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News FlashesOn June 16th, Jamy will headline at Monday Night Magic with "Heavy Mental," his show of mind-reading and "mentalism." Monday Night Magic is now in its 11th continuous year as New York's longest-running Off-Broadway magic show, rated "Best Magic Venue" by TimeOut NY and "Best Kept Secret" by New York Press.This week's "Point of Inquiry" features my second interview for the excellent weekly podcast from Center For Inquiry. Listen to Jamy's interview on the www.pointofinquiry.org podcast about the intersection between magic, reason, pseudo-science, and the paranormal. The March 17th issue of The New Yorker contains an in-depth piece exploring the contemporary art and culture of magic, entitled "The Real Work," and written by Adam Gopnik. Gopnik is an award-winning journalist and veteran New Yorker writer who has spent more than a year researching his subject. In the article he attempts to provide insight into the work of those who approach magic not merely as a novelty entertainment, but as an art built on ideas as well as aesthetics. This is likely one of most substantive items ever to appear in mainstream journalism about magic as an art. And I am a definite presence in the piece, having partly served as Adam's guide through the magic community. The article does not appear on the NYer website, but there is a very nice 14-minute audio interview with Adam Gopnik here. Jamy mentioned in TimeOut New York, in a piece on "How to do a cold reading." Jamy was a guest on Penn Jillette's radio show, along with fellow mentalist and skeptic Banachek. Listen to the podcast at the iTunes store or download the MP3 file here Jamy is one of two regular columnists for Antinomy, the new quarterly magic journal. Subscribe now! Read his controversial essay, "In Search of Street Magic." On Sunday, March 18th, Jamy hosted a program marking the 20th anniversary of the National Capital Area Skeptics. James Randi was honored and Jamy and Randi shared the stage for video highlights and discussion of recent Randi adventures. For the second year in a row, Jamy performs at the McCarter Theatre in Princton, NJ on Saturday, April 15th, as part of an evening of Monday Night Magic performers. Robin Leach attended one of Jamy’s performances at James Randi’s The Amazing Meeting 4 in Las Vegas, and featured Jamy on his LuxeLife web page, where he says that Jamy “...brilliantly manipulated four aces from every conceivable combination of a deck of cards -- both with and without fronts and backs!” Jamy on the radio! Listen to Jamy take part in the "Movie Night Debriefing" on Sirius satellite radio, every Monday in the last hour of the Alex Bennett Show, sometime between 11:00 a.m. and noon EST. Jamy's performance mentioned in a New York Times article about the Martin Gardner conference. (There's also a slideshow - see if you can find Jamy.) Another piece in the Knickerbocker column of the New York Sun also mentions Jamy [access only by subscription]. Convention news: Jamy has been steadily making convention appearances in the past couple of years. In 2002 he was part of Magic in the Rockies and Deceptions Unlimited; 2003 saw him at CAM (Canadian Association of Magicians) and the LVMI (Las Vegas Magic Invitational ); and in 2004 he appeared at Holy Toledo in Toledo, Ohio. At Holy Toledo and Magic in the Rockies he lectured and also performed on the close-up show, cabaret show, and large venue public stage shows. At CAM he also hosted a tribute banquet to James "The Amazing" Randi, including MCing the stage show. And in 2005, Jamy was invited to teach a sold-out group seminar at the World Magic Summit in Las Vegas. An extensive interview with Jamy about dangerous magic and Roy Horn of Siegfried and Roy is published on the arts site known as "The Thing" (see reviews/columns) "Shattering Illusions" second edition is now sold out! The book is now difficult to find and there is no source with any standing inventory. Hermetic Press hopes to reprint the book sometime in the future. Jamy is quoted several times in a piece in the April 21 issue of New York magazine. Shattering Illusions was reviewed in the L.A. Times Sunday Book Review. The review concludes: "But at his best, [Swiss] comes close to the heart of the issues magic raises about truth and art. One of Aristotle's puzzles about art was why we enjoy experiencing in art what we would never enjoy experiencing in reality. Aristotle had in mind the death and degradation presented in tragedy, but the condition of any work with an element of fiction raises the same question about our own violation by deception. The reason mimetic art can be cathartic is that, in it, we deal with the questionable aspects of human experience in a relatively safe environment. Blues music, for example, gets its power from the transformation of suffering into art and even joy. Magic, we might say, gives to the experience of being duped a pleasure, dignity and even truth." "CRACKING THE CONS," a one-hour program about con games and scams which Jamy co-created and co-produced, is now available from Discovery on videotape, and can be ordered by calling 1-888-404-5969 between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. (ET), Monday through Friday. A CD-ROM collection of Jamy's book review columns from Genii magazine, 1994 - 2000, is available from Lybrary.com. The collection is fully searchable by title, author, and more (with a superb interface designed by the publisher), and includes a new introduction, along with Jamy's 11,500-word "Millennium of Magical Literature" from the January 2001 issue of Genii. Mike Close, in MAGIC magazine, writes: "I'm a big fan of Mr. Swiss' writings. He has raised the quality of magic criticism to a high level. His essays are thoughtful, erudite, and scholarly. He educates while he entertains. Having all these reviews in an easily accessible format is invaluable. If you have any interest in the literature of magic (or if you just want to be a smart shopper) then The Jamy Ian Swiss Book Reviews should be next to your computer. Buy it. Period."
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