While that dream has yet to come true (and I’m willing to wait), I was giddy to find this photo capturing Barack and Michelle Obama in the same private suite where I used to perform Chamber Magic!

The photo above is from the official White House website (now archived) and the caption read:

Sept. 21, 2011 “The First Lady reacts to something the President whispered to her at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in between events related to the United Nations General Assembly in New York City.”  — Official White House Photo by Pete Souza

Here is a photo I took in exactly the same spot, in the same room, one week later. Notice the chairs all set up for my show in the living room:

The Obamas’ whispering photo reminded me of a picture I took with Warren Buffett after a private show in Omaha, Nebraska. I’ll never reveal the secret he shared…!

My performance suite at the Waldorf Astoria New York was room 35H, in the Waldorf Towers, down the hall from the Presidential Suite. On October 4, 1965, Pope Paul VI met President Lyndon Johnson in that same room. Also pictured is First Lady, Lady Bird Johnson.

Pope Paul was visiting New York to address the United Nations. It marked the first visit of the head of the Roman Catholic Church to the United States.

Here are some performance photos of me in that same room, suite 35H. Notice the same fireplace, and the same oil painting on the rear wall.

The Waldorf Astoria New York is closed but these wonderful memories remain. I was inspired to post this — albeit years later — since it corresponds with the current United Nations General Assembly being held in midtown Manhattan. When I came across the Obama photos, it reminded me of that formative stage in my life.

Looking back on my old showroom at the Waldorf, it seems so intimate and dainty. At that time, I never could have imagined that Chamber Magic would graduate to its grand showroom at the Lotte New York Palace (see below). I love my new venue even more, and am thrilled at the solid partnership with The Palace. We will be releasing 2020 tickets soon, in anticipation of the 20th Anniversary show. I look forward to meeting you at The Palace sometime in the near future!

The post Barack And Michelle in my showroom at the Waldorf Astoria appeared first on Chamber Magic.

The ceremony was held in the Frank Sinatra dining room, and pictures of many old-timey stars (also Friars) lined the wall: George M. Cohan, Milton Berle, Johnny Carson, Jerry Lewis, and of course Frank Sinatra.

I’ve been told that Max Malini was a member of the Friars Club and that he used to relax at the clubhouse because he didn’t constantly feel the need to prove he was a magician to everyone by performing.

At the induction ceremony, I was coerced into doing a brief performance which was warmly received.

Here is the certificate new Friars receive. Note the signatures by Jerry Lewis (abbott) and Freddie Roman (dean).

The club president Michael Gyure handed over a welcome packet, and snapped a nice photo with me.

The Friar who invited me into the club is Paul Ginsberg, a magician himself. Here’s a nice photo of the two of us, ironically standing in front of the “Friar of the Year” sign. Somehow I don’t think I’ll get that award my first year…

My other sponsor was none other than the dean, Freddie Roman.

The ceremony was a delightful experience, and I felt surrounded by warm, genuine people. I look forward to getting involved in the Friars Club and meeting even more of the members.

(Photography by Friars staff photographer Richard Lewin)

The post Newest member of the legendary Friars Club: Me appeared first on Chamber Magic.

Although I don’t foresee ever watching a single episode, the program reminded me of some amusing guests who have come to visit at my Chamber Magic^® shows in New York.

One week I had a man sitting in the front row whose name was Sherlock Holmes. The very next week, there was a man in the audience named James Bond. Of course I asked both of them to show me their drivers licenses, and sure enough those were their actual names!

Another month or so passed, and a fellow in the audience was named Bruce Wayne. (Batman’s alter-ego)

Is there a trend of fictional crime-fighters that I should know about? Is there a convention in town? I truly found this amazing.

On a similar yet different note, I’ve had many “Steve Cohen’s” come to my show. At the end, they always come to the front and challenge me with a sneer: “I’ll bet you can’t guess MY name!” And of course I reply, “Hmmm. Is it… STEVE COHEN??” And they are actually surprised. What they don’t apparently realize is that only someone named “Steve Cohen” would ever think to introduce themselves with such a challenge!

The post Celebrity crime fighters (?) come to Chamber Magic^® appeared first on Chamber Magic.

As I performed privately for two of the guests, I noticed that a photographer was furiously snapping pictures over my shoulder.

The photographer later informed me: “Those two men you just entertained were the Secretary of the Treasury and Secretary of Transportation. The only person who can usually bring them together is the President of the United States. And you just did the same thing with magic!”

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This reminds me of another occasion, when Michael Bloomberg invited me to his Park Avenue office in NYC prior to being elected mayor. After chatting for twenty minutes about golf, memory techniques, and how to master a second language (he was studying Spanish), Bloomberg asked me to show him some magic.

I asked if he had a dollar.

The billionaire chuckled and said, “Have I got a dollar? I’ve got quite a few!” We both laughed as he handed me a single dollar bill from his pocket.

I slowly and deliberately displayed the bill to him and called attention to the Secretary of the Treasury’s signature at the bottom. The name read Laurence Summers. Without a single false move, I waved my hand over that signature and magically transformed it into the signature of Bloomberg himself – Michael R. Bloomberg. The ink changed visibly in front of his eyes.

He rubbed the bill with his thumb and was delighted to see that his signature had been permanently printed on his own bill – real U.S. currency. At first he challenged me to change it back, but I countered, “Are you kidding? That’s a collector’s item. The next time I come to your office, I want to see that in a frame on your wall!”

I like to think that’s where it hangs to this day…

Here’s a photo of Michael Bloomberg and me (the summer before he was elected NYC mayor), at a Bloomberg company picnic.

The post A Magical Cabinet Meeting in Washington DC appeared first on Chamber Magic.

I was invited to perform at a gorgeous English-style country home in New Jersey yesterday (video below), to celebrate my client’s 50th birthday. After the show was over, it was time to sing “Happy Birthday.” You can imagine the look of surprise on my face when I saw my magic teapot, “Think-a-Drink” decorated in icing on his cake!

Magician Jonathan Brown saw this photo of the cake, and wrote a lovely comment on Facebook: “You know, you can win awards, make a name for yourself, get on TV etc..but when a CLIENT loves your magic enough to put YOUR trick on THEIR OWN birthday cake…well I don’t know where you go from that!”

Here’s a quick video of the outside of my client’s house. (In order to maintain privacy for him and his family, no further details will be included here.)

“Think-a-Drink” has become a signature routine for me. As a result, I’ve become quite enamored with the trick and its history. You may be interested to read of a legal dispute that arose over its performance by two rival magicians in 1943: “Think-a-Drink Hoffman” and “Have-a-Drink Count Maurice.”

The post Icing on the cake! appeared first on Chamber Magic.

Hedge fund billionaire Steven A. Cohen (shown above, with me and his charming wife Alex) has been to my show in NYC, and has also invited me to perform privately in Connecticut. We first met at an event years ago at the Pierre Hotel in New York, and have stayed in touch ever since. Steve then introduced me to Robin Hood Foundation, and arranged to have me entertain the Board of Directors at their annual luncheon. A truly amazing group.

Funny enough, I get a fair amount of “Steve Cohens” who come visit me at my Waldorf show. After the show I always do a meet-and-greet, and these fellows come up to me with a challenging tone in their voice, saying “Bet you can’t guess my name!” The moment they say that, I KNOW it must be “Steve Cohen.”

When I first began my show in 2000, my marketing budget was slim to none. I tried to think of clever ways to get people in the door without spending too much money. One of the things I did was send out advertising postcards to every “Steve Cohen” in the Manhattan telephone book! (There were several pages worth.) I figured that people are vain, and would wonder what my show was about. Sure enough, when they received the postcards, their curiosity got the best of them, and a lot of them actually showed up at once.

For completeness’ sake, here is the text of the NY Times article, by Joseph Berger:

Calling Steven Cohen. No, Not That One.

January 4, 2011, 2:38 pm

Steven M. Cohen, left, with Andrew M. Cuomo, then the attorney general, at a news conference last April. Mr. Cohen has been named secretary to Mr. Cuomo. But perhaps he is not the only Steven Cohen in the picture.

Steven Cohen is the new secretary to Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, among his most powerful aides. So please don’t confuse him with Steve Cohen, the Memphis congressman, or Steven A. Cohen the billionaire hedge fund manager.

Or the two Steve Cohens who are experts on Israel often quoted in The New York Times and other newspapers — Steven M. Cohen at Hebrew Union College in New York and Stephen P. Cohen at the Institute for Middle East Peace and Development, also in New York.

And though they have the same middle initial, the latter should not be mistaken for the Stephen P. Cohen who is an expert on South Asian politics at the Brookings Institution. And he should not be confused with Columbia University’s Steven A. Cohen, who is director of its environmentally focused Earth Institute. Or New York University’s Stephen F. Cohen, who is a professor of Russian studies and history.

None of the above is the Steve Cohn who was a Democratic district leader in Brooklyn for many years, until he decided not to seek re-election in 2010. (His son sought his seat and lost.)

The world is filled with accomplished Steven Cohens or so it might seem when entering the realms of academia or public policy, which seem to be populated by a profusion of quotable Steven Cohens. A search of Wikipedia has articles on no less than 12 Steven or Stephen Cohens, including a wrestler, a magician and a soccer player, and not including Stephen Cohn, a composer of concert and film music.

To be one of these Steve Cohens, however, can mean wrestling with the muddles growing out of their identical or nearly identical names.

“I believe I’m the third one my wife went out with,” said the environmental Steven Cohen, who also blogs for The Huffington Post.

He also had the misfortune of ending up in the same building on Morningside Heights where the Russian studies Stephen Cohen had once lived, so he spent a good deal of time forwarding mail.

“And Google has only made it worse,” he said. “I get e-mails from people asking me about Jewish social policy or Russian politics and I refer them to the other Steve Cohens.”

This Mr. Cohen met Mr. Cuomo’s Steven M. Cohen — a former federal prosecutor — during the campaign for governor because he was asked to write position papers on energy and the environment.

“He was a very nice guy,” he said of the governor’s Steve Cohen. “There was, of course, confusion.”

Stephen Cohen, the Russian expert, recalls receiving an enveloping bear hug from Bill Clinton at a fund-raiser about six years ago because the former president wanted to consult about Middle Eastern policy and thought he was buttonholing that Stephen Cohen.

More than coincidence may explain this plethora of namesakes, and there are several Steven Cohens with the credentials to provide an analysis.

Steven M. Cohen, the professor of Jewish social policy at Hebrew Union College in Greenwich Village, pointed out that Cohen is the most common Jewish name. And Steven or Stephen was a popular name for baby boomers, adds the environmental Steven Cohen, particularly among Jewish parents wanting to brand their children with an Americanized moniker.

Those boomer Steven Cohens have now reached their 50s and 60s, an age where their reputations have been burnished.

“So it is no surprise that there are so many Steven Cohens at the peak of their careers,” said the Jewish social policy Steven Cohen.

That Steven Cohen also thinks that it should not be surprising that many professors have the name Cohen because a high proportion of Jews work in academia. The abundance of namesakes explains why so many Steven Cohens are insistent about using their middle initials.

Some might speculate that the prominence of Steven Cohens has to do with the fact that almost all Cohens are descendants of the esteemed priests — the Cohanim — that tended the Jewish temple. However, the environmental Mr. Cohen said that he is not such a descendant. His last name was given to his grandfather by an Ellis Island immigration official looking to simplify a now-obscure Eastern European name.

Not all Steven Cohens have distinguished themselves in a way that promotes pride among their doppelgängers.

Indeed, Wikipedia shows that a Stephen M. Cohen was accused by a federal court in California of fraudulently acquiring control of the domain name sex.com in 1995 — not long after he spent time in prison for bankruptcy fraud.

And other names are common enough to have generated numerous Wikipedia entries — Mark Levine, say, or Steve Ross, or John Williams, a name that includes an award-winning composer and two authors, one black and one white, who were often confused with each other.

Charles M. Newman, a professor at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University and a probability expert, said, “These kinds of coincidences are not as unusual as they sometimes sound.” If Steven Cohen is a common name, then a certain percentage of them would be well known, depending on what threshold one uses for fame.

His own name, he pointed out, is relatively common. Four years ago, he found himself somewhat unnerved by opening The Times and seeing an obituary of a namesake, the editor of a literary magazine. He was relieved when he read that the literary Charles Newman had been married five times. The mathematical Charles Newman has only been married once.

Do you have a name that seems to have you coming and going? And, if so, does it bring you pride — or is it unsettling?

The post NY Times: Too Many Famous Steve Cohens! appeared first on Chamber Magic.

There was a person standing INSIDE the piano. Right inside the hole.

She was playing the piano and walking around the open floor, rolling the instrument in wide arcs. Her body was bent forward at the waist, at a full ninety degree angle, and her hands were flying up and down at a breakneck pace.

Okay, an artist built this provocative piano. That’s interesting enough. But as we watched the pianist perform, we realized that she must transpose her left and right hands’ roles in each song. In other words, her left hand is playing the higher pitched notes, while her left hand is playing the bass.

It was a pretty amazing performance, and the difficulty level was readily apparent in the piece that she played (Tchaikovsky). Before the applause wore down, she swiftly ducked down out of the piano hole (think Maxwell Smart dropping down his secret telephone booth), and made her exit.

I’ve included several more images that we enjoyed during today’s visit.

The post A walking piano, and other intrigues at MOMA appeared first on Chamber Magic.

The parade balloons pass right in front of us, and it’s a true delight.

I didn’t snap photos of every balloon this year, but just enough to give you a feel for the experience.

Last night I took my daughter and her friend to see the balloons being inflated. The photos from last night (included below – see Kung Fu Panda) offer some perspective regarding the size of the balloons.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

The post Central Park West view of NYC Thanksgiving parade appeared first on Chamber Magic.

Recently a man came to my show and introduced himself afterward. He said that he has something for me back home (in Montreal) that I’d be sure to like. A couple of weeks later, a package arrived with a heavy black hanger inside. The hanger was printed with gold lettering across the top, with the words:

S. Cohen

I thought to myself, how flattering. This man went out of his way to make a custom hanger for me. Then I read his letter, which explained that he runs a men’s clothing business in Montreal, called… S. Cohen.

All of their hangers are printed like that!

That let the temporary wind out of my sails. But I like to think that if I carry around my own hanger, everyone will know it’s mine

The post Custom suits, yes. Custom hangers? appeared first on Chamber Magic.

According to Wikipedia, among the items, persons, and scenes tattooed on Lydia’s body are the Battle of Waterloo (on her back), The Wreck of the Hesperus (beside it), the red, white and blue (above them); the cities of Kankakee and “Paree“, Washington Crossing the Delaware, President Andrew Jackson, Niagara Falls, Alcatraz, Buffalo Bill, Captain Spaulding exploring the Amazon, Lady Godiva (with her pajamas on), Grover Whalen, the Trylon, Treasure Island, Nijinsky, a fleet of ships (on her hips), and Lydia’s own Social Security number.
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Here’s another version of Groucho singing the same song on the Dick Cavett show much later in life.

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This next version is adorable – it’s Kermit the Frog singing Lydia on The Muppet Show. My daughter loves the ending, when Miss Piggy says, “Have you met my left fist? Hi-ya!”
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The two old hecklers in the balcony at the end of this clip are Statler and Waldorf. I always found them hilarious. Even more so when I grew up and learned that they were named after hotels: the Statler Hilton and my beloved Waldorf-Astoria!

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