I cannot stand Howard Stern's radio persona. However, I haved met the man, and find he is the nicest, most likeable guy I have ever met! Easy going, soft spoken, and a JOY to be around! Don't judge the man by his radio schtick. That is what you & I do not like. Big difference.

Doug

I wish I could get a booking for every time I was asked that question - One of my early "paid gigs" (paid in free stuff) was a local top 40 FM radio station doing "Live action broadcasts" in parking lots, in front of new stores, car lots... whoever was advertising for the 2 hour block of time. They had a Hummer, a prize wheel and a tuki tuki bird. Since it was the "era" that Puff Daddy (before P Diddy, then Sean "P Diddy" Combs) was popular, I became POOF-DADDY The Magician for their gigs and it just stuck with me. I just went by my name before that and now it is pretty much my name with "Poof-Daddy" in the middle. nothing much to it, just my 15 mins of fame (and a ton of free concert and amusement park tickets + new CD's and other stuff) The exposure was the important part. People would call the station to get my info (back when they had DJ's and not computer soundboards). I was also bartending at a bar/comedy club at the time. Table hopped for a couple years before that but the bar became a full time gig (best time of my life though).

Read the comment sections on reviews of the show. It is most enlightening on how Laymen can see our performances

"You can clearly see him switch each cup from under the table, and in the beginning he only showed how one cup was empty, then everyone was shocked when the other two had balls in them."

"ok so this is ridiculous, I know nothing about magic, and I saw everything that he was doing, changing cups, removing balls, cups obviously with a hidden compartment that he opened at one point with his finger(i guess a button)… In previous season magicians were soooo amazing, what happened?"


"Matt Franco's cup and balls trick was OK; but his moves were a bit too telegraphed. After seeing how smoothly Penn and Teller do it, and seeing the other magician do it on "Fool Us" a few weeks ago, his cup and balls trick was decent, but still needed a lot more practice to make smoother."

Never underestimate what a layman sees of think he sees





"This was horrible. I caught it right away. At about 0:11 you can see him show the inside of the bottom cup to make it look like there was nothing there. Then he flips the cups around and takes the top cup first.
What about the tennis balls?
At 1:31 he switches the cups under the table and at 1:37 and the last one at 1:45"

We could nit pick this for a long time...let it go...the kid won despite what we all felt was right or wrong about his performances. We all have had our good days and not so good days when presenting magic to the public. Mat made one thing crystal clear which many magicians should take into consideration...personality trumps skill every time. I'll be working way more on my performance personality after seeing Mat perform. He is a breathe of fresh air in what can sometimes be a snobby and elitist group of entertainers.

Haha.. This comment is great!

Not so crazy when you think about it.

I'm also one of those "haters" who think that not only his final loads were way to obvious, but that his whole routine was horrible.
I think all the kids who have a cups & balls set at home have shown to their parents that they're able to do the exact same thing. No sleight of hands, no intelligent nor funny patter, just "look at what I do".
So, ok, he won and many people like him. That doesn't mean that his show was good and I can't understand why we, as magicians, should rejoice about it.
It's not good for magic that he won. It's just good for him.

Would you ask a musician who loves Beethoven if he's happy that Psy's Gangnam Style was the most watched YouTube video on the Internet? "Hey, it's music, after all and people love him! It's a good exposure for music!"
Sorry, I prefer quality over popularity (and I'm sure many laymen would appreciate the difference if they were more exposed to good quality magic)

Wait a second here JLemoine...are you saying that Psy's Gangnam Style is not classical music? You sir our wrong...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiK7_gj48Fg


(Please know that this post was made with tongue firmly in cheek).

That was fun!

:-D
Ok. My mistake.