MAGIC MIRROR ON THE WALL WHO IS THE FERRIS ONE OF ALL?

Is this the Ferris of them all?

Did you see that? He just explained a joke. The sin of all sins. Next he'll be laughing at his own gags, tee hee.

I am going to combine mirrors, mazes, a zither, an armonica, a classic flick and an ancient fun park into one deliquescent blast. Fasten your jocular straps.

And yes I do know deliquescent is about something that salt does. Please be advised to take it with a pinch. Or a grain for the gob-smackingly small-minded.

Here's a video by me to get the roll bawling. Get ready for unserious mirror maze fun in Vienna. Please click play on the picture displaying my smooth spy acting. Stanislavky's 'The Method', you know?

Here are strange stories about a mirror maze and the famous Ferris wheel in Vienna.

There's a great finish to this story. It's the next post called A Mirror Finish with incredible revelations about Snow White.

First, the build.

Here's what really happened with the video above kids.

A MAZE.

I am a trickster, so I played a trick on the two boys in the maze. Somehow I worked out how to get out of the maze. Then how to get back in again in a flash. It was probably just luck that I figured it out, but an inventive magician is good at solving secrets.

The people in the maze were really trapped. So I decided to be outside the maze when they looked at me and then when they looked away I hopped inside. Then inside the maze when they looked at me again. Backwards and forewords, backwards and forewords. What a scream. They were going crazy because I was like a ghost. A bit of the old in and out.

I was having such fun that I did crunch my camera into an invisible sheet of glass. A sickening clunk. Even thinking about it now, my stomach goes hollow. The camera was wrecked. I did have to buy another one the next day because it finally fizzled. Great blistering blood oranges, my credit card needed Prozac. 

And, I loved that camera, we were to be married in the Spring.

Next truth. I did crash into that guy in the video. Wait. He crashed into me. He was caught in my terribly lovely vortex warp.

This accident gave me more wobbly footage than I wanted.

What to do, what to do? So I made up a little video story for you using that unfortunate video material and then I threw in some Prater amusement park delights and a dash of eye candy. 

I take tips.

Just so you know. The Prater is one of the oldest amusement parks in this world. I can't speak for other worlds. It started as a pleasure field in the year 1162. 

Here's some perspective about that date. In that year of 1162, the fierce leader on the Mongols Genghis Kahn was born. Thomas Becket became the Archbishop of Canterbury [three centuries before Chaucer wrote the Canterbury Tales] and the land was cleared in Paris to build the Notre Dame cathedral. At least they were all busy.

The Riesenrad is a very old Ferris wheel from 1890. Please don't get too excited by its name. The exotic sounding Reisenrad means 'giant wheel'. No big deal.

Here's the good part. This wheel is very famous. It's a movie star. Many classic films feature the old whirler. James Bond, Scorpio and on and on and around and around. But the movie that made this wheel iconic was The Third Man.

The film scene is now yours to see. In this here video.

As you see, this cool film thriller had the wheel, it had Orson Welles and Joseph Cotten all going around together. It also introduced to a rapt world an instrument called the zither. That's just the most fabulous name for anything. 

My mirror maze video above has a sweet piece of the Harry Lime Theme composed for the picture by zither whiz Anton Karas. Ah yes, the maestro of the resonant and the plectrum. Dirty talk, don't you love it?

The Harry Lime Theme was a sensation worldwide from the 1949. Even the emperor of Japan was a mad fan. I suppose you could slice sushi with a zither.

The zither that played The Harry Lime Theme. 

Now seen at The Third Man Museum in Vienna.

The music I use in the crystal maze part of my video is really something. It's played on the world's rarest instrument, the glass armonica invented by US founding father Benjamin Franklin. Also known as the hydrocrystalophone. It works exactly like music that comes from stroking the lip of wine glass with a moist finger. Franklin spun different sized glass discs inside a polished wooden cabinet. A reviewer said, "The sound is mysterious and ungraspable, almost otherworldly and filled with dreamlike shadings. It's absolutely compelling". 

They always sound like that, reviewers, don't they?

Thanks to the keen eyes of my friend Pierre Taillefer, the witty French curator and historian, I found myself looking at a working glass armonica in Vienna. Too bedazzling. It was Franklin's own instrument used by him in Europe. Insert mind spin here. I discovered this loopy object when I was looking for somewhere to rest my coffee cup at a gala at the elegant National History Museum. It was a 'what in the hell is that?' moment. My cup looked so lovely sitting on one of the world's rarest musical masterpieces. And I didn't leave a ring.

Now for some mirror maze material. You don't have to read it because it's really meant for perverse enthusiasts and assorted fruit cakes. That's all of us in one way or another, so we'd better get over it. 

 My mind mirrors yours 

I say mirror mazes are worth looking into. 

But then, I would say that.


I'll also say that the mirror mirrors the mirror. Please have fun with that one.

Mirrors are our friends until they turn against us and show us what we do not want to see. Us, old. Then they are like relatives we prefer not to know.

Even so, mirrors are fabulous when they're meant for fun, decoration or spectacle. The best are the halls of mirrors. These cause sensible people to bleed excitement.

And yet, as much as we love them, halls of mirrors and crystal mazes are not easy to find. They hide in far away places like palaces and unique parks made for thrills. They're never down at the shopping centre where they should be. Or in psychiatric offices where they might unbend minds without pills.

Instead we have half-hearted mirrors on the sides of escalators and inside elevators. It's like architects go out of their way to hide the real fun of mirrors.

Couldn't we have just a little flair with infinity? Everybody goes silly inside a crazed loop of reflected infinity. We all love being between two mirrors facing each other plane to plane. The warping sight of you inside you and inside you forever is such a funny flip-out. All of your worries and heartaches evaporate in an instant.

The flea-bitten mirror mazes of carnivals are always disappointing. They're all worn, weary and not very clever. The mirrors look sad and lost. The paint is flaked and faded. They match all the penny-dreadful rides around them.

What you might not know is that mirror mazes use plastic mirror to stop lawsuits when all those clumsy people smash into the glass and cut themselves to ribbons. Pretty ribbons, but still ribbons.

It becomes a challenge to find fantastic reflective halls and mazes of any kind. The hedge ones are good but need better drainage. You always seem to be hopping over puddles. It's hard enough getting through a maze without ruining your favourite shoes. Even in the middle of the most sizzling summers, there's still puddles and mud. I finally worked it out, gardeners should learn how to squirt their hoses better.

The cream on top of all must be mazes made of mirrors.

For me, only the most specific kind of reflective maze will do. They must be brilliantly constructed from mirrors and clear glass windows. That's the trick. The combination of see-through panes and mirrors dazzle the human mind. They change perception so that all things go wrong in the funniest way. Comin' at cha.

Great lighting is part of the act too. The best mirror and glass mazes have the most insidious lighting. They sparkle and dance. They toy with your senses. They give you a feeling that brightness is your friend, but it is not your pal. That bright lighting illuminates the tricks of reflection and makes you dance the dance of disaster.

Before I leave mirrors, here is something you should know to clear up a myth. Modern magic illusions do not use mirrors. Most people think they do. Rub it out of your mind. There were a few more scientific mirror illusions in ancient times, but magicians of today don't need them. 

Solved. 

The Myth Busters don't even need to waste time on it.

Instead, with magic, it goes up sleeves after sawing a rabbit in halves wearing a top hat. No modern magician does any of these things really. If only I could say the same thing about card tricks.


Moments of reflection:

 Credits: 

William Zeitler. World leader in the realm of music and composition with the glass armonica. 
I recommend that you sample his magical and beautiful musical skills.

http://www.williamzeitler.com/store/C.‬

Andy Warhol mirrored by the master of the designer eye, Philippe Morillon. The image is from his exceptional book of cultural wonders 'Ultra Lux' [1981].

Infinity mirror sculpture. By Portland Glass at the University of Maine.

The passenger side rear vision mirror of Tim Owen's car as we drove across Arizona.

Magic Stage Illusions and Scientific Diversions, Including Trick Photography. 
Compiled and edited by Albert A. Hopkins. Munn & Co, NY. First published 1897. 
Copper engraved plate on wood illustration of a fanciful, but possible mirror illusion. 
Three people become a crowd. Yes, three's a crowd.

Brain warp*

Enter at your peril. All hope may be lost.

Come, come into the sacred corridors of infinity. Obey my every whim. You may never return. You will not be in control.

See immediately below a story that will change it all for you. You will be transfixed, at a loss, and you will never see one of the great tales the same way again.

It's the story of a mirror mirroring a mirror.

Remember this. Mirrors have no sense of tact.

They should think longer before they reflect. 

A mirror finish.

 The true tale of Snow White. 

This is a brain numbing story. Buckle up. Your brain may need a white stick and a seeing-eye dog. Prepare your mind to be reconfigured.

The magic talking mirror from Snow White still exists.

I do mean the real mirror from, "Magic Mirror on the wall, who is the fairest one of all?"

Do not doubt it. The mirror still hangs on a wall in Bavaria. It proves to be the looking glass written about by the fairy tale masters the brothers Grimm in their Snow White story.

And we thought the whole tale was made up.

The truth of this is beautifully researched. You can see the real mirror at the Lohr Castle. A castle that looks very much like the one in the 1937 Walt Disney Snow White film.

Here is how the Disney imagineers saw the fabled mirror. Such stylish artistry. How wonderful would it be to float around a castle in such an exquisite purple cloak? Wouldn't you love to run your fingers around that queen's lovely cloak room? I got very close to that when I found myself let loose in Liberace's actual closet. I am not tripping, I was there. Ask me and I will tell you.

This is a spectacular animation. It was the very first animated full-length movie and I recommend you buy it and knock yourself out.

So. Now. Here's the part where you put your reality check into holding pattern. There is plenty of evidence that Snow White is a true story. 

Stupefyingly, all of the records, names, places and documents still exist and are held in the city archives at Lohr. These sources were checked and double checked by the chemist and historian, Karlheinz Bartels in Bavaria.

The story you know is all there. The sad, lovely princess made into a hard working slave by an evil stepmother monster. Then there's the prince, the dwarfs and the mirror.

Stories come from somewhere and this one came from Bavaria. Here are the facts. I'll make it quick and punchy. Settle back and munch on a poisoned apple.

The tales that made Walt Disney and others very rich were written by the Grimm brothers. They did not invent what we call fairy stories, they just wrote down the tales that people had told for centuries. 

Grimm.

Folklore and myth was the Google of then. The Grimms were collectors and historians. Sometimes they rolled a couple of stories into one for better drama and romance.

With Snow White they took a local Germanic story and added some fables by a wonderful tale collector from Italy, Giovanni Battista Basile. The Grimms were his fanboys. 

Basile's Italian story called The Young Slave is only vaguely like Snow White. It does have an evil stepmother but there's a baron instead of a prince. Most folktales have those sorts of people.

In Bavaria, history reveals that the true Snow White was a noble woman named Maria Sophia Margaretha Catherina von Erthal. She was born in that village of Lohr am Main in 1725. Locals recorded that she was known for her 'praiseworthy virtues', just like the lovely girl in the famous story. History books from that time called Maria Sophie an 'angel of mercy and kindness'. The town folk loved her.

Maria Sophia’s father remarried in 1743. The stepmother, Claudia Elisabeth von Reichenstein arrived and hated the existing children. Her bitch quotient was 10.

The famous talking mirror is in the Spessart Museum inside the Lohr Castle, where Maria Sophia was born and raised. It was a product of a famous Lohr Mirror Manufacturer, Kurmainzische Spiegelmanufaktur.

Lohr mirrors were said to tell the truth. They spoke the truth about the way people looked. These were known as talking mirrors. Oh yes they were.

If you can find an elaborately-worked Lohr mirror, they have messages about truth inscribed into the frames. This famous Snow White mirror in the Lohr castle says in fashionable French: 'Elle brille à la lumière' or, light shines from her. Thus, she is beautiful.

This is the original mirror at the castle. I took a look. Sad to report that you are not the fairest of them all. Though it did promise to put your name on file.

Isn't it bedazzling that this mirror is still there? Awe, plain awe.

The real thing.      You may genuflect.

The precise words written down by Wilhelm Grimm in the story were, "“Mirror, mirror, here I stand. Who is the fairest in the land?”

In the same way as the fairytale, Maria Sophia fled from her stepmother and met the dwarves around the mines at a town called Bieber 35 kilometres from the castle. The road and all the parts in the story are still there, even the signposts. Snow White's wishing well is right there near the historian Dr. Bartel's pharmacy.

The mines dotted around the castle had children and dwarfs as miners. Larger people did not fit inside the tiny tunnels. The whole tale happened just a jot away from the famous crystal and quartz mines where the indelibly wonderful Bavarian crystal comes from. Look up! Low-flying chandelier!

In the story, after the poisoning of Snow White by the evil queen, the dwarfs display her in a beautiful crystal casket. The Lohr district was then acclaimed for its local glass makers of Spessart who made beautiful transparent boxes as well as windows.

Why the dwarfs put Snow White in a crystal casket was never quite explained in later versions of the story and the Disney feature. We have always assumed that it was better to show off her sleeping beauty. However there is another idea. 

The evil queen became so frightened of the magic mirror when it began telling the truth about her fading beauty that she developed a psychological illness we now call crystallophobia. That is a morbid fear of reflections in glass and mirrors and the possibility of dangerous shattering. The vain and fearful stepmother would have been very unlikely to tamper with Snow White's crystal casket. The dwarfs were smart.

Now, let's get into the dangerous juice of the poisoned apple that caused Snow White or Maria Sophia to collapse into a coma. This entire region is filled with apple orchards. Some of the world's most deadly plants still grow alongside those apple trees. Atropa belladonna or the 'Black Cherry' has an anaesthetic effect that produces a sleeping rigor mortis that can kill people. You might know the plant as Deadly Nightshade. 

Deadly Nightshade.

Deadly night shades.

Dr, Bartel's chemical expertise was invaluable in matching the effects of a poison administered with a lethal dipped apple. But why would an aristocrat like Maria Sophie's mother head down the path of attempted murder of her pretty step-daughter?

In Charles Mackay's outstanding book from 1841, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, he explained the poisoning rage of the 16th and 17th Centuries:

"Ladies of gentle birth and manners caught the contagion of murder, until poisoning, under their auspices, became quite fashionable. Women put poison bottles on their dressing-tables as openly, and used them with as little scruple upon others, as modern dames use eau de Cologne or lavender-water upon themselves."

Mackay says many graveyards of Europe were closed down when they overflowed with countless thousands of poisoned victims.

Run, Snow White, run!

It all adds up. 

Oh and there's not much imagery of Snow White here. Frankly, she's a bit dull and soppy. Never mind, friend her on Facebook like all the others. Send her a sickly poem and a selfie.

In the end, it is so great to know these secret dimensions at last.

The evil queen would not be pleased.

With thanks to Walt and the decades of Disney geniuses who have directed our fantasies and wonder.

Mystique. Devilish magic art. "Holy Houdini, Batman!"

Here's a brainsnap. The objects in the beautiful illustration above, from the 1920s, still exist. Many of them in showroom condition. See the picture below. 

Amazing isn't it? How do these things survive so well going from hand-to-hand, house-to-apartment and from family-to-family throughout decades of wars and pestilence? Talk about miracles.

Such is the perfection of these hand made wonders that to hold them and even perform with them is the thrill of your magical life.

Just so you know. The bag in the photograph below, with the deep velvet and obsidian spun wood, makes things vanish, change or dervish up wonders so complex that any mind is put at a loss. The one in this photograph was made by Thayer in Los Angeles. It is to, my mind, the finest make of them all. Though Petrie Lewis made many superb versions that made hearts sing everywhere. Audiences love the beauty of these as much as the performer likes handling them.

Here is the masterful Nelson Hahne illustration that began my love affair with this exquisite object. I was eight and it put stars in my eyes.

Here I've made things real. Both cheek and chic.

The Ching Soo Firecracker in the picture below is both beautiful and terrific fun. This is the real Petrie Lewis make that you see depicted in the illustration above.

This is what happens when it is performed. You put a large fizzing cracker into a cool nickelled tube and then hand it to someone. You put your fingers in your ears and scrunch your eyes waiting for the bang. But nothing. A fizzer? Not really, the helper opens the tube and the whole, bloody lit cracker has vanished. They can search the tube like a mad person and they will find nothing. 

It's so groovy [with gravy].

IB.

Now here's something for the triv and driv fans. That's trivia and drivel if you must know.

This is so excellent it simply demands its own headline —

Get me the Bat Bag Batman!

So then, one of the coolest TV 'outings' of the 1960s was a kooky Caped Crusader show called Batman. Always worth checking on YouTube, Vimeo or whatever. The show finally spawned loads of movies when the avid watchers of the television show grew up and went bats.

One of the most important people in the show was the very elderly Commissioner Gordon. He is in every episode made. The commissioner was played by Neil Hamilton. Good gig. But now I reveal Neil's own secret guise as a young cooler than cool coolster in the wild, early days of 1930s Hollywood. Suck in your Spandex ... he was a famed holder of one of the magical bags I am talking about here. 

Yes, yes ... a picture is worth a thousand words. Here he is holding one.

"Holy trickery, Batman". 

And doesn't he cut a dashing figure with a velvet bag? 

Quite the accessory.

Those were the days when gigantic shadows were the thing in photographs. Eclipsing yourself, more or less. Here he appears to be fingering some very unpleasant evidence. Not the old finger-tongs trick?

"Oh, I'm afraid it is Batman".

   Neil Hamilton as Commissioner Gordon and 
Adam West as Batman.

Please ignore this additional information.