As promised: Jeff McBride is bringing back the Wonderground to Vegas.

The club offered a unique magic nightlife experience after McBride’s Vegas show, but he put it on hiatus and took it with him through an Asian tour. It featured magic, dancing, a live DJ, performance art and much more.

Wonderground will be held at 8 p.m. every third Thursday at The Olive (McBride’s favorite Mediterranean restaurant and hookah bar). It will include magic, variety, performance art, DJ Master Diaz, the Mojo A Go-Go Girls and close-up magic performed by students of McBride’s magic school. If you can’t make it, you can always watch it.

Magician Wayne Kawamoto, who is the author of “Picture Yourself As a Magician” and writes about magic for About.com, has named the 10 best magicians of our time. Top of his list: David Copperfield. According to his blog on About.com:

David Copperfield is easily the best known magician in the world. He has presented innovative magic in his many television specials and continues to tour and perform for live audiences. He’s an immensely talented and skillful entertainer who has effectively changed with the times and does it all: illusion, manipulation and close-up. At times in his career, he’s had the popularity of a rock star.

The rest of his top 10:

• 2. Doug Henning
• 3. Siegfried and Roy
• 4. Lance Burton
• 5. Ricky Jay
• 6. Mark Wilson
• 7. Penn & Teller
• 8. Harry Anderson
• 9. Jeff McBride
• 10. Cyril Takayama

The top five were easy to pick out, Kawamoto wrote. After his list, Kawamoto explains several of the omissions, including Harry Houdini, Dai Vernon, Paul Daniels and David Blaine. The list was inspired by this list by Magic Castle founder Milt Larsen — Kawamoto was gobsmacked that Copperfield wasn’t on it.

How on the mark was he? Discuss in this thread on the forum.

Magic and flourishing on the Internet keeps getting bigger and better.

Jeff McBride, founder and president of McBride’s Magic and Mystery School, has done a major overhaul of his umpteen Web sites. Two of his publications, including his Secret Art Journal and Museletters, have now been converted into blog formats. And areas of McBride’s sites for fans and for clients have been separated. There is A TON of information to be found at www.mcbridemagic.net. It’s easy to get lost for a couple of days. His Magic and Meaning Pep Talks are well worth the time.

XCMers and Handlordz rejoice: You have new forums. Master manipulator De’vo vom Shattenreich has rolled out redesigned forums that are much easier to browse. The new forums are on the vBulletin platform, so they have plenty of the features we know and love, including a rep system and friend networks. Users will also find plenty of videos, tutorials and other XCM info. The forum’s admins have also installed plugins that allow embedded videos in threads.

Photo courtesy Mcbridemagic.com

In light of our recent conversation with Aaron Fisher about the identity of S.W. Erdnase (listen at about the 15:40 mark):

Jeff McBride (pictured, above), incredible magician and director of the McBride Magic and Mystery School, recently returned from a tour of England and Peru. During his Peruvian venture, he had a conversation with Juan Tamariz about the identity of the legendary, unknown card master. Writes McBride on his blog:

During the Flasoma Convention 2009 in Peru, Tamariz explained his reasons for thinking that the S. W. Erdnase material was actually written by L’Homme Masque. L’Homme Masque was a Peruvian magician who lived at the same time as Erdnase. Dai Vernon considered him to be one of his idols. Gaetan Bloom shares Juan’s assumption. Juan and Gaetan held a lecture and discussion speculating that there is enough evidence pointing in the direction of L’Homme Masque as the author. I am sure that Juan will share further research at upcoming events.

For those of you who don’t know (and if you don’t, shame), S.W. Erdnase is the author of “Expert at the Card Table,” a book on sleight of hand with cards that is a must for every serious card worker. This Wikipedia page contains some other theories about his identity.

A few quick hits about some of the superstars of magic:

• David Blaine may get called in to help Hugh Jackson portray his inspiration and role model: None other than Harry Houdini. FOX News reported that magician Ricky Jay is involved with Jackman’s latest role; he is allegedly already working up magic routines for the musical about his life. In addition to Blaine, Cirque du Soleil may be called in for advice. Which leads us to…
• Criss Angel’s collaboration with the unique circus, “Believe,” was drawn and measured next to a classic of magic by Las Vegas Review-Journal columnist Mike Weatherford. The columnist heralded Burton’s show as a great example of classic, traditional magic. But there’s a story behind the story, adroitly pointed out by iTricks. Spoiler: How does Lance Burton’s “Believe” sound?
• Congratulations to the magicians who won awards at the 2008 World Magic Awards, which were televised on MyNetwork. Though we haven’t found an official list of winners, or a replay of the broadcast, the IBM reports that Jeff McBride won Best Classical Magician, Dan Sperry won Best Original Cabaret Act, Ed Alonzo won Best Comedy Illusionist, Greg Gleason won Best Stage Magician, Kirby VanBurch won Best Illusionist and Franz Harary won Best Escape Artist. The show was hosted by actor Neil Patrick Harris, who is also a Magic Castle board member (who knew?).
• Mentalist Gerry McCambridge helped a man pop the question. According to Norm Clarke of the Review-Journal, McCambridge “read the mind” of a man who wanted to ask something. The man, who had set the proposal up beforehand, proposed to his fiancee. McCambridge then asked if anyone else — namely Angel and new squeeze Holly Madison — wanted to propose.