There's more than one way to make things disappear

Houdini’s legend still lives today, but Howard Thurston’s may have been resurrected with author Jim Steinmeyer’s latest biography, “The Last Greatest Magician in the World: Howard Thurston Versus Houdini and the Battles of the American Wizards.”


Steinmeyer tells the story of Thurston beginning from the magician's days as a 12-year-old runaway, to when he hit rock bottom after a covered-wagon accident here in Utah, to his booming success as “The World’s Greatest Magician.”

Thurston fled from an abusive home as a boy and train-hopped from city to city in the Midwest selling newspapers before finally making his way to New York. As a teenager he earned a living as a pickpocket. After spending time in a reform school, Thurston decided to pursue a career in magic. Thurston, a master of sleight of hand, began his career performing card tricks with traveling vaudeville shows. Eventually, he created his own show that became so enormous that it took eight train cars to accommodate the 40 tons of props and actors.

Steinmeyer, a historian of magic and creator of illusions, uses his knowledge of the world of magic to portray in detail how Thurston’s illusions were performed. Steinmeyer’s insights give detailed information on mechanical devices used to perform the tricks to the roles of the magician and the members of his cast.

Steinmeyer is also frank in his portrayal of Thurston and doesn’t shy away from his shady dealings conning people in the early days of his career, his abusive relationship with his first wife or his financial dependence on his brother, who made his money in dime museums and hoochie-coochie shows.

Steinmeyer’s “The Last Greatest Magician in the World,” not only captures the life of Thurston and the world of magic in the early days of the 20th century, but it vividly portrays the period in the American entertainment industry and how magicians and other showmen had to adapt to the increasing popularity of motion pictures.

"The Last Greatest Magician in the World: Howard Thurston Versus Houdini and the Battles of the American Wizards," by Jim Steinmeyer, Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin Books, 377 pages, $26.95 (nf). For more information, click on the heading above.

"a human face on an American tragedy"

Ford's Theatre is staging The Civil War, a musical tribute that puts a human face on an American tragedy. A landscape of the people, voices and sentiments of the American Civil War, this song-cycle is inspired by the words of Walt Whitman, Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln as well as the lives (as documented through letters, photographs, and journals) of ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances.

Drawing from the American musical genres of rock, country, gospel, folk, and rhythm and blues, The Civil War combines the stories of Union and Confederate soldiers, slaves, abolitionists and veterans. The production is staged in a concert-like setting with a live seven-piece band and vocalists who sing of freedom and patriotism

"Fountain Sonoma Plaza" . . .

. . . by Michael Reardon is one of 200 works from members of the California Art Club on display in Pasadena, California.

Climber Prefers the Unencumbered Ascent

Michael Reardon hanging out on the gritstone at Stanage during a free-solo climbing trip to Peak District National Park in Derbyshire, Britain.

(Photo by Bill Becher)

"a window into California's origins"

Not only does this grassy town center (about midway between Napa and Santa Rosa) offer a respite from winery-hopping and easy access to upscale shops and eateries, but it also gives you a window into California's origins. This is where California's bear flag was designed in 1846, and the plaza-adjacent mission (now part of Sonoma State Historic Park; admission is $3 an adult) was the northernmost and last of the 21 Franciscan missions, all of which are represented by oil paintings inside.

(Sonoma Valley Visitors Bureau Info: (707) 938-9560, http://www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=479.)

(Brian Blood, California Art Club, Windblown Cypress, Pebble Beach, 18" x 24". Oil.)

California Poppy Festival

Lancaster boasts one of California's most abundant crops of the vibrant poppies that are California's state flower. For several years, the City of Lancaster co-sponsored the Wildflower Information Center with the Lancaster Woman's Club to cater the interests of thousands of visitors who flocked to the Antelope Valley for a glimpse of these brilliant, beautiful flowers. Held at the Lancaster Museum/Art Gallery, visitors could pick up free wildflower maps and learn about the best viewing locations before heading out to the Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve.

It seemed only natural to create an even larger event to welcome and introduce visitors to the Lancaster area. The annual Festival plays host to the colorful poppies, which are an Antelope Valley springtime attraction. For more information, click on the heading above.

"Modern Design"

Retirement communities often rely on a traditional look to create environs that feel familiar and comforting. But rather than reference the past, a design and development team behind a proposed community called Boom in Rancho Mirage, California is pointing squarely at the future. Ten firms contributed their visions for what modern senior living might look like at Boom, including this rendering from Diller Scofidio & Renfro. The result is an interesting exercise in dreaming about the perfect retirement home.

"Awesome Twosome"

Dick Mobley (shown above in 1960) and pioneer surfer and retired Manhattan Beach firefighter Tom Rice will be inducted into the Hermosa Beach Surfers Walk of Fame on Saturday, April 9. The program begins at 11 a.m. at the pier head.

"leaping off the platform"

SkyJump Las Vegas, an 885-foot controlled free-fall thrill ride, opened April 20, 2010 at the Stratosphere Las Vegas Hotel & Casino, setting a new Guinness World Record along the way.

Similar to skydiving or base jumping, SkyJumpers literally leap off the platform to descend to the landing pad below. To make the leap from the 108th floor of the hotel, riders first are suited-up in Stratosphere's custom jump suits and connected to a patented high-speed descender machine.

Dan Ball skyjumps 829 feet from Stratosphere Las Vegas Hotel & Casino to open SkyJump Las Vegas. His jump also breaks the Guinness World Record for highest decelerator decent. SkyJump Las Vegas / Eric Jamison photo

SkyJump Las Vegas costs $99.99 per person per jump, and riders must be 14 years old to jump. Those jumping also have the option of having their SkyJump recorded on DVD and a photo.

"Ideally situated high above the show-stopping Vegas Strip, SkyJump is a must-do for anyone looking to experience the ultimate adrenaline rush," said Frank Riolo, CEO of American Casino & Entertainment Properties. "Between screams of excitement and the rush of wind in their hair, riders will experience an unmatched view of the city day or night and a thrill that will last a lifetime."

The "Virtual Choir"

YouTube chorus of 2,052 voices

Orchestral musicians had their date with Internet destiny a few weeks ago with the YouTube Symphony Orchestra. On Thursday afternoon, the spotlight moved to choral singers with scheduled release of the Virtual Choir. Los Angeles-based choral composer Eric Whitacre created a choir that allows lone choristers from Lebanon, Kazakhstan and Madagascar to join 2,049 other singers from 50-plus countries in a performance of Whitacre's composition "Sleep."

The logistics of a virtual live performance are unworkable with current technology, but the ubiquity of YouTube made it possible for participants to upload their parts individually. Some mammoth data crunching by the Virtual Choir team produced a single track containing all 2,052 voices and a video montage using submitted footage.

Interest in the project has been intense, with more than twice as many videos submitted than Whitacre dared hope for and many more than the 185 singers in last year's Virtual Choir. "It's just a beautiful, poetic expression of a seemingly fundamental human need to connect," Whitacre said.

—Marcia Adair

"Figat7th"

An architect’s rendering of the renovated shopping center at Figueroa and 7th streets that will be renamed Figat7th. Changes will include adding a wide staircase leading to a Target store on the middle level.

(Brookfield Office Properties / April 6, 2011)

Adventurers Exploring the Ocean

One of them owns a twin-engine airplane and a helicopter. The other? A fleet of spaceships.

Richard Branson, the billionaire adventurer, and Newport Beach real estate investor Chris Welsh unveiled a one-person submarine Tuesday that they said will be used to explore the deepest reaches of the world's oceans.

The pair said they will begin later this year with the Mariana Trench, a 36,000-foot-deep valley that has not been visited by mankind since 1960, when a bulky, two-man submarine operated by the U.S. Navy made the voyage.

"David Smith: Cubes and Anarchy"

At the artist's studio, first in Brooklyn and then in upstate New York, raw sheet metal and iron went in one end and finished sculpture came out the other. Terminal Iron Works, with its forge and anvil and oxyacetylene torches, represented Smith's self-conception as a modern laborer.

At the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, "David Smith: Cubes and Anarchy" is a compelling retrospective that's the first to take a thematic look at the sculpture he produced between the Depression years and his untimely death at 58 in a 1965 car crash. It emphasizes the proletarian angle.

Smith, the middle-class, Indiana-born grandson of a blacksmith, worked briefly in an automobile assembly plant during a college break; but he proudly retained his United Steelworkers union membership throughout his life. Given recent anti-union efforts in the Midwest, New England and the South, not to mention the removal of a historic labor mural (from a state Labor Department office!) by an anti-labor governor in Maine, a certain unexpected timeliness attends LACMA's emphasis on this personal history, in both the show's introductory wall text and its catalog.

Some American artists' emphasis on labor in the early 20th century was an unspoken masculine compensation for a social milieu that associated new art with upper-class feminine leisure. (Think Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, Peggy Guggenheim and many more.) But the show makes a different point: Smith's worker's credentials are linked to his sculptural interest in geometric abstraction.

This emphasis on labor-plus-geometry as a linked motif that spans Smith's career amounts to a new -- and persuasive -- interpretation of the leading American sculptor of his generation. That's no mean feat.

"What's next?"

Work is quietly underway in the South Bay on a massive 22-story rocket whose power is rivaled in the U.S. only by the mighty Saturn V rocket, which took man to the moon, in a risky private venture that could herald a new era in space flight.

Dubbed Falcon Heavy, the 27-engine booster is being assembled by rocket maker Space Exploration Technologies Corp., or SpaceX, at its sprawling complex in Hawthorne where it has about 1,100 workers.

The rocket, which has twice the lifting capability of the next largest launcher built by a U.S. company, is being announced Tuesday at the National Press Club in Washington.

"We're embarking on something that's unprecedented in the space industry," Elon Musk, the company's chief executive, told The Times. "This is territory that has only belonged to the U.S. government — with its tens of billions of dollars."

Musk's company is building the 227-foot-tall Falcon Heavy even though there are no guarantees that the military or NASA will step forward to pay for the rocket to lift its payloads — or even astronauts — into space someday.

SpaceX hopes to launch it in a demonstration flight from Vandenberg Air Force Base, northwest of Santa Barbara, at the end of next year.

The undertaking to be announced by Musk was hyped all last week on the Internet with a video laden with fiery blast-offs proclaiming "Something new is coming. 4.5.11." The 30-second clip highlighted SpaceX's recent launches, boasted that the work was done "at a fraction of the cost" and asked "What's next?"

No, not an earthquake, it's just . . .

Los Angeles architect Neil Denari's new residential tower HL23 on the West Side of Manhattan and it's a standout building in ways that begin with — but aren't limited to — its gymnastic form.

Known as HL23, for its site where 23rd Street meets the High Line elevated park, the 14-story tower is among the most ambitious of the many buildings spawned by the opening of the wildly popular park in 2009.

"The Tragedy of the Artful Dodger"

At just 16, Jack Wild (above left) played the Artful Dodger in Academy Award-winning musical Oliver! (1968), earning his own nomination and a job offer from kid vid pioneers Sid and Marty Krofft. They thought the boyish Brit with the expressive face would be perfect for their H. R. Pufnstuf. Though the series lasted only one season on NBC, Wild's performance as Jimmy, the mischievous lad with a magic flute, became instantly iconic.

In savage, startling contrast, one of the last photos of the actor was published in 2002, when, after a horrible battle with throat and mouth cancer, Wild had part of his tongue and voice box removed. The image is indelible and heartbreaking. In place of his once puckish grin, his mouth was now misshapen and sunken. All along his nose and cheeks, decades of drink left their mark, as tiny blood blossoms. His signature pageboy haircut had given way to a receding, graying hairline. Then, at 49, Wild looked ancient. Four years later, on 3 March 2006, the cancer finally claimed his life.

Jack Wild was a remnant of Beatlemania and Carnaby Street, remade as light-hearted kids' fare. Not bad for a kid who just wanted to play football. Born in Royton in northwestern England on 30 September 1952, Wild moved with his family to London, where he was approached by a talent agent as he kicked the football around with his mates in a local park. She was Phil Collins' mother June and she saw to it that Wild received training in the art of acting. By 11, he was auditioning.

He was ready when Lionel Bart mounted his devilishly clever stage musical Oliver!. When he also appeared in the motion picture, Wild's show-stopping number, "Consider Yourself," became a show tune staple. Wild hit the variety show circuit, singing the song that threatened to overwhelm his talent.

The Kroffts saw to it that Wild was not stuck singing this same old tune the rest of his life. Yet, they created another sort of monster when they cast him as Jimmy. Wild was wonderful, performing opposite costumed creatures and human characters (including Billie Hayes as Witchie-Poo). With some memorable musical numbers and the standard quest-oriented narrative, Pufnstuf proved Wild was not a one-hit wonder.

When Pufnstuf was cancelled, the Kroffts made an unsuccessful movie version. Looking for work, Wild returned to England, where he collaborated with his Oliver! buddy Mark Lester on 1971's Melody. He then co-starred alongside Donovan in a rather disturbing version of The Pied Piper (1972), after which Columbia Records offered him a recording contract. He tried to establish a distinct pop persona (his debut, The Jack Wild Album, featured Beatles covers). He soon was reduced to performing pap for his frantic Tiger Beat brigade.

It was all more or less over by 1976. Wild was in his mid 20s, and learning the hard lesson of juvenile stardom: it fades quickly. He married his childhood sweetheart (backup singer Gaynore Jones) and worked sporadically, appearing in bit parts and the odd TV spot. Disillusioned, Wild found solace in the bottle, and quickly became a full-blown alcoholic. He also smoked like a chimney, and would later state that such a lethal lifestyle made him a "walking time bomb." When he turned up in Kevin Costner's Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, he was barely recognizable.

Wild would eventually clean up, divorce Jones, and settle down with new love Claire Harding. For over a decade, the couple lived together (they finally married in September of 2005), and Wild tried his hand at pantomime. Enjoying minor success onstage, the actor eyed a return to the limelight. Then his inner explosive finally went off. Cancer robbed Wild of his distinctive voice, but he tried to remain upbeat. Roles were written specifically for him, and he continued to anticipate a new career as a mime.

Ron Moody, his costar in Oliver! was angry upon hearing of Wild's death. "Jack was cheated out of a great career," he said. "He had a talent that should have developed into even more talent as he grew older." Though that potential was left unrealized, it was in full view, for all to see. It was written in Jack Wild's cherubic face.

"deadpan visual punning"

At any given time, most things on television resemble other things on television, sharing narrative conventions and visual conceptions, techniques and technologies, even ways of treating and reflecting their audience. But there are always a few black sheep about, horses of a different color – artists who work against the system even as they operate within it and out of whatever combination of intention or helplessness create their own unaccountable realities.

Two such other worlds get box-set video releases this month: "The Ernie Kovacs (shown above) Collection" (Shout Factory, due April 19), a well-chosen, six-disc overview of what survives of Kovacs' TV career, from his early '50s NBC morning show to his early '60s ABC specials, and "H.R. Pufnstuf: The Complete Series" (Vivendi, April 12), Sid and Marty Krofft's dawn-of-the-'70s Saturday-morning musical-fantasy sitcom about a boy, a witch and a dragon.

Even in his short lifetime — he was killed in an automobile accident in 1962, days before his 43rd birthday — Kovacs was hailed as a mad genius and poet of the small screen, and as such he was both celebrated and marginal: never really successful but never out of work for long. He had shows on every network, in every hour. As their star, writer, producer and eventually co-director, he was as much an auteur as TV has produced and possibly the first person in television to really explore it — not to make fun of what TV showed, which he also did — but to mess with the medium itself, to pick it apart and reassemble it inside out, with the tubes and wires showing. He was a video artist before artists got around to making video — it is not a far leap from late Kovacs, with its deadpan visual punning, to Bruce Nauman or William Wegman.

He worked in many modes. Early on, there are skits and comic monologues and puppets. As he develops, verbal comedy gives way to visual, until he's making shows with no talk at all. Water bursts through a painting of a dam. A light drawn on a wall shines real light. A giggling Mona Lisa is revealed to have a body extending beneath the frame, whose toes are being licked by a cat; household objects are orchestrated like dancers, dancers in gorilla suits perform "Swan Lake."

"the deepest lake in the United States"

Crater Lake Facts

Crater Lake is the deepest lake in the United States
The second deepest lake in the Western Hemisphere
The seventh deepest lake in the world
Crater Lake Maximum lake depth: 1932 feet
Average depth of Crater Lake: 1500 feet
Maximum lake width: 6 miles
Lake surface elevation: 6176 feet
Wizard Island elevation: 6940 feet
Wizard Island height above water: 764 feet
Crater Lake Rim elevation: 7100 feet
Snowfall, yearly average: 44 feet
Crater Lake National Park Size: 183224 acres

By Odalaigh -- Charles Dawley on Flickr.
This photo was taken on June 15, 2008 in Crater Lake, Oregon, US, using a Nikon D70s.

"A new way to greet the day"

The SLEEPTRACKER continuously monitors signals from your body that indicate whether you are asleep or awake. Because you wear it on your wrist at night its internal sensors can detect even the most subtle physical signals from your body. The watch finds your best waking moments, so that waking up has never been easier. For brief periods of time around REM, you are almost awake. By monitoring your sleep cycles for optimal waking moments during a set window of time, SLEEPTRACKER finds those almost-awake moments and gently wakes you when you're most alert. The result? You wake up refreshed instead of groggy. Waking up has never been easier!