One of the things that causes us plenty of frustration is shipping internationally — only because it causes our international customers so much frustration.

The costs are generally higher. Customers get charged customs, duties or whatever a country decides to call “taxes.” And in some cases, customers wouldn’t find out about these charges until they tried to pick up their item. The whole process made us want to bang our heads against walls, because our customers would get rubbed the wrong way, and there was nothing we could do about it.

Until now. Ellusionist is now working with i-Parcel.com for international shipping.

All costs paid up front. Automatic tracking. Faster arrival.

i-Parcel gives us a better way to serve our non-U.S. customers, and the prices are comparable to services we used from UPS and U.S. Postal Service. We have always tried to keep international shipping as affordable as possible, and this new affiliation lets us do exactly that. We are thrilled to be working with the company, and strongly encourage our international customers to choose that option.

Got questions? We got answers. Read more

We’re pretty sure Allen Iverson has never been, or will be, a magician. His legendary rant spells out exactly why.

And yes. We talkin’ ’bout practice.

We don’t know a single magician who doesn’t like to train. Unlike musicians, athletes, artists, writers, gamers or anyone else who pursues some sort of art or skill, magicians have no problem with the discipline of practice.

In fact, magicians seem to embrace the art of practice more than any performer we’ve encountered — and we’ve encountered a lot. All the magicians we’ve worked with, every one of them is always picking something up, working a move, even when we’re talking in business meetings. As every magician grows, they learn the joys of performance AND of practice, to the point that the practice becomes just as important as the performance.

As it turns out, there are four things about magic that gives us a better chance for successful, productive practice. These things help us plow through setbacks, deal with failures and conquer practice fatigue. People could learn a lot about practice from us, but our art gives us an advantage.

We practice techniques unknown to many. Considering the fingering pattern of a guitar piece, or the position of the heel in a martial arts kick. The method is just as known as the end result. But not in magic. The things we do lead to surprisingly different things that laymen would never know about. That thrill of the arcance fuels us. The knowledge of knowing how to do something filled with ruse and subterfuge charges us up to take action and do those things over and over — even if it’s just in front of a mirror.

Progress in failure is easier to see. Though magicians are artists of subtle moves, our mistakes are much more glaring to us. That means we reap many more benefits than the keyboardist does from hitting the wrong key, or the basketball player gets from a proper follow-through with the wrist. That further hones our ability to self-critique and analyze. And because magic is all about details, practice helps us hone our ability to be thorough.

Our methods unlock many more creative options. An actor who plays around with material might discover a new insight to a character. An artist might discover a new sort of mark with a pencil, and utilize it to draw something completely different. But a magician, when playing around, might discover something that unlocks a whole new effect. And that benefit comes during many more times than practice sessions — the act of shopping at a flea market might lead to an incredible new effect or presentation.

The payoff is much bigger. As practitioners of the only art form that challenges an audience to maintain disbelief, our reward is the perfect reaction, where someone goes crazy from having seen something impossible. Every magician craves that moment when they really blow someone away. That moment is so valuable — it goes beyond the thrill of simple appreciation of a performance. It reaches deep into people and affects them profoundly, and so affects us. That’s why we do what we do; why we practice our passes, our palms, our cuts and clips.

What did we miss? Think there’s another way magicians get more out of practicing than other artists? Let us know in the comments.

FOUR POINTS is a regular feature that celebrates magicians’ favorite number by highlighting four critical bits of importance, awesomeness or otherwise. Send your suggestions to joe@ellusionist.com.

A deck of playing cards is filled with enigmas and mysteries. One of the most enduring features a man with no mustache. The King of Hearts is one of the most iconic cards in the deck, mainly because of his awkwardly placed sword. Because of that, he’s earned the nickname of “suicide king.”

But that may be somewhat inaccurate.

A little history:

• ~ Modern playing cards — spades, hearts, clubs and diamonds — are French in origin. The shapes were easier to stencil than the detail-laden bells, hearts, leaves and acorns of German decks.
• ~ The designs seen in a deck from the U.S. Playing Card Company, Gemaco, Carta Mundi and other modern publishers descend from models produced by Pierre Marechal in Rouen around 1565, according to World of Playing Cards.
• ~ Near the end of that century, French publishers started naming the court cards after heroes, legends or historical figures. Names were printed on them until about the 18th century.
• ~ Originally, the court cards were portrayed as fully standing figures, complete with stockinged feet.
• ~ The simplistic graphics of today’s modern court cards can be traced back to those Rouen designs. Elements of those designs, including the flowers held by the queens, the King of Diamonds’ axe and the positions of the courts’ faces (namely, the one-eyed royals) have been incorporated in modern-era decks from numerous publishers.

The King of Hearts was dubbed Charles, presumably after Charlemagne. He’s the only king without a mustache, the only king doing something active with his weapon. The mystery deepens with an examination of that weapon, however: According to Wikipedia, it’s been suggested that because Charlemagne’s sword does not exactly match the weapons held by the other kings, perhaps he is not killing himself, but recovering from an attempt on his life.

Or maybe he’s just raising his sword, ready to attack. It’d be easy enough to speculate that –because the Rouen designs featured flat crowns on each court card flush against the border of the art, there wasn’t a lot of room left over to depict Charles in charge, ready to slice some heathens.

And conquering is what he’s known for: Charlemagne is remembered in history for a humongous expansion of his kingdom, including overtaking the Roman empire. Pope Leo III declared him emperor of the Romans, after he and his armies helped defeat a rebellion. Charlemagne died in 813 of an infection in his lungs.

Not exactly the kind of guy who would jab a sword in his skull. 

But the myth of the suicide king endures. He was a character in Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland.” There are a few plays named after the card, and a Roy Orbison album, released after the singer’s death, was named “King of Hearts.” And we’ve read some reports from Christian magicians who say the king’s apparent act of sacrifice make the card perfect for representing either God or Jesus.

Yet of all the iconography in a deck of playing cards, the suicide king remains one of the most often repeated designs, as critical to a complete deck as two one-eyed jacks. The reason for his apparent sacrifice is probably one of the biggest mysteries in a modern pack of playing cards.

INSIDE THE CARDS is an occasional feature that dives into the history of a single card. Know any good legends behind cards? Let us know. Comment below or e-mail joe@ellusionist.com.

When Joe Gold set out to make a movie about magicians, it was crucial to seamlessly weave the story and the magic together. But the issue of how women are treated in magic spoke out to him — so much so that he made it a central plot point in his latest movie.

“When you go to a play, and there’s five people in a play… everybody gets a bow at the end, everybody is in the program, everybody is treated as a performer, as an actor in that play. That’s not usually the case with a magic show. You go to see a big illusion show, and there may be a lot of assistants running around. If you are an onstage performer, you deserve a bow, you deserve to be treated like you’re part of the show.”

“Desperate Acts of Magic,” directed and produced by Gold and Tammy Caplan, was inspired by Gold’s experience as a professional magician. He performed more than 500 kids’ birthday parties and entered a slew of magic contests. The movie features Jason, a magician competing in an international magic contest, preparing to compete head-to-head with Stacy, a woman and street magician he fell in love with.

The movie took almost two years of filming to produce, and dealt with challenges from finding the time to shoot scenes to finding a replacement for a wrecked car. Gold talked to us about the movie, including some of the magicians who served as stars and consultants, how Valerie Dillman tackled the message and magic of playing Stacy and why it’s really hard to get work done when hanging out with Jonathan Levit.

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The movie opens up this weekend in New York City, next week in North Hollywood and can be requested for your area at Tugg.com.

It happens to all of us: We go to the bookstore, or shop on the Internet, and look for books about magicians. Our search results disappoint us, though: We get “Harry Potter.” “The Magicians” by Lev Grossman. “Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell,” by Susanna Clarke. “The Night Circus” by Erin Morgenstern.

Those are all great stories, but those are the wrong kind of magicians. We don’t want wizards, sorcerers and the kind of magic that some spell “magick.” We want our kind of magicians, the guys who practice their tails off, who perform for audiences and design miraculous illusions. THESE are our people, the ones who live lives knowing how to size up situations instantly, who go to great lengths in order to study arcane secrets.

The good news: There are many outstanding stories of the magicians you and I know. Some are even written by magicians. Here’s four worth hunting down:

“Carter Beats the Devil,” Glen David Gold

You’ve seen the Carter the Great posters in magic stores, but Glen David Gold brings the great one to life. Centered around the mysterious death of President Warren Harding, Carter is implicated and investigated by the FBI. What follows is a grand historical fiction featuring a number of well-known names, from Francis Marion “Borax” Smith to TV inventor Philo Farnsworth. Houdini and Howard Thurston also make appearances. And Gold’s writing is golden: The escapes he spins for Carter grow more and more impossible with each chapter.

“Magic,” by William Goldman

Known for “The Princess Bride” and “Marathon Man,” Goldman is no stranger to writing Hollywood-worthy stories, and “Magic” is no different (it was made into a movie starring Anthony Hopkins). After learning sleight of hand while bed-ridden in a hospital, Charles “Corky” Withers sought training by a top pro, but still lacked the courage to jump on stage. After finally summoning the courage to perform at an amateur night, the resulting response triggers a breakdown. That’s when the mannequin starts talking to him, and things spiral from there. Though reviewers don’t think of it as highly as his other works, “Magic” is a dizzying horror story that chills as much as it thrills.

“The Magician’s Assistant,” by Ann Patchett

How about some love for the assistants? Ann Patchett tells the story of Sabine, assistant to the magician Parsifal. The relationship is complicated, however — though her love for him is unrequited, he still marries her shortly before his death. In his death, Sabine discovers a world that he kept hidden from her. Though not as action packed as others on this list, Patchett gets a nod for weaving an interesting tale where an assistant is able to watch her magician grow young.

“Re-Deal,” by Richard Turner

Trust an expert card mechanic to figure out how to get his main character to play poker with Doc Holliday and S.W. Erdnase, and not seem the least bit weird. Turner is well known for his excellent sleight of hand and his specifically-details Bicycle decks. But his fiction story about Matt McCain and his encounter with the angel Miss Guided shows he’s just as creative with a story as he is with a deck of cards.

Bonus point: “The Prestige,” by Christopher Priest

Ever wonder why Christopher Nolan’s movie was so good? He had great source material. The mysteries and double crosses reveal themselves slowly in “The Prestige.” Written as diary entries, the battle between Angier and Borden stays intense and solid, long after it is explored by the magicians’ offspring.

Those are our four — five, actually — picks. What did we miss? What’s your favorite story featuring a magician?

FOUR POINTS is a regular feature that celebrates magicians’ favorite number by highlighting four critical bits of importance, awesomeness or otherwise. Send your suggestions to joe@ellusionist.com.