumb amazement. I like the history more than the how-to; the history of magic is full of tremendous characters, genuine oddballs, and, frankly, a number of guys who were crazy as shithouse rats. I like a magician who has a spooky little something in his eyes; the very look of the guy should raise a few questions in the mind of the audience. If the guy's already got you wondering before he's even done a single trick, well, hey boy, he's got you right where he wants you.

Magic's an amazing thing. The same basic repertoire of tricks has been baffling and entertaining people for generations, and precisely because the majority of the people in the audience feel exactly like I do --they don't want to know how all those old tricks are done. Which is why you'll still see these characters in tuxedos doing tricks with scarves and pigeons, and sawing women in half and pulling rabbits out of hats. If Joe Blow really wanted to he could figure out how every one of these tricks is accomplished with one visit to a library or a little poking around on the internet, but he doesn't want to. And that's a beautiful thing. That's the real magic.

The other thing I like to tell people is that magic is a whole lot more than just the usual elaborate smoke and mirrors productions you see so often these days. A great magician can still blow your mind with nothing but a quarter or a deck of cards. I remember Max Holden, a hand shadow artist who could hold an audience and mesmerize them every bit as effectively as these guys who move Winnebagos or make elephants disappear. I never did figure out how Holden did his famous "Monkey in the Bellfry" number. And for my money there's still nothing better than a real professional close-up man like Milton Kort, a cups- and-balls fella who was also a virtuoso with coins and a deck of cards. A man like that could fool and entertain an audience in even the most casual and intimate of settings.

Another terrific old balloon performer who I should mention just came to mind: Jim Sommers, who used to do a routine with balloon animals at the Pickle Barrel North in Chicago, and also, I seem to recall, did his own little book on balloon magic, Blow By Blow.

I've also seen some dandy cigarette acts in my time. That sort of thing is, of course, taboo these days, what with attitudes about smoking being what they are. But I still remember a fat redhead --for some damn reason I can't recall the fellow's name to save my soul-- who did a masterful bit he eventually marketed to the trade with the high-falutin' title, "Ireland Simplex Cigarette Production." And then there was Ed Marlo's brilliant "Cigars, Cigarettes, and Pipes" routine, which I saw a half dozen times in the early '70s. That guy did things with a cigarette I still can't believe are possible. As I was saying, I've always admired a man who can work without fancy props, stooges, or floozies.

And despite what some of the Bible-bangers might think, magic doesn't have to be at odds with the teachings of the Good Book. I have fond memories of a fellow by the name of Joseph White, a magician who called himself "God's Magical Midget." This guy did an entire act built around Bible stories and religious lessons. A very effective little production all around, a dynamite show, and I'll be the first to admit that I'm not exactly a holy man. A fellow who could learn to perform basic routines with a Biblical theme or religious patter was guaranteed steady work at chuch functions, socials, and Bible schools.

I still remember when "Industrial Magic" was a new concept, and guys were learning that they could use magic presentations to sell product. In the mid-'60s it seemed like every trade show, convention, sales meeting, and grand opening featured a magic act. It was damn good business all around until the bottom pretty much fell out of the whole thing. These days they hire motivational speakers or they get half-dressed broads to stand around their booths to hand out promotional materials.

I have a precise memory of the very moment magic first got me in its clutches. I was at a little carnival somewhere with my grandparents, and there was an aging illusionist who broke a slab of granite over the body of a purportedly catalepsed subject who was suspended from the backs of two chairs.

"Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Human Bridge!" the old magician shouted, and then he swung his sledge hammer.

This was a long time ago, of course, and I think what I saw that night was magic. Like I say, though, that's the beauty of the racket. All these years later I still don't know, but I remember that moment like it was yesterday.